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A HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION
TO THE STUDY OF THE
BOOKS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT.
/%^W<^ ^J-ty
..iAni4
A HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION
TO THE STUDY OF THE
BOOKS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT:
AN EXPANSION OF LECTURES
DELIVEKED IN THE
DIVINITY SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF DUBLIN
BY
GEORGE SALMON, D.D., F.R.S.,
REGIUS PROFESSOR OF DIVINITY.
SECOND EDITION.
LONDON:
JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE-STREET.
DUBLIN :
PRINTED AT THE UNIVEKSITY PKES8,
BY PONSONBY AND WELDUICK.
PREFACE
TO THE FIRST EDITION.
nPHE Lectures out of which the present volume has
-'- taken its origin were written some years ago, and
did not aim at giving a complete or systematic account
of the subjects with which they dealt. When I decided
last year on sending them to the press, I contemplated
making no other change than that of altering the division
into lectures — the original division, of necessity, having
mainly had regard to the length which it was convenient
to deliver at one time. Accordingly, the first three
Lectures of this volume contain, with but slight altera-
tions, what was originally the introductory Lecture of
my course. But as the printing went on I found ad-
ditions necessary, partly in order to take notice of
things that had been published since the delivery of the
lectures, and partly in order to include details which
want of time had obliged me to omit, but which I was
unwilling to pass unnoticed in my book. In this way I
have been led on to re-write, and make additions (but
without making any change in the style or in the ar-
rangement), until I am now somewhat dismayed to find
that the Lectures have swelled to two or three times
their original bulk.
The additions thus made have so far completed the
discussion, that I have ventured to give this volume the
yi PREFACE.
title of an Introduction ; but it will be seen that it does
not embrace all the topics frequently included under
that title. I do not enter on the criticism of the text,
nor do I make any analysis of the contents of the books.
My main purpose has been to discuss their date and
authorship on purely historical grounds ; and to examine
with sufficient completeness for a practical decision the
various theories on the subject advanced by modern
schools of criticism. It is in this latter respect that this
Introduction will chiefly be found to differ from some
valuable works on the same subject which are in the
hands of students. Most of the original evidence requi-
site for the discussion has already been brought within
easy reach in Canon Westcott's * History of the New
Testament Canon'. Dr. Charteris, also, in his * Canon-
icity ', has rendered accessible to the English reader the
collection of ancient testimonies made by Kirchhofer
in his * Quellensammlung '. According to the arrange-
ment of Canon Westcott's book, each of the ancient
witnesses is treated separately, and under each name
are placed the books of the New Testament to which
the witness bears testimony. According to the arrange-
ment of Kirchhofer and Charteris, each book of the New
Testament is examined in succession, and the ancient
writers are cited who bear testimony to it. The latter
is the arrangement I have followed. I do not always
give as full a report of the evidence as the authors just
mentioned have done, contenting myself with citing as
many witnesses as I judge to be sufficient to prove my
case. But on the other hand, as I have said, I aim at
giving a somewhat fuller discussion than they have done
of the theories of authorship which modern sceptical
writers have proposed to substitute for the traditional
PREFACE. vii
belief of the Christian Church. The time has passed
when it could be objected that a student's time was ill-
spent in becoming- acquainted with such theories, on the
g^round that he probably would never have heard of
them if he had not been asked to study the refutation.
Literature in which the theories in question are treated
as established facts has now obtained such extensive
circulation, that a clergyman must be pronounced ill-
trained for his work if he has to make his first acquaint-
ance with these speculations when he finds them ac-
cepted among his people as the latest results of scientific
inquiry.
Although my work may be described as apologetic
in the sense that its results agree in the main with the
traditional belief of the Church, I can honestly say that
I have not worked in the spirit of an advocate anxious
to defend a foregone conclusion. I have aimed at
making my investigations historical, and at asserting
nothing but what the evidence, candidly weighed,
seemed to warrant. It would be idle in anyone to pre-
tend that he can wholly divest himself of bias ; but I
must remark that the temptation to hold obstinately to
traditional opinions is one to which those who are called
apologists are not exclusively liable. The theories
which in these lectures I have found myself obliged to
reject are now some fifty years old. They are main-
tained by a generation of scholars who have accepted
them on the authority of guides to whom, in their youth-
ful days, they looked up with reverence, and whose
dicta they regard it as presumptuous to dispute, receiv-
ing their doctrines with something like the blind sub-
mission which the teachers of the scholastic philosophy
gave to the decisions of the Fathers. The temptation
viii PREFACE.
to apply unfairly the methods of historical criticism
besets as strongly the opponents as the assertors of the
supernatural. The former have found great difficulties
in maintaining their position by a priori proof of the
impossibility of miracle ; for what they seek to establish
really amounts to this : that, even if God exists, it is
beyond the power of his Omnipotence to give his crea-
tures convincing proof of his existence. Failing to
gain many converts to this doctrine, they have tried
another method of attaining their object : namely, by
a criticism directed to show that the documents ten-
dered for the establishment of miracles are so late as to
be undeserving of attention. But the attempt to show
this has, in my opinion, broken down, as I have en-
deavoured to prove in the following pages. If this
result has been established, it must follow that the
opponents of the supernatural will be forced to fall
back on their older methods.
T have thankfully to acknowledge kind help given
me in reading the proofs by my friends Professor
Mahaffy, Dr. Quarry, and Dr. Wace, to each of
whom I owe some useful suggestions. But my chief
acknowledgements are due to my colleague in our
Divinity School, Dr. Gwynn, who has taken, on my
behalf, an amount of trouble which, if I were not some-
what ashamed of having imposed so much labour on
him, would make me congratulate myself that the
publication of my lectures was delayed until I could
have the benefit of his assistance. In addition to most
careful reading of all the proofs, he has been ever ready
to consult authorities, and verify references for me, a
service which was particularly useful to me during three
months that I was at a distance from books ; and he has,
PREFACE. ix
besides, made some special investigations on my ac-
count, such as those which I have particularly acknow-
ledged, pp. 341, 539» 549, 597.
I had intended to add a Lecture, in continuation of
Lectures xi., xix., on books known to the early Church,
but which did not obtain admission into the Canon.
But I have found myself unable to include another
Lecture, which could not have been a short one, in a
volume which has grown to such a size.
The demand for a Second Edition has arisen too
soon to allow me time to make new investigations ; and
I have therefore merely reprinted the former edition,
with but slight alterations. But by a change of typo-
graphy I have made room for the lecture on non-
Canonical Books, which I thought would have unduly
swelled the size of the former volume. I have pub-
lished this Lecture separately for the use of purchasers
of the first edition. This change of typography having
rendered the former index useless, a new one has been
made for me by the kindness of the Rev. W. K. Ormsby.
My friend. Dr. Gwynn, has continued his valuable as-
sistance in the revision of the proofs of this edition.
Trinity College, Dublin,
May, 1886.
ERRATA.
Page 296, line 2, for xii. 50 read vii. 50.
„ 340, „ ii,ybrxvii. 12 read x\m. 12.
„ 446, „ 25, for Acts ix. 35 read iv. 36.
„ 527, ,, i^, for 'Lnmsden read L.Qusden.
CO NTENTS.
LECTURE I.
INTRODUCTORY. PART I.
Page
Principles of the Investigation i
Subject of Lectures defined, pp. i — 3. Question of Inspiration irrelevant
here, p. 4 ; amount of external evidence of authenticity commonly required
in similar cases, pp. 4 — 6 ; authenticity of N. T. books not to be denied
because of the miraculous nature of their contenes, pp. 6 — 10. Criticism
based on the rejection of the supernatural : Strauss, Renan, author of
Supernatural Religion, pp. 9 — 11. Naturalistic explanation of Gospel
Miracles: Paulus, p. 11 ; Strauss's theory, p. 12.
LECTURE IL
INTRODUCTORY. PART II.
Baur's Theory of Early Church History . . . 13
The Tiibingen (or 'Tendency') School, p. 13; its basis in the Clemen-
tine ^vritings, pp. 14 — 16 ; St. Paul assaUed in them under name of
Simon Magus, p. 16. Marcion, p. 17. The Paul-Simon theory, p. 19.
Two kinds of Ebionites, pp. 18 — 20. "WTiolesale rejection of N. T. books
necessary to Baur's theory, p. 21; the search for anti-Paulinism in the
Gospel, p. 22 ; unsuccessful, pp. 22 — 24 ; Baur admits but five N. T.
books as genuine, p. 24 ; internecine character of strife in early Church
as alleged by him, p. 24 ; its speedy and complete reconciliation, p. 25.
LECTURE III.
INTRODUCTORY. PART lU.
The Anti-Paulinism of the Apocalypse .... 26
Alleged anti-Pauhnism of the Epistles to the Seven Churches, pp. 26 — 28 ;
improbability of this view, pp. 28, 29. The calling of the Gentiles recog-
nized in the Apocalypse, p. 30 ; its alleged anti-Pauhne language paralleled
in Paul's own writings, pp. 30—32. Rapidity of supposed counter revo-
lution in favour of Paulinisra, p. 32.
xii CONTENTS.
LECTURE IV.
RECEPTION OF THE GOSPELS IN THE EARLY CHURCH.
PART I.
Page
The End of the Second Century; Iren^us, Clement,
AND Tertullian 33
Paul's teaching, as collected from his unquestioned Epistles, and from the
Acts, p. 33 ; assumes the fact of the Resurrection, p. 34 ; includes miracle,
p. 35. Facts admitted by Strauss as to reception of Gospels, p. 35.
IreNjEUS, pp. 35 — 40 ; links connecting him with Apostolic age, p. 36 ;
estimate of the Four Gospels in the Church of his age, pp. 36 — 38 ; his
testimony retrospective, pp. 38 — 40. Clement of Alexandria, pp. 40 — 42 ;
various texts of the Gospels, p. 41 ; inference from this fact, p. 42.
Tertullian, pp. 42 — 44. Greek the language of the early Roman
Church, p. 42 — 44. Early Latin version of Scriptures, p. 44 ; rendering
of title ' Logos ', p. 45.
LECTURE V.
RECEPTION OF THE GOSPELS IN THE EARLY CHURCH.
PART II.
The Muratorian Fragment ; Caius and Hippolytus . 46
The Muratorian Fragment, pp. 47—53; described, pp. 47 — 49; its
date how determined, Hermas, pp. 48, 49; conjectures as to its author,
pp. 50 — 53 ; its contents, pp. 53, 54. Caius and Hyppolytus, pp.
54 — 61. Caius, p. 55 ; his estimate of the Gospels, pp. 56, 57. HippO'
lytus, p. 57; his 'Refutation of Heresies', pp. 57, 58; his extracts
from heretical writers, p. 57 ; use made by these of N. T. books, p. 58 ;
expeciaUy of fourth Gospel, ib. ; by Valentinus, pp. 59 — 61 ; byBasilides,
pp. 61, 62. First mention of St. John as author of this Gospel, p. 62 ; it
tacitly claims him as such, p. 62.
LECTURE VI.
RECEPTION OF THE GOSPELS IN THE EARLY CHURCH.
PART III.
The Middle of the Second Century ; Justin Martyr,
Tatian 63
Justin Martyr, pp. 63—82 ; his date, p. 63 ; mentions and cites
'M-emoirs' of our Lord, pp. 64, 65; his citations vary verbally from the
CONTENTS. xiii
Page
existing Gospels, pp. 65 — 67 ; his substantial agreement with the Sy-
noptic Gospels, pp. 67 — 69; improbability that he used a Gospel now lost,
pp. 69 — 72 ; proofs that he knew the fourth Gospel, pp. 72 — 81 ; Thoma's
theory. Dr. Ezra Abbot, pp. 71, 72; Justin derives from fourth Gospel
his ' Logos ' doctrine, pp. 71 — 73 ; not from Philo, p. 73 ; hence also his
Baptismal language, pp. 74 — 76; St. John used in the Clementines,
p. 75 ; Strauss's failure to shake these conclusions, pp. 75-77 ; Dr.
Edwin Abbott's views untenable, pp. 78, 79; Renan's inconsistency on
this subject ; pp. 78 — 80. Tatian, pp. 80 — 86 ; his date and heresy,
pp. 81, 82; his knowledge of fourth Gospel, p. 81; his ' Diatessaron ' ,
pp. 82 — 86; recent recovery of commentary on it by Ephraem Syrus,
pp . 84, 85 ; its ample attestation of the fourth Gospel equally with the
others, pp. 85, 86.
LECTURE VII.
RECEPTION OF THE GOSPELS IN THE EARLY CHURCH.
PART IV.
The Beginning of the Second Century ; Papias, Apostolic
Fathers 87
Papias, pp. 87 — 106 ; his remains scanty and fragmentary, p. 87 ; unfair
inferences from his omissions, pp. 88 — 90 ; his ' Exposition of the Oracles
of the Lord', p. 90 ; his sources of information, pp. 90, 91 ; his witness
to the Gospels of Matthew and Mark, p. 92; recent doubts of the identity
of these with our first and second Gospels, pp. 93 — 95. Schleiermacher's
theory of the ' original ' Matthew and Mark, p. 95 ; Renan's theory of
their formation, pp. 95, 96. Meaning of the word 'Logia' in Papias's
account of Matthew, pp. 98, 99 ; explanation of his apology for Mark's
method, pp. 99, 100 ; probability that Papias knew Luke's Gospel,
pp. lOi — 103 ; true explanation of plan of Papias's work, pp. 103 — 105 ;
probability that he knew John's Gospel, p. 105. The Apostolic
Fathers, pp. 106 — 109. Clement of Rotne, p. 106. The early fathers
do not cite the Gospels by name, p. 106 ; nor verbally, p. 107 ; Barnabas,
pp. 108, 109.
xiv CONTENTS.
LECTURE VIII.
THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. PART I.
Page
Internal Evidence OF THEIR Antiquity . . . .no
Inferences from the titles of the Gospels, pp. no — 113 ; written Gospels
necessary from the first, pp. 112, 113. Our Lord's discourses as reported
by the Synoptists, p. 113; presumption that these would be written down
at an early date, pp. 114, 115; this presumption extends to the narrative
of his actions, p. 117. These three narratives not independent, pp. 116 —
118; the sceptical criticism is tending to revert to the early date claimed
for them, pp. 118, 119; no earlier Gospel extant, p. 120 ; the four took
their place without authoritative decision of Church, p. 121 ; Luke's ac-
count explains the oral common basis of the Synoptics, p. 121 ; he men-
tions written narrations prior to his own, p. 122 ; no authentic tradition as
to their publication, p. 123. Early necessity for authoritative records,
pp. 124 — 126. Gospels once published and accepted not easily changed,
pp. 126 — 128.
LECTURE IX.
THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. PART II.
Theories as to their Origin
Inquiry not precluded by belief in Inspiration, pp. 128, 129; though
difficult not hopeless, p. 129. Three chief hypotheses to account for the
common matter of the Synoptists, p. 130 ; various combinations of these,
p. 131; each hypothesis to be examined irrespectively of theories of In-
spiration, pp. 130 — 133. Alford's objection to First and Second Hypo-
theses, p. 133; verbal variations from documents in secular authors, p. 134;
variations in narratives of St. Paul's conversion, p. 135. The Third
Hypothesis will account for agreements in narrating of incidents, p. 136 ;
but the First or Second is needed to account for agreement in order of
narration, pp. 138, 139 ; absence of agreement in order of discourses,
pp. 139, 140. Gospels of Matthew and Luke independent of one
another, p. 140. Various forms of Second hypothesis, p. 141 ; inadmis-
sible modifications of it, pp. 141, 142. Modifications of Third hypo-
thesis, p. 142. Hypothesis of Hebrew common document, pp. 143, 144 ;
will account for verbal variations, pp. 144 — 147. Hypothesis of common
Greek original required by verbal coincidences, pp. 145, 146 ; and by
common citations of O. T., p. 146. Further elaboration of hypothesis of
Greek original, p. 147. Rushbrook's ' Synopticon', p. 148. Dr. Edwin
Abbott and the 'Triple Tradition', pp. 148—150; his theory of the
CONTENTS. XV
Page
common documents rests on an inadmissible assumption, p. 151. The
Synoptists' narratives of the Passion, pp. 151 — 153. The • Triple Tradi-
tion' rests on a single attestation, p. 152 ; which probably is that of
Peter, pp. 153, 154; traces of his testimony in Mark, pp. 154, 155. Mark
represents the original source most fully, p. 156 ; but is probably latest
in publication, p. 156 ; Matthew and Luke did not copy Mark, p. 157 ;
his last twelve verses, pp. 158 — 164.
Note on the Concluding Verses of St. Mark's Gospel 159
Early testimony to their authenticity, pp. 159 — 161. The testimony of
the two great uncials, p. 161. Improbability involved in the rejection of
the verses, pp. 163, 164. Some questions of textual criticism cannot now
be decided with certainty, p. 164.
LECTURE X.
THE ORIGINAL LANGUAGE OF ST. MATTHEW.
The Hebrew Gospel 165
Existence of an early Hebrew Gospel probable, pp. 165, 166. Early
Patristic evidence that Matthew wrote in Hebrew, p. 166. Witness of
Papias, Irenaeus, and Eusebius, p. 167 ; of Jerome and Epiphanius, p.
168. Internal counter-evidence, pp. 169, 170. No Greek text other
than ours known to the Fathers, pp. 170, 171. Hypothesis of a twofold
original, p. 172. The 'Hebrew Gospel', p. 172 ; not identical with the
* Ebionite Gospel', pp. 172 — 176; not the source of the Clementine quo-
tations, pp. 176, 177. Jerome's ' Nazarene ' Gospel not the original of
Matthew, pp. 177-188. Origen's evidence concerning the 'Hebrew
Gospel,' pp. 179 — 181; Jerome's inconsistency, pp. 182 — 184; estimate
of the value and age of this Gospel, pp. 184 — 186 ; first trace of it found
in Ignatius, p. 186; it was used by Hegesippus, p. 186. Palestine was
bilingual, pp. 187 — 189. Greek original on the whole more probable,
pp. 189 — 191.
LECTURE XL
Apocryphal AND Heretical Gospels 192
Hone's collection of N. T. Apocrypha, pp. 192 — 194 ; Hilgenfeld's,
pp. 193, 194. Apocryphal Gospels, pp. 194 — 203. The Protevangelium,
pp.194 — 198 ; its antiquity, p. 197. The Ps eudo- Matthew, t^.K)^. The
Gospel of Thomas, pp. 198 — 200 ; its legends of our Lord's childhood,
pp. 199, 200; its date, p. 200. The Gospel of Nicodemus and Acts of
Pilate, pp. 200, 201. Evangelic fragments, p. 202. Heretical
Gospels, pp. 203 — 209 ; were chiefly Gnostic and Encratite, p. 204.
Gospel of the Egyptians, pp. 203 — 205. Gospel of Marcion, pp. 205 — 209 ;
Tertullian's examination of it, p. 206 ; reconstruction of it, pp. 207, 208 ;
attempt to make it out prior to Luke's, p. 208 ; also to John's, p. 209.
xvi CONTENTS.
LECTURE XII.
THE JOHANNINE BOOKS. PART I.
Page
The Fourth Gospel 210
Common authorship of this Gospel and First Epistle, pp. 210, 211 ; motive
for questioning this fact, pp. 211, 212. Early external testimony to the
Epistle, pp. 212, 213. Baur assigns a late date to the Gospel, p. 215 ;
his followers tend to place it earlier, ib. ; Renan takes an exceptional
line, pp. 213 — 215. Motives for denying its Apostolic authorship, p. 216 ;
Its witness to our Lord's Divinity, p. 217 ; to His self-assertion, p. 217.
His self-assertion attested by the Synoptics likewise, pp. 218 — 220.
Christology of the Apocalypse, pp. 220 — 224. Apocalypse admitted to
be John's, pp. 223, 224. Christology of St. Paul's Epistles, pp. 224, 225.
Dr. Pfleiderer on the Christology of Apocalypse, p. 224.
LECTURE XIII.
THE JOHANNINE BOOKS. PART II.
The Fourth Gospel and the Apocalypse . . . 225
Diversity of style between these two books, p. 225. Early external at-
testation of Apocalypse, pp. 226 — 230. Millennarian use of it, pp. 227,
228; tended to discredit the book, p. 230. Ascription of it to Cerinthus,
p. 230; also of the Gospel, p. 231. Arguments of Dionysius of Alex-
dria against the Johannine authorship of Apocalypse, pp. 230 — 235 ; ex-
amination of them, pp. 234 — 242. Its coincidences of diction with the
Gospel, pp. 235 — 240; its points of difference, pp. 236 — 238. Solecisms
of the Apocalypse, pp. 238 — 241. The Greek of the Gospel, p. 241 ; its
superiority over that of the Apocalypse accounted for, pp. 241, 242.
LECTURE XIV.
THE JOHANNINE BOOKS. PART III.
The Date of the Apocalypse 243
Earlier date assigned by the sceptical school, p. 244. Theory of Renan
and his followers, pp. 244 — 246. Nero the ' Beast ', p. 245 ; its 'Num-
ber', p. 247. This theory imputes failure to the predictions of the
book, p. 247; is incredible, pp. 248, 249; attempts to deny that failure is
imputed, pp. 249, 250. Ancient conception of Prophecy, p. 251.
Modem solutions of the riddles of the book are but partial, pp. 251 — 253 ;
multiplicity of solutions, p. 254. Other objections to the Neronian
solution, p. 254. Neronian date not improbable, p. 255.
CONTENTS. xvii
LECTURE XV.
THE JOHANNINE BOOKS. PART IV.
Page
The Fourth Gospel and the Quartodecimans . .255
The Quartodecimans alleged as witnesses against fourth Gospel, p. 255.
Real difficulty in its account of Last Supper, pp. 256 — 259 ; solutions
offered, pp. 257, 258 ; a forger would have avoided raising this difficulty,
pp. 258, 259. Controversy concerning Easter, p. 259 ; Baur's assump-
tion as to the Eastern commemoration, pp. 260, 261. First recorded
instance of Paschal disputes, Polycarp and Anicetus, pp. 261, 262.
Probable usage of the Apostles, p. 262. Second recorded Paschal dis-
pute, Melito's book, pp. 263, 264. Third reco7-ded Paschal dispute,
Victor and Polycrates, p. 265. Quartodeciman testimony to fourth
Gospel, p. 266.
Note on the Astronomical Aspect of the Question . .266
Jewish New Moon, p. 266. Table of New Moons, p. 267. Wieseler's
mistake, p. 267.
LECTURE XVI.
THE JOHANNINE BOOKS. PART V.
The Gospel and the Minor Epistles 268
The Fourth Evangelist was (i) a yew, pp. 268 — 271 ; was (ii) a Jew of
Palestine, pp. 271 — 273 ; was (iii) of the first century, pp. 273 — 275 ; was
(iv) an eye-witness of the events he relates, pp. 275 — 279 ; and a disciple
of the Baptist, p. 276; was yohn the Apostle, pp. 278, 279. Theory of
another John, 'the Elder', pp. 279 — 281; this theory fails to solve the
questions of authorship of the Johannine Books, pp. 280, 281 ; the Minor
Epistles, pp. 281 — 287 ; their authenticity questioned, pp. 281, 282 ; es-
tablished conclusively by internal evidence, pp. 282, 283 ; they confirm
the Johannine authorship of the Gospel, p. 283. The Third Epistle, St.
John and Episcopacy, pp. 283, 284. ' The Elect Lady ' of tlu Second
Epistle, p. 285. Attempts to allegorize away parts of the fourth Gospel,
p. 286. Importance of the facts implied in the Third Epistle, ib.
b
xviii CONTENTS
LECTURE XVII.
THE JOHANNINE BOOKS. PART VI.
Page
The Fourth Gospel and the Synoptics . , . .287
Omissions of the fourth Gospel, p. 287 ; instance as regards our Lord's
birthplace, pp. 288, 289 ; absurdity of Renan's view of this case, pp. 289,
290 ; St. John's manner is to assume previous knowledge in his readers,
p. 291 ; his 'Irony', pp. 292 — 295 ; his knowledge of previous Gospels,
pp. 295 — 297 ; he wrote after Peter's death, p. 295 ; his last chapter, pp.
295, 296 ; supplemental character of his Gospel, pp. 297, 298 ; his silence
as to the Eucharist, p. 298; the institution of the Eucharist by our Lord
involves a claim of Divinity on His part, pp. 299, 300 ; Synoptic account
of institution confirmed by St. Paul, p. 300; early Christian belief con-
cerning it, ib. ; the Eucharist implied in fourth Gospel, pp. 301, 302; as
also baptism, p. 302 ; and the Ascension, ib. The fourth Gospel written
with a purpose, pp. 303, 304. Its coincidences with the Synoptics, pp.
304 — 306. It contains facts omitted by them, pp. 305, 306. A prion
probability of our Lord's earlier visits to Jerusalem recorded in it, pp.
306 — 308 ; admitted by Renan, p. 308.
LECTURE XVIII.
The Acts of the Apostles 309
Date of this book a vital matter, p. 309. External attestation of it, pp.
309 — 311. Internal evidence, p. 312. Modern theories of its compilation,
p. 312, 313. The 'we' sections, pp. 312 — 320; the author ol these, p. 313.
Tradition of Luke's authorship of third Gospel and Acts, pp. 313, 314.
Imagined marks of spuriousness, pp. 315, 316. Unity of authorship of
Acts inferred from its structure and contents, pp. 316, 317 ; and from its
diction, p. 317. Literary skill of the author, pp. 318, 319. Motives for
denying its unity, pp. 319 — 326. Its supernatural element, pp. 319, 320.
Its representation of Paul's relations with the Twelve, pp. 321 — 327. The
Tiibingen version of Paul's History, pp. 322, 323 ; its incredibility as
compared with the account in Acts, pp. 324, 325. Absence of Pauline
topics from speeches ascribed to him in this book, pp. 325, 326. Sup-
posed artificial parallelism between its narratives of Peter and of Paul,
pp. 326, 327. Frequent occuirence of parallel events in history ; the sup-
posed parallel wants its climax, pp. 327, 328. Abrupt close of the Acts,
p. 328. The author's principle of selection of topics, p. 329 ; his oppor-
tunities of gaining information, pp. 330, 331 ; his account of Philip the
Deacon, pp. 330 — 333 ; he possibly used as materials a diary of his own,
pp. 332, 333. His reports of Paul's speeches, pp. 333 — 335. His little
use of Paul's Epistles, p. 335 ; for example, that to Philippians, p. 336 ;
CONTENTS. xix
Page
Galatians, ib. ; l & 2 Corinthians, pp. 337, 338. Reports of Peter's
speeches in Acts compared with his First Epistle, p. 338. External con-
firmations of the author's accuracy, pp. 339 — 342. Holtzmann's theory
that the author followed Josephus, pp. 341, 342. Discrepancies between
the Acts and Josephus, pp. 342, 343.
LECTURE XIX.
Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles 343
No other Acts but Luke's admitted into the Canon, p. 344. Apocryphal
Acts mostly of heretical origin, pp. 344, 345 ; afterwards expurgated for
orthodox use, pp. 345, 346. (i) The Ahgar Legend, pp. 346 — 348 ; ex-
tant form of it, p. 347. (ii) The Acts of Paul and Thecla, pp. 349 — 354;
Tertulhan's account of its origin, p. 349 ; tinged with Encratism, p. 349 ;
its story, pp. 350 — 352 ; still extant, p. 352 ; time and place of composi-
tion, pp.353, 354. {^\\)T\iQ Acts of St. Thomas, pp. 354 — 364; Leucian
Acts, p. 455 ; light thrown by the Acts of Thomas on Gnostic ideas, pp.
355, 356 ; narrative of this book, pp. 356 — 360 ; Ritual described in it,
pp. 359 — 362 ; its doctrine, p. 362 ; date and place of composition, p.
363. (iv) The Acts of St. Peter, the Clementines, pp. 364, 365 ; the
'Circuits of Peter', and 'Preaching of Peter', p. 364; the Simon-Paul
theoiy, pp. 365, 366 ; ' Acts of Peter and Paul', pp. 367, 368; Feast of
29th June, pp. 368, 369; rival traditions concerning Peter, p. 370.
(v) The Acts of St. John, pp. 371 — 378; heretical character of the
Leucian Acts, pp. 371 — 373 ; second century traditions concerning John,
pp. 373 — 375 ; later legends, p. 375 ; Assumption of B. V. M., pp.
376-378.
LECTURE XX.
The Pauline Epistles ........ 379
The Sceptical school not agreed which of these to reject, pp. 379, 380.
Four groups of them, p. 381. St. Paul used by Justin Martyr, p. 382.
Methodius and Justin, p. 383. First Group, pp. 381 — 392 ; i Thessa-
lonia7is, pp. 385 — 387. 2 Thessalonians, pp. 387 — 389 ; its prophecy of
the Man of Sin, pp. 389 — 391 ; external attestation of both Epistles, pp.
390, 391 ; precaution against forgery, p. 391 ; lost Epistles, pp. 391, 392.
Second Group, pp. 392 — 395 ; concluding chapter of Pomans, pp. 393,
394. Third Group, pp. 395 — 408; Philippians, p. 395, 396; Philemon,
p. 396 ; Colossians, pp. 396 — 403 ; external attestation, p. 396 ; internal
evidence, pp. 396 — 398 ; objections grounded on its diction, pp. 398,
399 ; on its Christology, pp. 399, 400 ; on its reference to Gnostic teach-
ing, pp. 400 — 403 ; Ephesians, pp. 403 — 413; external evidence, pp.403,
404 ; its affinities with i Peter, p. 404 ; its close likeness to Colossians,
XX CONTENTS.
pp. 404, 405 ; Paley's account of this fact, p. 405 ; rejected by sceptical
critics, p. 405 ; question of priority between the two, p. 406 ; Holtz-
mann's theory, p. 407 ; this Epistle contradicts modern theories of early
Church history, p. 408 ; Gentile Christianity as shown in it, pp. 408, 409 ;
ruling topics of these two Epistles distinct, pp. 410, 411 ; literary excel-
lence and influence of Ephesians, pp. 412, 413. Fourth Group, pp.
413 — 432 ; Pastoral Epistles te]ecit6., yet used by Renan, p. 413 ; external
attestation, pp. 413 — 415 ; rejection by early heretics, p. 415 ; objections
founded on— (i) their diction, p. 416; on (2) the controversies they deal
with, pp. 416, 417 ; on (3) the difficulty of harmonizing them with the
Acts, pp. 417, 418 ; their diction probably marks them as St. Paul's
latest work, pp. 418 — 420; their historical contents suggest lilce conclu-
sion, p. 420 ; they imply Paul's release from the imprisonment recorded
in Acts, pp. 420 —424 ; independent evidence of this release, pp. 423, 424 ;
objections to late date, pp. 424 — 426 ; internal evidence for 2 Timothy,
pp. 426 — 432 ; its Pauline character, pp. 426 — 428 ; its details, pp. 428,
429 ; its genuineness carries with it that of i Tiinothy and Titus, pp. 431,
432 ; Renan's estimate of all three, p. 432.
Page
LECTURE XXI.
The Epistle to the Hebrews 433
Question of authorship, not of authenticity of Hebrews, p. 433. Use of it
by Clement of Rome, pp. 433, 434. Accepted by whole Eastern Church
as St. Paul's, pp. 434, 435. Testimony of Clement of Alexandria, pp.
434' 435- View of Origen, pp. 435, 436. Western opinion adverse, pp.
436, 437. Tertullian ascribed it to Barnabas, pp. 437, 438. Reaction
under Jerome and Augustine, pp. 438, 439. Evidence of MSS. and
Versions, p. 439. Its anonymousness, p. 440. Its canonicity well es-
tabhshed, ib. Iiiternal evidence for and against Pauline authorship,
pp. 440 — 445 ; individual passages, pp. 440 — 442 ; its doctrine Pauline,
p. 442 ; it uses Pauline language and mannerisms, pp. 442, 443 ; its O. T.
citations, p. 444 ; its Alexandrian colouring, p. 444 ; its general style un-
Pauline, pp. 454, 445. Conjectures as to authorship, pp. 445, 446 ; con-
siderations in favour of ascription to Barnabas, pp. 446 — 448. Probably
addressed to Jewish Christians of Jerusalem, pp. 448 — 452. Written from
Italy, p. 452. Lower limit of date, p. 452 ; upper Umit doubtful, pp.
452 — 454. Note on the Codex Claromontantis, p. 453.
LECTURE XXII.
The First Epistle of St. Peter 455
Eusebius's classification of N. T. Books, pp. 455 — 458. External attesta-
tions of I Peter, pp. 458, 459 ; it is included in all Canons except the
Muratorian, p. 458. Internal difficulties alleged against it, pp. 459, 460.
It contradicts Barn's views of early Church history, pp. 460, 461. Its
CONTENTS. xxi
Page
Paulinism of doctrine, p. 461, 462. Place of composition ' Babylon ', pp.
462 — 464. Roman martyrdom of Peter, pp. 464, 465. Addressed to
Christians dispersed in Pontus, &c., pp. 465, 466. Its coincidences with
Romans, p. 466 ; with Ephesians, pp. 466 — 470. Seufert's theory, p.
469. Its coincidences with Epistle of James, p. 470. Its originality and
individuaUty, pp. 471, 472.
LECTURE XXIII.
The Epistle of St. James 473
This Epistle classed by Eusebius among ' Antilegomena ', p. 473. The
' Seven Catholic Epistles ', ib. ; evidence of Origen concerning it, p. 474 ;
of Clement of Alexandria, pp. 474, 475 ; of Hermas, pp. 475, 476 ; pro-
bably of Clement of Rome, pp. 476, 477 ; of Irenseus, p, 477 ; other
authorities, ib. Internal evidence, pp.478 — 492. James, 'The Lord's
Brother', first bishop of Jerusalem, p. 478; probabiUty of the usual
ascription of the Epistle to him, pp. 478—480. Written for Christian
Jews, p. 480 ; probably residents in Syria, p. 480. The author a personal
follower of our Lord, pp. 481, 482; wrote before fall of Jerusalem, pp.
482, 483 ; his picture of the Jews confirmed by Josephus, pp. 483, 484.
Other internal evidences of early date, pp. 484, 485 ; its doctrine not anti-
Pauhne, pp. 485 — 487 ; its silence as to disputes of Paul's time, p. 487 ;
late date assigned to it by sceptical school, p. 488. Purity of its Greek,
p. 489; its verbal coincidences with Romans, pp. 489 — 491. Its sub-
stantial agreement with Paul's doctrine, pp. 491, 492 ; its teaching closely
akin to O. T. Prophets, pp. 492, 493 ; but not merely Judaic, pp. 493,
494. Character of the author as shown in it, p. 494 ; its moral precepts,
p. 495; moral effects of Christain teaching, pp. 496, 497. Bede on St.
James's Epistle, p. 497.
LECTURE XXIV.
The Epistle of St. Jude 498
Historical attestation of the books of N. T. unequal, p. 498 ; a few of
them were doubted by critics in fourth century, p. 500. Cause of the
scantiness of attestation of Epistles of James and Jude, pp. 501, 502; of
the two, Jude's has better external attestation, p. 502 ; especially in the
West, p. 502. Jude, one of * the Lord's brethren', p. 503 ; tradition
concerning his grandsons preserved by Hegesippus, pp. 503, 504 ; doubt
whether he was of the Twelve, p. 504 ; what we are to understand by
'Brethren of our Lord', p. 504 — 506. Date of the Epistle, p. 506;
against whom were its censures directed ? pp. 506, 507. Its use of Jewish
Apocrypha, pp. 508 — 511; the 'Assumption of Moses', pp. 508, 509;
the 'Book of Enoch', pp. 509—511. The Syriac translation of the
Catholic Epistles, p. 511.
xxii CONTENTS.
LECTURE XXV.
Page
The Second Epistle of St. Peter 512
Doubts in the Church of the authority of this Epistle, p. 512. Early
opinions unfavourable to it and other of the ' Catholic ' Epistles, pp. 513,
514. General acceptance attained by them all, pp. 514 — 516. Question
reopened at the Reformation, p. 514. Opinion of Epiphanius favourable,
p. 515; inconsistency of Jerome, ib. ; and of Didymus, ih. Evidence of
MSS. and Canons, p. 516. Opinion of Origen, ib.; of Firmilian, p.
517. Old Latin Version, ib. Doubtful use of this Epistle by Clement of
Alexandria, p. 517 ; by Iren^us, pp. 518 — 520; by Pseudo-Clement,
p. 520 ; by Theophilus of Antioch, ib. Prediction in this Epistle
of the destruction of the world by lire, pp. 520, 521. This destruction
early became a point of Christian belief, p. 521. Doubtful use of
2 Peter by Hermas and Clement of Rome, pp. 521, 522. Its ac-
ceptance far short of that of i Peter, p. 522. Grotius's theory, ib.
The author claims to be Peter, ib. ; if not Peter, is a forger, p. 523 ;
this alternative must be faced, ib. Relation between 2 Peter and Jude,
pp. 525 — 527. Difference of style between i and 2 Peter, pp. 527, 528;
points of resemblance between them, p. 528. Coincidences of 2 Peter
with Petrine speeches in Acts, pp. 528, 529. Dr. Edwin Abbott's attack
on 2 Peter, pp. 529 — 551. Its unworthiness of style, pp. 529 — 538;
'Baboo' Greek, pp. 529 — 535. Unfairness of his treatment of the
Epistle, pp. 530, 531 ; schoolboy EngUsh of his renderings, ib. Defects
in its Greek are natural, if it was written by a Palestinian Jew, p. 532 ; but
cannot affect the question of its genuineness, pp. 532, 533; its Greek not
to be tested by our Lexicons, pp. 534, 535. Absurd misapprehension
involved in the charge of 'pedantry' against the author, pp. 535, 536,
Discussion of sundry expressions objected to, pp. 536—538; 'Hapax
Legomena', pp. 537, 538. Its alleged borrowings from Josephus, pp.
539 — 547. Archdeacon Farra.r's opinion, pp. 540, 541. Alleged co-
incidences with Josephus merely verbal, pp. 541, 542. Not within brief
compass, p. 542 ; nor in same sequence, ib.; nor do they occur in the case
of unusual words, pp. 542, 543. No N. T. writer keeps within the limits
of BibHcal language, p. 544. The Greek of Philo, pp. 544 — 547. Dis-
cussion of the words and combinations relied on by Dr. Abbott, pp.
547, 548. Coincidences mth Philo's writings found in i Peter, pp. 549,
550; also elsewhere in N. T., p. 550. Result of examination of Dr.
Abbott's criticism, pp. 550, 551. Newly-discovered Stichometry, p.
551-
CONTENTS. xxiii
LECTURE XXVI.
Page
Non-Canonical Books 552
TJie Apocalypse of Peter, pp. 552 — 557. Recognized in the Muratorian
Fragment, and possibly by Caius, p. 552 ; quotations from it by Clement
of Alexandria, p. 553 ; and by Macarius, p. 554. Its use not quite ex-
tinct in the fifth century, p. 555. Whether included in the Sinaitic MS.,
P- 555 J the Psalms of Solomon, p. 555. Conjectural ascription of pas-
sages to this Apocalypse, p. 556; other Apocalypses, p. 557. The
Epistle of Barnabas, pp. 557 — 564. External attestation, pp. 557, 558.
Impossibility of accepting some of the contents as inspired, p. 559.
Whether it would be possible to acknowledge its Apostolic origin and
deny its inspiration, p. 560 ; attitude of the writer towards Judaism, pp.
561, 562 ; date of the Epistle, p. 563 ; to what Church addressed, p. 564.
The Epistle to Clement, pp. 564 — 571. Written in the name of the
Church of Rome, p. 565. Importance of the Bishop of Rome merged in
the importance of his Church, p. 565. Proofs of the early use of the
Epistle, p. 566 ; date of the latter, p. 567 ; varying accounts of the order
of the first Roman bishops, p. 567. No good reason for doubting that
Clement was really at the head of the Roman Church, p. 568. Whether
the Church of Corinth was in his time governed by a single person, p.
568; extreme amount of disorder in Corinth, p. 569. The Prayer of
Manasses, p. 569. Evidence of Roman supremacy afforded by Clement's
letter, p. 570 ; Clement a Jew, p. 570 ; authorities for the text of Clement,
p. 570. The Second Epistle of Clement, p. 571. The Shepherd of
Hernias, pp. 571 — 586. External testimony, pp. 572, 573. Disuse of
non-Canonical writings after rise of Montanism, p. 572. Tertullian
and the Shepherd, p. 573. Contents of the Shepherd, p. 574. The
date of Hermas, p. 575. The book written in good faith, p. 576 ; and ac-
cepted as a record of real revelations, p. 579; written in the Episcopate of
Clement, p. 581. Rejection of Muratorian account, p. 583. Church
organization in the time of Hermas, p. 584 ; he belonged to the order of
prophets, p. 585. Hermas and Theodotion, pp. 586 — 600. The 'Thegri '
of Hermas explained by Mr. Rendel Harris from Dan. vi. 22, p. 587.
Dr. Hort's fiu-ther inference, p. 587. Preliminary considerations unfavour-
able to his inference, p. 588. Greek translation of the Old Testament, p.
588. Theodotion's version of Daniel used in the Christian Church,
p. 589. Epiphanius's account of Greek translation not trustworthy,
p. 591. Theodotion's version in use before the time of Irenxus, p. 592.
A silent rejection of the Scptuagint not probable, p. 594. Characteristics
xxiv CONTENTS.
of the Chigi Daniel, p. 595 ; its affinities with the Apocryphal Esdras, p.
595. Did the New Testament writers make use of the Chigi version ?
p. 597. Neither Clement of Rome nor Baruch recognize it, p. 599.
The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles, pp. 600 — 617. External testimony,
p. 601. The 'Church Ordinances', p. 602. Barnabas and the 'Two
"Ways ', p. 603. Bryennius's ' Teaching of the Apostles ', p. 604 ; its ac-
count of Church organization, p. 605. Whether the author was an
Ebionite, p. 607. Relations of the Didache to Barnabas and Hermas, p.
608. Dr. Taylor on the Didache, p. 608. Hypothesis that the Didache is
founded on a pre-Christian manual for the instruction of proselytes, p. 609.
Relations of the Didache to Barnabas, p. 610; and of both to the
'Church Ordinances', p. 611. Western form of the book, p. 612.
AVhether the Didache in its present form had early circulation in the East,
p. 613 ; how much of it maybe referred to a pre-Christian model, p. 614 ;
its instructions about baptism, p. 614 ; on prayer, p. 615 ; on the Eucharist,
p. 616; the last chapter, 617 ; whether known to Origen, 618.
I.
INTRODUCTORY.
Part I.
PRINCIPLES OF THE INVESTIGATION.
THE subject appointed for our Lectures this Term is The
Bible ; but that opens up a field so wide, that to treat
adequately" of all that it is desirable should be known about
it would give us employment, not for one Term, but for
several years. Last year you attended Lectures on Natural
Religion and on Christian Evidences. I assume that you then
went through the proofs that there is a God ; that there is no
impossibility in His revealing His will to His creatures,
using miracle or prophecy as credentials to authenticate His
message ; and that you went through the proofs of our Lord's
divine mission, establishing the conclusion that He was the
bearer to the world of a revelation from God. Then, in logi-
cal order, follows the question, How is that revelation to be
known to us ? what are the books that record it ? — in other
words : What is the Canon of Scripture ?
In this investigation the determination of the New Testa-
ment Canon comes before that of the Old. We must first
determine what are the books which contain authentic records
of the teaching of our Lord and His Apostles ; because we
can then use their testimony to the older books, which they
reverenced as divinely inspired. Next after the question of
the Canon comes that of Biblical Criticism. Supposing it to
be established that certain books were written, containing an
B
2 INTRODUCTORY. [i.
authoritative record of Divine revelations, v^'e have still to
inquire whether those books have come down safely to us —
how we are to remove all the errors which may have accumu-
lated during the process of transcription in many centuries,
and so restore the texts to their original purity. Perhaps
here might follow questions concerning the Translation of
these texts, for without translation books written in Hebrew
and Greek cannot be made available for the instruction of our
people. At any rate, we have to consider questions concern-
ing the Interpretation of these books. May we follow the
same rules as we do in interpreting any ordinary book, and
be satisfied in each case with that plain meaning which it
seems the writer intended ; or does the fact that the books are
divine — that the real author is not man, but God ; that there
may, therefore, often be a meaning unknown even to the
human agent who w^as commissioned to write the words —
oblige us to employ special methods of interpretation in order
to discover the deeper spiritual meaning ? And, lastly, we
must inquire what is involved in the Divine Inspiration we
ascribe to these books. Does it exclude the supposition of
the smallest inaccuracy being found in them in science,
history, moral or religious teaching ? If we admit the possi-
bility of any such inaccuracy, can we put any limits to our
concession r
The subjects I have named — the Canon, the Criticism, the
Interpretation of our books, and the question of their Inspira-
tion— are by no means all that might be discussed in treating
of the Bible ; yet these alone form a programme to which it
is impossible to do justice in the time at my disposal, and in
practice I have found that, with whatever subject I begin, I
am obliged, if I wish to treat it at all adequately, to crowd
out nearly all the rest. At present I am about to take up
the subject which seems in logical order the first — the ques-
tion what books contain the authentic record of the teaching
of our Lord and His Apostles — in other words, the question
of the New Testament Canon.
I wish to keep the question I have named quite clear of
any discussion as to the Inspiration of the sacred books, such
I.] PRINCIPLES OF THE INVESTIGATION. 3
discussion plainly belonging to a later stage of the investi-
gation. I wish to examine into the evidence for the genuine-
ness and authenticity of the books of the Bible in the same
way as in the case of any ordinary books. It is clearly one
question : At what date and by what authors were certain
books written ? And quite another question : Is there reason to
believe that the authors of these books were aided by super-
natural guidance, and if so, what was the nature and extent
of that supernatural assistance ? The former is, as we shall
presently see, a question of vital importance in the contro-
versy between Christians and unbelievers; the latter is one in-
ternal among Christians, and only admits of discussion among
those who are already convinced of the historic credibility of
the New Testament books, and who, because they believe
what these books relate about Jesus of Nazareth, find no diffi-
culty in believing also that He endowed with special powers
those whom He commissioned to write the revelation which
He brought into the world.
I make these remarks at the outset, because it enables us
at once to set aside certain topics as irrelevant to the present
investigation. Suppose, for example, it be alleged that there
are plain contradictions between the first Gospel and the fourth;
if we were engaged in an inquiry as to the Inspiration of the
Gospels, it would be of the utmost importance to examine
whether and how far this allegation is true. But it may be
quite possible to set it aside as entirely irrelevant, when we
are only inquiring whether or not both Gospels were written
by Apostles. It is the constant experience of anyone who
has ever engaged in historical investigation to have to recon-
cile contradictions between his authorities ; but such contra-
dictions must reach a high point in number and gravity
before they suggest a suspicion that the opposing statements
do not both proceed, as they profess to do, from persons
having a first-hand knowledge of the matters about which
they write.
I have just said that I wish to investigate the genuineness
and authenticity of the books of the Bible in the same way as
we should in the case of any uninspired book. But we are
B 2
4 INTRODUCTORY. [i.
not quite permitted to do so. Those who would approve of
interpreting the Bible according to the same rules by which
we should interpret any other book apply very different rules
in determining the authorship of its parts from what are used
in the case of other books. If we were to apply to the remains
of classical literature the same rigour of scrutiny that is used
towards the New Testament, there are but few of them that
could stand the test. There are many of you who count as
good classical scholars, who have always received with simple
faith that what you read in your printed books is the work of
the author to whom it is commonly ascribed, and have never
applied your minds to consider what answer you could give
to anyone who should deny it. You are very familiar, for
instance, with Horace. Do you know what interval separates
the oldest manuscript of his works from the age of Augustus,
in which the poet is said to have lived ? Can you fill up the
gap by quotations from ancient authors ? Do you know what
ancient authors mention him or quote his poems r Can you
tell how far the earliest quotation is separated in time from
the poet himself? Can you tell what extent of his writings is
covered by quotations ? Can you give separate proofs for
each book of the Odes, of the Satires and Epistles, and for the
Art of Poetry ? And if you are able to give a proof for every
book, can you meet the requirements of a more severe critic,
who might demand a distinct proof of the Horatian origin of
every ode of every book ? I suppose the chances are that you
would not attempt to answer these questions ; because, though
you probably have heard of the theory of the Jesuit Hardouin,
that the Odes of Horace and other classical books were written
by Benedictine monks in the dark ages, it is not likely that
you have given that theory a serious thought. Yet, if we
were called on to refute it, by producing quotations from the
Odes by any writer who lived within two centuries of the
poet's death (and later testimony than that would not be
thought worth looking at in the case of a New Testament
book), we should be able to make only a very unsatisfactory
reply. One example is often cited to show how little this
kind of investigation is in practice judged to be necessary.
1. 1 PRINCIPLES OF THE INVESTIGATION. 5
The Roman History of Velleius Paterculus has come down to
us in a single very corrupt manuscript, and the book is only
once quoted by Priscian, a grammarian of the sixth century ;
yet no one entertains the smallest doubt of its genuineness.*
The first six books of the Annals of Tacitus are also known
to us only through a single manuscript which came to light
in the fifteenth century. Not long ago an elaborate attempt
was made to show that all the books of the Annals were
forged in that century by an Italian scholar, Poggio. And it
was asserted that *no clear and definite allusion to the Annals
can be found until the first half of the fifteenth century.' The
latest editor of the Annals, Mr. Furneaux, is what, if the sub-
ject of his labours were a New Testament book, would be
called an * apologist' ; that is to say, he believes that the tra-
ditional doctrine as to the authorship is true, and that the sup-
posed discovery of forgery is a mare's nest; yet, in answer to the
assertion just quoted, he can only produce one allusion, by no
means ' clear and definite,' and that of a date 300 years later
than the historian. Thus you see that if the external testi-
mony to the New Testament books, which I shall discuss in
future lectures, had not been forthcoming, we might still have
good reason for holding fast to the traditional theory of their
authorship. But where external proof is most abundant in
the case of profane authors, it falls considerably short of what
can be produced in support of the chief books of the New
Testament.
The reason, however, why a more stringent test is applied
to our books is on account of their contents ; namely, because
the books contain accounts of miracles and what purport to
be prophecies. Now, at first sight, it appears unreasonable
to allow this consideration to enter when we are discussing
the authorship of books. The works of Livy contain accounts
of prodigies which I may perhaps think Livy credulous for
believing, yet I am not on that account in the slightest degree
inclined to doubt that Livy was the author of the history
which bears his name. Still more does the remark apply to
* This case is discussed in the controversy between Boyle and Bentley about the
Epistles of Phalaris.
6 INTRODUCTORY. [i.
the accounts of miracles which swarm in the writings of the
monkish historians. I disbelieve the miracles, but I make
no question that the histories which relate those miracles
were written by the authors to whom they are ascribed. But
here is the pinch of the matter. These miraculous tales to
which I refer relate for the most part to events which the nar-
rators represent as having occurred a long time before their
own date. When honest and intelligent men relate things of
which they have personal knowledge, as a general rule we do
not find them telling of anything miraculous. In short, it is
only throwing into other words the statement that a miracle
is an exception to the ordinary course of nature, to say that
an account of a miracle is not likely to occur in true history,
and therefore that, if we meet with such an account, it is likely
to proceed from persons not truthful or not well informed. So
it is a canon of criticism that stories embellished with miracu-
lous ornaments are distant in time from the age in which the
acene is laid. Troy may have been really taken ; Achilles
and Agamemnon may have been real persons ; but when we
read in the Iliad of gods and goddesses taking part in the
battles round the city, this in itself is reason enough to suspect
that Homer lived at such a distance from the events which he
relates as permitted him to imagine the men of former days
to be very different from * such as mortals now are,' so that
things might have happened to them unparalleled in his own
experience. On these principles, then, it is contended that
our sacred books, from the mere fact of their containing
stories of miracles, are shown not to be the work of contem-
poraries.
If there is one narrative of the New Testament which
more than another contains internal proof of having been
related by an e3'^e-witness, it is the account of the voyage and
shipwreck of St. Paul. I recommend to your attention the
yery interesting monograph of Mr. Smith, of Jordan Hill,
who himself sailed over the entire course, and by a multitude
of minute coincidences verified the accuracy of St. Luke's
narrative. Yet, because the story tells of miracles performed
in the island on which Paul was cast, it has been supposed,
I.] PRINCIPLES OF THE INVESTIGATION. 7
without the smallest reason of any other kind, that these
things must have been added by a later hand.*
The same things may be said as to the prophecies which
our sacred books contain. In judging of an ordinary book
there is no more certain canon of criticism than that the book
is later than the latest person named in it, or the last event
described in it. If we read a book which contained mention
of the Duke of Wellington and Sir Robert Peel and of the
battle of Waterloo, it would take an amazing amount of evi-
dence to convince us that the book was written in the reign
of Queen Anne. It is by taking notice of anachronisms of
this kind that the spuriousness has been proved of works
which had imposed on an uncritical age; as, for example,
the ' Epistles of Phalaris,' which were exposed in Bentley's
famous essay, or the Decretal Epistles, purporting to be
written by the early Bishops of Rome, on which so much of
the fabric of Roman supremacy has been built. Well, the
same principles of criticism have been freely applied to our
sacred books. Porphyry contended that the prophecy of
Daniel must have been written by some one who lived later
than Antiochus Epiphanes, who is clearly described in the
book : the latter half of Isaiah, it is urged, must be later than
Cyrus : the Gospel of St. Luke must be later than the Destruc-
tion of Jerusalem, which it describes as to be ' trodden down
of the Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled,'
showing, it is said, that the writer not only lived after the
siege, but so long after as to have known that Jerusalem
remained for a considerable time in a condition of abiding
desolation.
Now, I have intimated in what I have said that I am
* Davidson, for instance, says ('Introduction to the New Testament,' 11. 134) ;
' The description of the voyage and shipwreck of Paul on his way to Rome is minute
and accurate, proceeding from an eye-witness. A few notices here and there betray
a later hand, especially those which are framed to show the wonder-working power
of the Apostle, such as xxviii. 3-5, 8, 9.'
Dr. S. Davidson, for some time Professor in the Lancashire Independent College,
published an Introduction to the New Testament, in three volumes, 1848-51. In
this the main lines of traditional opinion were followed ; but his views show a com-
plete alteration in the new Introduction, in two volumes, which he published in 1868.
My quotation is from the second edition of the later book, published in 1882.
8 INTRODUCTORY. [i.
ready, within reasonable limits, to adopt the canons of criti-
cism to which I have referred. But I cannot admit them to
be applicable without exception. Miraculous embellishments
may be a ground for suspecting that the narrative is not con-
temporaneous with the events; but if it is asserted that mira-
culous stories are never told by men contemporary with the
things related, that certainly is not true. I have, at different
times, read in periodicals accounts of spiritual manifestations
which I entirely disbelieve, yet in many cases impute to the
narrators no wilful intention to deceive, nor do I doubt that
they were, as they profess, actually present at the scenes they
describe. The Life of St. Martin of Tours, by his friend Sul-
picius Severus, is full of the supernatural. I do not find that
any of those who refuse to believe in the miraculous stories
attempt to justify their disbelief by maintaining that Sul-
picius was not the author of the Life, These are instances
of what I reckon as false miracles ; but the course of lectures
of last year must have been a failure if they did not establish
that true miracles, though from the nature of the case not of
common occurrence, are still possible. If so, when they
actually do occur, the witnesses of them may relate them in
true histories. In short, if miracle and prophecy be impos-
sible, there is an end of the whole matter. Your faith is vain,
and our teaching is vain.
Now, this principle, namely, the absolute impossibility of
miracle, is the basis of the investigations of the school, some
of whose results must be examined in this course of lectures.
Two of its leading writers, Strauss and Renan, in their pre-
faces, make the absolute rejection of the supernatural the
foundation of their whole structure. Renan* (p. Hi) declares
* The first edition of the 'Vie de Jesus par Ernest Renan' was published in
1863. It was followed by six successive volumes, relating the histoiy of the 'Origines
du Christianisme ' ; that is to say, the formation and early history of the Christian
Church. The last volume, bringing the history down to the reign of Marcus
AureHus, was pubHshed in 1882. The references in these Lectures are usually to an
1863 edition of the ' Life of Jesus,' which alone was available when they were written.
It has not been necessary for my purpose to examine minutely the modifications in-
troduced into later editions, because the changes in Kenan's views are sufficiently
indicated in the later volumes of his series.
I.] PRINCIPLES OF THE INVESTIGATION. g
that he will accept a miracle as proved only if it is found that
it will succeed on repetition, forgetting that in this case it
would not be a miracle at all, but a newly-discovered natural
law. Strauss,* equally, in his preface (p. xv) declares it to be «
his fundamental principle that there was nothing supernatural
in the person or work of Jesus. The same thing may be said
about a book which made some sensation on its publication a
few years ago, ' Supernatural Religion. 'f The extreme cap-
tiousness of its criticism found no approval from respectable
foreign reviewers, however little they might be entitled to be
classed as believers in Revelation. Dates were assigned in
it to some of our New Testament books so late as to shock
anyone who makes an attempt fairly to judge of evidence.
And the reason is, that the author starts with the denial of
the supernatural as his fixed principle. If that principle be,
in his eyes, once threatened, all ordinary laws of probability
must give way. It is necessary at the outset to call your
attention to tiiis fundamental principle of our opponents, be-
cause it explains their seeming want of candour; why it is
that they are so unreasonably rigorous in their demands of
proof of the authenticity of our books ; why they meet with
evasions proofs that seem to be demonstrative. It is because,
to their minds, any solution of a difficulty is more probable
than one which would concede that a miracle had really
occurred.
Now, it has become more and more plain that, if it be
granted that our Gospels were written by the persons to
whom they are ascribed, two of whom were Apostles, men
who had personal knowledge of the things which they relate,
and whose whole narrative bears the impress of honesty,
* D. F. Strauss (1808-1874), a pupil of Baur, published, in 1835, his ' Life of
Jesus,' the mythical theory propounded in which gave rise to much controversy, and
stimulated other attempts to disprove the historic credibility of the Gospel narratives.
The book had rather fallen into oblivion when, in 1864, Strauss, availing himself of
the labours of those who had written in the interval, published a new ' Life of
Jesus' ' for the German people.' It is to this popular Life that I refer in the text.
In 1872 Strauss broke completely with Christianity, in a book called ' The Old
Faith and the New.'
t This book, published, vols. i. and ii. in 1S74, '^'ol. iii. in 1877, obtained a good
deal of notoriety by dint of enormous pulling, great pains having been taken to pro-
lO
INTRODUCTORY. , [i.
then the reality of miracles necessarily follows. No one has
proved this more clearly than Strauss. He has conclusively
.shown that anyone who has determined to begin by asserting
the absolute impossibility of miracle cannot come with a per-
fectly unbiassed mind to investigate the history of our sacred
books, because an acceptance of the traditional account of
their origin w^ould be absolutely fatal to this first principle,
Strauss begins his latest work on the life of Jesus by criticiz-
ing the works of his predecessors, who were as disinclined as
himself to admit the reality of miracles, and who yet accepted
the traditional account of the authorship of the Gospels ; and
he shows that every one of them failed, and could not help
failing, to maintain this inconsistent position. Paulus* may
duce a belief that Bishop Thirlwall was the author. The aspect of the pages, brist-
ling with learned references, strengthened the impression that the author must be a
scholar of immense reading. The windbag collapsed when Lightfoot showed that
this supposed Bishop Thirlwall did not possess even a schoolboy acquaintance with
Greek and Latin, and that his references were in some cases borrowed wholesale, in
others did not prove the things for which they were cited, and very often appealed to
writers whose opinion is of no value. But what I wish here to remark is, that what
really made the book worthless was not its want of scholarship, but its want of
candour. An indifferent scholar, if he were industrious and honest, and, I must
add, modest enough not to find fault with the translations of better scholars than
himself, might compile a book which would only need the removal of some surface
errors to be a really valuable contribution to knowledge. But want of candour
vitiates a book through and through. There is no profit in examining the conclusions
arrived at by a writer who never seems to care on which side lies the balance of his-
toric probability, but only which conclusion will be most disagreeable to the assertors
of the supernatural. For myself, I find instruction in studying the results arrived at
by an inquirer who strives to be candid, whether he be orthodox or not ; but I have
little curiosity to find out the exact amount of evidence which would leave a captious
objector without a word to say in justification of his refusal to admit it.
Lightfoot's answers to ' Supernatural Religion' appeared in the Contemporary
Review, December, 1874; Jairuary, February, May, August, October, 1875; Feb-
ruary and August, 1876; May, 1877. In addition to their temporary object of
refutation,^ these articles contain so much of permanent value on the criticism of the
remains of the second century, that it is much to be regretted that they have not been
republished.
' Supernatural Rehgion ' has also been dealt with by Westcott in a Preface to the
later editions of his ' New Testament Canon.'
* Paulus (1761-1851), professor, first at Jena, afterwards at Heidelberg, pub-
lished his ' Commentary on the New Testament,' 1800-1804, and his ' Life of Jesus '
in 1828.
I.] PRINCIPLES OF THE INVESTIGATION. i j
serve as a specimen of writers of this class. He receives the
Gospel narratives as in some sense true ; the Evangelists do
not intend to deceive ; they tell things that really occurred, *
but through an error of judgment they represent incidents as
miraculous which in truth are capable of a natural explana-
tion. For example, according to him, there was nothing
miraculous in Christ's feeding of the multitude. But the
example of Christ and His Apostles freely distributing their
scanty store among the people shamed all the rest into pro-
ducing and sharing with their neighbours what they had
secretly brought each for himself, and so all were filled, and
supposed there had been something supernatural in the mul-
tiplication of the food. Similarly, Paulus does not deny that \
our Lord seemed to walk on the water; but, since of course
He could not really have done so, he concludes that He
walked on the bank of the lake, where, through an optical
delusion, his movements conveyed a false impression to the
spectators. He so far believes the story of the announce-
ment by an angel of the Saviour's Incarnation as to concede
that the Virgin Mary truly told that a stranger had come
into her with this message, who represented himself to be the
angel Gabriel ; but since this could not possibly be true, we
must conclude that the messenger was an impostor. These
few specimens are enough to give you an idea of the mass of
improbabilities and absurdities which are accumulated in the
working out of this scheme, so that we may fairly say that
the history, as Paulus tells it, is a more miraculous one than
if we take the Gospel narratives in their literal sense. It is
unnecessary for me to waste words in exposing these absurdi-
ties, because no one has a more lively sense than Strauss
himself of the failure of the attempts of his predecessors to
write a non-miraculous life of Jesus ; and he owns distinctly
that, if the historical character of the Gospels be ever con- '
ceded, it will be impossible to eliminate miracle from the life
of Christ.*
Strauss's own solution, you no doubt know, was to deny
* ' Sind die Evangelien wirklich geschichtliche Urkunden, so ist das Wunder aus
der Lebcnsgeschichte Jesu nicht zu entfernen.' — Leben Jesit, p. 17.
12
INTRODUCTORY. [ii.
that the Gospels are historical. According to him, they are
not written by eye-witnesses of the things related, but are
legends put together at a considerable interval of time after
the supposed events. How Jesus of Nazareth succeeded in
collecting a number of disciples, and in inspiring them with
a persuasion, not to be shaken by the unhappy end of His
life, that He was the promised Messiah, Strauss very
imperfectly explains. But his theory is, that a community
of Jewish Christians arose who somehow or another had
come to believe that Jesus was the Messiah, and who had
all from childhood been brought up in the belief that the
Messiah was to have certain distinguishing marks, that He
was to be born in Bethlehem, and so forth ; that then stories
circulated among them purporting to show how Jesus actually
did all that according to their notions He ought to have done;
and that these stories, being in perfect accordance with their
preconceived notions, when once started were readily believed,
and in simple faith passed on from one to another, until in
process of time they came to be recorded in the Gospels. It
is not the business of this Term to expose the weakness of
this theory ; and, indeed, Strauss himself appears to have
become sensible what a difficult task he had set himself
when he undertook to deny the truth of the Gospel histories,
and yet clear the historians of conscious imposture. Cer-
tainly, there is a very perceptible shifting of ground from his
original work, published in 1835, in the new popular version
brought out for the use of the German people in the year
1864. But common to both is the principle of the absolute
rejection of the supernatural ; and this I single out because
the investigation in which I wish to engage you proceeds on
an opposite plan, and therefore will naturally lead to a
different result. My investigation aims at being purely
historical. It refuses to be dominated by any philosophical
or pseudo-philosophical principle. I wish to examine the
evidence for the date of the Christian books on the same
principles on which I would act if they were ordinary pro-
fane histories, without allowing myself to be prejudiced for
or against them by a knowledge of their contents, or by fear
II.] BAUR'S THEORY OF EARLY CHURCH HISTORY. 13
of consequences which I shall be forced to admit if I own
these works to be genuine. For I do not hold our present
experience to be the absolute rule and measure of all possi-
bilities future and past ; nor do I deem it so incredible that
God should reveal Himself to His creatures, as to refuse to
listen to all evidence for such a fact when it is offered.
II.
Part II.
BAUR'S THEORY OF EARLY CHURCH HISTORY.
In his new Life of Jesus, Strauss has greatly availed him-
self of the labours of Baur* and of the school founded by him,
called sometimes, from his place of residence, the Tubingen
school, or from the nature of their theories, the Tendency
school. It will be advisable to give you, by way of preface
to our course, some short account of these theories ; not only
because of the wide acceptance they have met with from
writers of the sceptical school both in Germany and of later
years in England, but also because the view which they pre-
sent of the history of the early Church affects the credit to be
given to the testimony of that Church concerning our sacred
literature. There is no use in calling a witness without making
an attempt to remove prejudices which you know to be enter-
tained, whether against his honesty or his means of information.
Therefore, before producing to you evidence as to the recep-
tion of the Gospels by the early Church, it is expedient to
inquire whether certain speculations are deserving of regard,
which represent that Church as having altered so much and
so rapidly from its original form, as to be put under a strong
temptation to falsify the documents which relate its early
* F. C. Baur (1792-1860) published in the Tiibingen ' Zeitschrift ' for 1831 a
paper on the Christ-party in the Church of Corinth, which contained the germs of the
theory of which an account is given in the text. The fully developed theory wa
given in his ' Paulus,' published in 1845.
14 INTRODUCTORY. [ii.
history. According to Baur, our books are not the innocent,
purposeless collection of legendary tales for which the dis-
ciples of Strauss might take them ; all, even those which
seem least artful, are put together with a purpose, and have
a tendency' Just as of Mr. Dickens's novels, one is intended
to expose the abuses of the Poor Law system, another of the
Court of Chancery, another of Ecclesiastical Courts, and so
forth ; so each of the Christian books, however innocently it
may seem to profess to give straightforward narrative, is
really written with a secret design to inculcate certain dog-
matic views.
But what are these dogmatic views ? To answer this we
must expound the history which Baur gives of the early
progress of Christianity. He manufactured it mainly out of
his own notions of the fitness of things, with very slender
support from external authority ; and it has obliged him to
condemn as forged or interpolated the great mass of existing
ancient documents, since they are so perverse as not to be
reconcilable with the critic's theory. The main pillar of the
theory is a work of by no means great antiquity as compared
with the others which are to be discussed in this course of
lectures, being not older than the very end of the second
century. I speak of the spurious literature attributed to
Clement of Rome, a favourite character with the manufac-
turers of apocryphal literature in the second or third century.
The history of these writings is so remarkable, that I can-
not employ a few minutes better than in giving you some
account of them. The work originated among the Ebionites,
or Jewish-Christian heretical sects. In its earliest form it
contained discourses ascribed to the Apostle Peter, both in
controversy with heathen, and also with heretics, of whom
Simon Magus was made the representative and spokesman.
This work underwent a great variety of recastings. It is
doubtful whether Clement was introduced into the very
earliest form of it; but he was certainly, at a comparatively
early date, made the narrator of the story ; and the account
of Clement's history gradually grew into a little romance,
which, no doubt, greatly helped the popularity of the work.
fi.] BAUR'S THEORY OF EARLY CHURCH HISTORY. 13
Clement tells how he had been brought up as a rich orphan at
Rome, his parents having been lost in his early childhood. He
gives an affecting account of his search for religious truth, which
he sought in vain among the schools of the philosophers,
but there found nothing but strife and uncertainty. At last
news is brought to Rome of the appearance of a wonder-
working prophet in Palestine. Clement sails in search of
him, arrives after the death of Jesus, but meets Peter, and
is instructed and converted by him. Travelling about with
Peter, he finds first his mother, then his brothers, then his
father; and it is from these successive recognitions that the
work called the ' Clementine Recognitions ' takes its name.
This is one of two forms in which the work is still extant ;
the other, called the ' Clementine Homilies,' being as respects
the story [substantially the same, but as respects the dis-
courses worked into it, and the doctrine contained in them,
a good]! deal ^different. The 'Homilies' contain the Ebionite
doctrine in its strongest form ; in the ' Recognitions ' the
repulsive features of Ebionitism are softened down, so as to
make the book not altogether unfit for use among the ortho-
dox, and in fact the * Recognitions' are only preserved in a
Latin translation made for the use of the orthodox by a
Church writer, Rufinus. There is good evidence that another
form, still more orthodox, which has not come down to us,
was once in circulation. And though the heretical character
of these Clementine writings was well known to the Fathers,
who therefore rejected their doctrine, yet many of the things
these writings tell about Peter passed into Church tradition.
In particular, this Clementine literature has had a marvellous
share in shaping the history of Christendom, by inventing the
story that Peter was Bishop of Rome, and that he named
Clement to succeed him in that See.
At the revival of learning these writings were at first
treated with contumely as a good-for-nothing heretical fig-
ment. Long time passed before it was noted that, though
the book be regarded as no more than a controversial novel,
yet, dating'as it does from the end of the second century, it
must be a most valuable source of information as to the his-
1 5 INTRODUCTORY. [ii.
tory and opinions of the sect from which it emanated. Baur,
in particular, has called special attention to the anti-Paulinism
of the work ; and it is quite true that when we look into it
carefully, we find that Paul and his labours are passed over
in silence, Peter figuring as the Apostle of the Gentiles as
well as of the Jews. In one passage in the 'Homilies' the
dislike of Paul passes the bounds of mere silence. For Simon
Magus is described as ' withstanding Peter to the face,' and
declaring that he was * to be blamed.'* Many a reader might
innocently overlook the malice of these expressions; but when
attention is called to them, we can hardly deny that the coin-
cidence of language with that in the Epistle to the Galatians
(ii. 1 1) leads to the surmise that under the character of Simon a
reference to Paul is cloked ; and that Paul is intended by the
enemy, 6 exOpoQ avdpwrroq, who opposed St. Peter and St.
James. We see also what interpretation is to be put on a
controversy as to relative superiority between Simon Magus,
who claims to have seen our Lord in vision, and Peter, who
had actually seen Him in the flesh. It must be admitted that
the writer shows a covert dislike to Paul ; but we must remark,
at the same time, that the obscurity with which he clokes his
assault on the Apostle shows plainly that he dared make no
open attack, and that his views were, at that time, shared by
no influential party in the Church.
But the Tubingen school pounced with avidity on this
book. Here, they say, we have the key to the true history of
the origin of Christianity. Epiphanius tells us that the Ebio-
nites rejected Paul's Epistles, and looked on him as an apos-
tate. This book, then, may be regarded as a specimen of the
feelings towards Paul of an early section of the Christians.
Baur's idea is, that in all this anti-Pauline rancour we have a
'survival' of an earlier state of things, the memory of which
had been lost, owing to its variance with the Church's subse-
quent doctrine. At the beginning of the third century we
have, in one corner of the Church, men who hate Paul with
* In order that the coincidence with the Epistle to the Galations may be more
easily recognized, I adopt the language of the Authorized Version in translating
' ivavrlos aydiarriKcis /j.oi,' ' KaTijiwafxivov fie \4yfis ' (Horn. xvii. 19).
II.] BAUR'S THEORY OF EARLY CHURCH HISTORY. 17
the utmost bitterness, though, in deference to the then general
opinion, they are obliged to cloke their hatred under disguises.
At the same time we have, in another corner of the Church,
the Marcionites,* who recognize no Apostle but Paul, who
utterly reject the Jewish religion and the Old Testament, and
who set aside all the earlier Apostles as of no authority.
What, asks Baur, if these extreme views on both sides be not,
as had been supposed, heretical developments, but survivals
of a once general state of things r Those who themselves
hold our Lord to have been mere man find it natural to believe
that this must have been the earliest belief of His followers.
Consequently, the theory is that the whole Christian Church
was originally Ebionite ; that Paul was a heresiarch, or intro-
ducer of novel doctrines violently condemned by the great
mass of existing believers, of whose feelings towards Paul
these Clementine writings are regarded as a fair specimen ;
that the representations in the Acts of the Apostles that
Paul was on good terms with the elder Apostles are altogether
false, and that, on the contrary, the early Church consisted of
two parties, Pauline and anti-Pauline, bitterly opposed to
each other.
Such is the general outline of the theory ; but speculation
has particularly run wild on the assault on Paul in the Cle-
mentines under the mask of Simon Magus. Sceptical critics
jump at the conclusion that Simon Magus was the nickname
under which Paul was generally known ; and some even go
so far as to maintain that the account in Acts viii. is a covert
libel on St. Paul, which St. Luke, notwithstanding his Paul-
inism, has been so stupid as to perpetuate in his histor3'-;
Simon's offer of money to the Apostles representing Paul's
attempt to bribe the other Apostles into recognition of his
claims by the gift of money which he had collected for the
poor saints at Jerusalem. I feel ashamed of repeating such
nonsense ; but it is necessary that you should know the things
that are said ; for you may meet these German dreams retailed
* The Chronicle of Edessa names A.D. 138 as the date of the rise of the heresy of
Marcion, and this is probably as near the truth as we have the means of going. The
heresy had reached formidable dimensions when Justin Martyr wrott his Apology.
C
1 8 INTRODUCTORY. [ii.
as sober truth by sceptical writers in this country, many of
whom imagine that it would be a confession of inability to
keep pace with the progress of critical science, if they ven-
tured to test, by English common sense, the successive
schemes by which German aspirants after fame seek to gain
a reputation for ingenuity.
A more careful examination of the Clementines shows
that they did not emanate from that body which opposed Paul
in his lifetime. There appear, in fact, to have been two dis-
tinct kinds of Ebionites. One kind we may call Pharisaic
Ebionites, who may be regarded as representing those who
strove to combine the acknowledgment of the Messiahship,
though not the Divinity, of Jesus with the maintenance of the
full obligation of the Mosaic Law. They appear never to
have been of much influence, and before long to have died
out. But the Ebionites among whom the Clementines origi-
nated represented quite a different set of opinions, and appear
to have been a continuation of the Jewish sect of the Essenes.*
Among their doctrines was a fanatical horror of the rite of
sacrifice, which they could not believe to have been divinely
instituted. The whole Temple service was abomination in
their eyes. They believed that the true prophet had ap-
peared in divers incarnations, Adam being the first, and
Jesus the last. The story of the fall of Adam of course
they rejected. And with these opinions it was necessary
for them to reject great parts of the Old Testament. The
Pentateuch alone was used by them, and of this large parts
were cut out as interpolated. You will remember that
Paley, in his ' Evidences,' quotes an apocryphal Gospel as
ascribing to our Lord the saying ' Be ye good money-
changers.' This they interpreted as a direction not to be
deceived by the false coin which purported to be God's Word.
This doctrine, of which the Clementine ' Homilies ' are full,
* On these two kinds of Ebionites, see Lightfoot's 'Galatians,' p. 318. The
Church History of the period is hkely to be misunderstood if the identity of the latter
kind with the Elkesaites is not perceived ; and if it is not recognized, how little claim
these heretics have to represent any considerable body, even of Jewish Christians ;
and how late their origin was by their own confession.
II.] BAUR'S THEORY OF EARLY CHURCH HISTORY, m
would be as repulsive as Paul's own doctrine to the orthodox
Jews whom Paul had to encounter ; and therefore, as I say,
these Clementines have no pretence to date from the times, or
to represent the feelings, of his first antagonists in the Chris-
tian Church. The true history of these people seems to have
been that, after the destruction of the Temple at Jerusalem by
Titus, some of the Essene communities, who lived on the
other side of Jordan, and who knew that Jesus had predicted
the destruction of that Temple to whose rites they always had
been opposed, became willing to own Jesus to have been
divinely sent, but retained a number of their own peculiar
opinions. They appear to have made a few converts among
the Jews dispersed by the fall of the capital, but not to have
extended themselves very widely ; and it is not till the end of
the second century, or the beginning of the third, that some
of them made their way to Rome. They had among them
some men of literary skill, enough at least to produce a for-
gery. x'Vmong the documents they brought to Rome, for in-
stance, was one called the ' Book of Elkesai,' which purported
to be a revelation of their peculiar doctrines, but for which,
it is interesting to remark, no higher antiquity was claimed
than the reign of Trajan, a time when all the Apostles were
dead. They accounted for this late date by a theory that the
ordinary rule of God's Providence was that error should come
first, and that the truth which corrected it should be revealed
later. An early book of theirs, 'The Preaching of Peter,' was
improved, first into the form known as the ' Recognitions,'
afterwards into the 'Homilies,' and was made to include these
Elkesaite revelations. The making Simon Magus the repre-
sentative of Pauline ideas has all the marks of being an after-
thought. There is not a trace of it in the ' Recognitions,'
through the whole of which, as well as in every part of the
' Homilies ' but the one already referred to, Simon is Simon
and Paul is Paul. But, from the nature of the composition,
the opinions which the writer means to combat must be put
into the mouth of some of the characters in the story. When
the object is to combat the doctrines of Marcion, Simon is
made the exponent of these doctrines. But this furnishes no
C 2
20
INTRODUCTORY. [ir.
justification for the statement that there was a general prac-
tice of nicknaming Paul as Simon. As far as we can see, the
author of the * Recognitions ' is quite ignorant of it.
As the anti-Pauline party is judged of by the Ebionites of
the second century, so the school of Marcion is supposed to
represent the opposing party. Thus the Christian society is
said to have included two schools — a Judaizing school and a
Gnostic or philosophizing school ; violently hostile to each
other. It is not exactly our experience that theological
schisms heal up so rapidly and so completely that in fifty
years no trace remains of them, nor even memory of their ex-
istence. But so we are told it happened in this case. And as
in the process of time the bitterness of the dispute abated,
arose the Catholic Church, in which both Peter and Paul were
held in honour ; and then were attempts made to throw a
veil over the early dissensions, and to represent the first
preachers of Christianity as at unity among themselves.
It remains to test this whole theory of the conflict of Pau-
line and anti-Pauline parties in the early Church by compari-
son with the documentary evidence ; and the result is that it
bears the test very ill, so much so that, in order to save his
theory from destruction, Baur has been obliged to make a
tolerably clean sweep of the documents. In four of Paul's
Epistles some symptoms may be found which can be inter-
preted as exhibiting feelings of jealousy or soreness towards
the elder Apostles. But there is nothing of the kind in the
other nine. The genuineness of these, therefore, must be
denied. The Acts of the Apostles represent Paul as on most
friendly terms with Peter and James, and these Apostles as
taking his side in the controversy as to imposing Judaism on
the Gentiles. The Acts, therefore, cannot be true history.
Not only the discourses ascribed to Peter in the Acts, but the
first Epistle, which the ancient Church unanimously accepted
as Peter's, is thoroughly Pauline in doctrine. We must,
therefore, disregard ancient testimony, and reject the Epistle.
The earliest uninspired Christian document, the Epistle of
Clement of Rome, confessedly belongs to the conciliatory
school, Peter and Paul being placed in it on equal terms of
II.] BAUR'S THEORY OF EARLY CHURCH HISTORY. 2 1
reverence and honour. It, too, must be discarded. So, in
like manner, go the Epistles ,of Ignatius and Poly carp, the
former of whom writes to the Romans, (ch. v.) ' I do not pre-
tend to command you, like Peter or Paul.'
Now, it is very easy to make a theory on any subject if we
are at liberty to sweep away all facts which will not fall in
with it. By this method the Elkesaites were able to main-
tain that the Old Testament did not sanction the rite of sacri-
fice, and Marcion that the New Testament did not recognize
the God of the Jews. But one has a right to suspect any
theorizer if, in order to clear the ground for a foundation for
his theory, he has to begin by getting rid of the previously
accepted facts. So it is a presumption against this theory of
Baur's, that we find him forced to get rid of nearly all the
documents purporting to come from the Apostolic age, be-
cause, notwithstanding that they have been searched with
microscopic minuteness for instances of Pauline and anti-
Pauline rancour, scarcely anything of the kind can be found.
I will give a specimen or two of these supposed instances,
which will enable you to appreciate the amazing amount of
misdirected ingenuity which has been spent in elaborating
this system. The first is a specimen which is thought by
those who have discovered it to be an exceedingly good and
striking one. St. Matthew (vii. 22, 23), in the Sermon on the
Mount, makes our Lord speak of men who say, ' Lord, Lord,'
and who will, at the last day, appeal to their prophesying,
their driving out devils, and their doing of miracles in the
name of Jesus, but who will be rejected by Him as doers of
lawlessness (avojum), whom He had never known. It may
surprise you to hear that this sentence was coined by the
Jewish Christian author of the record as a protest against the
opposition to the Law made by Paul and his followers. And
it may surprise you more to hear that St. Luke (xiii. ^26) is
highly complimented for the skill with which he turns this
Jewish anti-Pauline saying into one of a Pauline anti-Jewish
character. He substitutes the word aSiKia, 'injustice,' for
avofiia, 'lawlessness,' and he directs the saying against the
Jews, who will one day appeal to having eaten and drunk in
2 2 INTRODUCTORY. [ii.
the presence of Jesus, and to His having taught in their
streets, but, notwithstanding, shall be told by Him to depart
as doers, not of avofxia, but of iniquity, and shall break forth
into loud weeping when they see people coming from the
east and west, and north and south, and sitting down
with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, while themselves are shut
out.
One other sample I will give you. St. Matthew says (x.
27), ' What I tell you in darkness, that speak ye in light ; and
what ye hear in the ear, that preach ye upon the housetops.'
St. Luke (xii. 3) — ' Whatsoever ye have spoken in darkness
shall be heard in the light, and that which ye have spoken in
the ear in closets shall be proclaimed on the housetops.' It is
contended that, whereas St. Matthew represents the Apostles
as directed to speak in the light and on the housetops, St.
Luke turns the phrase into the passive — the proclamation
shall be by other than the Apostles; namely, by St. Paul
and his party.
When, however, all ingenuity has been tried, there is no
escaping the acknowledgment that, if we are to look for an
anti-Pauline Gospel, it cannot be any of those we have now.
That Matthew's Gospel was made primarily for the use of
Jews most critics are agreed. Yet, do we find this Jewish
Gospel hostile to the admission of Gentiles ? It opens (ii. i)
with an account of Gentile Magi from the distant East com-
ing to worship the infant Saviour. In the first chapter which
records any miracle (viii. 5), we have an account of one per-
formed at the request of a Gentile, who is commended as
exhibiting faith not to be found in Israel ; and on this occa-
sion there is taught the doctrine of the admission of the Gen-
tiles, not to equal privileges with the Jews, but to a place
vacated by the rejection of the Jews. * Many shall come
from the east and west, and shall sit down with Abraham, and
Isaac, and Jacob, in the kingdom of heaven ; but the child-
ren of the kingdom shall be cast out into outer darkness;
there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.' It is to be
noted that the Gentile centurion of St. Matthew is inSt.
Luke made a kind of Jewish proselyte — * He loveth our
II.] BAUR'S THEORY OF EARLY CHURCH HISTORY. 23
nation, and hath built us a synagogue ' (vii. 5). In a later
chapter of St. Matthew the same doctrine is taught even more
plainly — ' The kingdom of God shall be taken from you, and
given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof (xxi. 43).
The parting command of our Saviour recorded in this Gospel
is, ' Go ye and make disciples of all nations ' (xxviii. 19). In
the account of our Lord's death, a critic with a keen eye for
'tendency,' might pronounce Matthew strongly anti- Jewish.
It is Luke (xxiii. 28), not Matthew, who records our Lord's
words of tender pity — ' Daughters of Jerusalem, weep not for
me, but weep for yourselves, and for your children,' St.
Matthew seems anxious to throw the guilt of our Lord's
death off the Gentiles, and on the Jews. Pilate's wife warns
her husband to 'have nothing to do with that just man'
(xxvii. 19). Pilate himself washes his hands before the mul-
titude, and declares that he is ' innocent of the blood of this
just person.' The Jews accept the awful burden, and exclaim,
' His blood be on us, and on our children ' [ib. 24, 25). Nay,
we find in our St. Matthew a trait also found in St. John's
Gospel, on account of which the latter has been characterized
as strongly anti- Jewish, namely, that the unconverted mem-
bers of the Jewish nation are spoken of as ' the Jews,' imply-
ing that the Christians were an entirely separate community.
In the last chapter of St. Matthew [y. 15) we have, 'This say-
ing is commonly reported among the Jews unto this day.'
When it is attempted to get rid of these evidences of anti-
Jewish tendency by the assertion that none of these things
could have been in the original Matthew, we can only reply,
that it is open to anyone to say that the original Matthew
contained just whatever he likes. But no theory can be said
to rest on a scientific basis which, instead of taking cogni-
zance of all the facts, arbitrarily rejects whatever of them do
not happen to accord \vith the hypothesis.
It is plain from what I have said that, when every inge-
nuity has been expended on our documents, they fail to yield
any sufficient evidence of the bitter hostility which, according
to Baur's theory, existed between the two great sections of
the early Church; and, therefore, these documents are con-
24 INTRODUCTORY. [ii.
demned by him and his followers as, at least in their present
shape, the work of a later age, which had set to work to
remove all traces of the ancient dissensions. Baur acknow-
ledges only five of our books as genuine remains of the
Apostolic age — four Epistles of Paul and the Apocalypse.
The four Epistles are those to the Galatians, Romans, and
the two to the Corinthians. It is not much to be grateful for
that he grants the genuineness of these, for they carry on
their face such marks of strong personal feeling, and are so
manifestly not the work of a forger, but the outpouring of a
heart stirred to its depths by the incidents of a real life, that
whoever should deny their genuineness would pronounce on
himself the sentence of incapacity to distinguish true from
false. But these Epistles have, in Baur's eyes, the further
recommendation, that they are those in which Paul has to
deal with his Jewish opponents, and therefore are the most
likely to yield proofs of that jealousy of the elder Apostles
and hostility to them which Baur's theory demands. After-
wards, when I come to speak of St. Paul's Epistles and of
the Acts of the Apostles, I will try to show how little ground
there is for the assertion that the view of Paul's relations to
the heads of the Jerusalem Church, exhibited in the Epistle
to the Galatians, is irreconcilable with that presented by the
Acts. If, indeed, anyone imagines that the Apostles were
not men of like passions with ourselves, and therefore counts
it a thing impossible that one should feel or express dissatis-
faction with the conduct of another ; if he cannot believe that
they should be differently influenced by different aspects of
the truth, or be of various opinion as to the immediate neces-
sity of guarding against different forms of error ; why, then,
we need not go beyond what the Epistle to the Galatians tells
of the dispute between Peter and Paul at Antioch in order to
convince him of his mistake. But when we have fully con-
ceded that there was no rigid sameness of utterance among
the first preachers of the Gospel, we still fall immensely short
of what Baur's theory requires us to grant. In order to adopt
his view, we must hold that the differences between St. Paul
and the elder Apostles were not like those which are known
II.] BAUR'S THEORY OF EARLY CHURCH HISTORY. 25
to subsist at the present day between political leaders of the
same party — differences which do not prevent them from
sitting in the same cabinet and joining in a common policy ;
but rather like the differences which separate the leaders of
opposite parties, or even of hostile states. The most Ultra-
montane Roman Catholic could not think worse of Martin
Luther than, if we believe our modern guides, the members of
the Church of Jerusalem thought of St. Paul.* The wildest
Protestant could not hate the Pope more than St. Paul's Gen-
tile converts are imagined to have hated the Apostles of the
circumcision.
But the most wonderful part of the theory is the alleged
end of the schism, in which Peter and Paul came to be
regarded as brothers, and held in equal honour. That is the
same as if we Protestants held in equal honour Martin Luther
and Ignatius Loyola, and as if it was our popular belief that
these two great saints had loved each other as brethren.
Surely, the Pauline Christians must have been the most for-
giving men in the world. They had been victorious along
the whole line. The Judaizers had disappeared. No one
dreamed of imposing the yoke of circumcision on the Gentiles.
Even in the Clementines no such burden is sought to be laid
on Gentile converts. Yet these Gentiles agreed in giving
equal honour to the great Apostle who had gained them their
liberty and to the bigoted Jews who had cast out his name as
evil, nicknamed him Balaam and Simon Magus, and orga-
nized conspiracy against him wherever he taught ! Surely
this is a theory not so recommended by probability that we
can afford to condone its deficiency in documentary proof;
and, for my part, I am well content to abide by the old
representations made by the author of the Acts of the
Apostles.
* 'Jamais, en effet, I'Eglise chretienne ne porta dans son sein une cause de
schisme aussi profonde que celle qui I'agitait en ce moment. Luther et le scholasti-
que le plus routinier differaient moins que Paul et Jacques.' — Renan, ' St. Paul,'
p. 289.
26 INTRODUCTORY. [iii.
III.
Part III.
THE ANTI-PAULINISM OF THE APOCALYPSE.
I have said that the Apocalypse is also received by Baur,
and is acknowledged by him as a genuine work of the apostle
John, It is scarcely necessary to say, that he does not look
upon it as containing any real prophecy, but merely antici-
pations of the future, which have been falsified by the event.
In owning the book of the Revelation to be Apostolic, the
modern school of destructive criticism is more easy of belief
than part of the early Church ; for in the third century there
were many who denied the authority of this book, and I shall
have occasion afterwards to speak of an argument by Diony-
sius of Alexandria, that the difference in style between this
book and the Gospel of St. John proves that both could not
have the same author. This argument has been eagerly
adopted by the modern school, only with a reversal of its
application. They hope now, by conceding that the Apoca-
lypse is the work of John, to found, upon differences of style,
an argument, that the fourth Gospel cannot be his ; and, in
fact, it is now alleged to be one of the most certain results of
criticism, that these two works cannot have the same author.
This, again, suggests a topic which I will not anticipate, as
the argument must be considered when I come to discuss the
Gospel according to St. John. Suffice it now to say, that the
Apocalypse is held to be strongly Jewish and anti-Pauline.
In the Epistles to the Seven Churches, Paul is held to be
the enemy against whom St. John, writing in our Lord's
name, warns his disciples. Indeed, one German teacher of
this school (Volkmar) carries out the theory to the absurdity
of imagining that by the false prophet predicted as upholding
the power of the Beast we are to understand St. Paul. In
the Epistle to the Church in Smyrna (ii. 9) we read : — * I
know the blasphemy of them which say they are Jews and
are not, but are the synagogue of Satan.' And in that to
III.] THE ANTI-PAULINISM OF THE APOCALYPSE. 27
the Church in Philadelphia (iii. 9) : — ' I will make them of
the synagogue of Satan which say they are Jews and are not,
but do lie, to come and worship before thy feet.' We are asked
to believe that those false Jews, with whom St. John has
broken so entirely as to call them the synagogue of Satan,
are St. Paul and his party. The angel of the Church of
Ephesus (ii. 2) is praised because ' he has tried them which
say they are apostles, and are not, and has found them liars.'
Here again we are asked to believe that it was Paul's claim
to apostleship which was thus rejected ; and we are again
and again invited by Renan to notice the remarkable fact,
that in Ephesus, where St. Paul had resided so long, and
laboured for a time so successfully, a few years after his
departure his followers had completely disappeared, and his
claims to apostleship had been generally owned to be based
in falsehood. Lastly, you will remember that in the Epistle
to the angel of the Church in Pergamos those are condemned
(ii. 14, 15) who *hold the doctrine of Balaam,' and also those
' who hold the doctrine of the Nicolaitans.' It had been con-
jectured long since — and the conjecture has been received
with more favour than I think it deserves — that Nicolaus,
* conqueror of the people,' was but a Greek translation of the
name Balaam. The etymology seems to me a forced one ;
but Renan adopts this view, with the addition, that Balaam
was a nickname for St. Paul, and that the doctrine of Balaam,
the teaching ' to eat things sacrificed to idols, and to commit
fornication ' (by which he understands marriage with Gentiles,
regarded by strict Jews as fornication), was the doctrine of St.
Paul. Renan would further have us believe that, in another
New Testament place where Balaam is mentioned, St. Paul
is intended — I mean the Epistle of Jude {v. 1 1). For though
that Epistle is one for which we cannot produce as early
testimony as for the rest, and is consequently not admitted
into Baur's meagre collection of genuine Apostolic Letters,
yet the temptation is great to gain some addition to the
scanty evidence of anti-Pauline rancour in the early Church ;
and so we have presented to us Jude, the brother of James,
describing Paul as a ' filthy dreamer,'. who * defiled the flesh.
28 INTRODUCTORY. [iii.
despised dominion, and spoke evil of dignities ' (namely, of
the original twelve Apostles), and who ' ran greedily after the
error of Balaam for reward.'
Now we can understand easily how it was that an obscure
heretic, in the end of the second century, not daring to attack
Paul openly, because he knew that such attack would have
condemned his book to exclusion from the whole circle of
Christian readers, masked his assault under a false name ;
so that while he seemed only to expose the wickedness of
Simon Magus, and could even, if a question w^ere raised by
any of the orthodox, plausibly maintain that no covert mean-
ing was intended, he would yet be understood by the few
initiated as gratifying their dislike to Paul. But Apostles
such as St. John and St. Jude would have had no need to
descend to such subterfuges. It is not consistent with the
character of the outspoken ' son of Thunder ' (either as that
character is made known to us by Scripture, or in the tra-
ditional story of his treatment of the heretic Cerinthus) to
suppose that, if there were false teachers whom he thought
it his duty to describe as the synagogue of Satan, he would
have disguised the object of his reprehension under the veil
of Balaam or Nicolaus, and never have ventured to mention
the name of Paul. Why should not John, one of the pillar
Apostles (Gal. ii. g) of the Church, and Jude, the brother of
one of the great three, have courage to speak plainly ? But
let that pass : at least their warning must have been intelli-
gible at the time it was given. The Church would have
known who it was that it was intended to describe; and if
so, is it credible that the tradition should have completely
perished out of memory, and that Christians, by whom the
great Apostle of the Gentiles was held in the highest love and
veneration, should still cherish these letters to the Seven
Churches, and this Epistle of St. Jude, never once dreaming
that they were honouring party pamphlets of an opposing
school ?
It is worth while to remark how singularly obtuse the
Paulinist party were as to the meaning of the assaults levelled
against their master; or at least at what an early date all
in.] THE ANTI-PAULINISM OF THE APOCALYPSE. 29
knowledge as to the true meaning of these assaults had per-
ished. I have already remarked how innocently the author of
the Acts of the Apostles tells the story of Simon Magus, with-
out betraying any suspicion that under the mask of this arch-
heretic Paul was to be recognized. Twice in the Acts (xv.
20, 29 ; xxi. 25) the same writer goes out of his way to repre-
sent the Apostolic heads of the Church of Jerusalem as con-
demning the eating meat offered to idols and fornication,
in evident ignorance that these two things were prominent
heads of the accusation brought against the Pauline Chris-
tians by their Jewish opponents. Nay, St. Paul himself is
represented as concurring in the condemnation, and as ac-
tively employed in disseminating it (xv. 25 ; xvi. 4). Once
more, the author of the Second Epistle of Peter (who, if he
were not Peter himself, certainly wrote at an early date, and
was an ardent admirer of Paul (ch. iii. 15) adopts as his own
(ii. 15) all that was said in Jude's Epistle about Balaam, the
son of Beor, and clearly has not the smallest suspicion that
under that name Peter's * beloved brother ' Paul was in-
tended.
I shall have occasion to say something hereafter as to the
use of tradition in the interpretation of Scripture, and the
present instance serves very well to illustrate what that use is.
For you can see that these theories as to the reference to Paul,
both in the Apocalypse and in the Epistle of Jude, might have
deserved some respectful consideration had they dated from
the first century instead of the nineteenth. If it had been the
case that in early times there was hesitation to acknowledge
the authority of these books, on the ground that they dis-
paraged the apostleship of Paul, then we should be bound to
look the possibility in the face, that tradition had preserved
correctly the interpretation put on these documents by those
to whom they were first addressed, and to inquire dispas-
sionately whether that interpretation were the right one.
But an interpretation is condemned at once by the mere fact
that it was left to the nineteenth century to discover it, and
we may fairly refuse to give it any respectful hearing. But I
think it well not to cut the matter short, as I might ; and will
30 INTRODUCTORY. [iii.
go on to show that we can find parallels in Paul's Epistles
for all the passages that are cited from the Apocalypse as
anti-Pauline.
It must be remembered that the doctrine of the calling of
the Gentiles is taught as distinctly in the Book of the Revela-
tion as in the saying of the Gospel — ' Other sheep I have
which are not of this fold.' We read, indeed, in the Apoca-
lypse of a sealing of 12,000 out of each of the tribes of Israel
(vii. 4-8) ; but immediately after the account of the bringing
in of this large but still finite number of Jews there follows :
'After this I beheld, and lo, a great multitude, which no man
could number, of all nations, and kindreds, and people, and
tongues, stood before the throne, and before the Lamb,
clothed with white robes, and palms in their hands.' And in
the mouth of the redeemed is placed a new song unto the
Lamb, ' who has redeemed them to God by his blood out of
every kindred, and tongue, and people, and nation' (v. 9).
The Apocalypse is said to be Jewish, because the heavenly
city is described under the name of the New Jerusalem
fxxi. 2) ; but this is the very language of St. Paul in his most
anti-Jewish Epistle — ' Jerusalem, which is above, is free,
which is the mother of us all' (Gal. iv. 26). For the literal
Jerusalem the Apocalypse has no more complimentary names
than Sodom and Egypt (xi. 8.)
I have already quoted the use made of the words ' those
who say they are Jews, and are not' — words imagined to refer
to St. Paul and his school. Those whogive them this refe-
rence have read Paul's Epistles very carelessly, and have
failed to notice one of his most characteristic traits. It is,
-hat this Apostle, who combats so strenuously the notion that
ihe Jew was to possess exclusive privileges in Christ's king-
dom, and that circumcision was to be the condition of admis-
sion to it, still retained, as was natural in a Jew by birth, his
attachment to the name of Jew and the name of circumcision.
Educated as he had been to regard these as titles of honour,
and to look down on the uncircumcised Gentile, it pains him
to hear his disciples called by the name of the uncircumcision,
and he contends that they were the true Jews — theirs the only
III.] THE ANTI-PAULINISM OF THE APOCALYPSE. 31
true circumcision. In the Epistle to the Ephesians (ii. 11) he
speaks of his Gentile followers as those 'who were called
uncircumcision by that which is called the circumcision in
the flesh, made by hands.' He tells these Gentiles (Col.
ii. 11) *ye are circumcised with the circumcision made with-
out hands, in putting off the body of the sins of the flesh by
the circumcision of Christ.' In the Epistle to the Philip-
pians, when about to give to the Jews the name of the cir-
cumcision, he checks himself, and calls them instead the
* concision ' ; ' for we,' he says, ' are the circumcision, which
worship God in the spirit, and rejoice in Christ Jesus, and
have no confidence in the flesh' (iii. 2). In the Epistle to the
Galatians he claims for those who walk according to his rule
the glorious title of the 'Israel of God' (vi. 16). And in a
well-known passage in the Epistle to the Romans (ii. 28) the
same doctrine is summed up. ' He is not a Jew which is one
outwardly, neither is that circumcision which is outward in
the flesh : but he is a Jew which is one inwardly, and cir-
cumcision is that of the heart, in the spirit, and not in the
letter, whose praise is not of men, but of God.'
I suppose there is no stronger mark of genuineness in
Paul's Epistles, nor any trait less likely to have occurred to
a forger, than this, that his affection for the names of Jew and
of circumcision cling to him long after he had ceased to attach
any value to the things. It need not surprise us to find the
same trait in St. John, who had grown up subject to the same
influences ; and we cannot hesitate to believe that those
against whom the Seven Churches were warned were the
unbelieving Jews, who are pronounced unworthy of the name
of Jews, and whose synagogue is called the synagogue of
Satan. It deserves to be mentioned that the Jews in Asia
Minor long continued to be the most bitter adversaries of
the Christian name, and that, when Polycarp was martyred,
the Jews were most active in collecting materials for the pyre
on which to burn him (Mart. S. Polyc. xiv., Euseb. H. E.'w. 15).
As little need it be supposed that in those * who say that
they are apostles, and are not,' we must recognize St. Paul.
Here again we have an exact parallel in St. Paul's Epistles :
32 INTRODUCTORY. [iii.
* Such are false apostles, deceitful workers, transforming'
themselves into the apostles of Christ' (2 Cor. xi. 13). And
if any proof were needed of the falsity of the assertion that
the Ephesian Church, ten years after St. Paul had founded it,
rejected his claims to apostleship, it would be furnished by
what immediately follows. For, according to Renan's hy-
pothesis, the Church of Ephesus had at the commencement
been beguiled into accepting Paul's pretensions, and there-
fore would be bound to look back with some shame and
regret on its early simplicity. Is there any trace of this in
the Apocalyptic Epistles ? Nay; the first state of the Church
is recalled as its palmy days. The Church is blamed for
having left its first love, and commanded to remember
whence it had fallen, and repent and do the first works
(ii. 4. 5)-
I must not omit to call attention to the extraordinary
rapidity ascribed to the supposed counter-revolution in
favour of Paulinism. For if we are to believe this theory the
elder Apostles must have persevered to the end of their lives
in treating Paul as an enemy. St. John, who was their last
survivor, must have continued to hold up Paul and his dis-
ciples to odium after the death of the Apostle of the Gentiles.
No one dates the Apocalypse earlier than the year 69, at
which time, according to all tradition, Paul was dead. Up to
that time, therefore, those who might be regarded as having
the best authority to speak had disowned Paul as a false
Christian. Paul therefore must have died an excommuni-
cated heretic. Yet, in a quarter of a century later — for that
is now the received date of Clement's Roman Epistle — Paul
is universally regarded as one of the chief of the Apostles,
and as having been the cherished partner of Peter, both in
work and in suffering ! (Clem. Rom. 5.)
I have spent more time than you may have thought
necessar}"- in refuting an utterly baseless hypothesis ; but
my excuse is, that this hypothesis is treated as authentic
history in almost all modern works in England, Germany,
and France, which profess to give the latest results of critical
science as applied to our sacred books.
IV.
RECEPTION OF THE GOSPELS IN THE EARLY
CHURCH.
Part I.
THE END OF THE SECOND CENTURY.
IREN^US, CLEMENT, AND TERTULLIAN.
IF I were lecturing on Christian Evidences, I should com-
mence my examination of the books of the New Testa-
ment with the Epistles of St. Paul. There are some of these
which are owned to be genuine by the most sceptical critics,
and these universally admitted Epistles are rich in autobio-
graphical details, and set Paul vividly before us as a real
living, working character. In connexion with Paul's Epistles
we should consider the book of the Acts of the Apostles, the
latter half of which bears undeniable marks of having ema-
nated from a companion of St. Paul's. We have thus the
fullest information what Paul believed and taught, and to
what sources of information he had access. We cannot doubt
that Paul was thoroughly sincere in his belief of what he
preached ; and it is certain, also, that the central topic of his i
preaching was Christ's Resurrection. ' He is never weary of
referring to this cardinal fact. He does not defend or prove
it, but constantly assumes it as a fundamental fact about
which no believer has any doubt whatever.' This fact which
Paul receives so confidently was in his time only a few years
old; and, without discussing Paul's claims to have himself
D
34 THE GOSPELS IN THE EARLY CHURCH. [iv.
seen his risen Master, it is unquestionable that he was on
terms of intercourse with Peter, James, John, and others who
claimed to be original witnesses of the Resurrection. If we
desire to know what else Paul taught concerning the events
of our Saviour's life, we have the answer in St. Luke's Gospel,
which is of indisputably common authorship with the Acts,
and therefore proceeded from a m^ember of Paul's company.
The order of taking the New Testament books which
I have thus sketched offers some advantages, but, owing
to inconveniences resulting from adopting it, which I will
not delay to describe at length, I have fallen back on the
obvious course of commencing with the Gospels. If we
can establish that the Gospels contain the story told at the
time by men who were eye-witnesses of what they related,
and who confirmed their testimony by their sufferings, then,
full of miracles as our Gospels are, it has been found practi-
cally impossible to refuse belief to them. But if the Gospels
were written a hundred years or more after the events which
they describe ; if the story is not told by eye-witnesses, but
has been improved by passing through several hands ; if there
has been time for floating myth and legend to gather round
the simple facts, and for men's preconceived notions of what
the Messiah ought to do, to ornament the history of what
Jesus did; then the intrinsic improbability of every miraculous
story outweighs second-hand testimony separated from the
original witnesses by so long an interval. Of the two, how-
ever, it is a more vital matter with unbelievers to reject the
early date of the Gospels than for us to assert it. Bring
down the date of the Gospels as low as the most courageous
of our adversaries can venture to bring them, and though we
thus lose the proof of the greater part of the wonderful works
of the Saviour's life, the great miracle of the Resurrection
remains untouched. Take St. Paul's abridged account of the
(Tospel he had received, as given in an unquestioned Epistle
{i Cor. XV. 3-7 j, and, though it is so much shorter than any of
the four, it contains quite as much stumbling-block for an
anti-supernaturalist — ' that Christ died for our sins, according
to the Scriptures ; that he was buried, and that he rose again
IV.] THE END OF THE SECOND CENTURY. 3-
the third day, according to the Scriptures ; and that he was
seen of Cephas, then of the twelve ; after that he was seen of
above five hundred brethren at once ; after that he was seen of
James, then of all the apostles.' Thus, from Paul's writings
and from other historical evidence, we can still show that men
who could not easily have been deceived as to the truth of
Vv/'hat they asserted, and who proved their sincerity by their
readiness to face sufferings and martyrdom in attestation of
their doctrine, declared that Jesus of Nazareth, the third day
after He had died on the cross, rose again from the dead. If
this one fact be proved, the cardinal principle of the anti-
supernaturalists, the impossibility of miracle, is demolished.
Christianity thus could survive the loss of the Gospels ; but
infidelity is incompatible with the admission of them, as is
evidenced by Strauss's confession, already quoted, that if the
Gospels be recognized as historical sources, miracle cannot be
eliminated from the life of Jesus.
In beginning our inquiry concerning the Gospels, I need not
take you much later than, at the latest, the year i8o. In every
controversy it is always well to see what facts are undisputed
which can be taken as common ground between the parties.
Now, to use the words of Strauss, ' it is certain that, towards
the end of the second century, the same four Gospels which
we have still are found recognized in the Church, and are
repeatedly quoted as the writings of the Apostles, and dis-
ciples of the Apostles, whose names they bear, by the three
most eminent ecclesiastical teachers — Irenseus in Gaul, Cle-
ment in Alexandria, and Tertullian in Carthage. There were,
indeed, current other Gospels, used not only by heretical
parties, but sometimes appealed to by orthodox teachers — a
Gospel of the Hebrews and of the Egyptians, a Gospel of
Peter, of Bartholomew, of Thomas, of Matthias, of the Twelve
Apostles — but the four were, at that time, and from that time
downwards, considered as the peculiarly trustworthy foun-
dation on which the Christian faith rested' (' Leben Jesu/
§ 10, p. 47). I will speak a little about each of these witnesses
— viz., Irenseus, Clement, and Tertullian. They are widely
separated in space, and they represent the whole extent of
D 2
36 THE GOSPELS IN THE EARLY CHURCH. [iv.
the Christian world. They prove that, if there had been any-
previous doubt or uncertainty which of all the documents
purporting to contain records of the Saviour's life were to
be regarded as of superior authority, that doubt had been
removed before the end of the second century, and that the
four Gospels which we recognize had then been established
in the place of pre-eminence which they have held ever since.
Irenseus was Bishop of Lyons, in Gaul, about the year
1 80.* But Irenseus not only represents the testimony of the
Galilean Church ; he had been himself brought up in Asia
Minor, from which country Gaul had, as we have every
reason to believe, derived its Christianity as well as its early
civilization. There remains (ap. Euseb. H. E. v. 2) a most
interesting record of the connexion between the two countries
in an affecting narrative of the persecution of the year 177,
addressed by the Christians of Vienne and Lyons to their
brethren in Asia Minor. This Epistle, though it does not
quote any of the books of the New Testament by name, is so
full of passages in which the writer makes the language of
these books his own, weaving texts into the narrative, as you
constantly hear preachers doing at the present day, that we
cannot doubt that the sacred books in use in that early
Church were in the main the same as the books of our own
New Testament. The bishop at the time of that persecution
was Pothinus, a man of about ninety years of age, who must,
therefore, have been born before som.e at least of the books of
the New Testament were written, and who must have mixed
with men contemporary with St. John. His presbyter and
successor, Irenaeus, was united by other links to the times of
the Apostles. He tells us how well he remembered Poly-
carp,t whom in his early years he had known at Smyrna : * I
can recall the very place where Polycarp used to sit and
teach, his manner of speech, his mode of life, his appearance,
* Lipsius, in the ' Dictionary of Christian Biography,' assigns a.d. 130 as the
most probable date of the birth of Irenseus; and the period (180-188) as that in which
it is likely that the different books of his treatise against heresies were published.
t Recent investigations determine a.d. 155 as the date of the martyrdom of
Pclycarp, at which time he was about eighty-six years old.
IV.] IREN^US. 37
the style of his address to the people, his frequent references
to St. John, and to others who had seen our Lord ; how he
used to repeat from memory their discourses which he had
heard from them concerning our Lord, His miracles and His
mode of teaching ; and how, being instructed himself by -
those who were eye-witnesses of the life of the Word, there
was in all that he said a strict agreement with the Scriptures '
(Epistle to Florinus, ap. Euseb. H. E. v. 20). Observe this
word ' Scriptures,' for it is plain that the books to which he
gave this venerated title are those which contain the record
of our Lord's life — the four Gospels.
There is a passage in the work of Irenseus against here-
sies which proves that he considered these books as, in the
highest sense of the word. Scriptures given by inspiration of
God. The passage is interesting as bearing testimony to a
New Testament reading not found in our existing Greek
manuscripts ; but only in the Latin and in the Curetonian
Syriac versions. It concerns the passage where we now
read, in the opening of St. Matthew's Gospel, 'The birth
of Jesus Christ was on this wise' (i. 18). Irenseus is arguing
against those who held that Jesus was at first but an ordi-
nary man, and only became Christ when the Holy Spirit de-
scended on Him in His baptism ; and he remarks (ill. xvi. 2)
that Matthew might have said that * the birth of Jestis was on
this wise,' but that the Holy Spirit, foreseeing the depravers
of the truth, and guarding against their fraud, said by
Matthew, ' The birth of Christ was on this wise,'* showing
that Christ was born ; in other words, that Jesus was Christ
from His birth. Thus what might seem the accidental choice
of one form of expression rather than another is ascribed to
the directing care of the Holy Spirit. You see then that
Irenseus believed not only in the genuineness, but also in the
inspiration, of the Gospels.
I dare say you have also heard of his reasons why there
are exactly four Gospels, neither more nor less. He argues
* Potuerat dicere Matthaeus, ' Jesu vero generatio sic erat ' ; sed praevidens
Spiritus Sanctus depravatores et praemuniens contra fraudulentiam eorum, per
Matthaeum ait ' Christi autem generatio sic erat.'
38 THE GOSPELS IN THE EARLY CHURCH. [iv.
(ill. xi. 8) that the Gospel is the pillar of the Church ; the
Church is spread over the whole world ; the world has four
quarters ; therefore it is fitting there should also be four Gos-
pels. Again, the Gospel is the divine breath, or wind of life,
for men ; there are four chief winds ; therefore, four Gospels.
He builds another argument on the fourfold appearance of the
cherubim. The cherubim, he says, are fourfold, and their
faces are images of the activity of the Son of God. The first
beast was like a lion, signifying His commanding and kingly
dignity ; the second like a calf, signifying His priestly office ;
the third like a man, denoting His] Incarnation ; the fourth
like an eagle, denoting the Holy Spirit flying over the
Church. Like these are the Gospels. John, who begins
with the Godhead and descent from the Father, is the lion;
Luke, who begins with the priesthood and sacrifice of Zacha-
rias, is the calf; Matthew, who begins with His human gene-
alogy, the man ; Mark, the eagle, who commences with the
announcement of the prophetic spirit — ' the beginning of the
Gospel as it is written by Isaiah the prophet.' You are
aware, I dare say, that this is not the apportionment of the
four beasts to the Gospels which ultimately prevailed in the
West, John being usually represented as the eagle ; Matthew
as the man ; Luke as the ox ; and Mark as the Hon.*
Irenaeus goes on to say that Christ's dealings with the
world are fourfold. To the patriarchs the word of God came
directly ; to those under the Law through the priestly office ;
Christ Himself came as man; since then He has dealt with
the Church by His Spirit overshadowing the Church with
* This apportionment seems to have been introduced into the West by St.
Ambrose {in Luc. Praef. 8). It was made more widely known by St. Jerome, who
professes therein to follow preceding expositors [Praef. in Matt. ; in Ezek. i. 6).
St. Augustine {De Consens. Evangg. i. 9), adopts the same apportionment, except
that he assigns the lion to St. Matthew, and the man to St. Mark. He mentions
also the arrangement of Irenaeus, but considers that this being founded merely on
the manner in which the several Gospels begin, is inferior to an arrangement founded
on their general contents. The three terrestrial animals, for instance, are fitly
assigned to the three Gospels, which are mainly occupied with our Lord's earthly
life : the eagle to the spiritual Gospel of St. John, who soars above the clouds of
human infirmity, and with unwavering eyes gazes on the light of immutable truth.
IV.] IREN^:US. 3g
His wings. Thus the Gospel also is fourfold, and those
destroy its fundamental conception who make the number
either greater or less ; either desiring to seem to have found
out more than the truth, or rejecting part of God's dispensa-
tion. The main point in this quotation is, that Irenseus
considers the fourfold character of the Gospels to have been
divinely arranged. We are not concerned with the validity
of his mystical explanations, but with the manifest inference
that the pre-eminence of four Evangelists must have been,
in the time of Ireneeus, long established, else he would not
thus ascribe it to divine appointment. Strauss quotes these
mystical explanations of Irenseus with a view to disparage
his testimony; but he is forced to admit that the fanciful
character of his reasons why there are only four Gospels
does not discredit his testimony to the fact that four, and
only four, were then acknowledged by the universal Church ;
and he owns that the reasons given by Irenaeus are not his
grounds for receiving only four Gospels, but only his mode
of justifying a belief adopted on other grounds.* Thus you
see that, without producing a single other witness, we have
proof that towards the end of the second century the Church
held the belief that is commonly held by the Church of the
present day, namely, that the four Gospels are to be vene-
rated as inspired records of our Saviour's life, and that no
others can be placed on a level with these.
Test by the evidence of this one witness the theory of
some, that St. John's Gospel made its first appearance about
the year 150 or 160. Is it credible that, if so, Irenaeus could
have accepted a forgery of which, according to the hypothesis,
his master Polycar.p had never told him a word ? For Poly-
carp, who, as I said just now, tised to repeat from memory
the discourses which he had heard from John, could not have
been silent about this work, which, if genuine, would be St.
* ' Diese seltsame Beweisfiihrung ist zwar nicht so zu verstehen, als waren die
angegebenen Umstande der Grund gewesen, wanim Irenaus nicht mehr und niclit
weniger Evangelien annahm ; vielmehr hatten sich diese vier eben damals in den
Kreisen der nach Glaubenseinheit strebenden katholischen Kirche in vorziiglichcu
Credit gesetzt, und dieses gegebene Verhaltniss suchte sich Irenaus im Geiste seiner
Zeit zurechtzulegen ' {^ lo, p. 48).
40 THE GOSPELS IN THE EARLY CHURCH. [iv.
John's most precious legacy to the Church ; and the fact
that it had not been mentioned by Polycarp would convince
Irenaeus that it was an audacious imposture. And again, it
is impossible that Polycarp could have accepted as genuine
a work of which he had never heard his master, John, speak.
There are, in short, three links in the chain — St. John, Poly-
carp, Irenaeus ; and I do not see how it is possible to dissever
any one of them from the other two.
Similar observations may be made about the conclusions
of the author of the work called ' Supernatural Religion.'
Other sceptical writers had thought they had done great
things if they could bring John's Gospel as late as 150 or 160,
allowing the Synoptic Gospels to date from the beginning of
the century. This writer iamgines that he has demolished
all evidence for the existence of the Synoptic Gospels prior
to the age of Irenaeus, and will only allow them to count from
the very end of the second century. But it is plain that the
evidence of Irenaeus, even if we had no other, takes us back
a long way behind his own time. Books newly come into
existence in his time could not have been venerated as he
venerated the Gospels. What length of time must we allow
for these books to have come into such esteem, that what
might be regarded as their chance expressions should be
considered as directed by the Spirit of God, and that among
all the different attempts to relate the life of Christ none
should seem fit to be put in comparison with these four } I
suppose fifty years would be a very moderate allowance of
time for such a growth of opinion : for the credit of these
books mainly rested on a belief that they were of apostolic
origin, and if they had been anywhere known to have been
recent modifications of an older story, they could not have
superseded their progenitors ; so that we may fairly conclude
that the time of their appearance was beyond then living-
memory. Well, then, what we have thus learned from Ire-
naeus is of important use when we come presently to look
at the works of the generation next before him. When we
find in these works what seem to be quotations from our
Gospels, we shall not easily be persuaded by small verbal
IV.] CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA. 4 1
differences that the writers are drawing from some unknown
sources, and not from books which we are certain, from Ire-
nseus, must in their time have existed, and have been of such
credit in the Church as to be well known to these writers.
The second witness to whom I have appealed gives us the
verdict of another large portion of the Christian world. Cle-
ment* of Alexandria lived in what was perhaps the city in all
the world where literary criticism was most cultivated. He
had been there the disciple of Pantaenus, who very possibly
may have been personally connected with disciples of the
Apostles. And Clement travelled and learned from other in-
structors of various nations, whose names he does not tell us,
but only their nationalities, an Ionian, an Italian, a Syrian, an
Egyptian, an Assyrian, a Hebrew in Palestine. ' These men,' as
he says, ' preserving the true tradition of the blessed teaching
directly from Peter and James, from John and Paul, son re-
ceiving it from father, came by God's providence even to us
to deposit among us those seeds of truth which were derived
from their ancestors and the Apostles' [Sh'om. i. 11). It is
needless to quote particular passages from Clement : suffice
it to say, that there is no more doubt as to his use of the
Gospels than there is as to the place assigned them by any
clergyman of the present day. He has traditions to tell con-
cerning the composition of Mark's and of John's Gospel, both
of which he regards as later than Matthew's and Luke's.
That, like Irenseus, he recognized as authoritative four Gos-
pels, neither more nor less, may be inferred from the manner
in which he deals with a saying ascribed to our Lord [Strom.
iii. 13) — 'We have not this saying in the four Gospels which
have been handed down to us ; it is found in the Gospel
according to the Egyptians.'! Besides this Gospel according
* Clement, possibly a Greek by birth, was born about the middle of the second
century, and was head of the Catechetical School in Alexandria (192-202). We last
hear of him as alive in 211 (Euseb. H. E. vi. 11).
t Some have doubted whether Clement had himself seen the Gospel according to
the Egyptians. He had said a little before that ' he thought ' (oF^itoi) that the
passage under discussion was to be found in the Gospel according to the Egyptians.
It has been inferred, therefore, that this was either a book which he only knew by
hearsay, or else one which it was so long since he had looked into, that he did not
quite like to trust his memory in speaking of it.
42 THE GOSPELS IN THE EARLY CHURCH. [iv.
to the Egyptians, he was acquainted with other apocryphal
writings — a Gospel according to the Hebrews, Traditions of
Matthias, and others; but the passage I have just cited is
evidence enough that, in his estimation, no other account
of the Saviour's deeds or words stood on the level of the
four Gospels.
When we compare the quotations of Clement and Irenaeus
a new phenomenon presents itself, which throws back the
date of the Gospels still further behind their own times. We
become aware of the existence of various readings. In fact,
in some of the texts, where the reading is now controverted,
there are second century witnesses on opposite sides. And
the general type of the text in use in Alexandria was different
from that in use in the West. Thus you see that the Gospels
were not only in existence at the end of the second century,
but they had by that time been copied and re-copied so often,
that errors from transcription and otherwise had time to creep
in, and different families of text to establish themselves.
The third witness to whom I have appealed, TertuUian,*
who also lived at the end of the second century, represents a
different section of the Church — the Latin-speaking section ;
and TertuUian, though himself a Greek scholar, habitually
used a Latin version made before his time. Nothing need be
said as to TertuUian's use of the Gospels, about which there
is as little question as about my own use of them ; but a few
remarks may be made as to this version. The first Latiil
translation does not appear to have been made, as one might
have expected, for the use of the Roman Christians. Rome
under the Emperors was in great measure, as Juvenal called
it, a Greek city, and Greek was its second language. As far
as we can learn, the great bulk of the early Christians in
Rome were not native Romans, but belonged to that large
foreign element in the population of the city which habitually
spoke Greek. What we know of London enables us easily to
realise the foreign element in Rome. It is said that there are
* The data for fixing the chronology of TertuUian's writings are scanty ; but we
shall not be far wrong in counting that he first appeared as a Church writer about
197, and that he continued his literary activity some thirty years longer.
IV.] THE LATIN VERSION. 43
in London more Irishmen than in Dublin, more Frenchmen
than in any French city except Paris, and similarly for other
nationalities. Rome, as the world's metropolis, had even
greater attractions for strangers than London ; and the popu-
lation, besides, included a large proportion of slaves, all
necessarily foreigners. It would, therefore, not in the least
surprise me if it turned out that in the time of Nero there were
more Jews in Rome than in Jerusalem ; these Jewish resi-
dents in foreign parts being known to their brethren at home
as Hellenists, from their habitual use of the Greek language.
It was, no doubt, to this Jewish colony in Rome that the
Gospel first found admission, working its way by a process of
slow diffusion, first to other foreign settlers in Rome, then to
Greek-speaking Romans, whether Jewish proselytes or friends
of Judaism ; last of all to the Latin-speaking population. It
was to speakers of Greek that Paul's Epistle to the Romans
was addressed. Ancient tradition describes the Gospel of
St. Mark as composed for the use of Roman Christians (Clem.
Alex., ap. Euseb. H. E. vi. 14) ; and this harmonizes with the
occurrence of Latin words in this Gospel : KoZpavTi]q, xii. 42 ;
KEVTwpiwv, XV. 39, 44, where in the parallel passages Matth.
and Luke have tKaroirap^^rje ; cr;r£KOwXara(,o, vi. 27; Ikuvov ttoihv,
for satisfacere, xv. 15 ; though one dare not lay too great stress
on this topic, for some Latin words forced themselves into use
all over the empire, and are to be found in other New Testa-
ment books, and in early Christian writings not composed at
Rome. In any case, the Epistle of Clement of Rome, in the
name of his Church, was written in Greek ; so was also
another early Roman production, the * Shepherd of Hermas.'
In the long list of salutations at the end of the Epistle to the
Romans only four Latin names occur. In the list of Roman
bishops of the first two centuries only two Latin names occur,
until about the year igo we come to Victor, after which Greek
and Latin names alternate for awhile. Of the inscriptions in
the Roman catacombs belonging to the second and third cen-
turies half are Greek ; and, what is curious, some of the Latin
ones are in Greek characters, which suggests that the stone-
cutters who made them were more familiar with working in
44 THE GOSPELS IN THE EARLY CHURCH. [iv.
Greek. It has been conjectured with good reason that Greek
was at first the liturgical language of the Church of Rome.
Many Greek words continued long in Roman liturgical use,
and the words Kyrie Eleisoiiy Christe Eleison, remain down to
our own time.
But meanwhile Christianity rapidly spread in Africa,
where Greek was not a current dialect. Latin was the lan-
guage of the African Church, and we have certain evidence
that they had a Latin translation of the Scriptures. In fact
the Christian custom of making the reading of the Bible a
part of the public worship made translations a thing of neces-
sity wherever the original language was not understood ; for
I need not say that public worship in an unknown tongue was
then unheard of. The language of the early Latin version
has been held to bear unmistakeable traces of its African
origin, as appears from comparing it with the productions
of African writers. I would hardly venture to insist very
strongly on this argument, because I believe that what is
called African Latin did not materially differ from the type of
the language used by the less highly cultured in Italy. I
have therefore dwelt at greater length on the proofs that
Rome was that part of the West which could longest afford to
do without a Latin translation ; whence we have less hesita-
tion in accepting the indications presented by style, that the
early Latin translation was first made for the use of those
flourishing towns in Northern Africa which kept up too active
an intercourse with Rome to be long strangers to Christia-
nity, but where there was no such mixture of Greek-speaking
people as in Rome itself.
We have abundant evidence from Tertullian that there
was in his time a Latin version of the New Testament current
in Africa, for he more than once finds fault with its render-
ings, one of them being that of the first verse of St. John's
Gospel, in which the word 'Logos' was translated by Sermo,
which thus became its African equivalent. Tertullian would
have preferred < Ratio ' [adv. Fraxean 5). I may say in passing
that the difficulty here found by Tertullian— that of adequately
rendering the Greek word 'Logos' — has been experienced by
IV.] TERTULLIAN. 45
every translator of the New Testament. For ' Logos ' not only
means the spoken word — the only sense suggested by our
English version — but still more, as Tertullian renders it,
reason. And so the early Greek fathers give the double
sense to the term in the Prologue of St. John, inferring that
it designates the Second Person of the Trinity not only as
God's spoken Word, by which He made known his will to
men, but also as having before this utterance dwelt from eter-
nity with the Father ; some analogy to help us to conceive
such an indwelling being found in the dwelling in man of the
principle of reason. So it is that the Fathers almost unani-
mously interpret the description of Wisdom in the 8th of Pro-
verbs, of the Second Person of the Trinity, whom the Collect
in daily use in our own College Chapel describes as ' the
Eternal Wisdom of the Father.' This interpretation was
received by the Arians as well as the orthodox.
Now this fact, that Tertullian had in use a version the
renderings of which he criticized, throws back the range of
Tertullian's testimony. We must allow some considerable
time for a version to acquire such currency as to mould the
popular theological dialect, and to give authority to renderings
which were in the judgment of good scholars capable of im-
provement. Towards the end of the second century it is not
only the fact that our Gospels are in sole possession all over
the Christian world, but translations of them have gained
an established rank. That is to say, at the time when it is
doubted if our Gospels were born, we find their children full
grown.
I believe, then, that if anyone fairly weighs all that is
involved in the undisputed fact that Irenaeus, Clement, and
Tertullian show that at the end of the second century all the
principal books of our New Testament were received all over
the civilized world as the works of the authors to whom we
still ascribe them, he will own it to be unreasonable to demand
further evidence, when we do not dream of requiring such
evidence in the case of any secular work.
The remains of the first generation of Christians are scanty,
and of the few works that have come down to us. several are
46 THE GOSPELS IN THE EARLY CHURCH. [v.
apologies intended for heathen readers,* to whom it would
not be appropriate to cite the New Testament Scriptures.
There is an advantage then in commencing with that age of
which we have remains so full and abundant as to leave no
room for controversy as to the sentiments of the writers ; and
which at the same time is so near the age of the Apostles,
that what was then the undisputed established opinion as to
the authorship of their sacred books, held by common consent
of distant Churches, is very likely to be a true opinion,
Should a question arise some centuries hence whether Pope
wrote the ' Dunciad ' and the ' Rape of the Lock,' or whether
Goldsmith wrote the 'Deserted Village' and the 'Vicar of
Wakefield,' it would go far to settle the question, if it were
proved that in our generation no doubt was entertained by
anyone on the matter, even if all preceding testimony had
perished.
Though, in my opinion, the testimony of the three witnesses
already considered might suffice to produce conviction, we can
produce trustworthy evidence of considerably earlier date,
which will be the subject of future Lectures.
V.
Part II.
MURATORIAN FRAGMENT. CAIUS— HIPPOLYTUS.
It would take more time than I can ask you to give, if I
were to bring before you all the second century testimonies to
the Gospels ; and I had intended to go back at once from the
three witnesses whose testimony is admitted by Strauss to
Justin Martyr, who lived about the middle of the second cen-
* From the nature of the case references to the New Testament books are infre-
quent in works addressed to such readers ; for example, if only TertuUian's 'Apology'
had come down to us it would not have been possible to prove that he was acquainted
with the Gospels.
v.] MURATORIAN FRAGMENT. 47
tury ; but I see that to do this would oblige me to omit some
things of which I think you ought to be told, and with which
I mean to occupy the present Lecture. I call your attention,
in the first place, to a very interesting document, commonly
known as the Muratorian fragment on the Canon. It is a list
of the books accepted at its date as authoritative, and it is
called Muratorian because first published, in the year 1740,
by the Italian scholar Muratori, from a manuscript now, as
then, in the Ambrosian Library at Milan, but which had origi-
nally belonged to the great Irish monastery of Bobbio. This
manuscript is a collection of extracts from various authors,
made about the eighth century, and the particular extract
with which we have now to deal must have been made from
what was then a mutilated manuscript, which the transcriber
was desirous to preserve ; for the existing manuscript is quite
perfect — no leaves are lost ; but the extract begins in the
middle of a sentence, and ends quite as abruptly. It bears
marks of having been a rude translation from the Greek; and
the transcriber was clearly a very indifferent Latin scholar,
for his work is full of misspellings and other blunders, such
as in some places quite to obscure their meaning. In fact, it
•was as a specimen of such blundering that Muratori first pub-
lished it.
So much interest attaches to this extract, as containing
the earliest extant attempt to give anything like a formal list
of New Testament books, that I must not grudge the time
necessary for laying before you the internal evidence which
approximately fixes the date of the composition of the work
from which the extract was taken.* In reading Paley's * Evi-
* A monograph on the Muratorian Fragment was published by Tregellesin 1867.
Considerable additional light was thrown on it by Dr. Westcott, the results of whose
study of it are given in the appendix to his 'New Testament Canon,' p. 514. As I
have frequently occasion to refer to this Fragment, it is convenient to print it here
entire, as restored by Westcott ; but it will be observed that some passages are too
corrupt to be restored with certainty. For a transcript of the actual text I refer to
Westcott's 'New Testament Canon,' and for other sources of information to my
article, Muratorian Fragment, in Smith's ' Dictionary of Christian Biography.'
. . . quibus tamen interfuit, et ita posuit. Tertium Evangelii librum secundum
Lucan, Lucas iste medicus post ascensum Christi, cum eum Paulus quasi ut juris
stndiosum secundum adsumsisset, nomine suo ex opinione conscripsit. Dominum
48 THE GOSPELS IN THE EARLY CHURCH. [v.
dences' last year you must have become familiar at least with
the name of the ' Shepherd of Hermas.' This work is quoted
as inspired by Irenseus and Clement of Alexandria; and in
the third century Origen hazarded the conjecture that it
might have been written by Hermas, who is mentioned in the
Epistle to the Romans ; and this, though, as I say, a compara-
tively late conjecture, has been accepted by some as if it were
tradition. The Muratorian fragment gives a different account
of the authorship, and one which has all the air of being tra-
dition, and not conjecture. It would appear that, at the time
this fragment was written, there was some disposition to
accept the 'Shepherd' as canonical ; for, in a passage where^
notwithstanding corruption of text, the writer's general mean-
ing can be clearly made out, he lays down that this book may
be read, but not be publicly used, with the Apostles and
Prophets, whose number is complete, seeing that it was
written ' very recently in our own time by Hermas, while his
brother Pius sat in the chair of the see of Rome.' Now, the
date when Pius was Bishop of Rome is variously given ; those
who place him latest make him bishop between 142-157 ; so
tamen nee ipse vidit in carne, et idem prout assequi potuit, ita et a nativitate Johan-
nis incepit dicere. Quarti evangeliorum Johannes ex discipulis. Cohortantibus con-
discipulis et episcopis suis dixit, conjejunate mihi hodie triduum et quid cuique fuerit
revelatum alterutrum nobis enarremus. Eadem nocte revelatum Andreae ex apostolis,
ut recognoscentibus cunctis Johannes suo nomine cuncta describeret. Et ideo licet
varia singulis Evangeliorum libris principia doceantur, nihil tamen differt credentium
fidei, cum uno ac principali Spiritu declarata sint in omnibus omnia de nativitate, de
passione, de resurrectione, de conversatione cum discipulis suis ac de gemino ejus
advento, primum in humilitate despectus, quod fuit, secundum potestate regali pras-
clarum, quod futurum est. Quid ergo mirum si Johannes tam constanter singula
etiam in epistulis suis proferat dicens in semetipsum, ' Quae vidimus oculis nostris et
auribus audivimus, et manus nostras palpaverunt, haec scripsimus.' Sic enim non
solum visorem, sed et auditorem, sed et scriptorem omnium mirabilium domini per
ordinem profitetur.
Acta autem omnium apostolorum sub uno libro scripta sunt. Lucas optima
Theophilo comprendit, quia sub praesentia ejus singula gerebantur, sicuti et semote
passionem Petri evidenter declarat, sed et profectionem Pauli ab urbe ad Spaniam
proficiscentis.
Epistulae autem Pauli, quae, a quo loco, vel qua ex causa directse sint, volentibus in-
tellegere ipsae declarant. Primum omnium Corinthiis schisma haeresis interdicens,
deinceps Galatis circumcisionem, Romanis autem ordine scripturarum, sed et princi-
pium earum esse Christum intimans, prolixius scripsit ; de quibus singulis necesse est
V.J MURATORIAN FRAGMENT. 4q
the question as to the date of the fragment is, How long after
could a writer fairly describe this period as ' nuperrime tem-
poribus nostris' ? It is urged that we cannot well make this
interval much more than twenty years. I have been accus-
tomed to speak of the definition of the dogma of Papal Infal-
libility at the Vatican Council of 1870 as very recent, and
as an event of our own time, though I begin to doubt
whether I can go on much longer with propriety in using
such language ; but though the definition of the dogma of the
Immaculate Conception in 1854 is also an event of my own
time, you would think it strange if I called it very recent,
seeing that it occurred before most of you were born. It is
concluded, therefore, that the date of this fragment cannot be
much later than 1 70.
There is, however, great difficulty in finding any writer of
that date to whom it can be plausibly assigned, especially as
internal evidence limits us to Rome or Italy as the place of
composition. This consideration sets aside a very improb-
able guess of the late Baron Bunsen — Hegesippus, commonly
called, but probably incorrectly, the earliest ecclesiastical
a nobis disputari, cum ipse beatus Apostolus Paulus, sequens prodecessoris sui
Johannis ordinem nonnisi nominatim septem ecclesiis scribat ordine tali ; ad Coriu-
thios (prima), ad Ephesios (secunda), ad Philippenses (tertia), ad Colossenses (quarla),
ad Galatas (quinta), ad Thessalonicenses (sexta), ad Romanes (septima). Verum
Corinthiis et Thessalonicensibus licet pro correptione iteretur, una tamen per omnem
orbcin terrse ecclesia diffusa esse dinoscitur ; et Johannes enim in Apocalypsi, licet
septem ecclesiis scribat, tamen omnibus dicit. Verum ad Philemonem unam, et ad
Titum unam, et ad Timotheum duas, pro affectu et dilectione ; in honore tamen
ecclesise catholics in ordinatione ecclesiasticse disciplinse sanctiticatse sunt. Fertur
etiam adLaodicenses, alia ad Alexandrines, Pauli nomine finctse ad hseresim Marcionis,
et alia plura, quae in catholicam ecclesiam recipi non potest . fel enim cum melle
misceri non congruit.
Epistula sane Judas et superscripti Johannis duas in Catholica habentur ; et
Sapientia ab amicis Solomonis in honorem ipsius scripta.
Apocalypses etiam Johannis et Petri tantum recipimus, quam quidam ex nostris
legi in ecclesia nolunt. Pastorem vero nuperrime temporibus nostris in urbe Roma
Hermas conscripsit, sedente cathedra urbis Romae Ecclesise Pio Episcopo fratie ejus ;
et ideo legi eum quidem oportet, se publicare vero in Ecclesia populo, neque inter
prophetas, completum numero, neque inter apostolos in finem temporum potest.
Arsinoi autem sen Valentini vel Metiad [ ] nihil in totum recipimus. Qui etiam
novum psalmorum Hbrum Marcioni conscripserunt, una cum Basilide, Assiano
Cataphrygum constitutorera. . . .
E
50 THE GOSPELS IN THE EARLY CHURCH. [v.
historian. The extracts from his work which have been pre-
served by Eusebius, and by which alone he is now known,
though historical in their character, are thought by the best
recent critics more likely to have been taken from a doctrinal
or controversial book than from a regular history. Hege-
sippus lived about the right time, but he had no connexion
with Italy: and besides, since Eusebius tells us that in the
passages he cites from earlier writers he had particularly in
view to illustrate the testimony borne by them to the New
Testament Scriptures [H. E. iii. 3), I count it improbable
that, it Eusebius had found in Hegesippus so remarkable an
enumeration of books owned as canonical, he would not have
made some mention of it. Muratori himself, when he pub-
lished the fragment, conjectured as its author Caius, the
Roman presbyter; and there is vastly more to be said for
that guess than for Bunsen's. Caius was the author of a
dialogue against the Montanists. The dialogue has been
lost, but Eusebius [H. E. vi. 20) tells us that, in rebuking the
rashness and impudence of the Montanists in composing
new Scriptures, he counts only thirteen Epistles of St. Paul,
omitting that to the Hebrews. Thus it seems certain that
this lost dialogue contained a list of canonical books, which
Caius set down, intending by this closed Canon to exclude
Montanist additions. It is natural to ask, then, May not
this Muratorian list be the very list of Caius ? Like that, it
was drawn up at Rome ; and like that also, it only counts
thirteen Epistles of St. Paul, leaving out the Epistle to the
Hebrews. But the date has been thought a fatal objection.
Caius wrote in the episcopate of Zephyrinus — we may say
about the year 210; how, then, could he speak of the year
140 or 150 as very recent ? The objection is a serious, but I
do not count it a fatal one. When a writer is only known to
us by a single fragment, we have no means of judging of his
habitual carefulness in the use of language, and so we are
not safe in considering ourselves bound to put the strictest
interpretation on his words. Instances have been produced
where similar expressions have been used about events which
happened a century or two ago. Everything is comparative.
v.] MURATORIAN FRAGMENT. cj
We should call Luther and Calvin quite modern writers if
anyone imagined them to be contemporary with St. Auo-us-
tine. Although, as I said just now, I should not dream, in
ordinary conversation, of describing an event of the year
1854 as quite recent; yet, if I were writing controversially,
and contrasting the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception
with the articles of the Apostles' Creed, it would not be in
the least unnatural if I described the former as a dogma
formulated ' quite recently and in our own time.' And I
might say this even if the promulgation of the doctrine had
been fifty years earlier than it was. Why, even Pope Pius's
Creed, which was made some three hundred years ago, is
often spoken of as quite new when it is put in comparison with
the Nicene Creed. Now, the object of Caius (as described
by Eusebius) and of the author of the fragment clearly was
controversial ; it was to draw a broad line of separation
between the inspired writings of the Apostolic age and
modern additions ; and, therefore, we need not press too
closely the energetic language with which the author of the
fragment protests against placing on a level in Church read-
ing with the Sacred Scriptures a writing that he believed to
be no older than Pope Pius I.
Now a careful examination of the ' Shepherd of Hermas '
has quite convinced me that, instead of being a work of the
middle of the second century, it dates from its very beginning.
If the Aluratorian writer has made a mistake about the date
of Hermas, it is likely he was not so near a contemporary of
Pius as people have thought. I have also found reason, on
investigating the history of Montanism, which clearly is com-
bated in the Muratorian fragment, to think that it did not
make its appearance in the West until a little after the year
200. On these and other grounds* I have come to the con
elusion that the fragment is of the same age as the dialogue
of Caius; and, then, I do not think I can fairly refuse to
accept Muratori's hypothesis, although I had at one time
been rather inclined to ascribe the fragment to Caius's con-
* See Smith's ' Dictionary of Christian Biography,' Arts. Muratorian Frag-
iiENT and Montanism.
E 2
C2 THE GOSPELS IN THE EARLY CHURCH. [v.
temporary Hippolytus, on the ground that the whole tone of
the fragment is rather didactic than controversial — rather the
lesson of a master to disciples than of a disputant with oppo-
nents. Bishop Lightfoot,* in 1868, published an ingenious
theory that Caius and Hippolytus were the same person
under different names ; but, though he persuaded me for
awhile, I have come back, on more careful study, to the old
opinion, that they were different persons, but contemporary.
I have frankly told you my own opinion, but you must
remember this is only my individual notion, and that the
received doctrine of scholars (orthodox and sceptical alike) is
that the document is not later than 170 or 180. It is a pity
that the impossibility of laying before you any view but that
which, however mistakenly, I believe to be true, obliges me
both to be guilty of the immodesty of setting myself in oppo-
sition to the received opinion of scholars, and also to forego
the controversial advantage that arises from accepting the
date commonly ascribed to the fragment. According to that
date, we gain a witness to our Canon, who, if not many years
earlier than Irenseus, would be at least an elder contempo-
rary: according to my view, he is but a younger contemporary
(for both Caius and Hippolytusf are said to have been dis-
ciples of Irenseus), and the main value of the fragment is the
testimony it gives to the wide line of distinction that at that
early date was drawn between canonical books and the most
valued of uninspired writings. I shall frequently have occa-
sion to refer to this document in the course of these lectures.
* ' Journal of Philology,' I. 98. If Lightfoot has succeeded in proving that the
works ascribed to each might conceivably have been written by the same person, this
would at most establish a possibility of identification. But I consider his argument to
be vitiated by the tacit assumption that the book called ' The Labyrinth,' of which
Photius speaks, is the same as the ' Little Labyrinth ' spoken of by Theodoret. Tlie
former I count to be the same as the ' Refutation of all Heresies,' and as the work of
Hippolytus ; the latter I count to be the same as what Photius calls the treatise
' against the heresy of Artemon ' ; and in Diet. Chr. Biog. iii. 98, I have given some
reasons for thinking that this treatise was not written by Hippolytus.
t These writers were both leading members of the Church of Rome in the first
quarter of the third century. It is likely that each may have commenced his literary
activity before the end of the second.
v.] MURATORIAN FRAGMENT. 53
At present I will merely report the account it gives of the
Gospels.
The fragment begins with a few words which evidently
are the end of a description of St. Mark's Gospel, for it pro-
ceeds to describe what it calls the third book of the Gospels,
that by Luke, whom it states to have been a companion of
Paul, but not to have himself seen our Lord in the flesh,
mention being made that he commenced his history from
the nativity of John the Baptist. The fourth Gospel it states
to have been written by St. John on the suggestion of his
fellow-disciples and bishops (by which, I suppose, is meant
the other Apostles), wherepon John proposed that they
should all fast three days, and tell each other whatever
might be revealed to any, and it was the same night re-
vealed to Andrew that, under the revision of all, John should
in his own name write an account of everything. Wherefore,
it adds, although the teaching of the separate books be diver-
sified, it makes no difference to the faith of believers, since in
all, by one guiding Spirit, are declared all things concerning
our Lord's Nativity, Passion, Resurrection, conversation with
His disciples, and concerning His double Advent — the first
in humility, which is past ; the second in royal majesty,
which is still to come.* Thus full and clear is the testimony
of the latter half of the second century, not only to the
genuineness of the four Gospels, but to their inspiration. If
nothing more could be adduced, it is better evidence than
that which satisfies us in the case of most classical writers.
* It would be interesting if there were clear evidence that the work from which
our fragment was taken was read by any ancient author. I think it, therefore, worth
while to copy the account which St. Jerome, in the preface to his Commentary on St.
Matthew, gives of the four Gospels, because the coincidences with our fragment,
which I have marked in Italics, seem to me more than accidental. ' Primus omnium
Matthceus est publicanus, cognomento Levi, qui Evangelium in Jud^a Hebrreo ser-
mone edidit : ob eorum vel maxime caussam, qui in Jesum crediderant ex J udreis, et
nequaquam legis umbram, succedente Evangeli veritate, servabant. Secundus Marcus,
interpres Apostoli Petri, et Alexandrinse Ecclesise primus episcopus ; qui Dominum
Salvatoreni ipse 7ion vidit, sed^ea quoe magistrum audierat prsedicantem, juxta fidem
magis gestorum narravit quam ordinem. Tertius Lucas medicus, natione Syrus
Antiochensis, cujus laus in Evangelic, qui et ipse discipulus Apostoli Pauli, in
Acaaicc Boeotioeque partibus volumen condidit, quaedam altius repetcns : ct ut ipse
54 THE GOSPELS IN THE EARLY CHURCH. [v.
As I have had occasion to mention these two disciples of
Irenaeus — Caius and Hippolytus — I have a few words more to
say about each. In point of antiquity they may be regarded
as on a level with Clement and Tertullian, though but younger
contemporaries of Irenseus, And I may say in passing, in
connexion with what I said as to the long continuance of a
large Greek element in the Roman Church, that although
Caius and Hippolytus both held office in that Church in the
first quarter of the third century, all that remains of either is
in Greek ; and Hippolytus published so many Greek books,
including some sermons, that I am not without doubts
whether he could use Latin at all for literary purposes.
In speaking of Irenaeus, I mentioned that he builds an
argument on the words of a text in St. Matthew's Gospel, in
such a way as to show that he was a believer in the verbal
inspiration of the Evangelist ; that is to say, that he looked
on the choice of the Evangelist of one word rather than
another as a matter to be regarded not as due to the acci-
dental caprice of the human writer, but as directed and over-
ruled by the Holy Spirit. It is plain that anyone who holds
such an opinion about any book must feel himself bound to
see that special care shall be used in the transcription of it, in
order that no copyist may carelessly or wdlfully substitute
words of his own for the words dictated by the Holy Ghost.
It is notorious with what care the Massoretic text of the Old
Testament has been preserved by men who thought that a
mystery might lie in every word, every letter of the sacred
in prooemio confitetur audita magis quam visa describens. Ultimus Johannes
Apostolus et Evangelista, quem Jesus amavit plurimum ; qui supra pectus Domini
recumbens, purissima doctrinarum fluenta potavit, et qui solus de cruce meruit
audire, Ecce mater tua. Is quum esset in Asia, et jam tunc hsereticorum semina
pullularent, Cerinthi, Ebionis, et cacterorum qui negant Christum in came venisse (quos
et ipse in Epistola sua Antichristos vocat, et Apostolus Paulus frequenter percutit),
coactus est ah omnibus pene tunc Asia episcopis et 7niiltarutn ecclesiarurn legationibus
de divinitate salvatoris altius scribere ; et ad ipsum (ut ita dicam) Dei Verbum, non
tarn audaci, quam felici temeritate prorumpere. Et ecclesiastica narrat historia, quum
a fratribus cogeretur ut scriberet, ita facturum se respondisse si indicto jejunio omnes
Deum precarentur^ quo expleto, revelatione saturatus, in illud prooemium ccelo veni-
ens eructavit : In principio erat Verbum, et Verbum erat apud Deum, et Deus erat Ver-
bum ; Hoc erat in principio apud Deum.'
v.] CAIUS. 55
text. What kind of care was used in the time of Irenaeus we
may gather from an interesting adjuration which he prefixed
to a work of his own — ' Whosoever thou art who shalt tran-
scribe this book, I charge thee with an oath by our Lord Jesus
Christ and by His glorious appearing, in which He cometh to
judge the quick and dead, that thou carefully compare what
thou hast transcribed, and correct it according to this copy
whence thou hast transcribed it ; and that thou transcribe
this oath in like manner, and place it in thy copy' (Euseb.,
H. E., V. 20). We may safely assume that Irenaeus would be
solicitous that fully as much care and reverence should be
used in perpetuating the text of the Gospels, which he vene-
rated so highly ; and we may, therefore, regard the end of the
second century as a time when a check was being put on the
licentiousness of scribes in introducing variations into the
text of the New Testament writings. It is in reference to this
point that I think it worth while to make a quotation from
Caius. Eusebius {H. E., v. 28) has preserved some extracts
from a work directed against the followers of Artemon, who,
of those calling themselves Christians, was amongst tha
earliest to hold our Blessed Lord to have been mere man.
Internal evidence shows the work to belong to the beginning
of the third century, and it has been ascribed both to Caius
and Hippolytus ; but the greater weight of critical authority,
and, in my opinion, also far the greater weight of evidence, is
in favour of the ascription to Caius. The writer pronounces
the doctrine of our Lord's simple humanity to be in contradic-
tion to the Holy Scriptures ; and it is plain, from the nature
of the case, that the writings which he thus describes as Holy
Scriptures, and as teaching the doctrine of our Lord's Di-
vinity, must have been Scriptures of the New Testament.
But from a later part of the same writing it appears that the
subject of various readings had, at that early date, given rise
to controversy. Caius accuses his opponents of having tam-
pered with the Holy Scriptures, of having published what they
called 'corrected' copies, but which, in his judgment, were
simply ruined. He appeals to the fact that different ' cor-
rectors' did not agree among themselves, and that the same
56 THE GOSPELS IN THE EARLY CHURCH. [v
man was not always consistent with himself, his later text
being often at variance with his earlier ; and he adds : ' I
think they can hardly be ignorant themselves what impudent
audacity their offence involves. For either they do not be-
lieve the divine Scriptures to have been spoken by the Holy
Spirit, and then they are nothing but infidels ; or else they
think that they are wiser than the Holy Spirit, and who could
entertain such an idea but a demoniac ? ' We have not the
means of judging whether the anger of Caius was justly
roused by perversions of the sacred text, wilfully made in
order to remove its testimony to our Lord's Divinity, or
whether he was but the blind champion of a Textus Receptus
against more learned critical revisers. The important point
for us to observe is how strongly the doctrine of Scripture
Inspiration was held at the beginning of the third century ;
and you will see how well justified I am in thinking it need-
less, in our investigation about the Gospels, to go below the
age of Irenaeus, the tradition which he handed on to his dis-
ciples being identical with that which the Church has held
ever since.
It might seem, then, needless to say anything about Hip-
polytus, whose literary activity mainly belonged to the first
quarter of the third century ; and so it would be needless, if
the question were merely about his own opinions ; but the
chief value of Hippolytus consists in the information he has
preserved to us about the sentiments of earlier writers, and
these men whose testimony is of high value to us in the
present investigation, namely, the heretics of the second
century.
We are never so secure that a tradition has been trans-
mitted to us correctly as when it comes through different in-
dependent channels. For example, to touch by anticipation
on subjects on which I shall have to speak at more length in
other courses of Lectures, the value of a version as a witness
in any controversy respecting the true text of the sacred
writings depends on the facts that the version is, for all
essential purposes, a duplicate of the manuscript from which
the translation was made, and that the corruptions which the
v.] HIPPOLYTUS. 57
two will suffer in the process of transcription are likely to be
different, since words resembling each other in one language
will probably not correspond to words easily interchanged in
the other. Hence things in which the version and copies of
the original agree may safely be counted to be as old as the
time when the translation was made. In like manner, if, in
any investigation as to the liturgical usages of the Eastern
Church, we find details of Eucharistic celebration common to
the Catholics, the Nestorian, and the Eutychian sects, we may
safely reckon these details to be at least as ancient as the
time when the splitting- off of these sects took place; for the
simple reason, that it is very unlikely that anything subse-
quently introduced in one of mutually hostile communities
would be adopted by the other. Similarly, if we find books
enjoying the prerogatives of Scripture in orthodox Churches
and heretical sects alike, we may safely conclude that these
books had gained their position before the separation of the
heretical sects in question. A forgery of later date would not
be likely to be accepted by both alike, and to be treated as
common ground on which both could argue.
The work of Hippolytus, which has thrown a great deal
of light on the Gnostic speculations of the second century,
has only become known in my own time, having been pre-
served in only a single manuscript, which was brought from
Mount Athos to Paris, and published for the first time in
1851. The title is the 'Refutation of all Heresies.' The
method of refutation which Hippolytus principally employed
is one which was probably not very convincing to the heretics,
but is very convenient to us, and probably was quite enough
for his orthodox readers. It consisted in simply repeating
the heretics' doctrine in their own words. In this way we
obtain a knowledge of several heretical writings, of which,
except through this book of Hippolytus, we should not have
heard. Now common to all these writings is the copious use
as authoritative of our four Gospels, and in particular of that
Gospel whose date has been brought down lowest, the Gospel
according to St. John. We do not gain much by these cita-
tions when the heretics quoted are only known to us by the
58 THE GOSPELS IN THE EARLY CHURCH. [v.
extracts given by Hippolytus ; for then it is open to any
objector to say, Oh! perhaps these writers were contemporary
with Hippolytus himself, or very little older. Who can assure
us that the heretical documents dragged to light by Hippo-
lytus had been in circulation for a dozen years before he ex-
posed them ? But the heretics from whose works Hippolytus
gives extracts are not all of them unknown persons. I name
in particular Basilides and Valentinus, who hold a prominent
place in the lists of everyone who has written about the
heretics of the second century. Basilides taught in the reign
of Hadrian — let us say about the year 130 — and Valentinus
taught in Rome between the years 140 and 150. In fact,
both these schools of heretics are mentioned by Justin
Martyr, so that they clearly belong to the first half of the
second century, and chronologically come before Justin
Martyr, of whom I had proposed next to speak. Now in
the extracts given by Hippolytus purporting to be from
Basilides and Valentinus, each of these writers not only
quotes from Paul's Epistles (including that to the Ephesians,
one doubted by Renan, who accepts all the rest, except the
Pastoral Epistles), but each also makes use of the Gospels, in
particular of the Gospel according to St. John. I may say in
passing, that though the fourth Gospel is that which is most
assailed by sceptical writers, yet as far as external evidence
is concerned, if there be any difference between this Gospel
and the others, the difference is in its favour — that is to say,
I think there is even greater weight of external attestation to
this than to the rest. And the use made of St. John's Gospel
by all the heretics of the second century is no small argument
in favour of its early date. The answer made by sceptical
writers to these quotations in Hippolytus is, Can you be sure
that the Valentinian and Basilidian works from which Hippo-
lytus quotes were really written by the heresiarchs themselves?
Is it not possible that, when he professes to describe the
opinions of Valentinus or Basilides, he is drawing his infor-
mation from the work of some disciple of each of these sects
who lived nearer his own time, the (pi^ai with which Hippo-
lytus introduces the quotations being merely intended to
v.] THE VALENTINIANS.
59
have the effect of inverted commas in an English book, and
not to be pressed to mean that Valentinus himself is the
speaker ? If I were to deal with this answer in a contro-
versial spirit I might describe it as a quite gratuitous assump-
tion, and a mere evasion to escape a difficulty, to imagine
that Hippolytus can mean anything but what he says, or to
suppose that words which he distinctly states are those of
Valentinus are to be understood as spoken by somebody else.
But I should be sorry to press any argument the least degree
further than in my own heart I considered it would justly
bear; and when I ask myself whether I can say that I regard
Hippolytus as incapable of the laxity here imputed to him, I
cannot say that I do. On the contrary, I should say that he
would be likely to consider that he was fulfilling all the re-
quirements of honesty in describing the opinions of Valen-
tinus from a Valentinian book, without troubling himself with
minute inquiries whether Valentinus himself were the writer.
I therefore do not insist on the admission that the heretical
works cited are as old as the words of Hippolytus, literally
understood, would make them out to be ; and for my purpose
I can be quite satisfied with the incontrovertible fact that, in
the time of Hippolytus, there was no controversy between
the Valentinians and the orthodox as to their New Testament
Canon, and in particular that the Gospel of John was alike
venerated by both parties.
This is a fact which we can abundantly establish by other
evidence. The whole vocabulary of the system of Valentinus
is founded on the prologue to St. John's Gospel. The system
of Valentinus uses as technical words, /novoyevijg, ^w?'/, aArj^a'o,
Xopig, 7rA//p Wjua, A070C, «^wc- It is quite impossible to invert
the order, and to suppose these words first to have been the
key-words of a heretical system, and then to have been
borrowed by someone desirous to pass himself off as St. John,
or to suppose that in such a case the Gospel could ever have
found acceptance in the Church. You might as well conceive
someone who wanted a document to be accepted as authori-
tative by us Protestants, stuffing it with Roman Catholic
technical words — Transubstantiation, Purgatory, and such
6o THE GOSPELS IN THE EARLY CHURCH. [v.
like. Putting in such words would clearly show any Protes-
tant that the document emanated from a hostile body; and
so, in like manner, if the theory of Valentinus had been pro-
mulgated before the publication of the fourth Gospel, the
vocabulary of the prologue to that Gospel would have ex-
cluded it from Catholic use. There is abundance of other
evidence that Catholics and Valentinians were agreed as to
the reverence paid to this Gospel, Tertullian contrasts the
methods of dealing with the New Testament pursued by
Marcion, of whom I shall speak a little later, and by Valen-
tinus. Marcion mutilated his New Testament, rejecting all
parts of it which he could not reconcile with his theories; but
Valentinus, as Tertullian says, ' integro instrumento uti vide-
tur' [De PrcBscrtp. 38) ; that is to say, he did not reject the
Gospels accepted by the Catholic Church, but he strove by
artificial interpretation to make them teach his peculiar doc-
trine. How true this statement is we have extant evidence.
The earliest commentary on a New Testament book of which
we have any knowledge is by a heretic — that by the Valen-
tinian Heracleon on St. John. It is known to us through the
use made of it by Origen, who, when commenting on the
same book, quotes Heracleon some fifty times, sometimes
agreeing with him, but more usually controverting him. We
have thus a very minute knowledge of Heracleon's commen-
tary on at least four or five chapters of St. John. And this
characteristic prevails throughout, that the strongest believer
in verbal inspiration at the present day could not dwell with
more minuteness on the language of St. John, or draw more
mysteries from what might seem the accidental use of one
expression rather than another.
There is controversy as to the date of Heracleon. All we
know with certainty is, that he must have been earlier than
Clement of Alexandria, who quotes him twice [Strom. IV. 9 ;
Eclog. ex Scrip. Proph. 25). Sceptical writers make Heracleon
as little earlier than Clement as they can help, and say his
commentary may have been as late as 180. Orthodox writers
would give it thirty or forty years greater antiquity. For my
part, I think it makes little difference as far as the question
v.] THE VALENTINIANS. 6 1
of the antiquity of St. John's Gospel is concerned. Heracleon
was a Valentinian, and it appears that in his time the autho-
rity, and I think we may say the inspiration, of John's Gospel
was common ground to the Valentinians and the Catholics.
How could that be possible, if it had not been acknowledged
before the Valentinians separated from the orthodox? If the
book had been written, subsequently to the separation, by a
Valentinian, the orthodox would not have received it; if by a
Catholic, the Valentinians would not have received it. If it
had been of unknown parentage, it is incredible that both
communities should have accepted it as apostolic.
What has been said about Valentinus may be repeated
about Basilides. Hippolytus produces an extract in which
the words of St. John's Gospel are twice quoted (vii. 22, 27),
and which he says, as plain as words can do it, is taken from
a writing of Basilides.* Admit that Hippolytus was either
misinformed on this point, or through inaccuracy said what
he did not mean to say, it still remains that the extract was
written by at least a disciple of Basilides. It follows that
Basilidians and orthodox agreed in their reverence for St.
John's Gospel ; and it follows, then, by the same argument
w^hich I have used already, that St. John's Gospel must have
gained its authority before Basilides separated from the
Church — that is to say, at least before 130. This evidence
for the antiquity of St. John is an argument a fortiori for the
antiquity of the other Gospels, which all admit to be earlier,
I may here mention the only point of any consequence on
which a difference is attempted to be made between the testi-
mony to the fourth Gospel and to the others, viz., that though
Papias, of whom I will speak presently, names Matthew and
Mark as the authors of Gospels, and though there are early
anonymous quotations of John's Gospel, the first to mention
* Westcott ('New Testament Canon,' p. 288) gives strong reasons for believing
the extract to be from a work of BasUides himself. So also Hort, ' Dictionary of
Christian Biography,' i. 271. The same view is taken by Matthew Arnold, 'God
and the Bible,' p. 268, quoted by Dr. Ezra Abbot ('Authorship of Fourth Gospel,'
p. 86). But since there is room for doubt, I use an argument which does not assume
the Basilidian authorship.
62 THE GOSPELS IN THE EARLY CHURCH. [v.
John by name as its author is Theophilus, who was bishop of
Antioch about 170 [ad Auiol. ii. 22). But this point is of very-
small worth ; for not to say that the argument might be used
equally against Luke's Gospel, the authorship of which is not
seriously contested, there cannot be a doubt that any evidence
which proves the antiquity of John's Gospel proves also its
authorship. In other words, it is plain from the work itself
that whoever composed it intended it to be received as ema-
nating from the beloved disciple, and we cannot doubt that it
was as such it was received by those who did accept it. Let
ine call your attention to the singular fact, that the name of
the Apostle John is never mentioned in St. John's Gospel.
If you had only that Gospel, you would never know that there
was an Apostle of the name. The other Gospels, when they
speak of the forerunner of our Lord, always give him the title
of the Baptist, so as to prevent confusion between the two
Johns. This Gospel speaks of him simply as John, so that a
reader not otherwise informed would never have it suggested
to him that there was another of the name. This fact is
worth attention in connexion with what I shall have here-
after to say on the omissions of the Gospel, and on the ques-
tion whether John is to be supposed ignorant of everything
he does not record in his Gospel. I shall contend, on the
contrary, that the things which John omits are things so very
well known that he could safely assume his readers to be
acquainted with them. It certainly is so in this instance ; for
no one disputes that, if the writer were not the Apostle John,
he was someone who wished to pass for him. But a forger
would be likely to have made some more distinct mention of
the person who played the principal part in his scheme ; and
he certainly could scarcely have hit on such a note of genuine-
ness as that, whereas almost everyone in the Church had felt
the necessity of distinguishing by some special name John
the forerunner from John the Apostle, there was one person
who would feel no such necessity, and who would not form
this habit — namely, the Apostle himself.
VI.] THE MIDDLE OF THE SECOND CENTURY. 63
VI.
Part III.
THE MIDDLE OF THE SECOND CENTURY.
JUSTIN MARTY R — T A T I A N.
It may now be regarded as proved, that towards the end
of the second century our four Gospels were universally ac-
cepted in the Catholic Church as the peculiarly trustworthy
records of the Saviour's life, and that they were then ascribed
to the same authors as those to whom we now ascribe them.
Why, then, are we not to accept this testimony ? Is it
because of any opposing evidence, external or internal ?
Postponing for a moment the question of internal evidence,
opposing external evidence there is none. All that can be
said is, the evidence you have produced bears date a hundred
years later than the books ; we desire to have earlier testi-
mony. Now, to take the case of a classical author, the testi-
mony to whom bears some faint comparison with that to the
Gospels ; the plays of Terence are quoted by Cicero and
Horace, and we require neither more nor earlier witnesses.
No one objects : Cicero and Horace wrote a hundred years
after Terence ; what earlier witnesses can you produce to ac-
count for the intervening time ? In the case of the Gospels,
however, we can meet what I account an unreasonable de-
mand. I began with the end of the second century, because
then first the Christian literature of the period is so abundant
as to leave no room for controversy as to the Gospels accepted
by that age. We can, however, go back a couple of genera-
tions and remain on ground which cannot reasonably be con-
tested.
The Apology of Justin Martyr was written about A.D. 150.
That is the date Justin himself gives [Apol. i. 46) ; and though,
no doubt, it is only a round number, it is as near the truth as
64 THE GOSPELS IN THE EARLY CHURCH. [vi.
we can go. The Apology is addressed to the Emperor
Antoninus, who reigned from 138-161, and it twice (cc. 2q, 31)
speaks of events in the preceding reign (Hadrian's) as having
happened 'just now.' Hence some place the Apology in the
very beginning of the reign of Antoninus. Eusebius dates it
141. Dr. Hort, in one of his earliest writings,* tried to prove
that Justin died in 148. He did not convince me that there is
evidence to justify any positive assertion about the matter ;
but in placing the Apology in 150, about the middle of the
reign of Antoninus, we are sure that we cannot be very far
wrong either way.
There has been a good deal of dispute about Justin's New
Testament citations ; but as far as the judgment of candid
men is concerned, the question may now be regarded as
settled. The result of very long discussions and of a good
deal of fighting has been to leave us where we had been.
Any ordinary reader would have no doubt that Justin's works
contain copious quotations from our Gospels ; and the objec-
tions to accepting this conclusion made by those who professed
to have gone closely into the matter have been dissipated by
still closer examination. In his references to the events of
our Lord's life, Justin goes over all the ground covered by
our Evangelists, and almost completely abstains from going
beyond it. He informs us also that he drew from written
sources the accounts which he gives of our Lord's life. It is
true, and our adversaries make the most of it, that he does
not mention the names of the authors of these records. But
the reason is, that he is addressing heathens who would not
be interested in knowing the names of the Christian writers
quoted ; and he purposely avoids using Christian technical
language. Thus, when he describes the Christian meetings
for worship on the Lord's day, he says that they take place on
the day which is called the ' day of the sun ' ; and again, he
calls the Jews * barbarians.' And so now he tells his heathen
readers that he is quoting from * memoirs ' of our Lord which
are called * Gospels,' and which were composed by the
Apostles and by those who followed them. Observe how
* Journal uf Classical and Sacred Philology, \\i. 155. 1856.
VI.] JUSTIN iMARTYR. 5^
accurately this agrees with our present Gospels — two
being composed by Apostles, two by their immediate fol-
lowers.
Justin adds that these memoirs were read along with the
writings of the prophets at the meetings of Christians on each
Sunday. Now, is it credible that the Gospels which Justin
attests to have been placed by the Christian Church in equal
rank with the prophets of the Old Testament, and to have
been weekly read in their public assemblies, could be different
from those Gospels which were confessedly a few^ years after-
wards exclusively recognized through the Christian world ?
Here comes in with great force the reflex action, to w^hich I
have already referred, of the testimony of Irenseus. In his
time our four Gospels were in such long-established honour
that it is certain they must have had the same rank at least
one generation earlier. In Justin's time, some Gospels were
in such honour as to be placed on a level in Church use with
Old Testament Scriptures. We never hear of any revolution
dethroning one set of Gospels and replacing them by another;
and we may therefore conclude with tolerable certainty that
the Gospels honoured by the Church in Justin's day were the
same as those to which the same respect was paid in the days
of Irenseus, some twenty or thirty years later.
The only plausible ground on which this has been con-
tested is that Justin's citations frequently do not verbally
correspond with our Gospels. Many of the differences that
have been pointed out are trivial enough, as an example will
enable you to judge. In order to show how pure was the
morality taught by our Lord, Justin devotes three consecu-
tive chapters to quoting his precepts. No other idea than
that Justin was quoting our Gospels would occur to anyone
whose acuteness had not been sharpened by the exigencies
of controversy. For instance, 'He said, "Give to him that
asketh, and from him that would borrow turn not away; for
if ye lend to them of whom ye hope to receive what new
thing do ye ? Even the publicans do this. Lay not up for
yourselves treasure upon earth where moth and rust doth
corrupt, and where robbers break through ; but lay up for
F
66 THE GOSPELS IN THE EARLY CHURCH. [vi.
yourselves treasure in heaven, where neither moth nor rust
doth corrupt. For vi^hat is a man profited if he shall gain
the whole world and lose his own soul .? or what shall a man
give in exchange for it .? Lay up treasure, therefore, in
heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt." And,
" Be ye kind and merciful, as your Father also is kind and
merciful, and maketh his sun to rise on sinners, and the
righteous and the wicked. Take no thought what ye shall
eat or what ye shall put on ; are ye not better than the birds
and the beasts? and God feedeth them. Take no thought,
therefore, what ye shall eat or what ye shall put on ; for your
heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of these things.
But seek ye the kingdom of heaven, and all these things shall
be added to you. For where his treasure is, there also is the
mind of a man." And, " Do not these things to be seen of
men, otherwise ye have no reward from your Father which is
in heaven." ' I need not pursue the quotation. I have read
enough to enable you to understand the general character of
Justin's quotations. You will at once have recognized the
words I read. If I ask you whence are they taken, you may
perhaps reply, From the Sermon on the Mount. But if I go
on to ask: Do you mean from the discourse recorded by St.
Matthew, or from a parallel passage in St. Luke? you examine
more minutely, and perhaps you find that Justin's version
does not verbally agree with one or other. Then comes the
question : How do you know that Justin is quoting either ?
May he not be taking his account from some other Gospel
now lost, which contained a record of the same discourses ?
As far as the evidences of our religion are concerned, it
makes no difference whether or not the hypothesis of a lost
Gospel be true. It is no part of our faith to hold the doctrine
of Irenaeus, that it was in the nature of things impossible
there should be more than four Gospels. We want to know
what was the story concerning Jesus of Nazareth, in attes-
tation of which the first preachers of Christianity were content
to suffer hardships, and if need be to give their lives ; and to
give us that information the Gospel used by Justin, whatever
it was, answers our purpose as well as any Gospel we have.
VI.] JUSTIN MARTYR. 5y
It might be uncomfortable to our feelings to believe that
Christian writers for the first century and a half used a diffe-
rent Gospel from ours, and that the Church, a.d. 170, for
some unaccountable reason, thought proper to bury its
ancient text-book in oblivion, and set up our four Gospels
in its room. But what would scepticism have gained, when
it is also proved that this lost Gospel must have been as like
to our present Gospels as the Gospels of St. Matthew and St.
Mark are to each other r* Substantially the same facts are
related in all, and told in the same way.
I will just take the account of our Lord's infancy, the sub-
ject above all others on which the apocryphal Gospels after-
wards ran wild, and you will see that Justin follows throughout
the narrative of our existing Evangelists. He does not appear
to have known anything more than they knew, and he tells,
without doubt, what they have related. I give a summary in
Westcott's words ('New Testament Canon,' p. loi): — 'He
tells us that Christ was descended from Abraham through
Jacob, Judah, Phares, Jesse, and David — that the angel
Gabriel was sent to announce His birth to the Virgin Mary
— that this was a fulfilment of the prophecy of Isaiah (vii. 14)
— that Joseph was forbidden in a vision to put away his
espoused wife when he was so minded — that our Saviour's
birth at Bethlehem had been foretold by Micah — that His
parents went thither from Nazareth, where they dwelt, in
consequence of the enrolment of Cyrenius — that as they could
not find a lodging in the village, they lodged in a cave close
by it, where Christ was born, and laid by Mary in a manger
— that while there, wise men from Arabia, guided by a star,
worshipped Him, and offered Him gold, and frankincense,
and myrrh, and by revelation were commanded not to return
to Herod, to whom they had first come — that He was called
Jesus, as the Saviour of His people — that by the command of
(xod His parents fled with Him to Egypt for fear of Herod,
and remained there till Archelaus succeeded him — that Herod,
being deceived by the wise men, commanded the children of
* This idea has been worked out by I.lv. Sadler in his book callc.l 'The Lost
•Gospel.'
F 2
68 THE GOSPELS IN THE EARLY CHURCH. [vi.
Bethlehem to be put to death, so that the prophecy of Jere-
miah was fulfilled, who spoke of Rachel weeping for her
children — that Jesus grew after the common manner of men,
working as a carpenter, and so waited thirty years, more or
less, till the coming of John the Baptist.' I need not continue
Justin's account of our Saviour's life. This specimen of his
account of that part of it where, if anywhere, a difference
from the canonical Gospels would be likely to be found, is
enough to show that the Gospel used by Justin told substan-
tially the same story as that related in the Gospels we have,
and that, as far as controversy with unbelievers is concerned,
it is quite immaterial which Gospel is appealed to.
There remains the purely literary question. Is there reason
to believe in the existence of this alleged lost Gospel ? 'Entia
non sunt multiplicanda preeter necessitatem,' and the question
is, Are we put under a necessity of postulating the existence
of a Gospel which has disappeared, by reason of verbal differ-
ences forbidding us to find in our present Gospels the source
of Justin's quotations ? An answer to this question has been
provided by a study of Justin's quotations from the Old Tes-
tament, which enables us to know what degree of accuracy is
to be expected from him. In that case we know what he
means to quote, and we find him quoting loosely and inaccu-
rately, and quoting the same passage differently different
times.* When we think it strange that an ancient father of
Justin's date should not quote with perfect accuracy, we for-
* See a table of Justin's Old Testament quotations given by Westcott ('New
Testament Canon,' p. 172). Dr. Sanday, in his 'Gospels in the Second Century,'
has shown that no greater exactness of quotation is found when we study the quota-
tions of the Old Testament in the New, or in the Apostolic Fathers, or the quotations
of the New Testament by Irenseus. I find in an unpubUshed Paper by the late
Bishop Fitz Gerald an apposite quotation from the preface to Pearce's 'Longinus': —
Neque enim aut Longino aut aliis priorum saeculorum scriptoribus videtur usitatum
fuisse accurate fideque satis verba citare. Imo nusquam, si bene memini, Longinus
per totum suum Commentarium cujusvis auctoris locum iisdem verbis (modo pluribus
quam duobus aut tribus consisteret) exhibuit ; nee ahter ab aliis scriptoribus factum
video. Si enim sensum auctoris et praecipua citatae sententiae verba ob oculos lec-
toris ponerent, de caeteris minus soliciti fuere. Accurata haec citandi diligentia, qua
hodie utimur, quaeque laudabilis sane est, frustra in veteribus quaerenda est. — Fraef.
in Longinum, p. xix.ed. 1732.
VI.] JUSTIN MARTYR. 69
get that in those days, when manuscripts were scarce, and
when concordances did not exist, the process of finding a
passage in a manuscript (written possibly with no spaces
between the words) and copying it, was not performed with
quite as much ease as an English clergyman, writing his
sermon with his Bible at his side, can turn up any text he
wishes to refer to ; and yet I should be sorry to vouch for the
verbal accuracy of all the Scripture citations we hear in
sermons at the present day. The excuse for such inaccuracy
at present is one which Justin, too, may have pleaded — that
exactly in proportion to a man's familiarity with a book is
his disposition to trust his memory, and not verify a reference
to it. And the applicability of this remark is confirmed by
the fact that there is very much less accuracy in Justin's short
quotations, which would be made from memory, than in his
long ones, where it would be worth while or necessary for him
to turn to the book.
On the whole, then, the general coincidence, in range and
contents, of Justin's quotations with our Gospels is enough
to show that they are the sources whence Justin drew his
information. I will give for each of the Gospels one specimen
of a multitude of proofs. In relating the murder of the inno-
cents at Bethlehem, he quotes Jeremiah's prophecy of Rachel
weeping for her children, and that in a form agreeing with
St. Matthew and differing from the Septuagint. Hence,
even if we had no other proof, we could infer that he used St.
Matthew's Gospel. Mark has so little that is not in St.
Matthew or St. Luke that it might be thought difficult to
identify anonymous citations with his Gospel. Yet, Justin's
quotations from the Gospels are so numerous, that besides
some very probable references to Mark, they touch on one
point certainly peculiar to him, namely, that Jesus gave to
the sons of Zebedee the name of Boanerges. St. Mark alone
has preserved to us this and some other Aramaic words used
by our Saviour, as Corban, Ephphatha, Abba, Talitha Cumi.
St. Luke is, no doubt, Justin's authority for stating that the
visit of Mary and Joseph to Bethlehem was occasioned by
the taxing under Cyrenius. And I may add that Justin even
70 THE GOSPELS IN THE EARLY CHURCH. [vi.
helps us in the case of disputed readings in St. Luke, for he
has a reference to our Lord's bloody sweat, which gives an
important attestation to the verses, Luke xxii. 43, 44, which
are wanting in the Vatican and Alexandrian MSS., but found
in the Sinaitic as well as in almost all other MSS. As I have
mentioned the subject of various readings, I may add that if
it could be proved that Justin never trusted his memory, but
always literally copied the Gospel he was using — a thing
that cannot be proved, for he sometimes quotes the same
passage differently — it still would not follow that he was
using a different Gospel from ours. It might only be that
his copy of Matthew or Luke had readings different from
our received text. I will not anticipate what belongs to
another branch of our subject by entering into the proofs
of the early existence of various readings. Suffice it to say
that this is a point which has to be attended to by any
careful critic of Justin's quotations. That Justin used the
three Synoptic Gospels may be regarded as now accepted
by the common consent of candid critics : being as freely
acknowledged by Hilgenfeld* in Germany as by Lightfoot
or Westcott in England. Justin's variations, then, from our
text of these Gospels may be divided into three classes.
The greater number are quite sufficiently accounted for by
the ordinary looseness of mefnoriter citations ; a few demand
the attention of the textual critic as suggesting the possible
existence of a various reading in Justin's manuscript ; and
lastly, a few more suggest the possibility that, in addition to
our Gospels, Justin may have used an extra-Canonical Gos-
pel. For example, in the abstract I read of Justin's account
of our Lord's childhood, you may perhaps have noticed that
he says that the Magi came from Arabia. Now, St, Matthew
only says that they came from the East; and the question
arises. Did Justin draw this localization from a written source
or was he merely expressing the view in his time popularly
held as to what St. Matthew meant by the East ? A similar
* Professor of Theology at Jena, one of the ablest living representatives of the
school of criticism founded by Baur.
vr.] JUSTIN MARTYR. 71
question arises as to the statement that Joseph and Mary,
when they could find no room in the inn, lodged in a cave.
It seems to me very possible that Justin was here drawing
from no written source, but that, being a native of Palestine,
he described what the received tradition of his time accepted
as the scene of our Lord's birth. Justin's additions to our
evangelic narrative are exceedingly few and unimportant;
but there is no reason why we should not admit, as a possible
account of them, that our Gospels were not the only written
documents with which Justin was acquainted. But I do not
think it possible that any such document could be raised to
the level of our four Gospels, even if it had the benefit of far
more distinct recognition by Justin than it can actually claim.
I have said that Justin's use of the Synoptic Gospels is
now pretty generally admitted ; but there is still a good deal
of unwillingness to acknowledge his use of St. John's. That
Gospel deals less in history than do the first three Gospels ;
and so there are fewer incidents mentioned by Justin which
we can clearly prove to be taken from St. John, while the
discourses of that Gospel present little that is suitable for
quotation in discussion with unbelievers. Yet there are coinci-
dences enough to establish satisfactorily Justin's acquaintance
with the fourth Gospel, there being scarcely a chapter of it
of which some trace may not be found in his works.* But
♦ See an Article by Tlioma in Hilgenfeld's ' Zeitschrift fiir wissenschaftl. Theo-
logie ' for 1875. Thoraa does not discuss Justin's knowledge of the Synoptic
Gospels, regarding this as having passed out of the region of controversy ; but he
takes St. John, chapter by chapter, exhibiting for each the trace it has left in
Justin's works: the result being to show that Justin is completely saturated with
that Gospel. Thoma is less successful in establishing a special theory of his own,
namely, that Justin, though acquainted with the fourth Gospel, did not regard it as
of equal authority with the others, or number it among the ' Memoirs of the
Apostles,' which were read in the Christian public worship. For this he has no
proof but the very precarious argument ex silentio, that Justin does not make as
much use of the fourth Gospel as Thoma thinks he would have made if he owned its
authority. Dr. Ezra Abbot, a Unitarian, Professor in Harvard University, deals
well with this argument in his ' Authorship of the Fourth Gospel,' p. 63. He shows
that Justin, writing to unbehevers, cannot be expected to make the use of New
Testament writings he would have made if addressing men who owned their
authority ; that he actually uses them more than do other apologists ; that he does
not offer proofs from the Apocalypse, though he confessedly accepted it as an inspired
72 THE GOSPELS IN THE EARLY CHURCH. [vi.
what weighs with me far more is, that the whole doctrinal
system of Justin, and in particular his conception of our Lord
as the eternal Logos, presupposes St. John to such an extent,
that anyone who does not acknowledge it is, in my judgment,
either a poor critic or an uncandid controversialist. The
name * Logos ' is habitually used by Justin, occurring more
than twenty times. His doctrine is, that this Logos existed
before all creation, dwelling with the Father;* that He was
God;t that by Him all things were made; J that this pre-
existent Word took form and became man, and was called
Jesus Christ [Apol. i. 5, 63 ; Dial. 48); and that He was the
only-begotten § of the Father.
I have by no means enumerated all the coincidences be-
tween the teaching of Justin and the prologue of St. John ; but
that there is very striking agreement you cannot have failed
to see. We ask. Is there any reason for rejecting the simple
account of this agreement, that Justin was a disciple of St.
John : not indeed by personal companionship, but by study
of his Gospel, which we have good independent reason to
think must have been current at the time, and which Justin
could hardly have helped knowing 1 And it deserves to be
borne in mind that Justin seems to have learned his Christi-
anity at Ephesus (Euseb. H. E. iv. 18), which is generally
allowed to have been the birthplace of the fourth Gospel.
When we have to speak of the agreement between Justin
prophecy ; and Dr. Abbot adds some instances from modern writers of surprising
neglect to use an argument or recognize a fact which we should have confidently
expected them to use or recognize. Dr. Abbot, who was one of the most learned of
American Theologians, died in 1885.
* 6 5e vibs iKe'iPov, 6 fiSvos AeySfievos Kvpiws vlSs, 6 xSyos irph rwv irotrjudrcui' Kal
ffvvibv KoX yevvw/xevos, ore r^]v apxh^ 5t avTOv iravra eKTiffe Kal eKofffiricre. — Apol. ii. 6.
apxhv TTph TtdvTaiv rwv KTifffxaTCtiv 6 Qehs yeyevuriKe Swafxtv riva «! eaurov XoyiK^v,
^ris KoL SJ|a Kvplov inrh rod Tri/eu/xaros rov aylov KaAelrai, Trore Se vlhs, irore Se (ro<pia,
TTOTe Se ayyeXos, irore 5e 6e6s, Trore 5e Kvpios Kal x6yos.- — Dial. 61.
Trph TTtivTwv Tu>v TTOi-qixa-Tiav (rvvr)v r^ irarpi. — Dial. 62.
t ai/rhs i>v ovtos 6 6ehs airh rov irarphs tS>v oAwv yevvijOels. — Dial. 6 1 ; see also
Apol. i. 63; Dial. 56, 58, 126, 128.
X &<rTe Adyoi deov . . . yeyevriadai Thv irdvra KSfffxov. — Apol. i. 59 ; see also C. 64,
and Apol. ii. 6.
^ ixovoyev^s ^v ry Trarpl rwv o\wv. — Dial. 105.
VI.] JUSTIN MARTYR. 73
and the Synoptic Evangelists as to the incidents of our
Saviour's life on earth, it is now felt to be a gratuitous and
unreasonable assumption to imagine that Justin drew his
account not from our Synoptics, but from a lost Gospel
coincident with them in a multitude of particulars. Have
we any stronger justification for imagining a lost spiritual
Gospel identical with St. John's in respect of its teaching as
to the pre-existence and divinity of our Lord ? Not that
these doctrines are peculiar to St. John : they are taught
as distinctly by St. Paul (see in particular Col. i.) ; but what
may be regarded as special to St. John is the use of the word
Logos, to denote the pre-existent Saviour. This name is not
found in any of the New Testament writings but the Johan-
nine,'^ nor does John represent our Lord as ever calling him-
self by it. If we ask from what other source but St. John the
name could have been derived by Justin, we are referred to
the writings of the Alexandrian Jew Philo, who speaks fre-
quently of the Divine Word, though there has been much
controversy w^hether he means to ascribe to him a distinct
personality, or merely uses personifying language about the
Divine attribute of Wisdom, Nothing forbids us to believe
that the speculations of Philo may have been known to St.
John.f We have in fact a connecting link in the Alexan-
drian Jew Apollos, who taught in Ephesus. It would be
quite in the spirit in which Paul dealt with the Grecian
philosophers at Athens if John, when not professing to re-
cord the words of Jesus, but speaking in his own person,
presented Christianity to those whose training had been
Alexandrian, by acknowledging and accepting all that was
true in the Philonic speculations about the Divine Logos, but
went on to tell of what Philo had not dreamed, that ' the Word
became flesh, and dwelt among us.' Now what we find in
Justin is not the Philonic but the Johannine doctrine of the
Logos, the doctrine of the Logos incarnate in the person of
Jesus Christ. If before Justin's time anyone but the fourth
* It is not certain whether Heb. iv. 12 is an exception to what is here stated,
t Philo was teaching in Alexandria in our Lord's lifetime, so there is no chrono-
logical difficulty.
74 THE GOSPELS IN THE EARLY CHURCH. [vi.
Evangelist had presented in this form his doctrine concerning
our Lord, how is it that all memory of it has perished?*
Let me next say something of Justin's mode of presenting
another Christian doctrine, that of Baptism. Justin's name
for the rite is ' regeneration.' Speaking of new converts, he
says [Apol, i. 6i): 'They are brought by us where there is
water, and are regenerated in the same manner that we our-
selves were regenerated. For they then receive the washing
of water in the name of God the Father and Lord of the
Universe, and of our Saviour Jesus Christ and of the Holy
Spirit. For Christ also said, " Except ye be born again ye
shall not enter the kingdom of heaven." Now that it is im-
possible for those who have been once born to enter into their
mothers' wombs is manifest to all.' I am sure it is equally
manifest to all that there is here striking coincidence with the
discourse with Nicodemus recorded by St. John.
Now let me add a word as to the cumulative effect of
Justin's doctrinal agreements with St. John, and his verbal
agreements of which this is a specimen. His doctrine is in
perfect harmony with St. John, and we are puzzled to say from
what other source he could have derived it. There are also a
number of verbal echoes of St. John, not indeed exact, but
very closely reproducing him. If Justin used St. John, every-
thing is explained : you may try to find some hypothesis
* The relations between the Logos doctrine of Justin and that of Philo and of
St. John have been carefully investigated by a very able and learned Unitarian, Dr.
James Drummond, Professor in Manchester New College, London, in a Paper
published by him in the Theological Review, April, 1877. In connexion with this-
may be read a Lecture on Philo, published by him in the same year. Dr.
Drummond conclusively establishes the dependence of Justin's doctrine on St.
John's, of which internal evidence shows it to be a later development. ' Not only
is every point in the Johannine doctrine contained in Justin's, but almost every
portion of it is presented with amplifications ; its ambiguous statements are
resolved into the requisite number of definite propositions, and questions which
it suggests, and does not answer, are dogmatically settled.' The same Paper
contains an excellent enumeration of verbal coincidences between Justin and the
fourth Gospel. Of these, one which Dr. Drummond has himself added to the list of
those previously observed has special interest for me, on account of its turning on an
interpretation of John xix. 13, which many years ago I had been in the habit of
hearing maintained by Archbishop Whately. He held that, in the phrase tKadiaev
VI.] JUSTIN MARTYR. y:;
which will account for one sort of agreements, and some
hypothesis which will account for the other ; but how violent
the improbability that both hypotheses shall be true. In the
present case, when we ask where Justin found these words of
Christ, ' Except ye be born again, ye shall not enter into the
kingdom of heaven,' we are inclined to laugh at the special
pleading which answers us. Surely not in St. John. Justin
says, ' except jy<2 be born again'; St. John, 'except a man be
born again.' Justin says, ' the kingdom of heaven ' ; St. John,
' the kingdom of God.'* And we are referred, as the more
probable original of Justin's quotation, to St. Matthew
(xviii. 3), 'Except ye become as little children ye shall not
enter the kingdom of heaven.' But what, then, about the
following sentence as to the impossibility of again enter-
ing our mother's womb } Is this but a chance thought
which occurred to Justin and to St. John independently ?
It may be well, however, not to omit to notice one of
Strauss's supposed proofs, that Justin did not use the dialogue
with Nicodemus, because the argument has recoiled on him-
self. A reference to this same passage in John is found also
in the Clementine Homilies [Horn. xi. 26), of which I made
mention in a previous lecture. The quotation is, like Justin's,
inexact ; and though it does not verbally agree with Justin's
either, it agrees with him in this point, that both use the
eirl 07]iuLaTos, the verb iKaQiaev was to be understood transitively, as in i Cor. vi. 4 ;
Kph. i. 20. Then the translation would run: 'Pilate brought Jesus forth, seated
him on the judgment-seat, . . . and saith unto the Jews, Behold your King.' That
is to say, Pilate in presenting Jesus to the Jews as their King, seats him, with mock
revei-ence, in his own judgment-seat. Now Dr. Drummond points out that Justin
[Apol. i. 35), has Siaffvpovres avrhv eKadtaav iirl firifxaTos Kal elirov, Kp'iyoy fifuu.
Except for the change of the singular into the plural, Justin's phrase is identical with
St. John's. It seems a reasonable inference that Justin read the verse in St. John,
and that he there understood the verb transitively.
* Dr. Ezra Abbot shows that Justin has the company of several subsequent
Fathers in every one of his variations from St. John. He gives references to nine
passages where Jeremy Taylor (who is not supposed to have used apocryphal
Gospels) quotes the text ; none of the quotations agreeing with St. John, and only
two with each other. And he remarks that the English Book of Common Prayer,
which twice quotes the text, in neither case agrees with St. John. Tiie late Irish
revisers have been so punctilious as to correct this irregularity.
y6 THE GOSPELS IN THE EARLY CHURCH. [vi.
second person plural,* ' except ye be born again,' while St.
John says, ' except a man be born again.' Hence it was argued
that Justin and the Clementines both drew the idea, not from
St. John, but from some other common source. Now, the
Clementines contained other apparent proofs of acquaintance
with St. John's Gospel, as, for instance, that they attribute to
Jesus the sayings, * I am the door,' and * My sheep hear my
voice' {Horn. iii. 52). But the Tiibingen writers expended
their ingenuity to prove that this coincidence in language was
only accidental, and their cardinal argument was that the
author of the Clementines could not have used the fourth Gos-
pel. He was, as I have already said, an Ebionite ; John, on
the contrary, the most anti- Jewish of New Testament writers.
The Clementine writer, therefore, could not have accepted a
book so opposed to his tendency ; and, if he had known it,
would have cited it only to combat it.
While this dispute was going on, a manuscript was dis-
covered, containing a completef copy of the Clementine
Homilies — for the manuscripts previously known were defec-
tive, and only contained eighteen of the nineteen Homilies —
and lo, in the nineteenth, we read, ' Our Lord answered to
those who asked Him, " Is it he who hath sinned, or his
parents, that he was born blind ? " — " Neither hath this man
sinned nor his parents ; but that through him might be mani-
fested the power of God, which heals sins of ignorance."
There are verbal differences of quotation here, but only a few
of our adversaries have, as yet, mustered courage to make
them a ground for denying that it is a quotation. J
Now, it being thus proved that the Clementine writer
acknowledged the fourth Gospel, the argument which had
been used by the deniers of this fact recoils on them with im-
* Not so, however, in the parallel passage {Recog. vi. 9).
t The work was first published complete by Dressel, in 1853.
% Among those who had this courage was the author of 'Supernatural Religion';
but Hilgenfeld (who, in a review of this work {Zeitschrift, 1875, 582), pronounces
that this author exhibits as much partiality against as do the orthodox for the
received acceptation of the Gospels), declares here that it will be difficult to find any-
one in Germany or Switzerland to believe that the Clementine writer is independent
of St. John — ' In Deutschland und der Schweiz wird es kaum jemand glauben dass
VI.] JUSTIN MARTYR. yy
mense force — namely, the argument founded on the diame-
trical opposition between the views of the Clementine author
and of the Evangelist. Ebionites would not easily accept a
work proceeding from quite an opposite school, if it were one
of modern origin, or if there were any reasonable pretext for
denying its Apostolic authority. The conclusion follows that,
at the time of the composition of the Clementines, which some
place as early as the year i6o,* the authority of St. John's
Gospel was so universally recognized in the Church by men
of all parties, and dated so far back, that no suspicion
occurred to men strongly interested in rejecting the book it
they could have ventured to do so. Thus the Clementines, to
which Strauss referred us, prove that, in the time when Justin
lived, he could hardly help being acquainted with the fourth
Gospel ; so that there is no reason whatever for not drawing
the obvious inferences from those passages in his writings
which are on the face of them quotations from it.
I have not time to speak of Justin's Eucharistic doctrine,
nor of a number of verbal coincidences with John ; but must
repeat that the critics who deny Justin's use of the fourth
Gospel seem to have no conception of the cumulative force of
evidence. After giving a forced explanation of one of these
coincidences, they go on to explain away another, and another
after that ; without ever reflecting that it is necessary for the
success of their argument that every one of these explanations
should be correct; and that if there are chances against the
correctness of each one of them, the chances against the cor-
rectness of the entire series must be enormous. I will only
add that Justin used not only St. John's Gospel, but also his
first Epistle. This is shown by a coincidence which seems to
Clem. Horn. xix. 22 von Joh. ix. 1-3 unabhangig sein soUte.' Renan, whose
memory seems to have failed him a good deal in the composition of his later
volumes, states (vi. 73) that the author of the Pseudo-Clementine Homilies did not
know the fourth Gospel, and in the same volume (p. 500) that he knew all four. The
explanation probably is, that Renan in the two places was relying on different au-
thorities, one of whom wrote before, the other after, the discovery of the 19th Homily.
* I am myself willing to accept so early a date only for the discourses of Peter
against the heathen, which were the basis of the work, and which seem to me to have
been used in 180 by Thcophilus of Antioch {ad Autol. i. 10 ; cf. Clem. Horn. x. 16 ;
Recog. v. 23).
y8 THE GOSPELS IN THE EARLY CHURCH. [vi.
me to afford decisive proof. In i John iii. i, the four oldest
manuscripts, well confirmed by other evidence, add to the
received text the words koL lajuiv — 'Behold what manner of
love the Father hath bestowed on us, that we should be called
the sons of God ; and such we are' This reading is accordingly-
adopted by all recent critical editors. Now, Justin has [Dial.
I 23) KOI 0£ov rkKva a\r}diva KaXov/uiiOa kqI iafxiv*
Renan's vacillations on the subject of St. John's Gospel
are extraordinary. In the preface to his first volume (p. xxv)
he gives a summary, endorsing the conclusions which I have
presented for your acceptance: — 'Nobody doubts that, towards
the year 150, the fourth Gospel existed, and was ascribed to
John. Formal citations by St. Justin {Apol. I. 32, 61 ; Dial.
88) ; by Athenagoras {Legat. 40); byTatian [Adv. Graec. 5, 7;
cf. Euseb. H. E. IV. 29 ; Theodoret, Haer. Fab. i. 20) ; by Theo-
philus of Antioch [ad Autol. ii. 22); by Irenseus (ll. xxii. 5 ;
III. I ; cf. Euseb. //. E. V. 8), show this Gospel, from that time
* One of the latest essays on Justin's use of St. John is by Dr. Edwin A. Abbott,
Master of the City of London School [Modern Review, 1882, pp. 559, 716). Dr.
Abbott adopts Thoma's theory, only in a less probable form. He does not deny that
Justin may have been acquainted with St. John's Gospel, but he denies that he
\alued it, or, indeed, that he ever used it. A number of coincidences are explained
away one after another. In some cases Justin is drawing directly from Philo, in others
from Christian disciples of Philo, or he is using traditions which were also known to
the fourth Evangelist. The saying about entering into the mother's womb referred,
no doubt, to a stock objection made by heathens to Christian missionaries, who
spoke to them of the necessity of a new birth and of becoming like little children. It
seems to me that, however difficult it might have been to resist the cumulative force
of so many coincidences, Dr. Abbott would have done better for his theory if he had
avoided making the fatal concession that Justin might have known the fourth Gospel.
For then we have a vera causa which at once accounts for his coincidences with it,
and it becomes unscientific in the last degree to invent imaginary disciples of Philo or
unrecorded traditions in order to explain what can be perfectly well explained without
any such hypothesis. If any author of the present day presented as many coincidences
with a previous writer, he would be laughed to scorn by his reviewers if, while he
had to own that he had seen the previous book, he denied that he valued it or had
used it.
Thoma's question, If Justin valued the fourth Gospel, why did he not use it
more ? has been so well answered by Dr. Drummond and by Dr. Ezra Abbot, that
a man must be argument-proof who repeats the question after reading what they have
said. It seems to me clear that, if Justin knew the fourth Gospel, he used it, and
that copiously ; if he used it, he valued it, for his whole theological system is founded
on it. If he adopted the fourth Evangelist as his theological instructor, he must
VI.] JUSTIN MARTYR. yg
forward, mingling in all controversies, and serving as a corner-
stone in the development of dogma. Irenaeus is express : now
Irenaeus came out of the school of John, and between him and
the Apostle there was only Polycarp. The part played by
our Gospel in Gnosticism, and in particular in the system of
Valentinus (Iren. I. iii. 6 ; ill. xi. 7 ; Hippol. Philosoph. vi. ii.
29, &c.), in Montanism (Iren. III. xi. g), and in the Quarto-
deciman dispute (Euseb. H. E. v. 24), is not less decisive.
The school of John is that whose influence can be most dis-
tinctly traced in the second century ; but that school cannot
be explained unless we place the fourth Gospel at its very
cradle. Let us add, that the first Epistle ascribed to John is
certainly by the same author as the fourth Gospel.* Now,
that Epistle is recognized as John's by Polycarp {ad Philipp.
7), by Papias (Euseb. H. E. iii. 39, 40), and by Irenaeus (ill.
xvi. 5, 8 ; Euseb. H. E. v. 8).'
During the interval, however, between the publication of
have admitted the claims which that evangelist implicitly makes for himself, and
which were acknowledged all over the Christian world within thirty years of Justin's
time.
Dr. Abbott's views are most eccentric when he treats of the Gnostic use of St.
John's Gospel. He admits that it was a favourite with the Valentinians, but he
thinks that to be a reason why it could not have been a favourite with Justin, who
opposed these heretics. He owns that it was used by Tatian, but he thinks that
must have been after Justin's death, and when Tatian had become a Gnostic. He
does not seem to have studied the links by which Tatian's apologetic work is doubly
connected with Justin and with the fourth Gospel. Finally, when called on to explain
how this Gospel, in such favour with the Gnostics, but rejected by their orthodox
opponent, came into equal favour with the Catholics also, and that so rapidly, that
all traces of hesitation have been obliterated except what may be discovered in Justin,
Dr. Abbott replies that the success was due ' to the intrinsic power of this most
spiritual treatise,' ' because it truthfully protested against the thaumaturgic tendencies
of the Church, by exhibiting Jesus principally as a worker of spiritual, and not
material, marvels.' This seems undeserved praise to give to the narrator of the
healing of the man born blind, and of the raising of Lazarus ; nor does it seem a
satisfactory explanation to say that a heretical book won the favour of the Church by
reason of its protest against the tendencies of the Church. In my judgment, a critic
who cannot divest himself of the anti-supernaturalist feelings of the nineteenth
century is not one who can enter into the mind of the second century, and is no
competent judge what arguments a writer of that date would have been likely to
use.
* I John i. 3, 5. ' The two writings offer the most complete identity of style, the
same terms, the same favourite exjiressions' (Renan's note).
8o THE GOSPELS IN THE EARLY CHURCH. [vi.
his first volume and his sixth, Renan appears to have received
a revelation (for he makes no pretence of offering a proof) that
the fourth Gospel was unknown to several of those whom he had
already cited as authorities.* He assures his readers, as a posi-
tive fact (vi. 73), that neither Papias nor Justin, nor the Pseudo-
Clementines, nor Marcion, were acquainted with the fourth
Gospel ; and he suggests that the Evangelist must have taken
some pains not to let his Gospel be seen by those who would
know that it did not come from John. Renan owns (p. 69)
that Justin has a theory of the Logos analogous to that of
'the Pseudo-John,' and he refers to Apol. I. 23, 32 ; II. 6, 10,
13 ; Dial. 61, 62, 70, 98, 100, 102, 105, 127 ; but we are on no
account to believe that Justin derived this theory from the
fourth Gospel. He tells us (p. 503) that Tatian did not know,
or did not admit, the fourth Gospel ; that it is wrong to think
that Tatian' s ' Diatessaron' commenced with 'In the begin-
ning was the Word' ; wrong to think that this title implied
the four Canonical Gospels. It is a term borrowed from
Greek music, and only implies perfect harmony. The Synop-
tics, the Gospel of the Hebrews, and the Gospel of Peter, were
the basis of this harmony. I shall speak presently of Tatian,
and you will then know why Renan was obliged entirely to
alter in his seventh volume the account he had given of the
'Diatessaron' in his sixth. But Renan's perplexity rises to
its height when (p. 129) he speaks of Papias, of whom I shall
treat in the next lecture, and when he tries to account for the
'singular fact' that 'Papias, who does not know the fourth
Gospel, should know the Epistle falsely ascribed to John.*
After some lame attempts at explanation, he exclaims, ' One
can never touch the question of the writings ascribed to John
without falling into contradictions and anomalies.' But there
would have been neither contradiction nor anomaly if Renan
had remained content with the statement of evidence given in
his first volume.
To return to Justin: we are happily able to bridge over
the interval between him and Irenaeus by means of Justin's
* Accordingly, I find that the passage cited above has been modified in later
editions.
VI.] TATIAN. 3 1
pupil, Tatian the Assyrian. It is related that Tatian was
converted by Justin ; and in Tatian's apologetic work, the
'Address to the Greeks', Justin is spoken of with high ad-
miration. On the other hand, after Justin's death, Tatian
joined himself to one of those ascetic sects which condemned
both marriage and the use of wine and flesh meat as abso-
lutely unlawful to a Christian.* And he is said to have held
some other heretical opinions besides. Irenaeus has a chap-
ter on the heresy of Tatian, and he speaks of him in the past
tense in a way which conveys the idea that he was dead,
and his teaching over, at the time Irenaeus wrote. Clement
of Alexandria tells us that one of his own teachers was an
Assyrian, and it has been very commonly thought that
this was Tatian. Thus we see that Tatian comes midway
between Justin Martyr and the age of Irenaeus and Clement.
Now, when we take up Tatian's apologetic work already
mentioned, we find at the outset a statement of Logos doc-
trine near akin to Justin's; while Tatian's use of St. John is
evinced by some distinct quotations — ' All things were made
by him, and without him was not anything made', 'This is
the saying, "The darkness comprehendeth not the light"',
and 'God is a Spirit'. Thus Tatian gives distinct confir-
mation to the conclusion we already arrived at as to the
derivation of Justin's Logos doctrine from St. John. But
Tatian also enables us to settle the question raised by Thoma,
If Justin knew St. John, did he put it on an equality with the
Synoptic Gospels ?
I have already said that the earliest commentary on a
New Testament book of which we have knowledge is by a
heretic, Heracleon; and I have now to add that it was also
a heretic, Tatian, who appears to have been the first to make
a harmony of the Gospels. Eusebius tells us that Tatian
* It is necessary to bear in mind this special feature of Tatian's heresy in order to
appreciate the merits of Dr. Abbott's suggestion that, after Tatian had come to
thinii it a sin to marry or to drink wine, the 2nd chapter of St. John's Gospel began
to have an attraction for him which it did not possess in the days of his orthodoxy.
Plainly, no Encratite would receive the fourth Gospel unless, before embracing his
heresy, he had been so long in the habit of using that Gospel that he could not then
give it up.
G
g2 THE GOSPELS IN THE EARLY CHURCH. [vi.
made a combination of the Gospels, and that he called it
* Diatessaron ',* which, being a recognized musical term,
answers in some sort to what we call a harmony. Sceptical
critics have made enormous efforts to escape the inferences
suggested by the use of the name ' Diatessaron ' — viz., that
the harmony was based on four Gospels, and that these were
the four which we know were, in the next generation, re-
garded as holding a place of divinely ordained pre-eminence.
These efforts have, in my judgment, so utterly failed, that,
as I cannot in these lectures go minutely into every point, 1
think it would be time wasted to discuss them.
I Tatian's arrangement of the Gospel history obtained very
large circulation, which amounts to saying that it found
acceptance with the orthodox ; for the followers of Tatian in
* The following note on the musical term Sia Tecrcrapuv has been given me by my
friend, Professor Mahaffy : —
' Among the old Greeks only the octave (5ii Tvaffuiv), the fifth (5ia irevTe), and the
fomth (Sih TeffffdpoJi'), were recognized as concords ((tv^<I>covoi (pQoyyoi), whereas the
rest of the intervals are called discords {'^idcpuvoi). This definition of concord, ex-
cluding thirds, which are now accepted as the simplest and easiest case, arises from
Pythagoras' discovery that if, of two equal strings, one be stopped at points dividing
the string in the ratios of I : 2 ; 2:3; and 3 : 4, the octave, fifth, and fourth above
the sister string are produced. Hence he regarded these intervals as perfect concords,
and this opinion was general till the time of Des Cartes, who first boldly asserted
that thirds were concords. It may be added that, even now, most of the major
thirds we hear are less than two whole tones apart. This interval, when strictly pro-
duced, sounds like a sharp third, and is disagreeable. The difficulty is avoided by
the temperament in our tuning.'
From this explanation it is seen to be improper to treat the phrase ' Diatessaron '
as one merely denoting harmony, and not implying any particular number of
Gospels. We see also that, since the phrase denotes, not a harmony of four, but a
concord between the first and fourth terms of a series, it was used improperly by
Tatian, unless his work had Jbeen one on the relations between the Evangelists
Matthew and John. But strict propriety of language is rare when terms of art are
used metaphorically by outsiders.
My friend Dr. Quarry has given me the curious information that Diatessaron is
not only a musical but a medical term. It denoted a plaister made of four in-
gredients ; the Diapente was another common plaister made of five {Caelius
Aurelianus, iv. 7, vol. ii. p. 331 : ed. Halle, 1774). See also Galen, De compositione
medicament, per genera v. p. 857. Leipzig, 1827. Dr. Quarry thinks that a weU-
known blunder made by Victor of Capua, in writing Diapente where he ought to
have written Diatessaron, is a confusion more likely to have arisen from the common
use of the words as medical than as musical terms ; the former use being popular at
the time in question, the latter then confined to a few.
VI. 1 TATIAN.
S3
his heretical opinions were very few. The use of the ' Diates-
saron' at Edessa is mentioned in an apocryphal Syriac book,
probably written about the middle of the third century.*
Theodoret [Haer. Fab., i. 20), writing in the middle of the
fifth century, bears witness to the still extensive use of it,
apparently in the public Church reading of his own diocese
(Cyrus, near the Euphrates) ; and states that he found more
than two hundred copies in use in the churches of his district,
which he took away, and replaced by copies of the four
Gospels. The work of substituting a single narrative for our
four would naturally involve many omissions from the text of
our Gospels, and it would seem to be this mutilation of the
sacred text which brought Tatian's work into disrepute. At
least Theodoret censures it for cutting out the genealogies
and other passages which show that our Lord was born of the
seed of David after the flesh ; and he implies, though perhaps
the imputation is undeserved, that Tatian had a heretical ob-
ject in this mutilation. A harmony not open to this objec-
tion was made, in the third century, by Ammonius of Alex-
andria. He took St. Matthew's Gospel as the basis of his
work, and put side by side with St. Matthew the parallel pas-
sages from other Gospels. We learn this from a letter of
Eusebius [Epist. ad Carpzantim) prefatory to his own improved
way of harmonizing the Gospels — the Eusebian Canons —
which will come under our consideration later.
To return to Tatian : the strongest proof of the orthodox
use of his harmony is that the most famous of the native
Syrian fathers, Ephraem of Edessa, who died in 373, wrote a
commentary on the ' Diatessaron', apparently as if it were the
version of the New Testament then in ecclesiastical use. This
fact till lately rested on the testimony of a rather late Syrian
writer, Dionysius Bar-Salibi, who wrote towards the end of
the twelfth century, and who gives the further information
that the harmony commenced, *In the beginning was the
Word ', which would place Tatian's use of St. John's Gospel
beyond doubt. You can well imagine that sceptical critics
made every effort to set aside testimony which would force oii
* Phillips, ' Doctrine of Addai,' p. 34.
G 2
84 THE GOSPELS IN THE EARLY CHURCH. [vi.
them so unwelcome a conclusion. Bishop Lightfoot, in an
article in the Contemporary Review (May, 1877), convincingly
showed that the attempts to break down the testimony of
Bar-Salibi had been utterly unsuccessful. But since then the
question has assumed a new aspect, by the substantial recovery
of the very work of Ephraem Syrus which Bar-Salibi described.
It comes to us, indeed, in a roundabout way. The common
opinion has been that Tatian's harmony was originally written
in Greek, and so the Greek name 'Diatessaron' would lead
us to suppose. Zahn* has lately taken a good deal of pains
to maintain that the original language was Syriac, and it is
certain that the Diatessaron had considerable circulation in
Syri'ac-speaking countries, and apparently very little where
Greek was spoken. f However that may be, if it had been
originally Greek, it had been translated into Syriac, and had
come into use in Syriac-speaking churches before Ephraem
commented on it. This commentary of Ephraem is extant in an
Armenian translation, apparently of the fifth century, and was
actually published in that language by the Mechitarist Fathers,
at Venice, so long ago as 1836, But in the obscurity of that
language it remained unknown to Western scholars until a
Latin translation of it was published by Moesinger, in 1 876, and
it took three or four years more before the publication attracted
much attention. J That this work is Ephraem's I think there
can be no reasonable doubt. It consists of a series of homi-
letic notes, and these (as we had been led to expect) not fol-
lowing the order of any one of our Gospels, but passing from
one to another : in other words, the commentary is on a nar-
rative framed by putting together passages from different
* ' Tatian's Diatessaron.' Erlangen, 1881. Zahn is Professor of Theology at
Erlangen, and belongs to the Conservative school.
t Baethgen even maintains the somewhat startling thesis that the 'Diatessaron'
was the earliest form in which the Gospel history became known to Syriac-speaking
people ('Evangelienfragmente,' Leipzig, 1885).
J The first formal account of it was given by Hamack in the Zeitschrift filr
Kirchengeschichte, 1881. He had previously, in the same journal, for 1879, P- 40^»
given a reference to the book without explaining its nature. The book had been
more largely referred to by Dr. Ezra Abbot, in America, in his ' Authorship of the
Fourth Gospel ', 1880. The first detailed account of it in England was given by Dr.
Wace in articles in The Expositor, 1882.
VI.] TATIAN. 85
Gospels. The commentary enables us to reconstruct, at least
in its substance, the text which was commented on. I say in
its substance, because we cannot infer with certainty that a
verse was absent from the harmony because it is not com-
mented on by Ephraem, it being possible that he found
nothing in the verse on which he thought it necessary to
remark ; nor, again, can we infer that a verse was present in
the harmony, because Ephraem, commenting on a different
verse, refers to it, since Ephraem was no doubt familiar, not
only with the harmony on which he commented, but with the
full text of the four Gospels. But although, for the reasons I
have indicated, we cannot pretend to be exact in every detail,
we can recover the general outline of the text commented on;
and we have important helps in the work of reconstruction.
Of these I will only mention a harmony published by Victor
■of Capua in the sixth century, and which he imagined must
be the work of Tatian. Comparison with the now-recovered
commentary of Ephraem shows that the harmony presented
by both is really in substance the same work, though the
Latin harmony restores the genealogies, and corrects some
other omissions, which no doubt had interfered with the
orthodox acceptance of Tatian's work.
We find, then, that the harmony on which Ephraem com-
ments deals with the four Gospels on an equal footing. It
begins, as Bar-Salibi had told us, with the prologue of St.
John. It then takes up the first chapter of St. Luke, and so
it goes on, passing freely from one Gospel to another, and (I
may add) including part of the last chapter of St. John, as to
the genuineness of which some very unreasonable doubts have,
in modern times, been entertained. There only remains, then,
the question. Have we any reasonable ground for doubting
the statement of Bar-Salibi that the harmony on which
Ephraem commented was by Tatian ? and I can see none.
The only alternative* seems to be that this should be the
* Jerome {Ep. 121 ad Algas. i. 860) speaks of Theopliilus of Antioch as the
author of a harmony. As we do not hear of this elsewhere, it is commonly supposed
that Jerome made a mistake in ascribing to Theophilus the work of Tatian. Since
Theophilus, who died in 181, was as early as Tatian, the proof of the antiquity of the
86 THE GOSPELS IN THE EARLY CHURCH. [vii.
harmony of Ammonius the Alexandrian, which I mentioned
just now; but, not to say that the work of an Eastern, as
Tatian 'was, was far more likely to be current in Syria than
that° of an Alexandrian, the harmony commented on by
Ephraem shows not the slightest trace'of having had Mat-
thew's narrative as the basis, which is the feature specified
by Eusebius as the characteristic of the harmony of Ammo-
nius.* If, then, it appears that Justin's pupil Tatian used all
four Gospels on equal terms, the conclusion at which we had
already arrived, that Justin himself did so, is abundantly con-
firmed.
fourth Gospel is not affected whether this harmony be ascribed [to a heretical or an
orthodox writer. But we may be sure that the work of a heretic would not have
been so successful in obtaining acceptance in the Church if there had been a ri^ al
work of the same kind by a Church writer of reputation.
* I observe that Dean Burgon refuses to join in the general recognition of the
harmony published by Moesinger as Tatian's, and refers to the author as Pseudo-
Tatian. But every specialist is in danger of being biassed by the consideration how
a decision affects his own subject. A very ancient reading of Matt, xxvii. 49 recorded
there the piercing of our Lord's side, now found only in St. John's Gospel, and
placed the incident before our Lord's death. On the authority of a scholium which
made ' Diodorus and Tatian ' responsible for this reading, a plausible explanation
was given, that the currency of Tatian's harmony, in which the words of different
Evangelists had been mixed together, had, in this instance, led to a transference of
an incident related by St. John to an improper place in the first Gospel. But this
explanation receives no confirmation from thej newly-recovered text of Ephraem. It
seems to me that this is not a sufficient reason for discrediting that text.
VII.] THE BEGINNING OF THE SECOND CENTURY. 87
VII.
Part IV.
THE BEGINNING OF THE SECOND CENTURY.
PAPIAS— APOSTOLIC FATHERS.
We have vSeen now that in the middle of the second cen-
tury our four Gospels had obtained their pre-eminence, and
enjoyed the distinction of use in the public service of the
Church. To-day I go back to an earlier witness, Papias, who
was Bishop of Hierapolis, in Phrygia, in the first half of the
second century. Although all that we have remaining of
him which bears on the subject is half-a-dozen sentences,
which happen to have been quoted by Eusebius, countless
pages have been written on these fragments ; and, what
seems not reasonable, almost as much stress has been laid
on what they do not mention as on what they do. Indeed,
nothing can be more unfair or more absurd than the manner
in which the argumentinn ex silentio has been urged by scepti-
cal critics in the case of writers of whom we have scarcely any
extant remains. The author of 'Supernatural Religion', for
instance, argues : The Gospels of St. Luke and St. John can-
not be earlier than the end of the second century, because
Hegesippus, because Papias, because Dionysius of Corinth,
&c,, were unacquainted with them. Well, how do you know
that they were unacquainted with them ? Because they never
mention them. But how do you know that they never men-
tioned them, seeing that their writings have not come down to
us? Because Eusebius does not tell us that they did; and he
would have been sure to tell us, if they had, for he says that
he made it his special business to adduce testimonies to the
Canon of Scripture. Now, here is exactly where these writers
have misunderstood Eusebius ; for the point to which he says
he gave particular attention was to adduce testimonies to
88 THE GOSPELS IN THE EARLY CHURCH. [vii.
those books of the Canon which were disputed in his time;*
and, in one of his papers,t Bishop Lightfoot most satisfac-
torily shows that this was his practice, by examining the
report which Eusebius gives of books which have come
down to us. Eusebius tells us {H. E. iii. 37) that Clement of
Rome used the Epistle to the Hebrews, but never says a word
as to his quoting the First Epistle to the Corinthians, though
the latter quotation is express (Clem. Rom. 47), and the use
of the former Epistle is only inferred from the identity of
certain expressions. The explanation plainly is, that there
was still some controversy in the time of Eusebius about the
Epistle to the Hebrews, and none at all about the Epistles
to the Corinthians. In like manner, he tells us {H. E. iv. 24)
that Theophilus of Antioch used the Revelation of St. John,
but never says a word about his quotation of the Gospel ;
though, as I have already said, Theophilus is the earliest
writer now extant who mentions John by name as the author
of the fourth Gospel. Why so ? Plainly because the Reve-
lation was still matter of controversy, and there was no dis-
pute in the time of Eusebius about the fourth Gospel. Other
instances of the same kind may be given. Perhaps the most
remarkable is the account which Eusebius gives (v. 8) of the
use which Irenaeus makes of the Holy Scriptures. Eusebius
begins the chapter by calling to mind how, at the outset of
his history, he had promised to quote the language in which
ancient ecclesiastical writers had handed down the tradition
which had come to them concerning the canonical Scrip-
tures ; and, in fulfilment of this promise, he undertakes to
give the language of Irenseus. He then quotes some things
said by Irenseus about the four Gospels, something more said
by him about the Apocalypse, and then mentions, in general
terms, that Irenaeus had quoted the first Epistle of John and
* The words in which Eusebius states his design (iii. 3) are : viro(Tr)fxi(ivacT&ai rives
Twv Kara xpfJj'oiis ^KKXrjcnaiTTtKwi/ (Tvyypa(pea)v orroiais k^xPW'"-'- ''''^^ avTiAeyo/xevimv,
Tiva re irepl twv fuSiad-fiKCDU Kal 6/j.o\oyovfifua>v ypa<puu, Kal Sera Trepl riav /jltj toiovtwv,
auTots tlpr)rai : that is to say, he undertakes to mention instances of the use of any of
the disputed writings, together with any statements that he found concerning the
composition of any of the writings, whether canonical or not.
f Contemporary Review, January, 1875.
VII.] PAPIAS. 89
the first Epistle of Peter, and that he was not only acquainted
with the ' Shepherd of Hermas ', but accepted it as Scripture.
Not a word is said about Irenaeus having used the Acts and
the Epistles of St. Paul. If the writings of Irenaeus had
perished, and our knowledge of them had depended on
this chapter, he would have been set down as an Ebionite
anti-Pauline writer ; for it would have been argued that the
silence of Eusebius, when expressly undertaking to tell what
were the Scriptures used by Irenaeus, was conclusive evidence
that the latter did not employ the Pauline writings. Actually,
however, Irenaeus refers to Paul more than two hundred times,
and it becomes plain that the reason why Eusebius says
nothing about it is, because in his mind it was a matter of
course that a Christian should acknowledge St. Paul's
Epistles. We see, then, that we have not the slightest rea-
son to expect that Eusebius should go out of his way to
adduce testimonies to the Gospels about which no one in his
time had any doubt whatever ; and, therefore, that no argu-
ment against them can be built on his silence.
To return to Papias : it is necessary that you should have
before you the facts about Papias in order to enable you to
judge of the theories of Renan and others as to the origin of
the Gospels. Papias was the author of a book called Xoyiojv
KvpiaKUJv £$//7tj(Ttc, an Exposition* of the oracles of the Lord,
of which Eusebius and Irenaeus have preserved a very few
fragments ; and in this is the earliest extant mention of the
names of Matthew and Mark as the recognized authors of
Gospels. Eusebius (ZT. £. iii. 36), according to some manu-
scripts of his work, describes Papias as a man of the greatest
erudition, and well skilled in the' Scriptures ; but it must be
owned that this favourable testimony is deficient in manu-
script authority ; and elsewhere [H. E. iii. 39), commenting
on some millennarian traditions of his, he remarks that Papias,
who was 'a man of very narrow understanding (o-(/»o^(oa o-^tKooc
rov voui/), as his writings prove', must have got these opi-
nions from a misunderstanding of the writings of the Apostles.
* Or ' expositions ' ; for readings vary between the singular and the plural.
go THE GOSPELS IN THE EARLY CHURCH. [vii.
It is a very possible thing for a man of weak judgment to
possess considerable learning and a good knowledge of Scrip-
ture ; and so what Eusebius says in disparagement of Papias
in one place does not forbid us to believe that he may have
given him some measure of commendation in another. What
is the exact date of Papias is uncertain. We know that he
lived in the first half of the second century ; but some place
him at the very beginning ; others, not earlier than Justin
Martyr. But the chief authority for placing him at the later
date has been exploded by Bishop Lightfoot.* The * Paschal
Chronicle/ a compilation of the sixth or seventh century,
states that Papias was martyred at Pergamum, in the year
164. But coincidences of language clearly show that the
compiler is drawing his information from a passage in the
' Ecclesiastical History ' of Eusebius, where the martyrdom of
one Papylus at Pergamum is mentioned. The confounding
of this man with Papias is a mere blunder of the 'Paschal'
compiler; and so we are left to gather the date of Papias from
his own writings. These clearly show that he lived at a time
when it was still thought possible to obtain oral traditions of
the facts of our Saviour's life.f
I will ask you to attend carefully to what Papias says as
to the sources of his information : — ' If I met anywhere with
anyone who had been a follower of the elders, I used to
inquire what were the declarations of the elders ; what was
said by Andrew, by Peter, by Philip, what by Thomas or
James, what by John or Matthew, or any other of the disciples
of our Lord ; and the things which Aristion and the elder [or
presbyter] John, the disciples of the Lord say ; for I did not
expect to derive so much benefit from the contents of books
as from the utterances of a living and abiding voice.' J By
* Contemporary Review, AxLg., i^"]^. ' Colossians,' p. 48.
t On this account it seems to me that A.D. 125 or 130 is as late as we can place
his work.
X The following is the extract given by Eusebius from the Preface of Papias ; but
the student ought to read carefully the whole chapter (Euseb. H. E. in. 39). He will
find the other fragments of Papias in Routh's Rell. Sac, I. 8, or in Gebhardt and
Hamack's 'Apostolic Fathers', i. ii. 87 : —
OvK oKvrjCcc 5e croi Kal otxa irore irapa rwv irpea^vripwv koKws ifiadov koX KaXws
VII.] PAPIAS. 9 1
disciples of our Lord, Papias clearly means men who had
personal intercourse with Him ; but it is a point which has
been much discussed whether Papias claims to have known
the Apostle John. The name John, you will observe, occurs
twice over in this extract — ' What was said by John or
Matthew'; 'what is said by Aristion and John the elder'.
The question is, whether he only means to distinguish these
last two, concerning whom the present tense is used, as men
still surviving ; or whether, besides John the Apostle, there
was another later John, from whom Papias derived his infor-
mation ; whether, in short, Papias was so early as to have
been actually a hearer of the Apostle John, or whether he
was separated from him by one link. Eusebius was, I believe,
the first to remark the double mention of John, from which
he concluded that two Johns were referred to ; and those in
the third century who denied the Apostolic origin of the
Revelation had already suggested that a John different
from the Apostle might have been its author. It must,
however, be borne in mind that the fact that Papias twice
mentions the name John does not make it absolutely certain
that he meant to speak of two Johns ; and there is no
other independent witness to the existence of the second.
Irenseus (V. xxxiii. 4), in fact, makes no doubt that it
was John the Apostle of whom Papias was a disciple ;
and this view was generally adopted by later ecclesiastical
writers.
In order that we may have before us all the facts we are
discussing, I will read at once the two passages in which
Papias speaks of Matthew and Mark. I told you already
that in his fragments we find the first mention of any of our
f/j.vrjfj.dvevcra, ffvyKaraTci^ai to7s ep/jiriveiais, Siafiefiaiov/j.evoi virep avruv aXriQeiav. Ov
yap rois TO, TToWh \4yov(riv exaipov SxTirep oi iroWol aWa ro7s Ta\7)dri SiSacrKovffiV
ovSh To7s ras aWorpias ivroKas fj.vqfxoi'evova'iv, aWct to7s tus irapa tov Kvpiov rri iriffrei
SfSo/xevttS, Ka\ cnr' avrrjs Trapayivofievas rfjs a,\r}deias. Et Se irov Kal TraprjKoXovdrjKws tis
rots TrpffffivTfpoLS e\6oi, tovs rSiv TrpeaffvTfpwv aveKpivov \6yovs' ti AvSpeas, v ''''■
Tlerpos elirev, ^ rt *iA.i7r7ros, ^ ti ©w/ias, ^ 'la/cw/Soj- ^ Tt 'luawns, fj MaTOaios, ^ rh
erepos twv rov Kvpiov ixaQr)TwV a re 'Apiarloov, Kol d irpefffivTepos 'Icoovvijs ot rou
Kvpiov /xaOriTal Xiyovcnv. Ov yap rk e/c twv fiifi\laiy roffovrSy fj.e ixpiKeiv vireXd/x^avov,
Scrov TCI, irapa ^wffrjs (pcuuris Kal /xevovcrris.
g2 THE GOSPELS IN THE EARLY CHURCH. [vii.
Evangelists by name. On the authority of John the elder
Papias writes : — ' And this also the elder said : Mark, having
become the interpreter (Ipjui^vEurTjc) of Peter, wrote accurately
all that he remembered of the things that were either said or
done by Christ ; but, however, not in order. For he neither
heard the Lord nor followed him, but subsequently, as I said,*
[attached himself to] Peter, who used to frame his teaching
to meet the immediate wants [of his hearers], but not as
making a connected narrative of our Lord's discourses. f So
Mark committed no error in thus writing down particulars
just as he remembered them ; for he took heed to one thing,
to omit none of the things that he had heard, and to state
nothing falsely in his narrative of them'. Eusebius next
gives Papias's statement concerning Matthew : — ' Matthew
wrote the oracles [to. Aoym) in Hebrew, and each one inter-
preted them as he could '.+ Eusebius gives no quotation from
Papias concerning St. Luke's or St. John's Gospels. He
mentions, however, that Papias quotes John's first Epistle ;
and since that Epistle and the Gospel have evident marks of
common authorship, the presumption is that he who used the
one used the other also. The passages I have just quoted
were until comparatively modern times regarded as un-
doubted proofs that Papias knew our present Gospels of
Matthew and Mark. Principally on his authority the belief
was founded that Matthew's Gospel was originally written in
Hebrew, and that Mark's Gospel was founded on the preach-
* Eusebius states that Papias quoted the First Epistle of Peter; and reasons will
be given afterwards for thinking that in the place here referred to Papias quoted
I Pet. V. 13.
t Or oracles : the reading varies between \6yaiv and Aoylcov.
X Kal rovd' 6 TrpecrfivTfpos eXeye. MapKos fxfv kpfji.7\vevr)}s Ufrpov yevo/x&os, Sera
ffxurifiduevffeu, aKpi0a>s eypa^l/ev, ov ^iv roi To|et ra virh tov Xpiarov 7) Xex^^""^"- ^
Trpax^fvra. Ovre yap i]Kov<re tov Kvpiov, ovre ■jraprjKoAovdrjO'ei' ahrcf' varepov Se, ws
f<piiv, Jlerpw, OS Trpos ras xp^'aJ iiroisiTo Tas StSaffKaXias aAA' ovx Sxfirfp ffwra^iv rQv
KvpiaKwv TTowvfxevos \6ya>v, Sxrre ovSev 'ri/xapre MdpKos, ovrcas euia ypa.\f/as us aire/jLVTi-
fiouevtrev. 'Evhs yap iiroiT]<TaTo ■Kp6voLav, tov /xrjSev Siv ^Kovcre irapa\nre7v, 7) \pevcra(rdai
TJ eu avTo7s.
MaTda?os fxev ovv 'EfipatSi diaAfKTci) ra \6yta ffvueypdipaTO. 'Hpfj.7ivev(Te S' avToi ais
^v SwuThs eKa(XT0s.
VII.] PAPIAS.
93
ing of Peter.* But it has been contended by some modern
critics that our present first two Gospels do not answer the
descriptions given by Papias of the works of which he speaks.
You see how hard it is to satisfy the sceptical school of critics.
When we produce citations in verbal accordance with our
Gospels, they reply, The source of the quotation is not men-
tioned ; how can you be sure that it is taken from your
Gospels ? Here, when we have a witness who mentions
Matthew and Mark by name, they ask, How can you tell
whether Papias's Matthew and Mark are the same as the
Matthew and Mark we have now ?
To the question just raised I am going to pay the com-
pliment of giving it a detailed examination ; but I cannot
forbear saying that the matter is one in which doubt is wildly
unreasonable. Juvenal tells us that the works of Virgil and
Horace were in the hands of schoolboys in his time. Who
dreams of raising the question whether the works referred
to by Juvenal were the same as those we now ascribe to
these authors ? And yet that a change should be made in
books in merely private circulation is a small improbability
compared with the improbability that a revolutionary change
should be made in books in weekly ecclesiastical use. We
have seen that in the time of Justin the Gospels of Matthew
and Mark were weekly read in the Church service. It is
absurd to imagine that the liturgical use described by Justin
originated in the year his Apology was written. We must
in all reason attribute to it some years of previous existence.
Again, we must allow a book several years to gain credit
* The dependence of Mark's Gospel upon Peter is also asserted by Clement of
Alexandria (Euseb. H. E. vi. 14), who, no doubt, may have had Papias for his
authority. It has even been thought that Justin Martyr refers to the second
Gospel as Peter's. In the passage quoted, p. 69, where Justin says that our Lord
gave to the sons of Zebedee the name Boanerges, he adds that Christ changed the
name of one of the Apostles to Peter, and that 'this is written in his memoirs'.
Grammatically, this may mean, either Christ's memoirs or Peter's memoirs ; and
considering that Justin's ordinary name for the Gospels is ' the Memoirs of the
Apostles', some have supposed that he here uses the genitive in the same way, and
that he describes the second Gospel (the only one containing the name Boanerges) as
the memoirs of the Apostle Peter.
^4 THE GOSPELS IN THE EARLY CHURCH. [vii.
and authority, before we can conceive its obtaining admis-
sion into Church use. If our present Matthew and Mark
supplanted a previous Matthew and Mark, at least the new
Gospels would not be stamped with Church authority until
so many years had passed that the old ones had had time
to be forgotten, and the new to be accepted as the genuine
form of apostolic tradition. Put the work of Papias at its
earliest (and I do not find sceptical critics disposed to place
it so very early), and still the interval between it and Justin's
Apology is not adequate to account for the change alleged
to have taken place. Observe what is asserted is not that
some corruptions crept into the text of the Gospels ascribed
to Matthew and Mark, but that a change was made in them
altering their entire character. And we are asked to believe
that no one remonstrated, that the old Gospels perished out
of memory, without leaving a trace behind, and that the
new ones reigned in their stead, without anyone finding out
the difference ! I shall afterwards have to consider specula-
tions as to the process by which it is imagined floating
traditions as to the Saviour's life crystallized into the form
of our present Gospels. What I say now is, that the interval
between Papias and Justin is altogether too short to leave
room for such a process. The mention by Papias of Matthew
and Mark by name is evidence enough that in his time these
Gospels had already taken their definite form ; for it is incon-
ceivable that if anyone in the second century had presumed
to remodel a Gospel which bore the name, and was believed
to be the work, of an Apostle, there would not be many who
would prefer and preserve the older form. I am persuaded
then, that interpreters of the words of Papias get on an
entirely wrong track if, instead of patiently examining what
opinion concerning our present Gospels his words indicate,
they fly off to imagine some other Matthew and Mark, to
which his words shall be more applicable.
Once more, I may take a hint from our opponents, and
with better reason than they, build an argument on the silence
of Eusebius. He had before him the whole book, which we
only know by two or three extracts ; and no passage in it
VII.] PAPIAS. g^
suggested to him that Papias used different Gospels from
ours, or that he even used an extra-canonical Gospel. Now,
although Eusebius is apt to see nothing calling for remark
when an ecclesiastical writer expresses the opinion which the
later Church generally agreed to hold, he takes notice readily-
enough of any divergence from that opinion. For instance,
in his account of the Ignatian Letters he takes no notice of a
couple of fairly accurate quotations from our Gospels ; but he
singles out for remark the only passage suggesting a possible
use of a different source. [H. E. iii. 36 ; Ignat. Smyrn. 3.)
To return now to the reasons alleged for facing so many
improbabilities, it is urged that there is a striking resemblance
between the Gospels of Matthew and Mark as we have them
now, but that Papias's description would lead us to think of
them as very different. Matthew's Gospel was, according to
him, a Hebrew work, containing an account only of our Lord's
discourses ; for so Schleiermacher* would have us translate
TO Aoyta, the word which I have rendered 'oracles'. Mark,
on the other hand, wrote in Greek, and recorded what was
done as well as what was said by Christ — to. vtto tov XjO'trrou rj
XtxOhra rj irpaxOivTa. Again, Mark's Gospel, which in its
present state has the same claims to orderly arrangement as
Matthew's, was, according to Papias, not written in order.
The conclusion, then, which has been drawn from these
premisses is that Papias's testimony does not relate to our
present Gospels of Matthew and Mark, but to certain un-
known originals, out of which these Gospels have sprung;
and in some books of the sceptical school the ' original
Matthew' and 'original Mark ' (Ur-Markus) are constantly
spoken of, though there is no particle of evidence, beyond
that which I have laid before you, that there ever was any
Gospel by Matthew and Mark different from those we have
got.
Thus, according to Renan, Papias was in possession of
two documents quite different from one another — a collection
* Schleiermacher (1768-1834), Professor of Theology at Halle, and afterwards at
Berlin. His essay on the testimony of Papias to our first two Gospels appeared in
the TJieol. Stud, und KriU, 18^2.
gS THE GOSPELS IN THE EARLY CHURCH. [vii.
of our Lord's discourses made by Matthew, and a collection
of anecdotes taken down by Mark from Peter's recollections J
and Renan {Vz'e de Jesus, p. xxii.) thus describes the process
by which Matthew's Gospel gradually absorbed Mark's
anecdotes, and Mark's derived a multitude of features from
the *logia ' of Matthew: — * As it was thought the world was
near its end, men were little anxious about composing books
for the future : all they aimed at was to keep in their heart
the living image of Him whom they hoped soon to see again
in the clouds. Hence the small authority which the evan-
gelic texts enjoyed for one hundred and fifty years.* No
scruple was felt as to inserting additions in them, combining
them diversely, and completing one by another'. The pas-
sage I am reading illustrates the character of Renan's whole
book, in which he trusts far more to his power of divination
than to evidence, his statements being often supported by the
slenderest authority. Thus, for this statement that for a
century men had no scruple in transposing, combining, and
interpolating the evangelic records, there is not a shadow of
proof. Renan goes on to say : — ' The poor man who has
only one book wants it to contain everything which goes to
his heart. These little books were lent by one to another.
Each transcribed in the margin of his copy the words, the
parables, which he found elsewhere, and which touched him.
Thus has the finest thing in the world issued from a process
worked out unobserved and quite unauthoritatively.'f In this
way we are to suppose that the Gospels of St. Matthew and
St. Mark, which were originally unlike, came, by a process
of mutual assimilation, to their present state of resemblance.
If this theory were true, we should expect to find in early
times a multitude of Gospels, differing in their order and in
their selection of facts, according as the different possessors
of manuscripts had differently inserted the discourses or
events which touched their hearts. In the more ancient
manuscripts the order of the events would become uncertain.
* Later editions, 'nearly one hundred.'
t ' La plus belle chose du monde est ainsi sortie d'une elaboration obscure et
completement populaire."
VII.] PAPIAS. ^^
It would even be doubtful to which Gospel this or that story
should be referred. Why we should have now exactly four
versions of the story is not easy to explain. We should
expect that, by the process of mutual assimilation which has
been described, all would, in the end, have been reduced to a
single Gospel. Attempts would surely have been made to
l)ring the order of the different Evangelists to uniformity. If
one poor man had written an anecdote in his manuscript in
a wrong place, another would not scruple to change it.
But the fact is that our four Gospels are as distinct, and the
order of the events as definite, in the earliest manuscripts as
in the latest; and if such variations as I have described had
(jver prevailed, it is incredible that no trace of them should be
found in any existing authority. The two Gospels of Matthew
and Mark, with all their likeness, remain quite distinct as far
as we can trace them back. Nor is there the slightest un-
certainty as to the order of narration of either. One solitary
fact is appealed to by Renan in his note as the sole basis for
his monstrous theory. The section of St. John's Gospel
which contains the story of the woman taken in adultery is,
as you probably know, wanting in the most ancient manu-
scripts ; in a few copies it is absent from the place where it
occurs in the received text, but is added at the end of the
Gospel ; and in four manuscripts of comparatively late date,
which, however, show evident marks of having been copied
from a common original, it is inserted in St. Luke's Gospel
at the end of the 21st chapter. It would be out of place to
discuss here the genuineness of this particular passage.*
Critics generally regard it as an authentic fragment of apos-
tolic tradition, but not as a genuine part of St. John's Gospel.
But now it is manifest that the phenomena which present
themselves in a small degree in the case of this story would,
if Renan's theory were true, show themselves in a multitude
of cases. There would be a multitude of parables and miracles
* Eusebius gives us some reason to think that the story of the adulteress was
related in the work of Papias. If, as Lightfoot conjectures, it was told in illustration
of our Lord's words, 'I judge no man' (John viii. 15), we have an explanation how
the paragraph has come to be inserted in the particular place in which wc iind it.
II
gS THE GOSPELS IN THE EARLY CHURCH. [vii.
with respect to which we should be uncertain whether they
were common to all the Evangelists or special to one, and
what place in that one they ought to occupy. Further,
according to the hypothesis stated, Mark's design was more
comprehensive than Matthew's. Matthew only related our
Lord's discourses ; Mark, the things said or done by Christ —
that is to say, both discourses and actions of Jesus. If this were
so, it might be expected that Mark's Gospel would differ from
Matthew's by excess, and Matthew's would read like a series
of extracts from Mark's. Exactly the opposite is the case.
But I wholly disbelieve that the word Xoyia in the extract
from Papias is rightly translated 'the speeches of our Lord.'
Not to speak of the absurdity of supposing a collection of our
Lord's sayings to have been made without any history of the
occasions on which they were spoken, Aoym is one word,
XoyoL another. Examine for yourselves the four passages in
which the former word occurs in the New Testament : — Acts
vii. 38, 'Moses received the lively oracles to give unto us' ;
Rom. iii. 2, ' To the Jews were committed the oracles of
God' ; Heb. v. 12, 'Ye have need that we teach you which
be the first principles of the oracles of God ' ; and lastly,
1 Peter iv. 11, ' If anyone speak let him speak as the oracles
of God '. Now when Paul, for example, says that to the Jews
were committed the oracles of God, can we imagine that he
confines this epithet to those parts of the Old Testament
which contained Divine sayings, and that he excludes those
narrative parts from which he has himself so often drawn
lessons in his Epistles ; as, for instance, the account of the
creation which he uses, i Cor. xi. 8 ; the account of the fall,
2 Cor. xi. 3, I Tim. ii. 14; the wanderings in the wilderness,
I Cor. x. I ; the story of Sarah and Hagar, Gal. iv. 21 ; or
the saying (Gen. xv. 6) that ' Abraham believed God, and it
was counted unto him for righteousness ,' of which such use
is made both in the Epistles to the Romans and to the
Galatians. Thus we find that in the New Testament Xoym
has its classical meaning, ' oracles ', and is applied to the
inspired utterances of God in His Holy Scriplures. This
io also the meaning the word bears in the Apostolic Fathers
VII.] PAPIAS.
99
and in other Jewish writers. Philo quotes as a Xoyiov, an
oracle of God, the narrative in Gen. iv. 15, 'The Lord set a
mark upon Cain, lest any finding him should kill him ' ; and
as another oracle the words, Deut. x. 9, ' The Lord is his
inheritance'. The quotations from later writers, who use
the word Aoyta generally as inspired books, are too abundant
to be cited. We must recollect also that the title of Papias'
own work is Xo^^mv KupmicdJi' iUiyv<^iQ* while it is manifest
that the book was not confined to treating of our Lord's
discourses. I consider the true conclusion to be, that as we
find from Justin that the Gospels were put on a level with
the Old Testament in the public reading of the Church, so we
find from Papias that the name Xoyia, the oracles, given to
the Old Testament Scriptures, was also given to the Gospels,
which were called ra KvpiaKo. Xoyia, the oracles of our Lord.
The title of Papias' own work I take as meaning simply ' an
exposition of the Gospels'; and his statement about Matthew
I take as meaning : * Matthew composed his Gospel in
Hebrew', the word Xoyia implying its Scriptural authority.
I do not know any passage where Xoyia means discourses ;
and I believe the notion that Matthew's Gospel was origi-
nally only a collection of speeches to be a mere dream.
Indeed the theory of an original Matthew containing
speeches, and an original Mark containing acts, has been
so worked out that the best rationalist critics now recognize
its absurdity. For it was noticed that our present Matthew
contains a great deal of history not to be found in our present
Mark ; and that our present Luke contains a great many
discourses not to be found in Matthew ; and so the theory
led to the whimsical result of critics looking for the original
Matthew in St. Luke, and for the original Mark in St.
Matthew.
A more careful examination of what Papias says leads us,
* ' If there were any doubt as to the meaning of this title, it would be removed by
the words of Irenseus in the preface to his treatise. Certain, he says, -rrapdyovcri tov
vovv tSiv aTreijJOT^poou, . . . paSioupyovvres t^ \6yta Kvpiov, i^TjyrjTal kukoI Taji/ KaKaa
f\pr\ix4vo}v yiv6fxivoi. Papias wished to combat false interpretations of the " oracles "
by true.'— Westcott, N. T. Canon, p. 577.
H 2
lOO THE GOSPELS IN THE EARLY CHURCH. [vii.
I am convinced, to a very different conclusion. On reading
what Papias says about Mark's Gospel, two things are
apparent — first, Papias had a strong belief in Mark's perfect
accuracy. Three times in this short fragment he asserts it :
' Mark wrote down accurately everything he remembered ' ;
' Mark committed no error'; 'He made it his rule not to omit
anything he heard, or to set down any false statement there-
in '. Secondly, that Papias was for some reason dissatisfied
with Mark's arrangement, and thought it necessary to apolo-
gize for it. No account of this passage is satisfactory which
will not explain why, if Papias reverenced Mark so much, he
was dissatisfied with his order. Here Renan's hypothesis
breaks down at once — the hypothesis, namely, that Papias
was in possession of only two documents, and these totally
different in their nature : the one a collection of discourses,
and the other a collection of anecdotes. Respecting, as he
did, Mark's accuracy, Papias would assuredly have accepted
his order had he not been in possession of some, other
document, to which for some reason he attached more
value in this particular — a document going over somewhat
the same ground as Mark's, but giving the facts in different
order. It is clear that the Mark of which Papias was in
possession did not merely consist of loose collections of
unconnected anecdotes of our Lord's life, but was a Gospel
aiming at some orderly arrangement. It was not the case
that the copies of this Gospel so differed from each other as
to make it uncertain what was the order in which it gave the
facts. This order was definite, and though Papias was
dissatisfied with it, and tried to explain why it was not
different, he never maintained that Mark had originally
written the facts in any different or preferable order. And
it is clear that he had more such Gospels than one —
namely, at the least, St. Mark's Gospel, and some other
Gospel, with whose order he compared St. Mark's, and found
it different.
The question then remains to be answered : If Papias
held that Mark's Gospel was not written in the right order,
what was, in his opinion, the right order ? Strauss considers
VII.] PAPIAS.
lOl
and rejects three answers to this question, as being all in-
admissible, at least on the supposition that the Gospel known
to Papias as St. Mark's was the same as that which we
receive under the name. These answers are : first, that the
right order was St. John's ; secondly, that the right order
was St. Matthew's ; thirdly, that Papias meant to deny to
Mark the merit not only of the right order, but of any his-
torical arrangement whatever. Of these three solutions, the
first — that the right order in Papias' mind was St. John's — is
that defended with great ability by Bishop Lightfoot. Be-
sides these there remains another, which I believe to be the
true one — namely, that what Papias regarded as the right
order was St. Luke's. The reason, I suppose, why this
solution has been thought unworthy of discussion is, that no
mention of St. Luke is made in any of the fragments of
Papias which have reached us ; from which it has been
assumed to be certain that Papias was unacquainted with
Luke's writings. Now, if we had the whole work of Papias,
and found he had said nothing about St. Luke, it might be
reasonable to ask us to account for his silence ; but when we
have only remaining some very brief extracts from his book,
it seems ludicrous to conclude that Papias was ignorant of
St. Luke, merely because Eusebius found in his work no
statement concerning Luke which he thought worth copying.
With regard to Matthew and Mark, Eusebius found the state-
ments that Mark was the interpreter of Peter, and that
Matthew wrote in Hebrew, and these he thought worth pre-
serving; but if Papias added nothing to what was known
about Luke, we can understand why Eusebius should not
have copied any mention of Luke by Papias. The fragments
preserved contain clear traces that Papias was acquainted
with the Acts, and since, as we have seen, Luke's Gospel
was certainly known to Justin Martyr, who was not so much
later than Papias that both may not have been alive at the
same time, the conclusion that it was known by Papias also
is intrinsically most probable. When, therefore, in explain-
ing the language used by Papias, we have to choose between
the hypothesis that he was acquainted with Luke's Gospel,
I02 THE GOSPELS IN THE EARLY CHURCH [vii.
and the hypothesis that the Matthew and Mark known to
Papias perished without leaving any trace of their existence,
and were in the next generation silently replaced by another
Matthew and Mark, the former hypothesis is plainly to be
preferred, if it will give an equally good account of the pheno-
mena. Since we know from Justin that it was the custom to
read the Gospels every Sunday in the Christian assemblies,
the notion that one of these could have been utterly lost, and
another under the same name substituted, is as extravagant
a supposition as can well be imagined.
In support of my opinion that Papias knew St. Luke, I
may quote an authority above suspicion — Hilgenfeld, who
may be pronounced a leader of the present German Ration-
alist school. His notion is that Papias was acquainted with
Luke's Gospel, but did not ascribe to it the same authority as
to Matthew and Mark. And his opinion, that Papias knew
St. Luke, is founded on a comparison of the preface to Luke's
Gospel with the preface to Papias' work, in which he finds
many phrases which seem to him an echo of St. Luke. I am
disposed to think he is right ; but the resemblance is not
striking enough to convince anyone inclined to deny it.
Lightfoot comes to the same conclusion on different grounds,
namely, on account of a striking coincidence between one of
the fragments of Papias and Luke x. i8.
But if we assume that Papias recognized St. Luke's Gos-
pel, the language which he uses with respect to St. Mark's is
at once accounted for. The preface to St. Luke's Gospel
declares it to be the Evangelist's intention to write in order —
ypaxpai icaSt^fjc, but a reader could not go far without finding
out that Luke's order is not always the same as Mark's. In
the very first chapter of St. Mark the healing of Peter's wife's
mother is placed after the Apostle's call to become a fisher of
men, in opposition to Luke's order. It is on this difference of
order that, as I understand the matter, Papias undertook to
throw light by his traditional anecdotes. And his account
of the matter is that Mark was but the interpreter of Peter,
whose teaching he accurately reported ; that Peter had not
undertaken to give any orderly account of our Lord's words
VII.] PAPIAS. 103
or deeds ; that he only delivered these instructions from time
to time as the needs of his people required ; and that Mark
was, therefore, guilty of no falsification in faithfully reporting"
what he had heard.
We have no evidence that Papias's notice about St.
Matthew occurred in the same context as that about St.
Mark ; but I think it likely that this remark was also made
in explanation of an apparent disagreement between the first
Gospel and one of the others. And I conceive Papias's solu-
tion of the difficulty to be, that the Church was not then in
possession of the Gospel as Matthew wrote it — that the
Greek Matthew was but an unauthorized translation from
a Hebrew original, which each one had translated for him-
self as he could. Thus, in place of its being true that Papias
did not use our present Gospels, I believe the truth to be that
he was the first who attempted to harmonize them, assuming
the principle that no apparent disagreement between them
could affect their substantial truth.
Thus, then, these explanations lead to the same inference
as the use of the word Xoyia in speaking of St. Matthew's
Gospel ; both indicate that Papias regarded the Gospels as
really inspired utterances. When he finds what seems a
disagreement between the Gospels, he is satisfied there can
be no real disagreement. Mark's order may be different
from Luke's ; but, then, that was because it was not Mark's
design to recount the facts in their proper order. Three
times over he repeats that Mark committed no error, but
wrote all things truly. If in Matthew's Gospel, as he read it,
there seemed any inaccuracy, this must be imputed to the
translators ; the Gospel as Matthew himself wrote it was free
ii'om fault.
Weighing these things, I have convinced myself that
Bishop Lightfoot has given the true explanation of a passage,
from which an erroneous inference has been drawn. Papias
declares, in a passage which I have already cited, * If I met
with anyone who had been a follower of the elders anywhere,
1 made it a point to inquire what were the declarations of the
elders, what was said by Andrew, by Peter, by Philip, what
I04 'i"HE GOSPELS IN THE EARLY CHURCH. [vii.
by Thomas or James, what by John, or Matthew, or any
other of the disciples of our Lord, and the things which
Aristion and the presbyter John, disciples of the Lord, say ;
for I did not think that I could get so much benefit from the
contents of books as from the utterances of the living and
abiding voice '. The question is: Does this disparagement
of written books extend to our Gospels ? are we to suppose
that Papias regarded these books, if he had them, as in no
sense inspired, and that he preferred to obtain his knowledge
of the Saviour's earthly life from viva voce tradition ? Con-
sidering his solicitude to clear the Gospels from all charge of
inaccuracy, I feel convinced that these were not the writings
which he found comparatively useless to him for his work.
The title of his book was, as I understand it, 'An Exposition
of the Gospels ' ; and it was in seeking for traditions to sup-
plement and illustrate the Scripture history that he found it
useless to search the Gnostic interpretations* then current,
and that he preferred his own collection of viva voce tradi-
tions, whose genuineness could, as he alleged, be proved by
tracing them up, like the four Gospels, to the Apostles
themselves. It is worth while to take notice also of the
commencement of the preface of Papias : ' I shall not scruple
also to place along with my interpretations anything that I
carefully learned from the elders '. Here we have in the first
rank, as the object of Papias's work, expositions of the oracles
of our Lord — inter pj-etations ; that is to say, he assumes an
existing authoritative text, on which he comments, and
which he tries to explain ; and then, with a little apology,
he takes leave to put his iraditions forward as on the same
level with his interpretations. But neither one nor the other
seems to come into competition with the text. Those who
vi^ould have us believe that Papias preferred his traditions to
the Evangelic texts forget that he tells us the two things —
that he was in possession of a book written by Matthew, and
that he also made it his business to inquire from anyone who
could tell him what Matthew had said. Papias must have
* Bisilides, apparently a contemporary of Papias, is said to have written twenty-
four books on the Gospel (Euseb. H. E. iv. 7).
VII.] PA PI AS. 105
been even of weaker understanding- than Eusebius would
lead us to think, if he regarded hearsay reports as better
evidence what were the statements of Matthew than the
testimony of a book which he believed to have been written
by that Apostle. But Papias might fairly retort the chargt^
of stupidity on his critics. He had called Matthew's book
the 'Logia', and his own book an interpretation of 'Logia'.
To find a parallel case, then, we must imagine a writer of the
present day publishing a commentary on the 'In Memoriam,'
and stating in his preface that he had taken pains to question
•everyone that he met with who had conversed with the Lau-
reate, and that he regarded the interpretations he had thus
been able to collect as more valuable than anything he had
seen in print. What should we think of a reviewer who,
reading no further than the preface, should report that the
author maintained that none of the printed editions of
Tennyson's Poems could be relied on, and that he attached
no value to anything save certain stanzas he had heard in
conversation to have been recited by the poet .?
On tlie whole, then, I arrive at the conclusion that Papias
recognized an Evangelic text, to which he ascribed the
highest authority, and in the perfect accuracy of which he
had strong faith. In my own mind I have no doubt that this
text consisted of the four Gospels we now have. Papias has
named two of his Gospels, those of St. Matthew and St.
Mark; and I see no ground for imagining that these names
totally changed their signification in the course of a gene-
ration.
With regard to the use of St. John's Gospel by Papias,
the presumption arising from his confessed use of the first
Epistle is confirmed by several indications in the list of names
already quoted. Andrew is placed before Peter, as in John
i. 44 (compare Mark i. 29) ; Philip and Thomas are selected
for mention, who have no prominence except in St. John's
Gospel ; Matthew and John are coupled together, the simplest
explanation of which is, that both were known to Papias as
authors of Gospels. In the context of this list, Papias calls
our Lord by the Johannine title of ' the Truth'. And Light-
io6 THE GOSPELS IN THE EARLY CHURCH. [vii.
foot gives strong reasons for thinking Papias to be the author
of a passage quoted anonymously by Irenseus, and which
contains a quotation from St. John. Lightfoot's reasons
have been accepted as convincing by an unprejudiced critic,
Harnack. Of Papias's use of St. Luke's Gospel, I have
spoken already, and we shall not doubt that he recognized
this Gospel if we afterwards find reason to think that he
was acquainted with the Acts of the Apostles.
If still earlier evidence than that of Papias is required, the
only difficulty is that the books from which we might have
drawn our testimony have perished. The extant remains of
earlier Christian literature are few ; and, indeed, it is likely
that the first generation of Christians, among whom there
were not many learned, and who were in constant expectation
of their Master's second coming, did not give birth to many
books. As to the remains we do possess, I avoid burdening
your memory with too many details, and I will only quote a
specimen from him who is accounted the earliest of uninspired
writers, Clement of Rome, in order to show the kind of testi-
mony which those who are known as the Apostolic Fathers
afford : 'Remember the words of our Lord Jesus, for he said,
Woe to that man ; it were better for him that he had not been
born than that he should offend one of my elect. It were
better for him that a millstone should be tied about his neck,
and that he should be drowned in the sea, than that he should
offend one of my little ones' (Clem. Rom. 46). Elsewhere he
says : ' Especially remembering the words of our Lord Jesus,
which he spake, teaching gentleness and long-suffering. For
thus he said. Be ye merciful, that ye may obtain mercy :
forgive, that it may be forgiven to you. As ye do, so shall
it be done unto you : as ye give, so shall it be given unto
you : as ye judge, so shall ye be judged : as ye show kind-
ness, so shall kindness be shown unto you : with what
measure ye mete, with the same shall it be measured unto
you ' [Ch. 13). Similar quotations are found in the Letters of
Polycarp and Ignatius, but the passages I have read illustrate
the two characteristics of these early citations — first, that
they do not mention the name of the source whence they
vii.l CLEMENT OF ROME.
107
are taken ; secondly, that, though they substantially agree
with passages in our present Gospels, they do not do so lite-
rally and verbally. There are two questions, then, to be
. settled — First : Is the writer quoting from a written source at
all, or is he merely using oral traditions of our Lord's sayings
and doings ? Secondly : Is he using our Gospels, or some other
record of our Saviour's life ? It seems to me that the words
* Remember the words of our Lord Jesus,' when addressed to
the members of a distant Church who had received no oral
instructions from the writer, point distinctly, not to oral
tradition, but a written record, which Clement could know
to be recognized as well by those whom he was addressing as
by himself. St. Paul, addressing the Ephesian elders, might
say, ' Remember the words of our Lord Jesus, how he said.
It is more blessed to give than to receive' (Acts, xx. 35),
although these words do not occur in our Gospel history,
because he had taught for three years in Ephesus, and there-
fore had the means of knowing that his readers had heard
the same words before. But the words, ' Remember the words
of our Lord Jesus ', when addressed to men, as to the oral
instruction delivered to whom the writer apparently had no
means of knowledge, point, in my opinion, plainly to written
sources of information. And it appears to me unreasonable
to suppose that these written sources of information were
works which have disappeared, and not those works to which
we find testimonies very little less ancient than the quotations
to which I refer, and which contain the passages cited, the
verbal differences not exceeding those that are commonly
found in memoriter quotations. I have already spoken of the
degree of accuracy that may reasonably be looked for in the
memoriter quotations of the very early Fathers.
But, before parting with the Apostolic Fathers, I must
produce a passage which illustrates the skill of critics in re-
sisting evidence produced to prove something which they
have, on a priori grounds, decided not to admit. There are
those who have made up their minds that the Gospels are
comparatively late compositions, and who are certain that
they could not, for a long time, have been looked on as
io8 THE GOSPELS IN THE EARLY CHURCH. [vii.
inspired or treated as Scripture. Now, the Epistle of Barna-
bas is a work which, though not likely to have been written
by the Apostle Barnabas, is owned on all hands to be one of
great antiquity, dating from the end of the first century, or at
least the beginning of the second,* a period at which, accord-
ing to some of our opponents, St. Matthew's Gospel was per-
haps not written, and at any rate could not yet have been
counted as Scripture. But this Epistle contains (c. 4) the
exhortation, ♦ Let us take heed lest, as it is written, we be
found, many called, but few chosen '. Here we have a plain
quotation from St. Matthew, introduced with the well-known
formula of Scripture citation, 'It is written'. But this part
of the Epistle of Barnabas was till lately only extant in a
Latin translation ; hence it was said that it was impossible
that these words, ' It is written', could have been in the ori-
ginal Greek. They must have been an interpolation of the
Latin translator. Hilgenfeld, in an early work,t went so far
as to admit that the Greek text contained some formula of
citation, but he had no doubt it must have been ' as Jesus
says ', or some such like. Unfortunately, however, lately the
Greek text of this portion of the Epistle of Barnabas came to
light, being part of the newly-discovered Sinaitic Manuscript,
and there stands the ' as it is written', mq jiypaTTTai, beyond
mistake. Then it was suggested that the quotation is not
from St. Matthew, but from the second book of Esdras. Now,
it is a question whether this book is not post-Christian (as
certainly some portions of the present text of it are), and
possibly later than St. Matthew — say as late as the end of
the first century. But the words there are, 'Many are created,
but few shall be saved '. The contention that the words
* Many are called, but few chosen', are not from St. Matthew,
but from this passage, though this itself may have been derived
from our Gospels, is only a proof of the straits to which our
opponents are reduced. Then it was suggested that the quota-
tion was perhaps from some lost apocryphal book. And lately
a more plausible solution, though itself sufficiently desperate,
* Hilgenfeld dates it a.d. 97. f 'Die apostolischen Viiter,' p. 48 (1853).
VII.] CLEMEMT OF ROME. 109
has been discovered. Scholten* suggests that the phrase
* It is written ' was used by Barnabas through a lapse of
memory. The words ' Many are called, but few chosen ', ran
in his head, and he had forgotten where he had read them,
and fancied it was somewhere in the Old Testament. I
think this is an excellent illustration of the difficulty of
convincing a man against his will.
* Scholten (born 1811), Emeritus Professor of the University of Leyden, a re-
presentative of the extreme school of revolutionary criticism.
VIII.
THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS.
Pa rt I.
INTERNAL EVIDENCE OF THEIR ANTIQUITY.
WE have now traced back, as far as we had any ma-
terials, the history of the reception of the Gospels
in the Church ; and have found no sign that the existing
tradition concerning their authorship has ever varied.*
One remark I must make as to what that tradition exactly
was. Renan observes (p. xvi.) that the formulae * according
to Matthew ', * according to Mark ', &c., indicate that the
earliest opinion was, not that these stories were written from
one end to the other by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, but
only that they contain traditions emanating from these re-
spective sources and guaranteed by their authority.f But
assuredly if that had been what was intended by the phrase
* according to', the second and third Gospels would have been
known as the Gospel according to Peter and the Gospel
according to Paul. The account of Papias, that Mark did
* The student who desires to see the evidence of the early use of the Gospels in
fuller detail will find valuable assistance in Anger's ' Synopsis.' It is an arrangement
of the Evangelic text in the form of a harmony, and aims at giving in connexion
with each passage any illustrative parallel to be found in writers earlier than Irenaeus.
t I observe that Renan has struck this ^^entence out of his later editions, which,
I suppose, is to be regarded as a confession that the argument it contained cannot be
relied on.
VIII.] THEIR TITLES. 1 1 1
nothing but record narrations of Peter concerning our Lord,
was received with general belief by the early Church.* And
it was just as generally believed that the third Gospel rested
on the authority of St. Paul. Irenaeus, for instance, says (ill. i.)
— ' Paul's follower Luke put in a book the Gospel preached
by him'. Some ancient interpreters even understand the
phrase 'according to m)'' Gospel', which occurs in the Pauline
Epistlesf to refer to the Gospel according to St. Luke (Euseb.
H. E. iii. 4). Clearly, then, if the phrase ' according to' had
been understood to imply anything less than actual author-
ship, the Church would never have been content to designate
these Gospels by the names of those who transmitted the
tradition at second-hand, but would have named them more
honourably after the great Apostles on whose authority they
were believed to rest. It is plain, then, that the phrase ' the
Gospel according to' indicates only the Church's sense of the
unity of the fourfold narrative, the same good tidings being
contained in all, only presented differently by different
hands.
Hence it follows that the titles of our Gospels afford
internal evidence of their antiquity. They must, in any case,
be earlier than Justin Martyr. In Justin's time the word
Gospel had acquired its technical meaning ; for he uses it in
the plural number, and says that the memoirs of the Apostles
were called Gospels. J The titles, on the contrary, bespeak a
time when the word Gospel had acquired no such technical
meaning, and when the appellation ' Evangelist ' was not
confined to the authors of four books. All the Apostles and
other preachers of the new religion had the same message of
good tidings to deliver. Whatever might be the diversity of
form in their teaching, all preached ' the Gospel '.
Further, these titles regarded in another point of view
* See note, p. 92. Clement states (I.e.) that the tradition wliich had reached
him was, that the Gospels containing the genealogies had been written first, and that
]Mark afterwards wrote his^ Gospel at Rome at the request of Peter's hearers, who
desired to have a permanent record of the Gospel orally preached by that Apostle ;
Peter himself not interfering either to forbid or encourage the design.
t Rom. ii. 16 ; xvi. 25 ; 2 Tim. ii. 8 ; see also 2 Thess. ii. 14.
X Justin also vses the birgular (e. g. Dial. 10, 100).
112 THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. [viii.
prove their own historic character. If they had been arbi-
trarily chosen, we may be sure that persons of greater
distinction in the history of the Church would have been
selected, Matthew is one of the least prominent of the
Apostles, and the dignity of Apostleship is not even claimed
for Mark and Luke. It would have been so easy to claim a
jnore distinguished authorship for the Gospels, that we have
the less right to refuse credence to what is actually claimed,
namely, that the two Evangelists just named, though not
Apostles, and possibly not even eyewitnesses themselves,
were in immediate contact with Apostles and eyewitnesses.
It remains, then, to test this tradition by internal evidence.
When we examine the Gospels with a critical eye, do we
find reason to think that they cannot be so early as the date
claimed for them, viz., the first age of the Church — the age
when Apostles and other eyewitnesses of our Saviour's
ministry were still alive and accessible to the writers of
these narratives P If we reflect for a moment we shall be
convinced that in that early age there must have been Gos-
pels : if not the Gospels we know, at least some other Gospels.
Two things may be regarded as certain in the history of our
religion : first, that it spread with extraordinary rapidity —
that within twenty or thirty years of our Lord's death the
Gospel had travelled far outside the borders of Palestine, so
that there were Christians in widely separated cities ; and,
secondly, that the main subject of the preaching of every
missionary of the Church was Jesus Christ. Numerous pas-
sages will rise to your minds in which the work of these first
missionaries is described as 'preaching Christ'. St. Luke
says of the Apostles at Jerusalem, 'Daily in the temple and
in every house they ceased not to teach and preach Jesus
Christ ' (Acts, v. 42J. When persecution scattered away the
disciples from Jerusalem, St. Luke tells us of those who
came to Antioch and spoke to the Grecians, 'preaching the
Lord Jesus' (Acts, xi. 20). 'We preach not ourselves', says
St. Paul (2 Cor. iv. 5), 'but Christ Jesus the Lord', What-
ever were the dissensions in the early Church, of which we
now hear so much, they did not affect this point. ' Some ',
VIII.] Til KIR REPORT OF OUR LORD'S DISCOURSES. 113
says St. Paul (Phil. i. 15), 'preach Christ even of envy and
strife, and some also of goodwill'; but 'every way, whether
in pretence or in truth, Christ is preached'. The zeal of the
first disciples made every Christian a missionary into what-
ever town he went ; and the work of the missionary was, as
we have seen, to preach a person. Consequently the preacher
must have been prepared to answer the questions, Who was
this Jesus whom you preach ? What did he do ? What did
He teach .? And since the preachers could rarely answer
these questions from their personal knowledge, it was a
necessity for their work that they should be furnished with
authentic answers resting on a higher authority than their
own. We cannot doubt, then, that the first age of the
Church must have had its Gospels, and the question is,
whether we are bound to reject the claim of these books of
ours to have been, at least, among the number.
When I discussed the external evidences to the Gospels,
I considered all four together : for my judgment is that, with
respect to external evidence, there is no appreciable difference
between them. But the internal characteristics of the fourth
Gospel are so different from those of the other three, and the
special objections made against it so numerous, that it will be
necessary to consider this Gospel separately. I shall, there-
fore, now speak only of the first three, commonly called the
wSynoptic Gospels — a title which is so well established that it
is now too late to discuss its propriety.*
There is one class of passages in these Gospels on which
the stamp of antiquity is impressed so deeply as to leave no
room for dispute : I mean those which record discourses of
our Lord. That the report of these discourses is substantially
accurate no unprejudiced critic can doubt. Renan speaks of
the ' naturalness, the ineffable truth, the matchless charm of
the Synoptic discourses ; their profoundly Hebrew turn ; the
analogies they present to the sayings of Jewish doctors of the
same time; their perfect harmony with the scenery of Galilee'
(p. xxx). Elsewhere (p. xxxvii) he says, *A kind of bril-
* The idea is that these Gospels agree in giving one synopsis or general view of
the same series of events.
I
114 THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. [viii.
liancy at once mild and terrible ; a divine force underlies
these words, as it were, detaches them from the context, and
enables the critic easily to recognize them.' 'The true words
of Jesus, so to say, reveal themselves. When they are
touched in this chaos of traditions of unequal authenticity
we feel them vibrate. They come, we may say, spontaneously
to take their places in our story, where they stand out in
striking relief.'
Indeed, I need hardly quote the testimony of Renan or of
anybody else ; for we have sufficient evidence of the substan-
tial truthfulness of the Gospel report of our Lord's discourses
in the fact that in all Christian literature there is nothing
like them. If, instead of simply reporting these discourses,
the first disciples had invented them, they could have invented
something else of the same kind. Actually, it is a little sur-
prising that the men who were so deeply impressed by our
Lord's teaching, and who so fully imbibed the spirit of it,
should never have attempted to imitate its form. In point of
style we travel into a new country when we pass from the
Synoptic Gospels to the Apostolic Epistles. Those who
heard our Lord's parables, and who could not fail to have
been struck by their beauty, and by the force with which they
brought to the mind the lessons they were meant to convey,
never, as far as we know, used the same method of impressing
any lessons of their own. Among early uninspired Christian
writers there were several imitators of the Apostolic Epistles,
but only one, Hermas, who attempted to imitate the parables,
and that with such poor success that we need the less wonder
that others did not try the experiment.
Thus we see that if tradition had been silent, criticism
would have told us the story that tradition now tells. * There
are things here which must either have been written down by
men who heardjjesus of Nazareth speak, or else by men who
faithfully transmitted the account given to them by the actual
hearers.' And we have every reason also to think that no
great time could have elapsed before the recollections of our
Lord's teaching were reduced to a permanent form. Cer-
tainly those who exclude miracle, and who look upon our
viii]. THEIR REPORT OF OUR LORD'S DISCOURSES. 1 15
Lord merely as an eminent teacher, cannot otherwise account
for the substantial faithfulness of the evangelistic record of
His discourses. A few detached aphorisms of a great teacher
may be carried by the memory for some time, and be passed
on from one to another ; but discourses of the length we find
in the Gospels would, in the ordinary course of things, have
perished, if they had not been from the first either committed
to writing, or, if committed to memory, kept alive by constant
repetition. It is surprising how little of spoken words ordi-
nary memories are able to retain. I believe that anyone who
has been much in the company of a distinguished man will,
on his death, be astonished to find how extremely little in the
way of reminiscences of his conversation he will be able to
recall. If Boswell has been able to give a vivid representa-
tion of Dr. Johnson's Table-Talk, it is because he used to
stand behind the chair of the object of his veneration with
note-book in hand. And it was in the same way that Luther's
Table-Talk was preserved. It is quite true that some memo-
ries are exceptionally retentive, and true also that the words
of Jesus were of surpassing interest. All however that follows
from this is, that it is not necessary to conclude that our Lord's
discourses were written down in His own lifetime : but it
seems to me not rational to suppose that, if any long time
had passed after the day of Pentecost before His discourses
were reduced to a permanent form, they could have been pre-
served to us with so much faithfulness and so much purity.
Nor do I think that the case is altered when we look at
the matter from a Christian point of view. We believe that
the Apostles were aided by the Holy Spirit, who brought to
their memories the things that Jesus had said. But we have
no reason to think that this assistance was bestowed on such
terms as to relieve them from the duty of taking ordinary
precautions for the preservation of what was thus recalled to
their minds.
I hold it, then, to be certain that the existing Gospels
contain elements which are, in the highest sense of the word.
Apostolic; and the present question is, Are we to confine
this character to that part of them which records our Lord's
I 2
Ii5 THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. [viii.
discourses? Are we to suppose that the Apostles carefully
remembered and accurately reported what Jesus said, and
that they neglected the easier task of recording what He did ?
or was this a point on which their hearers would not be
curious for information ? No one can answer this or any
other historical question rightly who projects his own feel-
ings into the minds of men who lived centuries ago. A
nineteenth-century critic may be deeply impressed by the
excellence and beauty of the moral teaching ascribed to Jesus
of Nazareth. He very willingly grants that it would be
inconceivable that four illiterate Jews should each indepen-
dently arrive at a degree of wisdom far surpassing that
obtained by any other of their nation ; and so he may
readily accept their own account of the matter, namely, that
all had obtained their wisdom from one common source.
But the modern critic does not care to hear of miracles ; and
he would, if possible, prefer to believe that one in other
respects so admirable as Jesus had made no pretensions to
supernatural power. But it is absurd to imagine that this was
the frame of mind of the first disciples. Who can conceive
of them as men only solicitous to hear what had been the
words of Jesus, and indifferent to the report of His works ?
I have said that the first Christian missionaries summarized
their work as 'preaching Christ'. And if we look at the
specimens of their teaching, whether as presented in the
Book of the Acts or in the unquestioned Apostolic Epistles,
we see that this meant far less preaching what Christ had
said than what he had done. The character in which He is
presented is not that of a wise moral teacher, but of one
' anointed with the Holy Ghost and with power, who went
about doing good, and healing all that were oppressed with
the devil'. Look at any of the places in the Epistles where
the word Gospel is used, and you will see that ' preaching
the Gospel ' meant telling the story of the life and death and
resurrection of our Lord. It follows then (without taking
into account the fact that many of our Lord's sayings would
not have been intelligible without an explanation of the cir-
cumstances under which they were spoken) that we cannot
VIII.] THEIR REPORT OF OUR LORD'S ACTIONS. 117
reasonably believe that those who preserved a record of our
Lord's words did not also relate something of his acts. In
point of fact, our three Synoptic Gospels contain a common
element, which includes deeds as well as words of Christ; and
the only satisfactory account of this common element is, that
it represents an apostolic tradition used by all three.
Later on I shall have to say a little as to the theories that
have been framed to explain the mutual relations of the
Synoptic Gospels ; theories which propose to account as well
for their substantial agreement as for their variations in de-
tail. At present I am concerned with the coincidences between
the three narratives which are altogether too numerous to be
referred to chance. They agree in the main in their selection
of facts — all travelling over nearly the same ground; though
independent narrators would be sure to have differed a
good deal in their choice of subjects for narration out of a
public life of three years. In point of fact we do find exactly
such a difference between the life of our Lord as related by
St. John and by the Synoptics. These last agree in the main
in the order of their narrative ; and in many cases they tell
the story in almost identical words. If these coincidences of
language only occurred in the report of our Lord's discourses,
they would not afford much ground for remark; though even
in that case, before we could assert the perfect independence
of the reporters, we should have to inquire in what language
our Lord spoke. If he spoke in Aramaic, different independent
translators of his words into Greek would not be likely to co-
incide not only in words * but in grammatical constructions.
If we were to consider nothing more than the fact that in
Aramaic there are but two tenses, and in Greek a great
many, we see that the translator into Greek of an Aramaic
* As an example how likely independent translators are to differ in their choice
of words, compare the following two translations given in the Authorized Version for
the same Greek words : 'The scribes which love to go in long clothing, and \os&salic-
tatiotts'm Xhe market places and the chief seats in the Synagogues, and the uppermost
rooms at feasts, which for 2, pretence make long piayers.' — St. Mark, xii. 38. 'The
scribes which desire to -walk in long robes, and love greetings in the markets, and the
highest seats in the Synagogues, and ihe- chief rooms at feasts: which for a. shew
make long prayers.'- — St. Luke, xx. 46.
Il8 THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. [vm.
sentence, even if he were left no choice as to the words he
w^as to employ, would still have great liberty of choice as to
the grammatical structure of his sentence. But although the
greater number of coincidences naturally occur in the report
of our Lord's discourses, which every narrator would be
anxious to repeat in the very words in which tht^y had been
delivered to him ; yet there are, besides, so many cases where,,
in the relation of incidents, the same words are employed
by different Evangelists, that it would be a defiance of all
probability to ascribe these coincidences to chance.* Yet,
with all these agreements, there is so much diversity, as to
suggest the idea to orthodox and sceptical critics alike, that
we have here recastings by three later hands of one original
Gospel. The difference is just this, that while the orthodox
critic makes the original Gospel proceed from apostolic lips
or pen, and ascribes the recastings, if we may call them so,
to men who were in immediate contact with the Apostles ;
sceptical critics place their original Gospel at about the same
date that we assign to the present form of the Gospels ; while
to the latter they assign, with one consent, a date later than
Papias ; and many of them, owing to a blunder which I have
already told you, place the death of Papias as late as A.D.
165.
I have already argued that the external tradition as to the
authorship of a book, if well confirmed, is entitled to much
respect, and is not liable to be displaced unless confuted by
internal evidence. Now, the mere fact that criticism can dis-
cover in the Gospels traces of a still older original is no proof
whatever that they are not of the antiquity that has been
claimed for them. Give them that date, and there still
remains room for an earlier original ; while I hope to show
you that there is not room for any later recasting. But I
must first remark that the concessions which the later school
of sceptical critics has been forced to make have evacuated
* Here are two examples : 'His hand was restored,' aireKaTea-rder] rj xf^P avrov
(Mark iii. 5; Luke vi. 10; Matt, xii. 13) ; 'Let it out to husbandmen and went
into a far country.' e'leSero avThv yewpyoTs koI air€Srifji7]<rev (Matt. xxi. 33 ; Mark xii.
I ; Luke xx. 9).
TBEIR COMMON MATTER.
119
the whole field in which critical science has a right to assert
itself against tradition. We can well believe that there would
be considerable differences between a document written iw
A. D. 60 and in 160; and, therefore, if the question were between
two such dates, one who judged only by internal evidence
might be justified in maintaining his opinion in opposition
to external evidence. But now that all sober criticism has
abandoned the extravagantly late dates which at one time
were assigned to the Gospels, the difference between the con-
tending parties becomes so small, that mere criticism cannot
without affectation pretend to be competent to give a decision.
Take, for example, the difference between an orthodox critic,
who is willing to believe that the fourth Gospel was written
by the Apostle John in extreme old age, towards the end of
the first century, and a sceptical critic of the moderate school,
who is willing to allow it to have been written early in the
second century. It seems to me that this difference is smaller
than criticism can reasonably pronounce upon. P^or I count
it unreasonable to say that it is credible a book should
have been written eighty years after our Lord's death, and
incredible it should have been written only sixty ; when we
have scarcely any documentary evidence as to the history of
the Church, or the progress of Christian thought during the
interval. So I think that the gradual approaches which
Baur's successors have been making to the traditional theory
indicate that criticism will in the end find itself forced to
acquiesce in the account of the origin of the Gospels which
the Church has always received.
Let us examine, then, the Church account of the origin of
the Gospels, and see whether there is anything in it which
what we know of the history of the period gives us a right to
pronounce improbable. Although there is no evidence that
the existing Gospels have suffered material change since
their first composition, or that our present Matthew and
Alark differ from the original Matthew and Mark, of whom
German writers speak so much ; yet it is not asserted that
these Gospels of ours had no predecessors. St. Luke tells us
that he was not the first to write a Gospel : nay, that many
I20 THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. [viii.
before him had taken in hand to set forth in order a declara-
tion of the things most certainly believed among Christians.
What, then, has become of these predecessors of our Gospels ?
How is it that they have so utterly vanished out of existence ?
That there are extant apocryphal Gospels you have doubt-
less heard. In another lecture I hope to give some account
of them. Suffice it now to say, that none of them is imagined
by critics of any school to be earlier than our four, because
the shortest inspection of them shows that they presuppose
and acknowledge the Canonical. Accordingly, when Tischen-
dorf maintained that the present apocryphal Gospel of St.
James was known to Justin Martyr, and that the Gospel of
Nicodemus represents the Acts of Pilate, probably current in
the second century, such a theory was loudly protested
against by sceptical critics, because these documents presup-
pose respectively the Gospels of Matthew and John, which,
therefore, must have been much earlier. The choice of sub-
jects in the apocryphal Gospels is enough to show that they
did not proceed from independent tradition. It is a conceiv-
able thing that since our Lord, after he had become famous,
had crowds of hearers about him, others besides the Apostles
might commit to writing their recollections of his words and
deeds : so that if the apocryphal Gospels had purported to
give an account of our Lord's public ministry, it might at
least deserve an examination whether they do not perchance
contain some genuine traditions. But that they proceeded
from invention, not from tradition, is shown by the fact that
they are silent on those parts of our Lord's life about which
traditions might be expected to exist. They rather under-
take to fill up the gaps of the Gospel history, to tell us the
history of Joseph and Mary previous to their marriage, or
the events of the Saviour's infancy or childhood. No doubt,
Christians would naturally be curious for information about
these topics, and finding the Gospels silent, might be pre-
pared to welcome some answer to their questions from anyone
who professed to be able to give it. But nothing is more in-
trinsically improbable than that anyone should possess trust-
worthy information on such points as these who could add
VIII.] . THEIR PREDECESSORS. 12 i
nothing to the Gospel history of the deeds and words of our
Saviour after he became a public teacher.
Acknowledging, then, that no Gospel earlier than the
Canonical is now extant, we have to ask, Did the Church
formally select our four from the mass of evangelical tradi-
tion ; and was it in consequence of the pre-eminence given to
these by the force of authority that the others then disap-
peared ? Not so : it is a remarkable fact that we have no
early interference of Church authority in the making of a
Canon ; no Council discussed this subject ; no formal deci-
sions were made. The Canon seems to have shaped itself;
and if, when we come further on, you are disposed to com-
plain of this because of the vagueness of the testimony of
antiquity to one or two disputed books, let us remember that
this non-interference of authority is a valuable topic of evi-
dence to the genuineness of our Gospels ; for it thus appears
that it was owing to no adventitious authority, but by their
own weight, that they crushed all rivals out of existence.
Whence could they have had this weight except from its
being known that the framers of these Gospels were men of
superior authority to the others, or with access to fuller in-
formation r
Accept Luke's account of the matter as given in the pre-
face to his Gospel and in the Acts, and all is plain. He tells
us at the beginning of the Acts that the qualification necessary
in one to be added to the apostolic body was, that he should
have companied with the Apostles all the time that our
Lord went in and out among them, beginning from the
baptism of John until the day that he was taken up. And
although it is stated that the specific object of this was in
order that the person chosen might give witness of the
Resurrection ; yet the qualification itself implies that it was
the special function of an Apostle to bear witness to the
whole public life of our Lord — from his baptism to his ascen-
sion. Even if it had not been the official duty of an Apostle
to bear this testimony, who can suppose that the eager
curiosity of Christians for authentic information concerning
the early life of Him, on whom their whole faith was built.
122 THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. [viii.
could leave unquestioned the men who had been his intimate
companions;— men, moreover, who had the promise of his
Spirit to bring to their recollection the things that Jesus had
said to them? It could not be, therefore, but that each
Apostle would be frequently called on to repeat the story
of the things which Jesus had said or done. Nothing would be
more probable than that, on repetition, he should tell the story
nearly in the same way. Yet we cannot well suppose that the
Apostle would at first give one continuous narrative, intended
to embrace all that Jesus had said or done. He would be
more likely, as Papias tells in the case of St. Peter, to give
the accounts of separate incidents, as the wants of his
hearers made it expedient that this or that history should be
related. Now, nothing would be more probable also, than
that those who heard these sacred narratives, and desired,
as every Christain would, to preserve the memory of them,
should write down what they had heard ; and the next step
would be, to frame such detached accounts into an orderly
narrative. This is what I understand from Luke's Preface^
that before him many had taken in hand to do ; — not to write
from their own resources a life of Christ, but merely to ar-
range into an orderly story {avara^aaOat St/jyijatv) the things
which had been orally delivered to them by those who were
from the beginning eye-witnesses and ministers of the Word.
And this, which they had undertaken to do, Luke, who claims
to be possessor of more complete and accurate knowledge,
also undertakes to do [ypa^^ai KaOt^fjc), that so Theophilus
might have certain knowledge of the things in which he had
been instructed.
It is easy to conceive that when Luke had performed his
task, his work was recognized as so much more full, and so
much more trustworthy than most previous arrangements of
the apostolical traditions, that no one tried to preserve these
abortive attempts. Similarly, if Matthew's Gospel and Mark's
were written by the persons to whom we ascribe them, we can
understand how they at once superseded attempts to supply
the same want made by men of less estimation in the Church.
But all the facts lead us to the conclusion that these Gospels^
viii.] ABSENCE OF TRADITION AS TO PUBLICATION. 123
which have absorbed all other attempts to commit our Lord's
teaching" to writing, must have been of so early a date, that no
previous Gospel had had time to gain an established reputa-
tion, and that they must have been written by men holding
in the Church some position of distinction.
We may draw what I think is a strong proof of the anti-
quity of our Gospels from the absence of all authentic tradi-
tion as to the manner of their first publication. Such tradition
would be very welcome if it could be had, and might help us
to a solution of several difficulties. For instance, there are
verses wanting from some early manuscripts of the Gospels
which internal evidence strongly disposes us to pronounce
genuine, and yet which we find it hard to conceive that any
transcriber would leave out, who found them in the text he
had to copy. So the idea suggests itself, Is it not possible
that the Evangelist may have published more than one edition
of his Gospel, so that each of the types of manuscript repre-
sents a genuine text; the shorter representing the first edition
of the Gospel, the fuller representing the text as subsequently
completed by genuine additions made by the Evangelist him-
self? But no tradition is early enough to throw any light on
such a hypothesis, either in the way of confirmation or refuta-
tion. At the latter part of the second century, which is the
first date from which Christian writings in any abundance
have been preserved to us, it is evident no more was known
on the subject than is known now. The publication of the
Gospels dated from a time of then immemorial antiquity.
There sprang up a belief that Matthew published his Gospel
in Palestine, Mark in Italy, Luke in Greece ; and, at a later
period, John in Asia-Minor, by way of supplement to the pre-
vious histories. It is by no means incredible that the fact
that we have three versions of our Lord's life, with so much
in common, may have arisen from independent publication at
different places at nearly the same time ; but any tradition on
the subject is too late for us to build much on it. If any tra-
ditions deserve respect they are those of Papias, who made it
his business to collect them, and who was comparatively early
in date; but even Papias is too late to give us much help in
124 'THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. [viii.
solving the difficulties which the question of the origin of the
Gospels presents.
In the absence, then, of any contemporary testimony as to
the manner of publication of the Gospels, or as to the exist-
ence of any form of them different from what we have now,
we have tried to examine whether there is anything opposed
to probability in what tradition does assert, namely, that the
books were written either by Apostles or companions of the
Apostles. We have seen that the admission of this author-
ship still leaves an interval between .the first publication of
the Gospel story and the existing record, quite long enough
to afford room for explaining the phenomena which the actual
texts present. The question with which we have now to deal
is, Can we reasonably go later ? How long could the Chris-
tian world manage to do without authoritative Gospels ? I
answer, Not long after the first outburst of missionary zeal,
and the consequent foundation of Churches distant from Jeru-
salem. Remember what I said just now, that there was a
time before the word ' Gospel ' denoted the name of a book :
the Gospel then signified the subject of the preaching of every
Christian missionary, and that was in two words — Jesus
Christ. It was because it told the story of Jesus Christ that
the Book of Matthew, or John, or Mark, or Luke, came to be
called the Gospel. We know from the first detailed account
of the Christian weekly meetings for worship — that given by
Justin Martyr — that the reading of the story of Jesus Christ
was part of the stated business of these meetings. How early
are we to date the origin of this practice ? We have only our
sense of historical probability to guide us. But take these
five documents, which Baur does not question — four Epistles
of St. Paul, and the Apocalypse — and gather from them what
the early Church thought of Jesus Christ, and I feel you will
be persuaded that to tell of Him must, from the first, have
been the business of every Christian preacher. If a Church
were presided over by Apostles or others who had first-hand
knowledge of the facts, such presidents would be able to tell
all that was necessary from their personal recollections, un-
assisted by any written record. But what would happen when
viii.] NECESSITY FOR WRITTEN GOSPELS. 125
the Apostolic preachers who had founded a new Church went
away ? The first expedient, no doubt, would be to leave in
charg-e of it a disciple who had been thoroughly trained and
catechized, and so might be trusted to give the people the
lessons of which they had need. But with the multiplication
of Churches it would become more and more difficult to find
persons possessing that long familiarity with the facts which
would qualify them for this task.
It is indeed a point in which modern missions contrast
with apostolic missions, that in our day the formation of a
native ministry is of slow growth, and in most places where
congregations have been gathered from the heathen, the
majority of the teachers are furnished by the Church which
sent forth the first missionaries. But in the apostolic days,
soon after the first burst of missionary effort, and the preach-
ing of the Gospel in foreign cities, we read of the Apostles
ordaining Elders in every city. How were these new Elders
to be supplied with the knowledge their office required ? The
obvious remedy would be, that men who knew the story well
should commit it to writing for the benefit of a new genera-
tion of teachers. Have we any cause to pronounce it unlikely
that such a remedy should be adopted? We are not speaking
of a pre-historic age like that of the composition of the
Homeric poems, in the case of which it may be deemed more
probable that ballads should pass on from mouth to mouth,
than that they should be preserved by the then unknown or
unfamiliar art of writing. We have to do with a literary age.
If we want to know what amount of literary culture was pos-
sessed by the first Christian Churches, we have, in Paul's un-
questioned Epistles, specimens of the communications that
passed between a Christian missionary and his converts.
Can anyone read these letters and doubt that the first Chris-
tian teachers included men quite competent to commit their
message to writing, and that the communities which they
founded included men capable of appreciating and being
grateful for such a service ? If Matthew, Mark, and Luke
wrote their Gospels at the time tradition says they did, they
only met a demand which must have been then pressing, and
126 THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. [viir.
which, if they had not then satisfied it, somebody else must
have attempted to supply.
Well, if we find reason to hold that Gospels were written
by Apostles or their companions, is it consistent with proba-
bility to believe that they were subsequently changed from
their original form ? I have told you of Renan's explanation
of the origin of the Gospels in the little books in which dif-
ferent simple Christians wrote down such stories as they had
come across concerning the Saviour's life and teaching. To
me it is the most amazing thing in the world that a man
should write seven volumes about the Origins of Christianity,
and not have become cognizant of the existence of the Chris-
tian Church. One of the most patent facts in the history of
our religion is its organization : wherever there were Chris-
tians they formed a community ; wherever a Church was
founded it was provided with duly commissioned teachers.
It was not the business of the individual Christian to compile
a Gospel for himself; he was duly instructed in it by the re-
cognized heads of the Christian community to which he be-
longed. I do not pretend that there was any decision of the
universal Church on the subject. I well believe that the
adoption of a definite form of evangelic instruction was
regulated for each Church by its bishop, if you will permit me
to call him so ; or if any difficulty is raised as to the use of
this word, I will say, by its presiding authority. But, on any
view of this authority, its extension renders it incredible that
the Gospels originated in the haphazard way which Renan
-describes.
When the choice of which I speak was once made, was
it liable to be easily changed ? I have spoken already of the
blunder in historical inquiries of projecting our own feelings
into the minds of men of former generations. This is what
we are accused of doing here. We have been brought up
from childhood to believe in the inspiration of these sacred
narratives : wilfully to change a word of them seems to us
sacrilege. But, it is said, we have no right to attribute any
such feeling to the first disciples, whose sole anxiety was to
know as much as possible of what Jesus had said or done,
viii.] A GOSPEL ONCE ACCEPTED NOT CHANGED. 127
and to whom it would be a matter of comparative indifference
whether or not they had the exact form in which Mark or
Luke had recorded it. But people would at least be solici-
tous about the historic certainty of the things to which they
were to give their faith. St. Luke tells his disciple his object
in writing was 'iva liriyvij^c irepi aJv icar»)p';0i7c Xoywv rrjv a(T<paXeiav.
Without such a(7(})a\eia the Christian people could not be
satisfied, Theophilus of Antioch, writing about A.D. 180,
says : 'Writers ought either to have been eye-witnesses them-
selves of the things they assert, or at least have accurately
learned them from those who had seen them. For those who
write uncertain things do nothing but beat the air.' The
feeling here expressed is so natural that I cannot believe that
those who were in possession of narratives, supposed to have
been written by men of such rank in the Church as Matthew,
Mark, and Luke, could allow them to be altered by inferior
authority. Little do those who suppose such an alteration
possible know of the conservatism of Christian hearers. St
Augustine, in a well-known story, tells us that, when a
bishop, reading the chapter about Jonah's gourd, ventured
to substitute St. Jerome's * hedera ' for the established ' cucur-
bita', such a tumult was raised, that if the bishop had perse-
vered he would have been left without a congregation.* The
feeling that resents such change is due to no later growth
of Christian opinion. Try the experiment on any child of
your acquaintance. Tell him a story that interests him ;
and when you meet him again tell him the story again,
making variations in your recital, and see whether he will
not detect the change, and be indignant at it. I do not be-
lieve in short that any Church would permit a change to be
made in the form of evangelic instruction in which its mem-
bers had been catechetically trained, unless those who made
the change were men of authority equal to their first instruc-
tors. Take the age in which the Apostles and apostolic men
were going about as teachers; and with regard to that age
I can believe in recastings and divers versions of the Evangelic
• Auf^ustine ii/. 71, vol. ii., pp. 161, 1 "q.
128 THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. [ix.
narrative, all commended to the Christian world by equal
authority. But if a bishop of the age of Papias had presumed
to innovate on the Gospel as it had been delivered by those,
* which from the beginning were eye-witnesses and ministers
of the Word', I venture to say that, like the bishop of whom
Augustine tells, he would have been left without a congre-
gation.
IX.
Part II.
THEORIES AS TO THEIR ORIGIN.
Having at some length laid before you the account which
Church tradition gives of the origin of our Gospels, I went on
in the last lecture to compare with this the conclusions to
which we are led by a study of these writings themselves ;
and I did not then proceed further than was necessary to
show that these conclusions are in no wise contradictory to
the traditional account, but rather are confirmatory of it.
But the study of the genesis of the Gospels has much more
than an apologetic interest. Critics of all schools have been
tempted to grapple with the perplexing problems presented
by the aspect of three narratives of the same series of events,
so like each other, not only in arrangement, but in verbal
details, as to convince us that there must be a close affinity
of some kind between them, and yet presenting manifold
diversities, such as to be irreconcilable with the most obvious
ways of accounting for the resemblances.
It is not without some reluctance that I go on to describe
to you more minutely the problems that have to be solved,
and to tell you something of the attempts made to solve
them. Not that I share the feelings of some who regard
their belief in the inspiration of the Gospels as precluding
IX.] THEORIES AS TO THEIR ORIGIN. 129
any such inquiry. They cannot imagine that one inspired by
the Holy Spirit should have need to consult any previous
document, and they think it enough to hold that such as the
Gospels are now, such their Divine Author from the first
ordained they should be. Some such feeling stood for a time
in the way of geological inquiries. If the markings of a stone
resembled a plant or a fish, it was held that this was but a
sport of Creative Power, which had from the beginning made
the fossil such as we see it. Yet we now feel that we may
lawfully study the indications of their origin which God's
works present, in the reverent belief that He has not mocked
us with delusive suggestions of a fictitious history. Similarly
we may pronounce it to be not truly reverent to decline a
careful study of God's Word on account of any preconceived
theory as to the mode of composition most befitting an
inspired writer.
My reluctance to enter with you upon this inquiry arises
solely from my sense of its extreme difficulty. As I have
already said, we are on ground where we have no authentic
history to guide us ; for the earliest uninspired Church writers
are far too late to have had personal knowledge of the pub-
lication of the Gospels, and such traditions as they have
preserved are extremely scanty, and not always to be
implicitly relied on. And the history of the present specu-
lations shows how difficult it is to plant firm footsteps where
we are obliged to depend on mere criticism, unaided by
historical testimony. For if I wished to deter you from
forming any theory as to the origin of the Gospels, and to
persuade you that knowledge on this subject is now unattain-
able by man, I should only have to make a list for you of
the discordant results arrived at by a number of able and
ingenious men who have given much study to the subject.
Yet patient and careful thought has so often gained
unexpected victories, that we incur the reproach of indolent
cowardice if we too easily abandon problems as insoluble.
In particular, we ought not to grudge our labour when it is
on God's Word we are asked to bestow our study. It is
scarcely creditable to Christians that in recent years far more
K
I30
THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. [ix.
pains have been expended on the minute study of the New
Testament writings by those who recognize in them no
Divine element, than by those who believe in their inspira-
tion. In fact, their very belief in inspiration, fixing the
thoughts of Christians on the Divine Author of the Bible,
made them indifferent or even averse to a comparative
<ixamination of the work of the respective human authors of
the sacred books. They were sure there could be no contra-
diction between them, and it was all one to their faith in
what part of the Bible a statement was made, so that no
])ractical object seemed to be gained by inquiring whether or
not what was said by Matthew was said also by Mark. In
modern times the study of the New Testament has been taken
up by critics who, far from shutting their eyes to discrepancies,
are eager to magnify into a contradiction the smallest in-
dication they can discover of opposite ' tendencies ' in the
different books ; and we must at least acknowledge the close-
ness and carefulness of their reading, and be willing in
that respect to profit by their example. For these reasons,
notwithstanding the discouraging absence of agreement
among the critics who have tried from a study of the
Gospels themselves to deduce the history of their origin, I
think myself bound to lay before you some account of their
speculations.
The hypotheses which have been used to account for the
close agreement of the Synoptic Evangelists in so much
common matter are three-fold : — (i) The Evangelists copied,
one from another, the work of him whom we may place first
having been known to the second, and these two to the third.
(2) The Evangelists made use of one or more written docu-
ments which have now perished. (3) The common source
was not written but oral, the very words in which Apostles
had first told the story of the Saviour's works having been
faithfully preserved by the memory of different disciples.
There is wide room for differences among themselves in de-
tails between the advocates of each of these three solutions;
and the solutions also may be variously combined, for they do
not exclude one another. If the first of the three Synoptics,
IX.] ACCOUNTING FOR THEIR AGREEMENTS. 131
whichever he was, made use of a previous document, it is
conceivable that the second Evangelist may have not only-
made use of the first Gospel, but also of that previous
document : while, again, if we assert that an Evangelist used
written documents, we are still not in a position to deny that
some of the things he records had been communicated to him
orally. Evidently, therefore, there is room for a great variety
of rival hypotheses.
Before I enter on any detailed discussion of them there is
a preliminary caution which it is by no means unnecessary to
give, viz., that in our choice of a solution we ought to be
determined solely by a patient comparison of each hypothesis
with the facts ; and that we are not entitled to decide off-hand
on any solution according to the measure of its agreement
with our preconceived theory of inspiration. For example,
there are some who think that they are entitled to reject with-
out examination both the first and second of the solutions I
have stated, because they cannot believe that if the story of
our Lord's life had been once written down by an inspired
hand, any subsequent writer who knew of it would permit
himself to vary from it in the slightest degree ; while they do
not find the same difficulty in conceiving that variations may
have been introduced into the narrative in the process of oral
transmission before it was written down.* For myself, I see
no a priori resison for preferring one account of the matter to
the other. If we had had to speculate beforehand on the way
in which it was likely God would have provided an inspired
record of the life of His Son upon this earth, we should not
have guessed that there would be four different narratives
* Thus Mr. Sadler, a writer for whom I have much respect, says (Comm. on St.
Matthew, p. xi.) : ' St. Luke, if he had either of the two first [Gospels] before him
would have scarcely reproduced so much that is common to both, with alterations
also which he could never have made if he looked upon them as inspired documents.'
And again, ' The inspiration [of the Gospels] is incompatible with the theory that
they were all taken from one document, for in such a case that unknown and lost
document must have been the only one which could be called the work of the Spirit ;
and the alterations which each one made in it, which their mutual discrepancies
show, prove that in altering it they individually werj not so fal- guidi.d by the Holy
Spirit ' .
K 2
132 THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. [ix.
presenting certain variations among themselves. But we
know, as a matter of fact, that He has not seen fit to secure
uniformity of statement between the sacred writers. I need
not delay to give reasons for thinking that the Bible, such
as we have it, is better adapted for the work it was to accom-
plish than if it had been endowed with attributes which men
might think would add to its perfection. I content myself
with the matter of fact that God has permitted that there
should be variations between the Gospels ; and if He did not
choose to prevent them by miraculously guarding the memory
of those who reported the narratives before they were written
down, I know no greater reason for His interfering miracu-
lously for a similar purpose on the supposition that the
Evangelists used written documents.
Needless embarrassment, in fact, has been caused by
theories invented under a fancied necessity of establishing
that conditions have been satisfied in the transmission of the
Divine message, which cannot be shown to be essential to
what one of the Evangelists declares to have been his object
in writing, viz., 'That ye might believe that Jesus is the
Christ, the Son of God, and that believing, ye might have life
through His name.' We do not imagine that when two of
the Apostolic missionaries went about preaching the Gospel
they would think themselves bound to tell the story of the
Saviour's life exactly in the same way, nor even that if one
were relating an incident at which he had not been present
himself, he would think it necessary to repeat the identical
words of his informant. If God did not see fit to provide
statements of rigid uniformity for the establishment of the
faith of the first generation of Christians, whose souls were,
no doubt, as dear to Him as those of their successors, what
warrant have we for asserting that He must have dealt
differently with later generations ? When anyone imagines
himself entitled to pronounce off-hand that the second Evange-
list (whichever he was) could not have known that an inspired
writer had performed the task before him, we cannot but ask
him if he does not believe that the second Evangelist was
inspired as much as the first. Whether the human author of
IX.] HYPOTHESIS OF COMMON DOCUMENTS. 133
the second Gospel knew or not that he had had a predecessor,
the Divine Author of the work assuredly knew ; and, notwith-
standing-, it was His will that the second Gospel should be
written. The fact that the two Evangelists stood precisely
on a level, in respect of supernatural assistance, makes all
the difference in the world to the argument. We justly assign
to the four Gospels a place apart. Though many in our day
undertake to write Lives of Christ, we know that what they
presume to add without warrant from these inspired narratives
may freely be rejected. But the Apostolic preachers were
not dependent on any written Gospel for their knowledge.
Every one of our Evangelists has told us many things which
he could not have learned from the work of any of the other
three. If one of the apostolic band of missionaries, on
quitting a Church which he had founded, desired to leave
behind, for the instruction of his converts, a record of the
facts on which their faith rested, I know no reason why he
should not be free to choose whether he should give to be
copied the story as written by another Evangelist, or whether
he should commit to writing the narrative as he had been
accustomed, in his oral teaching, to deliver it himself. I am
sure that we are over-arrogant if we venture to dictate the
conditions according to which inspiration must act, and if we
undertake to pronounce, from our own sense of the fitness of
things, what mode of using his materials would be per-
missible to one commissioned to write by God's Holy Spirit.
But Alford objects, that if one of our Evangelists knew
the work of another, or a document on which it was founded,
the arbitrary manner in which he must have used his arche-
type— at one moment servilely copying its words, and the
next moment capriciously deviating from them — is inconsis-
tent not only with a belief in the inspiration of the antecedent
document employed, but also with the ascription to it of any
authority whatever. I am persuaded that this assertion
cannot be maintained by anyone who takes the pains to
study the way in which historians habitually use the docu-
ments they employ as authorities. The ordinary rule is, that
a great deal of the language (including most of the remark-
134 THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. [ix.
able words) of the original passes into the work of the later
writer, who, however, is apt to show his independence by
variations, the reasons for which are often not obvious. Mr.
Smith, of Jordan Hill, whose work on the Shipwreck of St.
Paul I have already recommended to you, wrote also a
treatise on the origin of the Gospels. In this he places side
b)'' side accounts of battles, as given in Napier's History of the
Peninsular War^ in Alison's History, and in a French military
memoir employed by both writers; and he finds just the same
phenomena as our Gospels exhibit. The three narratives not
only agree in their general purport, but have many common
words : sometimes a whole sentence is common to two ; and
yet identity of narration is never kept up long without some
interruption.
In ancient times it was considered legitimate to use, with-
out acknowledgment, the very words of a preceding writer
to a much greater extent than would now be regarded as
consistent with literary honesty. But even when one means
to copy the exact words of another, it is very easy to deviate
from perfect accuracy. It might be amusing, but would lead
me too far from my subject, if I were to give you illustrations
how little we can be sure that what modern writers print with
inverted commas does really contain the ipsissima verba of the
writer whom they profess to quote. Of ancient writers, there
is none whose reputation for accuracy stands higher than
that of Thucydides : yet, what he gives fv. 47) as the accurate
copy of a treaty presents no fewer than thirty-one variations
from the portions of the actual text recently recovered.* The
frequent occurrence of variations in what are intended to be
faithful transcripts arises from the fact that it is irksome to
stop the work of the pen in order to refer to the archetype,
and so the copyist is under a constant temptation to try to
carry more in his head than his memory can faithfully retain.
Naturally, then, when a writer undertakes no obligation of
faithful transcription, but of his own free will uses the words
of another, he will look at his archetype at longer intervals —
* Mahaffy's History of Greek Literature, ii. 121.
IX.] VARIATIONS CONSISTENT WITH HYPOTHESIS. 135
not referring to it as long as he believes that he sufficiently
remembers the sense; and consequently, while he reproduces
the more remarkable words which have fixed themselves in
his memory, will be apt to vary in what may seem a capri-
cious way from his original. I do not think that the varia-
tions between the Synoptic Gospels exceed in number or
amount what might be expected to occur in the case of
three writers using a common authority ; nor do I think
that we have any right to assume that God would miracu-
lously interfere to prevent the occurrence of such variations.
If we desire to know what amount of variation an Evange-
list might probably think it needless to exclude, some means
of judgment are afforded by the three accounts of the conver-
sion of St. Paul contained in the Acts of the Apostles. These
accounts present the same phenomena of great resemblance
with unaccountable diversities, and even apparent contradic-
tions. If they had been found in different works it might
have been contended that the author of one had not seen the
others; and ingenious critics might have even discovered the
different ' tendencies ' of the narrators. As things are, we
seem to have in the comparison of these narratives a measure
of the amount of variation which St. Luke regarded as com-
patible with substantial accuracy. I am therefore unable to
assent to those who would set aside without examination the
hypothesis that one Evangelist was indebted to another, or that
both had used a common document ; and who would reduce
us to an oral tradition as the only source of their agreements
that could be asserted without casting an imputation on the
inspiration or on the authority of our existing documents.
Yet, after all, we have advanced but a little way when we
have vindicated for the advocates of the documentary hypo-
thesis* the right to get a hearing. We may now go on to
examine what need there is of any such hypothesis. The
oral teaching of the Apostles was, no doubt, the common
* ' Hypothesis,' perhaps, is hardly a right word to use. We know as a certain
fact, from St. Luke's preface, that other documents were in existence when he wrote.
It is then scarcely an hypothesis to assume that he made use of these documents,
however much liis superior knowledge enabled him to supplement or correct them.
136 THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. [ix.
basis of all the Evangelic narratives. Does this common
basis sufficiently account for all the facts ?
Let us then observe the precise nature of the agreement
between the Synoptic narratives. If the story of a miracle
were told by two independent witnesses we should have
relations in substantial agreement no doubt, but likely to
differ considerably in cheir form. But in a number of cases
the Synoptic narratives agree so closely, in form as well as
in substance, as to convince us that they are not stories told
by independent witnesses, but different versions of the story
some one witness had told. Take, for example, a verse
common to all three Synoptics (Matt. ix. 6; Mark ii. lO;
Luke V. 24): 'But that ye may know that the Son of Man
hath power on earth to forgive sins (then saith he to the sick
of the palsy) Arise, take up thy bed and go unto thine house '.
You will feel that it would be scarcely possible for three
independent narrators to agree in interpolating this paren-
thesis into their report of our Lord's words. Take another
example: St. Luke (viii. 28), relating the miracle of the
healing of the demoniac, tells that 'when he saw Jesus he
cried out, What have I to do with Thee, Jesus, thou Son of
God most high ? I beseech Thee, torment m.e not. For He
had commanded the unclean spirit to come out of the man'.
Now, if the story had been told in the chronological order we
should first have Jesus' command to the unclean spirit to
depart, and then the remonstrance of the demoniac. So
when we find Mark (v. 7) agreeing with Luke in the minute
detail of relating the remonstrance first, and then adding
parenthetically that there had been a command, this coinci-
dence alone gives us warrant for thinking that we have here,
not the story as it might have been told by two different
witnesses to the miracle, but the story in the form in which a
single witness was accustomed to tell it.
Add now the consideration that both in the instances just
produced, and in many others, we have a vast number of
\ erbal coincidences between the corresponding narratives of
different Evangelists ; and we may go further. Either the
story, as it proceeded from the lips of that single witness.
IX.] ORAL HYPOTHESIS. 1 37
was written down; or at least the hearers did not content
themselves with a faithful report of the substance of what he
related, but must have striven to commit to memory the very
words in which he related it. Before the narrative came into
our Gospels it had passed out of the fluidity of a story, told
now one way, now another, and had crystallized into a defi-
nite form.
When we have reached this point, it seems to become
practically unimportant to determine whether or not writing
had been used for the preservation of the story before it was
included in our Gospels. If writing- was so used, it would
clearly be idle to inquire whether the material to which the
writing had been committed was papyrus, or parchment, or
waxen tablets. Well, if we are willing to believe that the
memory of the first disciples, unspoiled by the habit of
writing and stimulated by the surpassing interest of the
subject, retained what was entrusted to it as tenaciously
and as taiihfuUy as a written record, then the hypothesis
that a story had been preserved by memory stands on the
same level as the hypothesis that it had been preserved on
papyrus or on parchment. We should have no means of
determining, and very little interest in determining, which
hypothesis was actually true. In either case we acknow-
ledge that the tradition had assumed the fixity of a written
record.
It is because we have not only one but a series of stories
common to the Synoptics that the difference between docu-
mentary and oral transmission comes to have a practical
meaning. The latter supposition contemplates a number of
stories preserved independently : the former regards them as
already embodied in a document which, even if it did not
pretend to be a complete Gospel, contained the narration of
more incidents than one, disposed in a definite order. Our
choice between the two suppositions can be guided by exa-
mining whether the Evangelists agree, not only in their way of
relating separate stories, but also in the order in which they
arrange them. Now, a careful examination brings out the
fact that the likeness between the Synoptic Gospels is not
138 THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. [ix.
confined to agreement in the way of telling separate stories,
but extends also to the order of arranging them. Take, for
instance, the agreement between Matthew and Mark as ta
the place in which they tell the death of John the Baptist
(Matt. xiv. I ; Mark vi. 14). They relate that when Herod
heard of the fame of Jesus he was perplexed who He might
be, and said to his servants, 'This is John whom I beheaded '.
And then, in order to explain this speech, the two Evange-
lists go back in their narrative to relate the beheading of
John. Their agreement in this deviation from the natural
chronological order can scarcely be explained except by
supposing either that one Evangelist copied from the other,
or both from a common source. The order of St. Luke
deviates here from that of the other two Evangelists. He
relates the imprisonment of John in its proper place (iii. iq;,
and the perplexed inquiry of Herod later (ix. 7) ; but we are
not entitled to infer that he did not employ the same source,
for the change is an obvious improvement that would suggest
itself to anyone desirous to relate the history in chronological
order. And we may even conjecture that it was in conse-
quence of Luke's thus departing from the order of his arche-
type that he has come to omit altogether the direct narrative
of the beheading of John.
The example I have cited is not an isolated one. Our
attention, indeed, is caught by a few cases in which an
incident is differently placed by different Evangelists, but
the rule is uniformity of order ; and in particular Mark and
Luke are in very close agreement. Of course, as to a few
leading events, the arrangement would admit of no choice.
All narratives would begin with the story of our Lord's birth,
would go on to tell of his baptism, and would finish with his
Passion and Resurrection. But there is a host of incidents,
the order of arranging which is dictated by no internal
necessity. If these had been preserved separately by oral
tradition, the chances are enormous that different persons
weaving them into a connected narrative would arrange
them differently ; for the stories themselves but rarely con-
tain notes of time, such as would direct the order of placing
IX.] ARRANGEMENT OF INCIDENTS. 139
them. I feel bound, therefore, to conclude that the likeness
between the Gospels is not sufficiently explained by their
common basis, the oral narrative of the Apostles; and that
they must have copied, either one from the other — the later
from the earlier — or else all from some other document earlier
than any. Reuss* has divided the Evangelic narrative into
124 sections, of which 47 are common to all three Synoptics ;
and I believe that in these common sections we have, repre-
sented approximately, a primary document used by all three
Evangelists. I say approximately, for of course we cannot
assume without careful examination that some of these
sections may not have come in from a different source, or
that some sections which we now find only in two Evange-
lists, or even only in one, may not have belonged to the
common basis.
On the other hand, a study of the order of narration gives
the death-blow to Schleiermacher's theory that the ' logia ' of
St. Matthew consisted of a collection of our Lord's discourses.
It is not only that the words of Papias, as I have contended,
give us no authority for believing in the existence of this
' Spruchsamrnlung', which so many critics assume as un-
doubted fact ; but critical comparison of the Gospels gives us
reason to assert the negative, and say that no such collection
of discourses existed. If the Evangelists took their report of
our Lord's sayings from a previously existing document, they
would have been likely in their arrangement to follow the
order of that document ; but if the sayings were separately
preserved by the memory of the hearers, two independent
arrangers would probably dispose them in different order.
Now, the sections common to the three Synoptics contain
some discourses of our Lord, and, as a rule, these follow the
same order in all; but besides these Matthew and Luke report
many other of his sayings, and in the case of these last there
* Professor at Strassburg. The division is given, p. 17 of the introduction to
his Histoire Evangelique, which forms part of his French translation of the Bible,
with commentary. I have found this introduction very instructive, and it would have
been more so if Reuss had cleared his mind of the cobwebs that have been spun
about the fragments of Papias.
I40 THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. [ix.
is no agreement between the order of the two Evangelists.
Take, for example, the Sermon on the Mount, which seems
to offer the best chance of complete agreement, there being a
corresponding discourse in St. Luke. But the result is, that
of the 107 verses in the Sermon on the Mount only 27 appear
in the corresponding discourse in Luke vi. Twelve more of
these verses are found in the nth chapter, 14 in the 12th, 3
in the 13th, i in the 14th, 3 in the i6th, and 47 are omitted
altogether. The same dislocation is found if we compare any
other of the discourses in St. Matthew with St. Luke. And if
we further take into account how many parables and other
sayings of our Lord there are in each of these two Gospels,
which are not found in the other, and yet which no one who
found them in a document he was using would be likely to
omit, we can assert, with as much confidence as we can assert
anything on critical grounds alone, and in the absence of ex-
ternal evidence, that Matthew and Luke did not draw from
any documentary record containing only our Lord's dis-
courses, but that the sayings they have in common must have
reached them as independent fragments of an oral tradition.
What I have said gives me occasion to remark that
theories as to one of the Synoptics having copied another
seem to me deserving consideration, only if we confine them
to the relations of Mark to the other two, for Matthew and
Luke show every sign of being quite independent of each
other.* When we compare the accounts which they give of
our Lord's birth, we find them proceed on such different lines
as to suggest that they have been supplied by independent
authorities. The two accounts agree in the main facts that
our Lord was miraculously conceived of the Virgin Mary, who
was espoused to a man named Joseph, of the lineage of
David ; that the birth took place at Bethlehem, and that the
family afterwards resided at Nazareth. But the two Gospels
give different genealogies to connect Joseph with David, and
wdth respect to further details those which the one gives are
* If this be so, no great interval of time can have separated their publications ;
otherwise the later could scarcely fail to have become acquainted with the work of
the earlier.
IX.] DID THE LATER BORROW FROM THE EARLIER 141
absent from the other. In the one we have successive revela-
tions to Joseph, the visit of the Magi, the slaughter of the
Innocents, the flight into Egypt. In the other the annuncia-
tion to Mary, the visit to Elisabeth, the taxing, the visit of
the shepherds, the presentation in the temple, and the testi-
mony of Simeon and Anna. As we proceed further in our
comparison of the two Gospels, we continue to find a number
of things in each which are not recorded in the other ; and it
is not easy to see why, if one were using the other as an
authority, he should omit so many things well suited to his
purpose. When, therefore, we have to explain the agree-
ments of these two Evangelists, the hypothesis that one
borrowed directly from the other is so immensely less pro-
bable than the hypothesis that both writers drew from a com-
mon source, that the former hypothesis may safely be left out
of consideration.
The hypothesis that the later of the Synoptics borrowed
from the earlier may evidently be maintained, and has
actually been maintained, in six different forms : according
as they are supposed to have written in the orders : Matthew,
Mark, Luke ; Matthew, Luke, Mark ; Mark, Matthew, Luke ;
Mark, Luke, Matthew ; Luke, Matthew, Mark ; Luke, Mark,
Matthew. You will find in Meyer's Commentary (or, perhaps,
more conveniently in that of Alford, who has copied Meyer's
list) the names of the advocates of each of these arrange-
ments. However, if we regard it as established that Matthew
and Luke were independent, it is only with regard to the
relations of these two to Mark that the hypothesis that one
Evangelist used the work of another need come under con-
sideration. Some maintain that Mark's Gospel was the
earliest, and that Matthew and Luke independently incor-
porated portions of his narrative with additions of their own :
others believe that Mark wrote latest, and that he combined
and abridged the two earlier narratives.* To this question I
mean to return.
* This controversy illustrates a source of difficulty in these critical inquiries, viz.,
that there is scarcely anything which may not be taken up by one or other of two
handles, it constantly happening that the same facts are appealed to by critics who
142 THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. [ix.
The theory that one Evangelist copied the work of another
is sometimes modified by the supposition that the Gospel
copied was not one of those we read now, but the supposed
original Matthew or original Mark, from which it is imagined
that our existing Gospels were developed. I count this as
but a form of the solution which will next come under con-
sideration, viz., that the Evangelists used common documents.
To give to one of these documents the question-begging name
-of ' original Matthew,' &c., is to overload the hypothesis with
an assumption which it is impossible to verify. Such a name
implies not only that the compiler of that which we now call
St. Matthew's Gospel used previous documents, but that he
used some one document in a pre-eminent degree, taking it
as the basis of his work ; and further, that the name of the
compiler of the present document was not Matthew, and that
this was the name of the author of the basis-document. It is
unscientific so to encumber with details the solution of a
problem which, in its simplest form, presents quite enough of
difficulty. Accumulation of unverifiable details is a manifest
note of spuriousness. We should, for instance, be thankful
to anyone who could tell us in what year Papias or Justin
Martyr was born ; but if our informant went on to tell us the
day of the month and hour of the day, we should know at
once that we had to do with romance, not with history. Quite
in like manner we feel safe in rejecting such a history as
Scholten has given of the origin of St. Mark's Gospel. He
tells how, from the proto-Marcus combined with the collection
of speeches contained in the proto-Matthaeus, there resulted
the deutero-Matthseus ; how this was in time improved into a
trito-Matthaeus, and finally, this employed by a new editor of
the proto-Marcus to manufacture by its means the deutero-
draw from them quite opposite conclusions. For example, certain miracles recorded
by St. Mark (i. 32) are related to have been performed ' at even when the sun did
set ' {6\f/las yfyoix&T^s ore eSvcrev 6 ifiKtos). Here St. Matthew (viii. 16) has ' at even'
(6\pias yevofMeur}s) ; St. Luke (iv. 40), 'when the sun was setting' (Svvoutos tov r]\iov).
One critic argues that this comparison clearly shows Mark to be the earliest, his two
successors having each omitted part of his fuller statement. Another critic pronounces
this to be a clear case of 'conflation', the latest writer evidently being Mark, who
•carefully combined in his narrative everything that he found in the earlier sources.
IX.] HYPOTHESIS OF HEBREW ORIGINAL. 143
Marcus which we have now. A story so circumstantial and
so baseless has no interest for the historical inquirer.
The advocates of the documentary hypothesis have also
been apt to encumber their theories with details which pass
out of the province of history into that of romance, as they
undertake to number and name the different documents
which have been used in the composition of the Gospels.
Anyone who assumes that our Evangelists used a common
document has first to settle the question, In what language
are we to suppose that document to have been written : Greek
or Hebrew ? where, of course, the latter word means not the
■classical Hebrew of the Old Testament, but the modern type
of the language, Aramaic, to which the name Hebrew is
given in the New Testament, and which we know was exten-
sively used in Palestine in our Lord's time. It was employed
for literary purposes : Josephus, for instance, tells us in his
preface that his work on the Jewish wars had been originally
written in that language. It is intrinsically probable that the
Hebrew-speaking Christians of Palestine should have a Gospel
in their own language, and we actually hear of Hebrew Gospels
claiming great antiquity. It is therefore no great stretch of
assumption to suppose that a Hebrew Gospel was the first to
be written, and that this was made use of by the writers of
Greek Gospels.
The hypothesis of a Hebrew original at once accounts for
a number of verbal differences between corresponding pas-
sages in different Gospels. How easy it is for the process of
translation to introduce variations not to be found in the
original may be abundantly illustrated from the Authorized
Version,* the translators of which declare in their preface that
they deliberately adopted the principle of not thinking them-
selves bound always to translate the same Greek word by the
same English. For example, there is considerable verbal
difference between the two following texts: 'John had his
raiment of camel's hair, and a leathern girdle about his loins,
and his meat was locusts and wild honey' (Matt. iii. 4) ; 'John
was clothed with camel's hair, and with a girdle of a skin
* See note, p. 117.
144 THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. [ix.
about his loins, and he did eat locusts and wild honey*
(Mark i. 6). Yet the sense is so precisely the same that the
variations would be completely accounted for, if we suppose
the two to be independent translations of the same original
in another language. We know for certain that the most
important difference between the two texts can be thus
accounted for ; the * girdle of a skin ' in one Evangelist and
the 'leathern girdle' of the other being both translations of
the same Greek words, Z,i^\n\v cipfxarivnv. It is, then, a very
tempting conjecture that the further differences, ' had his rai-
ment of camel's hair', 'was clothed with camel's hair' ; ' his
meat was locusts and wild honey', 'he did eat locusts and
wild honey ' — differences which exist in the Greek as well as
in our version — might be explained by regarding the two
Greek accounts as translations from a common Aramaic
original. This supposition evidently gives a satisfactory
explanation of all variations between the Gospels which are
confined to words and do not affect the sense. Some ingenious
critics have gone further, and tried to show how some of the
variations which do affect the sense might have arisen in the
process of translation from an Aramaic original. But I do
not feel confidence enough in any of these explanations to
think it worth while to report them to you.
Even when the sense is unaffected, the idea may be pushed
too far, and we may easily mistake for translation al variations
what are really editorial corrections. For example, in Mat-
thew (ix. 12) and Mark (ii. 17) we read, ' They that are strong
(ot to-xvovrtc) have no need of a physician', in Luke (v .31)
it is 'they that are well' [ol vyiaivovTs^). Now Matthew and
Luke may have independently translated the same Aramaic
word by different Greek ones ; but it is also a possible sup-
position that, having Matthew's or Mark's Greek before him,
but knowing that our Lord had not spoken in Greek, Luke
purposely altered the popular phrase ol laxvovrtg into the
more correct word to denote health, vjiaivovTic;* Again, St.
* Similarly, Luke v. i8 has irapa\e\vfj.{uos, not napaXvriKSs, Mark ii. 3 i laadai
(vi. 19), not Biaaw^eiv (Matt. xiv. 36) ; rprj/xa ^e\6vris (xviii. 25), not Tfjvin^fjLa pacpiSos
(Matt. xix. 24), or rpviMuKia, l)a<pi5os (Mark x. 25). Many more instances of tlie kind
IX.] ■ HEBREW ORIGINAL INSUFFICIENT. 14^
Mark uses several words which we know, from the gram-
inarian Phrynichus, were regarded as vulgarisms by those
who aimed at elegance of Attic style. Such are eaxartoQ t^e*
(v. 23), tV(T\yiniov (xv. 43), KoAAujStorat (xi. 15), KOpuaiov (v. 41],
Kpa(5(3aToc: (ii. 4), fiovocpdaXnog (ix. 47), opKi^io (v. 7]. pawKT/xa
(xiv, 65), pa(piQ (x. 25).* Now when Luke avoids all these
words, we cannot infer with any certainty that he is merely
making an independent translation of an Aramaic original.
The case may be, that St. Luke, having more command of
the Greek language than the other Evangelists, designedly
altered phrases which he found in a Greek original in-
tended for a circle of readers the majority of whom were
not Greek by birth, and who habitually spoke the Greek
language with less purity than those for whom his Gospel
was composed.
However this may be, the hypothesis of an Aramaic
original does not suffice to explain all the phenomena.
For there are very many passages where the Evangelists
agree in the use of Greek words, which it is not likely could
have been hit on independently by different translators. If
such cases are to be explained by the use of a common
original, that original must have been in the Greek lan-
guage. On the l-movmoQ of the Lord's Prayer, though the
word plainly belongs to the class of which I speak, I do not
lay stress, because we can well believe that a liturgical use of
will be found in Dr. Hobart's interesting book on The Medical Language 0/ St. Luke.
In this work the Church tradition that the author of the third Gospel and of the Acts
of the Apostles was the same person (viz. he who is described [Col. iv. 14] as Luke
the beloved physician) is confirmed by a comparison of the language of these books
with that of Greek medical treatises. The result is to show that a common feature cf
the Third Gospel and the Acts is the use of technical medical terms, which in the
New Testament are either peculiar to St. Luke, or at least are used by him far more
frequently than by any other of the writers. Dr. Hobart sometimes pushes his
argument too far, forgetting that medical writers must employ ordinary as well as
technical language, and therefore that every word frequently found in medical books
cannot fairly be claimed as a term in which medical writers can be supposed to have
an exclusive property. But when every doubtful instance has been struck out of Dr.
Hobart's lists, enough remain to estabhsh completely what he desires to prove.
* I take this Ust from Dr. Abbott's article ' Gospels' in the ninth edition of the
Encyclopcedia Britannica.
L
146 THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. ' [ix.
that Prayer in Greek had become common before our Gospels
were written ; and such a use would affect the language of
translators. Nor again can I lay stress on a very striking
and oft-cited specimen : Matt. xxi. 44, 6 iraawv tirX tov Xidov
TOVTOv cTVvdXaaOticTtTai, tcp' ov 0 av Trtari, XiK/uiiaei avTOv. We
have the very same words in St. Luke, xx. 18, with only
the exception of skhvov Xidov for Xldov tovtov. It is certainly
not likely that two independent translators from the Aramaic
should hit on identical expressions. But though the words
I have read are found in the text of St. Matthew, as given by
an overwhelming majority of Greek MSS,, including all the
oldest ; yet there is a minority, insignificant in numbers, no
doubt, but sufficient to establish the fact that a text from
which these words were wanting, early obtained some circu-
lation. And then we must admit it to be possible that the
shorter reading represents the original text of St. Matthew ;
and the longer, one which a very early transcriber had filled
up by an addition from St. Luke. We have no need to in-
sist on any doubtful cases, the instances of the use of common
words being so numerous. And in order to feel the force of
the argument you need only put in parallel columns the cor-
responding passages in the different Evangelists : say, of the
parable of the sower or of the answer to the question about
fasting (Mark ii. 18-22; Matt. ix. 14-17; Luke v. 33-39),
when you will find such a continuous use of common words
as to forbid the idea that we have before us independent
translations from another language.*
The use of a common Greek original is further established
by a study of the form of the Old Testament quotations in
the Gospels. Several such quotations are peculiar to St.
Matthew, and are introduced by him with the formula ' that
it might be fulfilled'. In these cases the ordinary rule is,
that the Evangelist does not take the quotation from the
LXX., but translates directly from the Hebrew. It is other-
* Seealsop. Ii8. Otherexamplesof common words are — aj'c{-)'aiov (Mark xiv. 15;
Luke xxii. 12); 5ucr/c(^A.a)j (Matt. xix. 23; Mark x. 23; Luke xviii. 24); KareKXaat
(Mark vi. 41; Luke ix. 16) ; koKo^ovv (Matt. xxiv. 22; Mark xiii. 20) ; irTepiyyiw
(Matt. iv. 5 ; Luke iv. 9) ; ^laHxi^ns (Matt. vii. 5 ; Luke vi. 42).
IX.] A COMMON GREEK ORIGINAL NECESSARY. 147
wise in the case of quotations which Matthew has in com-
mon with other Evangelists. As a rule they are taken from the
LXX., and when they deviate from our text of the LXX. all
agree in the deviation. For example, all three quote Malachi's
prophecy in the form — tSou, aTroorrtXAw tov fU-yy^Xov juov Trpo
7rpo(T(jjirov (TOW, og KaraaKtvacrei rriv odov gov (Matt. xi. 10; Mark
i. 2 ; Luke vii. 27). Here the LXX. has Idov, l^aTroarAAw r.
«. fx., Kul inifiXiiptTai 6 Soy Trpo Trpoo-wTrou fxov. Similarly, Matt.
XV. 8, 9, is in verbal agreement with Mark vii. 6, 7, but the
quotation is considerably different from the LXX. In Matt,
iv. 10 ; Luke iv. 8, both Evangelists have *thou shalt worship
the Lord thy God ', while the LXX. have * thou shalt fear '.
The result is, that if an Aramaic original document is
assumed in order to account for the verbal variations of the
Gospels, a Greek original (whether a translation of that
Aramaic or otherwise) is found to be equally necessary in
order to explain their verbal coincidences.
Again, there are verbal coincidences between St. Matthew
and St. Luke in their account of our Lord's temptation and
other stories not found in St. Mark. If we account for Mark's
omission by the solution that these stories were not contained
in the document used by all three Evangelists, we are tempted
to imagine a second document used by Matthew and Luke.
Thus in hypotheses of this nature documents have a tendency
to multiply. Eichhorn,* for example, having put forward in
1794 the idea of an Aramaic original from different recensions
of which the different Gospels had sprung, Marshf pointed
out the necessity of a Greek original also ; and he constructed
an elaborate history, how, out of ten different documents,
which he distinguished by different Hebrew, Greek, and
Roman letters, the Synoptic Gospels severally took their
* Eichhorn (i 752-1827), Professor at Jena and afterwards at G5ttmgen, published
his Introduction to the New Testament \n successive volumes, first edition, 1804-1812 ;
second edition, 1820-1827.
t Herbert Marsh (1758-1839), Bishop of Peterborough in 1819, having himself
studied in Germany, did much to introduce into England a knowledge of German
theological speculation. The theory referred to in the text was put forward in
1803 in an Appendix to his translation of Michaelis's Introduction, to the Ncio
Testament .
L 2
148 THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. [ix.
origin, Eichhorn then, in the second edition of his Introduc-
tion, adopted Marsh's theory as to its general outline, but
added to the number of assumed documents, and otherwise
complicated the history. It is not wonderful that these
theories found little acceptance with subsequent scholars,
who have not been able to believe in?so complicated a history,
resting on no external evidence, and obtained solely by the
inventor's power of critical divination. Nor, indeed, is there
much to attract in a theory which almost assumes that in
the production of their Gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke
used no other instrument of composition than paste and
scissors.
It may further be remarked that as the number of docu-
ments is increased, the documentary theory ceases to differ
much from that which makes a common oral tradition the
basis of the Gospel narratives. On the latter hypothesis
nothing forbids us to suppose that each story when orally
delivered may have been separately WTitten down by the
hearers, so that the hypothesis is practically equivalent to
one which assumes as the basis a large number of indepen-
dent documents.
I certainly have not courage to follow out the documen-
tary hypothesis into details ; but one is strongly tempted to
examine whether it does not at least afford the best account
of the matter common to the three Synoptics. If you wish
to pursue this study you can now do so[luxuriously by means
of Mr. Rushbrooke's Synopttcon, published by Macmillan in
1880. The corresponding passages are printed in parallel
columns, matter common to the three Synoptics being printed
in red, and that common to each two being also distinguished
by differences of type. Mr. Rushbrooke's work was under-
taken at the suggestion of Dr. Edwin Abbott, whose article
'Gospels' in the 'Encyclopaedia Britannica' contains a
summary of results thus obtained. Dr. Abbott gives in
detail the contents of what he calls the ' triple tradition ' —
that is to say, the matter common to the three Synoptics;
then of the three double traditions — that is to say, the matter
common to each pair; and lastly, the addition which each
IX.] ' THE TRIPLE ' TRADITION. 149
separately has made to the common tradition. Dr. Abbott
has accompanied his analysis with many acute remarks, but
there are some considerations which it seems to me he has
not sufficiently attendedl'to, and which ought to be kept in
mind by way of caution by anyone who uses his work.
In the first place, it is obvious that the phrases triple
tradition, twofold tradition, express phenomena as they
appear to us, not things as they are in themselves. You
would feel that a man knew very little of astronomy if he
spoke of the full moon, and the half moon, and the new moon
in such a way as to lead one to think that he took these for
three distinct heavenly bodies, and not for the same body
differently illuminated. Now, considering that the triple
tradition becomes a double tradition every time that one of
the three writers who transmit it chooses to leave out a word
or a sentence, we are bound in our study of the subject con-
stantly to bear in mind the possibility that the triple, and
the double, and perhaps even the single tradition, may be
only the same thing differently illuminated.
The business of science is to interpret phenomena : to
deduce from the appearances the facts that underlie them.
The work, no doubt, must begin by an accurate study of the
phenomena, but it must not stop there. When the painter
Northcote was asked with what he mixed his colours, he
answered, ' With brains '. The deduction of the original
tradition from the existing narratives must be done by
brains ; it cannot be done merely by blue and red pencils.
When one of our authorities fails we must not assume without
examination that the two remaining ones are now deriving
their narrative from some new source; and moreover, the
questions whether the common source were oral or written,
and in what language it was, all demand careful inquiry.*
Now, Dr. Abbott dispenses too summarily with all this
brain-work. Having crossed out of his New Testament all
* A specimen of the scientific conduct of a quite similar investigation is to be
ound in tlie attempt of Lipsius to recover the common document, which he
believes to have been used by three different writers on heresy — Epiph.inius,
Philaster, and pseudo-Tertullian. (See Lipsius, Quellcnkritik des Epiphanios.')
i^O THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. [ix.
the words that are not common to the three Synoptics, he
forthwith accepts the residuum as the 'original tradition upon
which the Synoptic Gospels are based,' or at least as re-
presenting that tradition as nearly as we can now approach
to it ; and in his work the name * triple tradition ' is constantly
used so as to convey the idea of * original tradition '.*
Thus the triple tradition is said to verify itself, because
the sayings of Jesus as they appear in it answer to Justin
Martyr's description of being 'short, pithy, and abrupt'.
But how could they be otherwise ? If the most diffuse
orator in the kingdom were treated in the same way, and
only those portions of his speeches recognized as genuine, of
which three distinct hearers gave a report in identical words,,
the fragments that survived such a test would assuredly be
[5paxi'iQ Koi avi'TOjuoi, short, and very much cut up.f But Dr.
iVbbott commits a far more serious mistake, in the tacit
assumption he makes in proposing to search for ' ^/le original
tradition upon which the .Synoptic Gospels are based '.
Admit that the Synoptic Evangelists used a common docu-
ment, and we are yet not entitled to assume without exami-
nation that this contained a complete Gospel, or that it was
* Since the first edition of this lecture was printed, Dr. Abbott, in conjunction
with Mr. Rushbrooke, has pubHshed what he calls ' The Common Tradition of the
Synoptic Gospels ' ; and he promises to follow it up with another volume containing
the ' Double Tradition ', that is to say, the portions of the Synoptic narrative common
to two Evangelists. This rending the evidence in two seems to me as unintelligent a
proceeding as if a printseller were to cut his stereoscopic slides in two and sell them
separately. If we desire to recover an ' original tradition ' used by the Synoptic
Evangelists, we have no right to assume that we can do so by the mechanical process
of taking out the words common to all three. A careful scrutiny of the ' double
traditions' is an absolutely essential part of the investigation. It must be remembered
also that, even if it be granted that the ' triple tradition ' and the three ' double tradi-
tions ' represent four different documents, one at least of the ' double traditions *•
stands on a level with the ' triple tradition ' as respects claims to antiquity. A
document antecedent to the two earliest of our SjTioptics must be antecedent to alj
three.
t Here is the narrative of two miracles, as given in the triple tradition :
(i) ... to the mountain . . late . . walking on the sea , . it is I, be not
afraid.
(2) He came into the house . . not dead but sleepeth, and they mocked
him. . . Having taken her by the hand . . arise.
IX.] COMMON DOCUMENT NOT COMPLETE. 151
more than one of the materials they employed. Dr. Abbott
treats the triple tradition as if it were not only the original
Gospel, but represented it in so complete a form that its
omissions might be used to discredit later additions to the
story. Thus the ' triple tradition ' does not contain the story
of our Lord's Resurrection, and of all the miracles ascribed
to Him it relates only six.*
It is certainly worth considering, if we could find the
' original Gospel ', what would be its value as compared with
those we have. Suppose, for instance, we could recover one
of those earlier Gospels which Luke mentions in his preface,
that would certainly be entitled to be called an ' original
Gospel'. It was probably defective rather than erroneous;
and we may certainly believe that all that was not erroneous
has been embodied by St. Luke in his work, so that by a
simple process of erasure, if we only knew how to perform it,
we might recover all that was valuable in the 'original
Gospel'. But would that be an improvement on St. Luke?
The Primitive Church did not think so, which allowed the
earlier work to drop into oblivion. But could it now be
restored, the whirligig of time would bring in its revenges.
In the eyes of modern critics every one of its omissions would
be a merit. ' It only relates six miracles.' ' What a prize ! '
' It does not tell the story of the Resurrection.' ' Why, it is
a perfect treasure ! '
But before we can build an argument on the omissions
of a document, we must know what it aims at doing ; and as
far as the ' triple tradition ' is concerned, quite a new light is
cast on the matter when we examine it more closely. We
find, then, that it is certainly true that this tradition gives no
account of the Resurrection ; but then it is also true that it
does not contain the history of the Passion : in other words,
* This limitation of number, combined with the casting out of many of the
details, facilitates much the application of the methods of Paulus (see p. n) ; and
the curious reader will find in the appendix to Dr. Abbott's Through Nature to
Christ how all six may be explained as being cases where either the spectators of the
supposed miracle imagined occurrences to be supernatural, which in truth were not so,
or else where the language usea by the reporters of the event was misunderstood.
152 THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. [ix.
it was no complete Gospel, but at most the narrative of cer-
tain events given by a single relater. Compare the story of
the Crucifixion, as told by St. Luke, with that told by St.
Matthew and St. Mark, and we find the two accounts
completely independent, having scarcely anything in com-
mon except what results necessarily from the fact that both
are histories of the same event. Again, though with regard
to this history, Matthew and Mark are in close agreement,
the nature of this agreement is quite different from that which
prevails in the earlier narrative. There the two Evangelists
present the appearance of using the same source, though in a
different way, Matthew reproducing it in an abridged form ,
Mark with an abundance of pictorial detail. In the history
of the Passion, on the contrary, the relation between Matthew
and Mark is constantly one of simple copying. We may <
conclude then with confidence that if the three Evangelists
drew their history from a common source, that source did not
extend so far as the relation of the Passion.
There is one remark, obvious enough when it is made,
but of which it is quite necessary for you to take notice, viz.
that ' triple tradition ' does not mean ' triply attested tradi-
tion ', but singly attested tradition. If you compare the history
of the early Church, as told by three modern historians, you
will find several places where they relate a story in nearly iden-
tical words. In such a case an intelligent critic would recog-
nize at once that we had, not a story attested by three
independent authorities, but one resting on the credit of a
single primary authority, coming through different channels.
When we come further down in the history, and Eusebius is
no longer the unique source of information, exactly as
authorities become numerous, verbal agreement between
the histories ceases, and our triple tradition comes to an
end. Thus, instead of its being true that the ' triple tradi-
tion ' is the most numerously attested portion of the Gospel
narrative, we may conclude that this is just the part for
which we have a single primary authority. Now, when the
first Christian converts desired to hear the story of their
Master's life there would be no difficulty in finding many
IX.] MEANING OF 'TRIPLE TRADITION'. 153
who could tell them of the Passion and the Resurrection.
Everyone who had lived through that eventful week, in which
the triumph of Palm Sunday was so rapidly exchanged for
the despair of Good Friday, and that, again, for the abiding
joy of Easter Sunday, would have all the events indelibly
burned on his memory. In comparison with these events,
those of the Galilean ministry would retire into the far back
distance of things that had occurred years ago ; and there
would be more than the ordinary difficulty we all experience,
when we unexpectedly lose one whom we love, of recalling
words which we should have taken pains to treasure in our
memory, could we have foreseen we should hear no such words
again. I have often thought that the direction to the Apostles
to return to Galilee for the interval between the Resurrection
and the gift of the Holy Ghost was given in order to provide
them with a season for retirement and recollection, such as
they could not have again after they had become the rulers
of the newly-formed Church. When we return to the place
where we last conversed with a departed friend, as we walk
over the ground we trod together, the words he then spoke
rise spontaneously to the mind ; and nothing forbids us to
believe that the Holy Spirit, whose work it was to bring to
the disciples' memory the things that Jesus had said, em-
ployed the ordinary laws which govern the suggestion of
human thoughts. Yet so difficult is it, as I have already
observed, to remember with accuracy words spoken at some
distance of time, that there would be nothing surprising if
the story of the Galilean ministry mainly depended on a
single witness, whose recollections were so much the fullest
and most accurate that they were accepted and adopted by
all.
It seems to me that if it be admitted that the ' triple tradi-
tion' rests on the testimony of a single witness, we can go
very near determining who that witness was. Take the very
commencement of this triple tradition. The whole of the first
chapter of St. Mark is occupied with a detailed account of the
doings of one day of our Lord's ministry. It was the Sabbath
which immediately followed the call of Simon and Andrew,
154 THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. [ix.
John and James. We are told of our Lord's teaching in the
Synagogue, of the healing of the demoniac there, of the entry
of the Saviour into Simon's house, the healing of his wife's
mother, and then in the evening, when the close of the Sab-
bath permitted the moving of the sick, the crowd of people
about the door seeking to be healed of their diseases. In
whose recollections is it likely that that one day would stand
out in such prominence ? Surely, we may reasonably conjec-
ture that the narrator must have been one of those four to
whom the call to follow Jesus had made that day a crisis or
turning-point in their lives. The narrator could not well have
been John, whose authorship is claimed for a different story ;
nor could it have been Andrew, who was not present at some
other scenes depicted in this triple tradition, such as the
Transfiguration and the healing of Jairus's daughter. There
remain then but Peter and James the son of Zebedee ; and it
is again the history of the Transfiguration which determines
our choice in favour of Peter ; for to whom else is it likely
that we can owe our knowledge of the words he caught him-
self saying as he was roused from his heavy sleep, though
unable, when fully awake, to explain what he had meant by
them r It seems to me then that we are quite entitled to sub-
stitute, for the phrase 'triple tradition', ' Petrine tradition';
and to assert that a portion, if not the whole of the matter
common to the three Synoptics, is based on what Peter was
able to state of his recollections of our Lord's Galilean ministry.
Although I have given reasons for thinking that these recol-
lections had been arranged into a continuous narrative before
the time of the composition of the Synoptics, we are not
bound to believe that this had been done by Peter himself.
These recollections would naturally have been made use of
by some of those who, as St. Luke tells us, had before him
attempted to arrange an orderly narrative of the Saviour's
life ; and when St. Luke entered on the same work, with
more abundant materials and more certain knowledge, he
might still have followed the order of his predecessors as
regards the truly apostolic traditions which they did record.
Thus are we led, by internal evidence solely, to what
IX.] AUTOPTIC CHARACTER OF SECOND GOSPEL. 155
Papia.s stated had been communicated to him as a tradition,
viz. that Mark in his Gospel recorded things related by Peter;
but we must add, not Mark alone, but Luke and Matthew
also — only we may readily grant that it is Mark who tells the
stories with such graphic fulness of detail as to give us most
nearly the very words of the eye-witness. To this Renan
bears testimony. He says (p, xxxix) : ' Mark is full of minute
observations, which, without any doubt, come from an eye-
witness. Nothing forbids us to think that this eye-witness,
who evidently had followed Jesus, who had loved Him, and
looked on Him very close at hand, and who had preserved a
lively image of Him, was the Apostle Peter himself, as Papias
would have us believe.'
If you will take the trouble to compare any of the stories
recorded by St. Mark with the corresponding passages in the
other Evangelists, you will be pretty sure to find some
example of these autoptic touches. Read, for instance, the
history of the miracle performed on the return from the mount
of Transfiguration (ix. 14), and you will find the stor}-- told
from the point of view of one of the little company who
descended with our Lord. We are told of the conversation
our Lord held with them on the way down. Next we are
told how, when they caught sight of the other disciples, they
saw them surrounded by a multitude, and scribes questioning
with them ; and how when our Lord became visible there was
a rush of the crowd running to Him. It is then Mark alone
who records the conversation between our Lord and the
parent of the demoniac child ; who tells the father's half-
despairing appeal: ' If thou canst do anything'; and then,
when our Lord has said that all things are possible to him
that believeth, the parent's agonizing cry : ' Lord, I believe,
help Thou mine unbelief ; and then, as the child's convulsive
struggles drew new crowds running, the performance of the
miracle. This one narrative would suffice to banish the idea^
taken up by some hasty readers, that Mark was a mere
copyist and abridger — an idea indeed countenanced by St.
Augustine, who says of Mark, 'Mattheeum secutus tanquam
pedissequus et breviator' [Dc consens. Evangg. i. 4). It is
1^6 THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. [ix.
Mark who tells that when children were brought to our Lord,
He took them up in His arms and blessed them (ix. 36, x. 16).
It is Mark who, in telling of the feeding of the multitude
(vi. 39), depicts the companies showing as garden-beds
{npaaiai Trpaaiai) on the ' green grass ', It is Mark who tells of
the little boats which accompanied the vessel in which, during
the storm, our Lord lay asleep on the pillow; Mark again,
who tells of the look of love which our Lord cast on the young
man (x. 17) who asked what he should do to inherit eternal
life ; and again of his look of anger on the hypocrites who
watched Him (iii. 5). I have already referred to Mark's
record of different Aramaic words used by our Lord. He
gives us also several proper names — the name of the father of
Levi the publican, the name and father's name of the blind
man healed at Jericho, and the names of the sons of Simon of
Cyrene. Baur struggled hard to maintain that all these
details were but arbitrary additions of a later writer, who
having a pretty turn for invention and an eye for pictorial
details, used his gifts in ornamenting the simple narrative of
the primitive Gospel. But subsequent criticism has generally
acknowledged the view to be truer which recognizes in these
details particulars which had fastened themselves on the
memory of an eye-witness. And I cannot read the early
chapters of St. Mark without the conviction that here we
have the narrative, not only in its fuller but in its older form.
Observe how carefully the name Peter is withheld from that
Apostle until the time when it was conferred by our Lord :
in the opening chapters he is only called Simon. Again,
Mark alone tells of the alarm into which our Lord's family
was cast by His assuming the office of a public teacher : how
they thought He was out of His mind, and wished to put Him
under restraint. Again, on comparing Mark's phrase, vi. 3 :
* the carpenter, the Son of Mary ', with Matthew's in the
parallel passage, xiii. 55 : ' the carpenter's son, the son of
Joseph,' I am disposed to accept the former as the older form.
When Jesus first came forward, He would probably be known
in His own city as the carpenter ; and if, as seems likely,
Joseph was dead at the time, as the Son of Mary. But after
IX.] MATTHEW AND LUKE DID NOT COPY MARK. 157
our Lord devoted Himself to the work of public teaching,
and ceased to labour at His trade, He would be known as the
carpenter's son. Justin Martyr shows his knowledge of both
Gospels by his use of both titles. On the whole, internal
evidence gives ample confirmation to the tradition that Mark's
Gospel took its origin in a request, made by those who desired
to have a permanent record of the things Peter had said, that
Peter's trusted companion should furnish them with such a
record.*
Does it follow, then, that Mark's was the earliest Gospel
of all, and that it was used by the other two Evangelists r
Not necessarily ; and the result of such comparison as I have
been able to make is to lead me to believe that Matthew and
Luke did not copy Mark, but that all drew from a common
source, which, however, is represented most fully and with
most verbal exactness in St. Mark's version. It is even
possible that the second Gospel may be the latest of the three.
It contains a good deal more than the Petrine tradition ; and
it is conceivable that when Mark was asked to record that
tradition, he chose to complete it into a Gospel ; and that he
may even have used in his work the other two Synoptics,
which may have been then already written. Whether they
were so or not is a question on which I do not feel confidence
in taking a side.
It has been contended that the fact that Mark contains so
little outside the Petrine tradition, that is not found either in
Matthew or Luke, is most easily explained on the supposition
that he was the latest ; for if it was the other two Evangelists
who had used his work, it is hardly likely that their borrow-
ings would have so supplemented each other as to leave
nothing behind. Although in many places Mark's narrative
compared with the others shows clear indications of priority,
* I fear Klostermann's remark is a little too ingenious (cited by Godet, Etudes
Bihliques, ii. 38), that some statements become clearer if we go back from Mark's
third person to Peter's first. For example (Mark i. 29) : ' They entered into the
house of Simon and Andrew, with James and John.' If we look for the antecedent
of * they,' we find that it includes James and John. But all would have been clear
in Peter's narrative, ' we entered into our house with James and John '.
158 THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. [ix.
there are other places where I find no such indications, and
where the hypothesis that Mark simply copied Matthew or
Luke seems quite permissible.
But here the question becomes complicated with one on
the criticism of the text ; for our decision is seriously affected
according as we recognize or not the last twelve verses as an
integral part of the Gospel. Some of these verses appear to
give an abridged account of what is more fully told elsewhere :
in particular, one of them reads like a brief reference to Luke's
account of the appearance to the two disciples at Emmaus.
The current of critical opinion runs so strongly in favour of
the rejection of these verses that it seems presumptuous to
oppose it. But no one can be required to subscribe to a
verdict which he believes to be contrary to the evidence; and
he sufficiently satisfies the demands of modesty if, in differing
from the opinion of persons of higher authority than himself,
he expresses his dissent with a due sense of his own fallibility.
This is not the place to enter into a discussion of the critical
question. Here I have only to observe how the question is
affected by the view I take that in Mark we have the Petrine
tradition completed into a Gospel. Of course, it is not to be
expected that there should be uniformity of style between
verses that belong to the tradition and those which belong to
the framework in which it is set ; and, therefore, arguments
against the last twelve verses, drawn from a comparison of
their language with that of other parts of the Gospel, at once
lose their weight. On the other hand, if we compare the last
twelve verses with the first fifteen, we do find features of re-
semblance, and in particular I think that it is either on the
opening verses or on the concluding ones the still prevalent
idea that Mark's Gospel is an abridgment of the others is
founded. And opening and conclusion seem to me to have
equal rights to be regarded as part of the framework in which
the tradition is set.
It seems to me also that the hand of the writer of the con-
cluding verses is to be found elsewhere in the Gospel. Three
times in these concluding verses attention is called to the
surprising slowness of the disciples to believe the evidence
IX.] LAST TWELVP: verses of ST. MARK. i^g
offered them {vv. ii, 13, 14). Now you will find that the
thought is constantly present to the mind of the second
Evangelist, how slow of heart were the beholders of our
Lord's miracles ; how stubborn the unbelief which the evi-
dence of these miracles was obliged to conquer. Thus, in the
account of the healing of the man with the withered hand
(common to the three Synoptics), Mark alone relates (iii. 5)
that before commanding the man to stretch forth his hand
our Lord looked round on the bystanders * with anger, being
grieved for the hardness of their hearts '. Again, in Mark vi. 6
there is a note special to this Evangelist : ' Jesus marvelled
because of their unbelief. And in the history of the tempest
on the lake of Gennesaret, told both b}'- Matthew and Mark,
there is a noticeable difference between the two accounts.
"Where Matthew (xiv. 2)2,) tells of the conviction effected by
the miracle in those who beheld it, Mark (vi. 52) has instead
an expression of surprise at the stupidity and hardness of
heart of those who had not sooner recognized our Lord's true
character.
Believing, then, the existing conclusion to have been part
of the second Gospel, ever since it was a Gospel, I look on
the marks of posteriority which it exhibits as affecting the
whole Gospel; and I am, therefore, disposed to believe that
Mark's is at once the oldest and the youngest of the three
Synoptics : the oldest as giving most nearly the very words
in which the Apostolic traditions were delivered ; the young-
est as respects the date when the independent traditions were
set in their present framework.
Note on the Concluding Verses of St. Mark's Gospel.
The following is a statement of my reasons for thinking that in this instance critical
editors have preferred — (I.) later testimony to earlier, and (II.) a less probable story
to a more probable. The question is one that stands by itself, so that the conclusions
here stated may be adopted by one who has accepted all Westcott and Hort's other
decisions.
I. jVs to the first point there is little room for controversy, (i) The disputed
■versus SiXi expressly attested by IrenKus in the second century, and very probably by
l6o THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. [ix.
Justin Martyr, who incorporates some of their language, though, as usual, without
express acknowledgment of quotation. The verses are found in the Syriac version
as early as we have any knowledge of it ; in the Curetonian version as well as in the
Peshitto. Possibly we ought to add to the witnesses for the verses — Papias, Celsus,
and Hippolytus. On the other hand, the earliest witness against the verses is Eusebius,
in the fourth century, whose testimony is to the effect that some of the copies in his
time contained the verses, and some did not ; but that those which omitted them
were then the more numerous, and, in his opinion, the more trustworthy. He
stands strangely alone in this testimony. It is true that several writers used to be
cited as bearing independent witness to the same effect. But all this confirmatory
testimony was demolished by Dean Burgon in what seems to me the most effective
part of his work 'On the Last Twelve Verses of St. Mark'. He shows that
three of the authorities cited reduce themselves to one. A homily of uncertain
authorship having been inserted among the works of three different writers;
each of these writers was separately cited as a witness. And he shows, further,
that all the writers cited do no more than copy, word for word, what had been said
by Eusebius ; and in some cases indicate that they were of a different opinion
themselves. Dr. Hort replaces, or reinforces these discredited witnesses by an
argument, ex silejitio, that the disputed verses were unknown to Cyril of
Jerusalem, who otherwise would not have failed to use them in his catechetical
lectures. But the argument from silence is always precarious. It is a common
experience with everyone who makes a speech or writes a book to find after he
has brought his work to a conclusion that he has failed to use some telling argu-
ment which he might have employed. Dr. Hort owns that the same argument might
be used to prove that the verses were unknown to Cyril of Alexandria and to Tlieo-
doret, neither of whom could possibly be ignorant of the verses, which in their age
were certainly in wide circulation. But supposing it proved that the text of St .
Mark used by Cyril of Jerusalem did not contain the verses, it only results that the
recension approved by the great Palestinian critic, Eusebius, found favour in Palestine
for a few years after his death. We still fail to find any distinct witness against the
verses who, we can be sure, is independent of Eusebius.
It is more to the point, that Dr. Hort contends by a similar argument from silence
that neither TertuUian nor Cyprian knew the disputed verses. But in order to main-
tain this thesis, as far as Cyprian is concerned. Dr. Hort is forced to contend that the
quotation by a bishop at one of Cyprian's councils, of words of our Lord, ' In my name,
lay on hands, cast out devils,' imphes no knowledge of Mark xvi. 17, 18! IfDr.Hortis
right about TertuUian, it would follow that the version first in use in Africa was made
from a copy of the shorter version. Against this conclusion are to be set the facts
that the extant copies of the old Latin, with but one exception, recognize the dis-
puted verses, that they were used in the West by Irenseus, and that they were in the
Curetonian version, which has many affinities with the old Latin. Indeed we are led
to suspect that Eusebius must have been guilty of some exaggeration in his account
of the general absence of the verses from MSS. of his day. The presence of the
verses in all later MSS., and the testimony of writers who lived within a century of
Eusebius, prove that the scribes of the generation next to him found copies contain-
ing the verses, and that, notwithstanding his great authority, they gave them the
preference. And, if the argument from silence is worth anything, the fact deserves
attention, that we have no evidence that any writer anterior to Eusebius remarked
IX.] THE LAST TWELVE VERSES OF ST. MARK. ]6i
that there was anything abrupt in the conclusion of St. Mark's Gospel, or that it gave
no testimony to our Lord's Resurrection.
(2) ' But the two great uncials B and ^ agree in rejecting the verses, and though
these be but fourth century Mss., yet as they were made from different archetypes,
the common parent of these archetypes, presumably the common source of readings
in which they agree, is likely to have been as old as the second century.' Let it be
granted that this inference holds good in the case of ordinary agreements between B
and Ji^ ; but the present case is exceptional. The mss. are here not independent,
the conclusion of St. Mark being transcribed in both by the same hand. This
was pointed out by Tischendorf; but it is to be observed that his opinion does
not merely rest on his general impression of the character of the handwriting,
concerning which only an expert like himself would be competent to judge.
He gives a multitude of conspiring proofs, which can be verified by anyone who
refers to the published facsimile of the Sinaitic MS. The leaf containing the con-
clusion of St. Mark is one of six leaves, which differ from the work of the Sinaitic
New Testament scribe and agree with that of the Vatican in a number of peculiarities :
in the shape of certain letters, for instance H ; in the mode of filling up vacant space
at the end of a line ; in the punctuation ; in the manner of referring to an insertion in
the margin ; in the mode of marking the end of a book, including what Tischendorf
calls arabesques, or ornamented finials, those used in the Sinaitic being quite unlike
those used in the Vatican, except in the leaves now under consideration. Further,
in these leaves the words Hvdpooiros, vl6s, ovpav6s, are written at full length, as in the
Vatican, not abbreviated, as elsewhere in the Sinaitic. Again, these leaves agree with
the Vatican against the Sinaitic as to certain points of orthography. For instance
Pilate's name is spelt with i in the Sinaitic, with ei in these leaves and in the Vatican ;
'Iwacj/Tjs is spelt with one v by the Vatican scribe, with two by the Sinaitic. Such
an accumulation of indications does not come short of a demonstration ; and, accord-
ingly, Tischendorf 's conclusion is accepted by Dr. Hort, who says (p. 213) : ' The fact
appears to be sufficiently established by concurrent peculiarities in the form of one
letter, punctuation, avoidance of contractions, and some points of orthography. As
the six leaves are found on computation to form three pairs of conjugate leaves, hold-
ing different places in three distant quires, it seems probable that they are new or
clean copies of corresponding leaves which had been executed by the scribe who
wrote the rest of the New Testament, but had been so disfigured either by an un-
usual number of clerical errors, or from some unknown cause, that they appeared
unworthy to be retained, and were therefore cancelled and transcribed by the " cor-
rector". ' Tischendorf s view, that these leaves were transcribed by the 'corrector'
is confirmed by the fact that these leaves themselves contain scarcely any corrections.
Not that they do not require them. In the first verse of Mark xvi., for instance,
there is a very gross blunder which could not have failed to be discovered if the
leaf had been read over ; but it is intelligible that the ' corrector ', whose duty it was
to read over the work of other scribes, thought it unnecessary to read over his own.
But why was this leaf cancelled .? On inspection of the page, two phenomena
present themselves, which go far to supply the answer. First, on looking at the
column containing the conclusion of St. Mark, and at the next column, containing
the beginning of St. Luke, it is apparent that the former is written far more widely
than the latter. There are, in fact, only 560 letters in the former column, 678 in the
latter. This suggests that the page as originally written must have contained
M
152 'iHE LAST TWELVE VERSES OF ST. MARK. [ix.
something of considerable length which was omitted in the substituted copy. Unless
some precaution were taken an omission of the kind would leave a telltale blank. In
fact, if the concluding column of St. Mark had been written in the same manner as
elsewhere, there would have been a whole column blank. But by spreading out his
writing the scribe was enabled to carry over 37 letters to a new column, the rest of
which could be left blank without attracting notice, as it was the conclusion of a
Gospel. The second phenomenon is that the Gospel ends in the middle of a line,
and the whole of the rest of the line is filled up with ornament, while underneath,
the arabesque is prolonged horizontally, so as to form an ornamented line reaching
all across the column. This filling up the last line occurs nowhere else in the Sinaitic
(though the same scribe has written the conclusion of three other books), nor in the
Vatican New Testament. It occurs three or four times in the Vatican Old Testa-
ment, but the prolongation of the arabesque has no parallel in either MS. We see
that the scribe who recopied the leaf betrays that he had his mind full of the
thought that the Gospel must be made to end with iipofiovvro yap, and took
pains that no one should add more. I do not think these two phenomena can be
reasonably explained in any other way than that the leaf, as originally copied,
had contained the disputed verses ; and that the corrector, regarding these as not a
genuine part of the Gospel, cancelled the leaf, recopying it in such a way as to cover
the gap left by the erasure. It follows that the archetype of the Sinaitic MS. had con-
tained the disputed verses. But what about the archetype of the Vatican } In that
manuscript there actually is a column left blank following the end of St. Mark, this being
the only blank column in the whole MS. All critics agree that the blank column
indicates that the scribe was cognizant of something following icpofiowro yap which
he did not choose to copy. But surely before he began St. Luke he would make up
his mind whether or not the additional verses deserved a place in his text. If he
decided against them he would leave no blank but begin St. Luke in the next
column. But what we have seen in the case of the Sinaitic suggests the hypothesis
that the Vatican also as first copied had contained the disputed verses, and that on
the leaf being cancelled, the gap left by the omission was bigger than spreading out
the letters would cover. Thus both MSS., when cross-examined, give evidence,
not against, but for the disputed verses ; and afford us reason to believe that in this
place these MSS. do not represent the reading of their archetypes, but the critical
views of the corrector under whose hand both passed ; and as they were both copied
at a time when the authority of Eusebius as a biblical critic was predominant, we
still fail to get distinctly pre-Eusebian testimony against the verses.*
II. ' Supposing that we cannot produce against the verses any witness earlier than
Eusebius, still Eusebius in the fourth century used a purer text than Irenseus in the
second, and, therefore, his testimony deserves the more credit.' Again, I raise no
question as to general principles of criticism, nor shall I inquire whether in this case
Eusebius was not liable to be unduly influenced by harmonistic considerations ; but if
we accept the fourth century witness as on the whole the more triistworthy, it remains
to be considered whether we are to prefer a credible witness telling an incredible story
to a less trustworthy witness telling a highly probable one.
* I am well disposed to agree with Canon Cook in thinking that these two were
part of the 50 MSS. which by Constantine's desire were copied, under the superinten-
dence of Eusebius, for the use of the new capital.
IX.] THE LAST TWELVE VERSES OF ST. MARK. 163
The rejection of the verses absolutely forces on us the alternative either that the
conclusion which St. Mark originally wrote to his Gospel was lost ^vithout leaving a
trace of its existence, or else that the second Gospel never proceeded beyond verse 8.
The probabihty that one or other of these two things is true is the exact measure of
the probability that the Eusebian form of text is correct.
(i) We may fairly dismiss as incredible the supposition that the conclusion which
St. Mark originally wrote to his Gospel unaccountably disappeared without leaving a
trace behind, and was almost universally replaced by a different conclusion. It has
been suggested that the last leaf of the original MS. became detached, and perished
and it is true that the loss of a leaf is an accident liable to happen to a MS. Such a
hypothesis explains very well the partial circulation of defective copies of a work_
Suppose, for instance, that a very old copy of St. Mark's Gospel, wanting the
last leaf, was brought, let us say, to Egypt. Transcripts made from that venerable
copy would want the concluding verses ; or if they were added from some other
authority, indications might appear that the addition had been made only after the
Gospel had been supposed to terminate. In this way might originate a local circula-
tion of a defective family of MSS. But the total loss of the original conclusion could
not take place in this way, unless the first copy had been kept till it^ dropped to
pieces with age before anyone made a transcript of it, so that a leaf once lost was lost
for ever.
(2) It has been imagined that the Gospel never had a formal conclusion; but this
also I find myself unable to believe. Long before any Gospel was written, the belief in
the Resurrection of our Lord had become universal among Christians and this doctrine
had become the main topic of every Christian preacher. A history of our Lord, in
which this cardinal point was left unmentioned, may be pronounced] inconceivable.
And if there were no doctrinal objection, there would be the literary one — that no
Greek writer would give his work so abrupt and ill-omened a termination as
itpo^ovvro yap.
Two explanations of the absence of a suitable conclusion have been offered. One
is that the Evangelist died before bringing his work to a conclusion. But even in
the supposed case, that St. Mark, after writing verse 8, had a fit of apoplexy, the
disciple who gave his work to the world would surely have added a fitting termina-
tion. The other is that Mark copied a previous document, to which he was too
conscientious to make any addition of his own. Then our difficulties are simply
transferred from St. Mark to the writer of that previous document. But, not to
press this point, we must examine whether internal evidence supports the theory that
Mark acted the part of a simple copyist, who did not attempt to set the previous
tradition ill any framework of his own; and that, consequently, the second Gospel,
as it stands now, was the source used by Matthew and Luke in the composition of
their Gospels. I do not believe this to be true ; and so I find no explanation to
make it conceivable that Mark's Gospel could have finished with ecpofiovvro yap.
On the other hand, the opinion that the concluding verses, just as much as the
opening ones, belong to the original framework of the Gospel has no internal diffi-
culties whatever to encounter. The twelve verses have such marks of antiquity that
Dr. Tregelles, who refused to believe them to have been written by St. Mark, still
regarded them as having ' a full claim to be received as an authentic j art of the
second Gospel'. In fact, we have in the short termination of Codex L a specimen of
the vague generalities with which a later editor, who really knew no more than was
M 2
1 64 THE LAST TWELVE VERSES OF ST. MARK. [ix.
contained in our Gospels, might attempt to supply a deficiency in the narrative. The
twelve verses, on the contrary, are clearly the work of one who wrote at so early a
date that he could believe himself able to add genuine apostolic traditions to those
already recorded. If he asserts that Jesus ' was received up into heaven and sat on
the right hand of God ', he only gives expression to what was the universal belief of
Christians at as early a period as anyone beheves the Second Gospel to have been
written {see Rom. viii. 34; Eph. 1. 20 ; Col. iii. i ; i Peter iii. 22 ; Heb. i. 3 ; viii. i ;
X. 12 ; xii. 2). This belief was embodied in the earUest Christian Creeds, especially
in that of the Church of Rome, with which probable tradition connects the composi-
tion of St. Mark's Gospel. Further, the twelve verses were written at a time when
the Church still believed herself in possession of miraculous powers. Later, a stumb-
ling-block was found in the signs which it was said (verse 17) should 'follow them
that believe.' The heathen objector, with whom Macarius Magnes* had to deal,
asked if any Christians of his day really did believe. Would the strongest believer of
them all test the matter by drinking a cup of poison .'' The objection may have been
as old as Porphyry, and may have been one of the reasons why Eusebius was willing
to part with these verses. We must, therefore, ascribe their authorship to one who
lived in the very first age of the Church. And why not to St. Mark ?
Thus, while the Eusebian recension of St. Mark presents intrinsic diihculties of
the most formidable character, that form of text which has the advantage of attesta-
tion earlier by a century and a half contains nothing inconsistent with the date
claimed for it. In spite, then, of the eminence of the critics who reject the twelve
verses, I cannot help looking at them as having been from the first an integral part
of the Second Gospel ; and I regard the discussion of them as belonging not so much
to the criticism of the Text as to the subject of the present Lecture, the History of
the genesis of the Synoptic Gospels. t
* The author of a book called Apocritica, written about A.D. 400, and containing
heathen objections against Christianity, with answers to them. In answering an
objection founded on the disputed verses, Macarius shows no suspicion that it was
open to him to cast any doubt on their genuineness. Nothing is known with
certainty about this Macarius, and indeed his book had been known only by a few
short extracts, until a considerable portion of it, which had been recovered at Athens,
was published in Paris in 1876.
f It seems to me that textual critics are not entitled to feel absolute confidence
in their results, if they venture within range of the obscurity that hangs over the history
of the first publication of the Gospels. Such a task as Bentley and Lachmann pro-
posed to themselves — viz. to recover a good fourth-century text — was perfectly
feasible, and has, in fact, been accomplished by Westcott and Hort with triumphant
success. I suppose that if a MS. containing their text could have been put into the
hands of Eusebius, he would have found only one thing in it which would have been
quite strange to him, namely, the short conclusion on the last page of St. Mark, and
that he would have pronounced the MS. to be an extremely good and accurate one.
But these editors aim at nothing less than going back to the original documents ;
and, in order to do this, it is in some cases necessary to choose between two forms of
text, each of which is attested by authorities older than any extant MS. Now, a
choice which must be made on subjective giounds only cannot be made with the same
confidence as when there is on either side a clear preponderance of historical testi-
mony. And, further, there is the possibility that the Evangelist might have him-
self jHiblished a second edition of his Gospel, so that two forms of text might both
daini his authority.
X,
THE ORIGINAL LANGUAGE OF ST. MATTHEW.
THE HEBREW GOSPEL.
IN this lecture I propose to discuss what amount of credence
is due to the statement of Papias that St. Matthew wrote
his Gospel in Hebrew — that is, in the later form of the lan-
g-uage which was popularly spoken in Palestine in our Lord's
time. The question is a very difficult one, on account of the
conflict between external and internal evidence. The diffi-
culty I speak of lies in the determination of the exact nature
of the relationship between our Greek Gospel and its possible
Aramaic predecessors. We need have no difficulty in believ-
ing that, before our Gospels, there had been written records
of discourses of our Lord and of incidents in His life; that one
or more of these may have been in Aramaic, and may have
been used by our Evangelists. But when all this has been
granted, it still remains a subject for inquiry whether any of
these preceding documents had assumed the form of a com-
plete Gospel, and whether our Greek St. Matthew is to be
regarded as a mere translation of it, or as an independent
work.
It is certain that in very early times Hebrew-speaking
Christians had in use Gospels in their own language : and
these were quite different in character from the Apocryphal
Gospels, of which I mean to speak in the next lecture.
It was a necessity for Greek Apocryphal Gospels to be
different from the Canonical ; for unless they had some-
thing new to tell, why should they be written ? They
were either framed in the interests of some heresy, the
1 66 THE ORIGINAL LANGUAGE OF ST MATTHEW, [x.
doctrines of which were to obtain support from sayings put
into the mouth of our Lord or His Apostles; or else they were
simply intended to satisfy the curiosity of Christians on some
points on which the earlier Evangelists had said nothing.
In either case it was the very essence of these Gospels to tell
something different from the Gospels we have. It was quite
otherwise with the Hebrew Gospels. They were intended to
do the very same thing for the benefit of the disciples who
spoke Hebrew that the Greek Gospels were to do for those
who could speak Greek. There was no necessity that either
class of disciples should be taught by means of a translation
from a different language. There were, among those who
had personal knowledge of the facts of the Gospel history,
men competent to tell the story in either tongue. We might,
therefore, reasonably expect that there w'ould be original
Gospels in the two languages, proceeding on the same lines,
the same ■ story being told in both, and possibly by the same
men ; and yet, though in substantial, not in absolute, agree-
ment with.^'each other. There would be no a priori reason
why an independent Hebrew Gospel might not differ as much
from our Synoptics, as one of these does from another ; and
since each of the Synoptics contains some things not told by
the rest, so, possibly, might an independent Hebrew Gospel
record some sayings or acts of our Lord other than those con-
tained in the Greek Gospels. It is reasonable to believe that
if there were any material difference in the way of telling the
history, the Hebrew Gospel would be translated into Greek ;
but if the resemblance between the Hebrew Gospel and one
of the Greek ones was in the main very close, it would not be
worth while to make a translation of the whole Gospel, and
anything special which it contained might pass into Greek
independently. I have particularly in my mind the story of
the woman taken in adultery. Eusebius, who probably did
not read that story in his copy of the Gospel according to St.
John, informs us (iii. 3g) that Papias had related a story of a
woman accused of many sins before our Lord, and that the
same story was contained in the Gospel according to the
Hebrews. Well, I have no difficulty in admitting it to be
X.J EXTERNAL EVIDENCE FOR HEBREW ORIGINAL. 167
possible that a perfectly authentic anecdote of our Lord might
have been related in the Hebrew Gospel alone, that this
might be translated into Greek, and find its way, first into the
margin, ultimately into the text, of one of our Greek Gospels.
And it seems to me by no means unlikely that this may
afford the true explanation of some more trifling insertions
found in Western MSS., which the severity of modern criticism
rejects as not entitled to a place in the Greek text. This also
may give the explanation of an interpolation in the 20th
Matthew, found in some early authorities, containing instruc-
tions substantially the same as those given in 14th Luke,
against taking the highest place at a feast.
I have said enough to show that there is no antecedent
improbability, such as to throw any difficulty in the way of
our accepting a statement that an Apostle wrote a Gospel in
Hebrew, and that this Gospel was afterwards translated into
Greek. Now, that our first Gospel actually is such a trans-
lation from one written in Hebrew by St. Matthew is testified
by an overwhelming mass of Patristic evidence which has
been accepted as conclusive by a number of the most eminent
modern critics. In the first rank of these witnesses must be
reckoned Papias, whom I have already quoted. I do not
know whether Irenaeus can be counted an independent wit-
ness : for he knew and valued the work of Papias, and may
have thence drawn his information ; but as he gives a note of
time not found in the extract quoted by Eusebius, he may
possibly have derived a tradition from some other source.
What Irenaeus says (iii. i) is, that 'Matthew, among the
Hebrews, published a Gospel in their own dialect when Peter
and Paul were preaching in Rome and founding the Church.'
Again, Eusebius (v. 10) tells a story of Pantsenus, who, about
the beginning of the last quarter of the second century, was the
head of the Catechetical School of Alexandria, where he accord-
ingly was the teacher of Clement of Alexandria. The tradition,
which Eusebius reports with an ' it is said,' is, that Pantsenus
went to preach to the Indians, and that he found the Gospel
of Matthew had got there before him : for that the Apostle
Bartholomew had preached to the Indians, and had left them
1 68 i'HE ORIGINAL LANGUAGE OF ST. MATTHEW, [x.
St. Matthew's Gospel written in Hebrew letters, which they
had preserved to the time of Pantaenus's visit and later. The
external evidence for this tradition, it will be seen, is weak ;
and it certainly has no internal probability to recommend it.
A Greek book would have had a better chance of being under-
stood in India (no matter what that word means) than an
Aramaic one.
What these early fathers asserted, those who came after
them naturally echoed, so that the testimony of the majority
of later writers cannot be regarded as adding much to the
weight of these early witnesses : especially as very few of
them knew Hebrew, or could say that they themselves had
seen the Hebrew original of St. Matthew. We have, how-
ever, in St. Jerome a witness who seems above all suspicion.
He says that Matthew wrote his Gospel in Hebrew words
and letters for the sake of those of the circumcision who
believed in Christ, and that it is uncertain who translated it
into Greek. He adds that a copy of the original Hebrew was
then still preserved in the library at Csesarea, founded by the
martyr Pamphilus, and that he himself had transcribed the
Hebrew Gospel with the leave of the Nazaraeans who lived at
Beroea in Syria [Aleppo], and who used that Gospel.* We
have the further testimony of Epiphanius,t who was well
acquainted with Eastern languages. He mentions the same
sect of the Nazarenes to which Jerome refers, for he describes
Beroea as one of the places where they most flourished ; and
he says that they had the Gospel of St. Matthew complete,
written in Hebrew, only he is not sure whether they did not
* De. Vir. illustr. 3. Jerome resided in the desert east of Syria, 374-379, and it
seems to have been at this period that he made acquaintance with the Hebrew
St. Matthew. The work from which the citation is talien was pubhshed in 392.
t Epiphanius, bishop of Salamis in Cyprus, published his great work on Heresies
in 377. We have often reason to remark that the literary work of the Fathers falls
short of the modern standard of accuracy ; but there is none who is more apt than
Epiphanius to make blunders through carelessness and want of critical discrimination.
On this account his unsupported testimony can only be used with great caution.
But he is well entitled to be heard on the present question, since Syriac was his
native language, and he appears to have been well acquainted with Hebrew, besides
knowing Egyptian, Greek, and Latin, whence he was called irevTayXwa-aos.
X.] INTERNAL EVIDENCE FOR GREEK ORIGIN. 169
take away the genealogy from the beginning [Haer. 29). This
confession of ignorance gives us reason to infer that he does
not speak of this Gospel from personal knowledge. In calling
their version complete (TrAjjjOfcrrarov) he meant to contrast it with
that used by another Jewish sect whom he calls the Ebionites,
and which he describes in his next section. They also had a
Hebrew Gospel which they called that according to St. Mat-
thew : and this Epiphanius knew, and gives several extracts
from it. He tells us that it was not perfect, but corrupted
and mutilated (ou^ oXto St TrXr/pecxTaTti), aAAa vtvoQiVfxivtj^ koI
yiKpu)Ti}piaaimtv(o) .
In point of external evidence, then, the proof of the
Hebrew original of St. Matthew's Gospel seems as complete
as could be desired. Yet there are two considerations to be
attended to before we accept all this testimony as absolutely
conclusive.
One is, that internal evidence leads us to regard our
present Matthew as an original work, not a translation. In
the first place we have translations of Hebrew words : ' They
shall call his name Immanuel, which being interpreted is
God with us ' (i. 2^). ' A place called Golgotha, that is to
say, a place of a skull' (xxvii. 33) ; * Eli, Eli, lama sabach-
thani, that is to say. My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken
me' (xxvii. 46). It is evident these explanations could not
have been in the Hebrew original, and that they must have
been introduced by the translator, if there was one. Next,
there are explanations which show a regard to the case of
readers unacquainted with the customs of Palestine at the
time in question: 'The same day came to him the Sadducees,
which say that there is no resurrection ' (xxii. 2^) ; ' Now at
that feast the governor was wont to release unto the people a
prisoner whom they would' (xxvii. 15); 'That field was
called the field of blood unto this day ' (xxvii. 8) ; ' This
saying is commonly reported among the Jews until this
day' (xxviii. 15). These explanations would not have been
necessary for one writing in Hebrew to the Jews of Palestine,
but are quite suitable in a work written in Greek, and
expected to pass outside the limits of the Holy Land. I do
lyo THE ORIGINAL LANGUAGE OF ST. MATTHEW, [x.
not venture to lay much stress on instances of paronomasia,
to which attention has been called, such as acftavlKovmv ottwq
(pavwcriv (vi. 1 6); kukovq kokwc (xxi. 41); nor on expressions
such as jSaTToXoynv, TroXvXoyia. Possibly instances of this
kind are not more than might be unconsciously introduced
by a translator. But the investigation in which we engaged
in the last lecture goes very near to determine the present
question. For example, I regard it as almost certain that
our first Gospel did not copy the third, nor the third the firsr,
but that both drew from a common source. And I have
stated my opinion that the facts are not explained by the
supposition that that source was Aramaic : being led to this
conclusion by an examination of the coincidences of language
in the Greek of the Gospels, and in particular by a study of
the manner in which the first Gospel cites the Old Testament.
Now, if we come to the conclusion that the first Gospel, such
as we have it, shows traces of the use of a Greek source, the
only way in which it is possible to maintain the Hebrew
original is by adding the hypothesis that the translator of the
Gospel into Greek was acquainted with the source in ques-
tion, and used it to guide him in his work. I will not delay
now to speak of the difficulties of this hypothesis, as I shall
presently give reasons for thinking it needless to have
recourse to it. Nor will I dwell on certain minute marks
of originality in our present first Gospel. Some of them,
indeed, can better be felt than described ; but certainly the
impression on any reader of Matthew and Luke is, that one is
as much an original as the other.
I pass to the second consideration, namely, that none of
the Fathers show acquaintance with any Greek text of the
first Gospel other than that we have. If a Hebrew Gospel
by St. Matthew had been recognized as a primary source of
information concerning our Lord's history, we might expect
that more persons than one would have been anxious to
translate it into Greek. Actually there is no trace of any
Greek text but one, and that seems to have been established
in exclusive possession in the days of our earliest witness,
Papias. Observe his words : * Matthew wrote the oracles in
X.] EVIDENCE OF PAPIAS. 171
Hebrew, and everyone interpreted them as he could.' Here
you may take ' everyone ' in the strict sense, and understand
Papias to say that there was no Greek translation, and that
everyone who desired to use St. Matthew's Gospel was
forced to translate it for himself as best he could ; or, you
may take ' everyone ' as more loosely used, and rnay under-
stand Papias only to say that there was no authorized Greek
translation, but that certain persons had published transla-
tions which each had made to the best of his ability. I
rather think the first is what he means: but in either case
the point to observe is, that Papias uses the aorist tense
rip/niivtvae. The days of new independent translation appear
to have been over when Papias wrote, and we have every
reason to believe that there was one authoritative Greek St.
Matthew. The citations of it are as early and as constant as
those of the other Gospels. Even those Fathers who tell us
that Matthew's Greek Gospel is a translation seem to forget
themselves, and elsewhere to speak of it and use it as if it
were an original. In short, the Church has never made the
difference between the first and the other Synoptic Gospels
that this theory demands. I mean the theory that in each of
the latter two we have the work of an inspired writer : in the
first, a translation made by an unknown interpreter who
clearly acted the part rather of an editor than translator, and
who in some places inserted explanations and additions of
his own.
The difficulty of claiming inspired authority for the Greek
St. Matthew has been felt so strongly, that in modern times
a theory has been started to which no ancient author gives
countenance, namely, that there was a double original: that
Matthew first wrote in Hebrew and afterwards himself trans-
lated his work into Greek. If we are to reject the testimony of
the ancients at all, I should prefer to reject their assertion that
the Gospel was originally written in Hebrew ; but those who
say that it was testify also that there was no authorized
translation. On this point both Papias and Jerome are
express, so that it seems to me there is no middle course.
We must choose between the two hypotheses, a Greek
172 THE ORIGINAL LANGUAGE OF ST. MATTHEW, [x.
original of St. Matthew, or a lost Hebrew original with a
translation by an unknown author.* Or rather, since our
Greek Gospel bears marks of not being a mere translation,
we must choose between the hypotheses that we have in the
Greek the Gospel as written by Matthew himself, or the
Gospel as written by an unknown writer, who used as his
principal materials an Aramaic writing by St. Matthew
which has now perished.
We turn back, then, to examine more closely the external
evidence for th? Hebrew original, when we find that it melts
away in a wonderful manner. Observe what is the point to
be determined. It is iiot disputed that Hebrew-speaking
sectaries in the third and fourth centuries used a Gospel in
their own language, and that they ascribed it to St. Matthew;
but the question is. What was the relation of that Gospel to
our Greek St. Matthew } was it that of original to translation ?
For that purpose we must inquire what information is to be
had about that Hebrew Gospel. In the next lecture I shall
speak of other Apocryphal Gospels; but it is not inconvenient
to treat of the Hebrew one separately, because its character
is different from that of the others. These last I have de-
scribed as either supplemental or heretical : that is to say,
as either such as assume the Canonical Gospels and try to
make additions to their story, or else such as were framed
to serve the interests of some heresy. But the Hebrew
Gospel is the only one which has pretensions to be an
independent Gospel : that is to say, one which claims to be
set on a level with the Canonical Gospels, as one accepted
by the Church as containing an authentic history of our
Lord's life and teaching.
* That the existing Greek text is not authoritative is assumed also by Eusebius.
One of the solutions which he offers {Quaest. ad Marm. II.) of the difficulty which
he finds in Matthew's statement, that Mary Magdalen's visit to the sepulchre took
place o<|/6 (ra00drcov, is that this phrase, used by the Greek translator, does not quite
accurately give the meaning of Matthew's Hebrew text, which would have been
better expressed by fipdSiov than 6\pf. It seems to me not impossible that Eusebius
might have got this solution from Papias, and that this might have been the very
occasion on which Papias found occasion to observe that Matthew had written his
Gospel in Hebrew.
X.] THE EBIOMTE GOSPEL.
173
I begin by putting out of court the Ebionite Gospel
described by Epiphanius, this being clearly to be banished
to the class of heretical gospels. Epiphanius tells us enough
about it to make us at any rate sure that this was not the
original of our St. Matthew. It contained nothing cor-
responding to the first two chapters, and its actual beginning
was quite different from what we find in the third chapter.
The Gospel emanated from the Ebionite sect which I have
described already (p. 18), and to which I find it convenient
to give the distinctive name of Elkesaite, thereby avoiding
some controversy as to the proper extension of the name
Ebionite.* These Jewish sectaries, being few in number and
not widely diffused, were little known to the Church at large
until the end of the second century or the beginning of the
third, when an extreme section of them assumed an aggressive
and proselytizing attitude, and in particular attempted to
make converts at Rome. This section included some men
who did not scruple at literary imposture. They produced
the book of Elkesai (see p. ig), and they refashioned for their
purposes earlier documents which professed to relate the
preaching of Peter. In this way originated the Clementine
Recognitions and Homilies. It is for this section that
Epiphanius reserves the name Ebionite, giving to the other
Judaizers the name of Nazarenes. My judgment concerning
what Epiphanius describes as the Ebionite Gospel is, that
it was a Greek book compiled by these Elkesaites for the use
of their converts, and purporting to be a translation of the
Hebrew Gospel. But I am persuaded that these adepts in
literary forgery, instead of giving a faithful translation of
* The name Ebionite seems to have been originally given to all Jewish Christians
who observed the Mosaic law (Orig. adv. Cels. ii. i) ; and though the earlier authori-
ties distinguished between those Christians of Jewish birth who, after their conver-
sion, merely continued to observe the Mosaic law themselves, and those who insisted
on such observance as necessary to salvation, and who besides denied our Lord's
Divinity and His miraculous Conception; yet these early authorities give to both classes
the name of Ebionites (see in particular Orig. adv. Cels. v. 6i, Euseb. H. E. iii. 27).
It seems to have been first towards the end of the fourth century that the name
Nazarene was applied (by Epiphanius and Jerome) to the first class, while the name
Ebionite was left as the peculiar designation of the second.
174 'iHE ORIGINAL LANGUAGE OF ST. MATTHEW, [x.
that Gospel, manufactured a new Gospel of their own, using
for that purpose not only the Gospel according to St. Matthew,
but also that according to St. Luke, and perhaps also that
according to St. John. That this Ebionite Gospel never
existed in Aramaic is more than I can venture to assert ; *
but I hold that the Gospel which Epiphanius describes was
in Greek, and that our Greek Gospels were used in its manu-
facture.
I have already said that this Elkesaite sect was charac-
terized by an abhorrence of sacrifice, and by an objection to
the use of flesh meat ; and the extracts given by Epiphanius
show how they made their Gospel emphatically sanction
these opinions of theirs. In one place (Epiph. Haer. xxx. 16)
our Lord is made to say : ' I came to put an end to sacrifices,
and until ye cease from sacrifices the wrath of God shall not
cease from you.' The same hand was evidently at work here
that in the Clementine Recognitions (i. 64) makes Peter say
to the priests in the temple : ' We are certain that God is only
made more angry by the sacrifices which ye offer, seeing that
the time of sacrifices is now passed ; and because ye will not
acknowledge that the time for offering victims has passed,
your temple shall be destroyed, and the abomination of
desolation set up in the holy place.'f
It was a natural object of solicitude with these Elkesaites
to get rid of the encouragement to the eating of flesh afforded
by our Lord's participation in the Passover feast. Accor-
dingly, in their Gospel, the disciples' question, 'Where wilt
thou that we prepare for thee to eat the Passover'? receives
from our Lord the answer, * Have I with desire desired to eat
this Passover, even flesh, with you f * Two things deserve to
be noticed in this passage besides its hostility to the use of
flesh. The first is that Epiphanius, in commenting on the
two changes introduced by the insertion of the word flesh, and
of the interrogative particle, describes the latter as made by
* Epiphanius states {Haer. xxx. 3) that both the Gospel according to St. John
and the Acts of the Apostles had been translated into Aramaic.
t We may gather from this Clementine passage in what part of the Gospel the
saying quoted by Epiphanius was inserted.
X.] THE EBIONITE GOSPEL. ly^
the addition of the two letters fi, tj ; showing plainly that it
was a Greek book he had before him. The other is, that the
text on which the Elkesaite forger has operated is not from
St. Matthew's Gospel, but from St. Luke's, viz. xxii. 15.
Another New Testament example of the use of animal
food seemed to contradict the teaching of these Elkesaites — I
mean the passage which describes locusts as having been the
food of John the Baptist. Accordingly they substituted ' His
food was wild hone}^ the taste of which was that of the
manna, as a honey-cake dressed with oil' (compare Numbers
xi. 8, LXX.). The substitution here of the word IjKpig, a cake,
for uKpig, a locust, has convinced the great majority of critics
that this Ebionite forger here did not translate from the
Hebrew, but worked on the Greek texts of our Gospels.
In the very few fragments of this Gospel that have been
preserved there are several other indications of the use
of St. Luke besides those already mentioned. It names
Zacharias and Elisabeth as the parents of John the Baptist ;
it dates the preaching of the Baptist, * Caiaphas being the
high priest,' Luke iii. 2. It tells that Jesus, when He came
forward as a teacher, was ' about thirty years of age ; ' (Luke
iii. 23), and it shows signs of following Luke iii. 21, in the
phrase, 'when the people were baptized came Jesus also'. In
this Ebionite Gospel what Matthew calls the Sea of Galilee
becomes the * lake of Tiberias' : ' lake ' being Luke's ordinary
phrase and * Tiberias ' John's. And I am disposed to recog-
nize as an indication of the use of St. John's Gospel a point
noted by the late Bishop FitzGerald. According to St. John
it was the descent of the Holy Ghost at our Lord's baptism
which taught the Baptist to recognize Jesus as the Son of
God (John i. t,^). Now according to Matthew's Gospel, John,
before the descent of the Holy Ghost, confesses that he has
need to be baptized by Jesus. This Ebionite Gospel trans-
poses the confession so as to make it agree with what John's
account would at first sight appear to require. And it is only
when the Baptist sees the miracle and hears the voice from
heaven that he falls at the feet of Jesus, with the prayer, ' I
beseech Thee, Lord, do Thou baptize me.'
176 THE ORIGINAL LANGUAGE OF ST. MATTHEW, [x.
Now, according" to all the authorities, the genuine He-
brew Gospel was identical, or nearly so, with St. Matthew,
so that these coincidences, not with Matthew, but with other
Gospels, arrest attention. And considering- by what tainted
hands this document is presented, I will not detain you with
a discussion of the abstract question whether coincidences
with Luke and John ought necessarily to cause us to reject
the claim of a document to be regarded as the original
Hebrew Gospel, I content myself with expressing my con-
viction that this Ebionite Gospel of Epiphanius is nothing of
the kind. I look on it as a third-century forgery, made with
heretical intent by one who was well acquainted with the
Greek Gospels, in a workshop discredited by other forgeries
and impostures ; and I hold that it must be altogether cast
out of consideration by anyone who seeks to restore a con-
siderably older document, namely, the Hebrew Gospel in use
among those whom Epiphanius and Jerome call Nazarenes,
and for which these sectaries claimed the authorship of St.
Matthew.
For the same reason it is only with great reserve I can
employ another source of information about the Hebrew
Gospel, namely, the Clementine Homilies. These frequently
quote sayings of our Lord, and they contain other passages
resembling texts in the Canonical Gospels, but often differing
a good deal from them in form. It was a natural explanation
of these variations to suppose that the Clementine writer was
quoting a gospel different from any of our four, and to assume
that the Gospel which, as a Jewish Christian, he was accus-
tomed to use must have been the Hebrew Gospel. The idea
receives some confirmation from the fact that it is Matthew's
Gospel which the Clementine quotations ordinarily recall.
But they do not so exclusively. In a table of the Clementine
Gospel quotations given by Westcott {hitrodudion to the Study
of the Gospels^ p. 468) there are about sixty coincidences with
St. Matthew, three with Mark, six with Luke, and four with
John. But one thing must be borne in mind before we infer
that a peculiarity in the form of a Clementine citation implies
that the writer used a different Gospel. It is that when such
X.] thp: nazarene gospel. lyy
citations are made in the Homilies Peter is usually the
speaker; and he is represented not as reading our Lord's
sayings from a book, but as giving his own recollections of
His teachings and His acts. The conditions of the story then
required that Peter should show himself to be an independent
authority, and not the servile copier of a previous record. I
feel no doubt that the story of the man born blind, which I
have quoted (p. 76), was taken from St. John; and a com-
parison of the two versions shows the amount of licence which
the Clementine writer conceived himself at liberty to use.
The fact, then, that a report of our Lord's words, made by so
arbitrary a writer, differs from the Canonical text gives us no
assurance that he derived it from the Hebrew Gospel, or even
from any written source. On the other hand, since he was no
doubt acquainted with the Hebrew Gospel, there is always a
possibility of his having used it ; and if the same peculiar form
of citation occurs more than once, or if it agrees with the
cittition of another writer, then we are led to regard it as taken
from a written source, and not improbably from the Hebrew
Gospel.*
When we have cast aside these Elkesaite authorities, we
have no more copious source of information about the Hebrew
Gospel than St. Jerome ; and it might seem that he sets at
rest the question of the Hebrew original of St. Matthew, for he
tells us that he had seen it himself and made a copy of it. Un-
fortunately, he goes on to tell us that he proceeded to translate
it into Greek and Latin. That alone would lead us to suspect
that the book must be something different from our Gospel of
* The most remarkable instance of the kind is the saying ' Be ye approved money-
changers ' {ylviffde SoKi/xoi rpane(7Tai), which I have quoted already (p. 23). The
meaning of it was that we ought to emulate the skill of money-changers in under-
standing how to reject the evil and choose the good (compare i Thess. v. 21, a text
often quoted in connexion with this saying). The saying is quoted three times in the
Clementine HomiHes, ii. 51 ; iii. 50; xviii. 20. Clement of Alexandria, who is lax in
his use of non-canonical and even heretical documents, expressly quotes this saying
as Scripture [Strom, i. 28), and three times again indirectly refers to it (ii. 4; vi. 10;
vii. 15). It is also quoted in the second century by the Gnostic Apelles (Epipli.
Huer. xliv. 2). It is referred to by a whole host of later writers, of whom a list will
be found in Nicholson's Gosjel according to tha Hebrews, p. 157.
N
1 78 Tlll'^ ORIGINAL LANGUAGE OF ST. MATTHEW, [x.
St. Matthew, or that, if the latter be a translation, it cannot
be an accurate translation. And this suspicion is turned into
certainty by abundant extracts which St. Jerome gives from
the same book, sufficiently confirmed by the testimony of
other fathers. We are thus enabled to say with certainty that
whatever affinities there may have been between this Naza-
rene Gospel and St. Matthew's, the latter can with no pro-
priety be said to be a translation of the former. The Nazarene
Gospel contained some things that are not in St. Matthew,
and wanted some things that are in St. Matthew,* and told
in different ways stories that were common to both. The most
interesting of the additions made by the Nazarene Gospel to
the canonical history is its account of our Lord's appearance
to James after His resurrection. It runs: 'Now the Lord,
when He had given the linen cloth to the servant of the priest,
went to James, and appeared to him. For James had taken
an oath that he would not eat bread from that hour on which
he had drunk the cup of the Lord till he saw him risen from
the dead.' Then our Lord says, 'Bring a table and bread.'
And a little further on it is added : ' He took bread, and
blessed and brake, and gave it to James the Just, and said to
him, My brother, eat thy bread, for the Son of Man is risen
from the dead' {De Vir. Illust. 2). We may be sure that if
this story had been in the original St. Matthew, it would not
have been omitted in the Greek translation, and therefore this
one specimen would give ground for the opinion, which the
other specimens I shall produce establish beyond doubt, that
Jerome's Hebrew Gospel is not a different form of the first
Gospel, but to all intents a fifth Gospel. f It is another ques-
* The proof of this is, that the Hebrew Gospel is the shorter. The Stichometry
of Nicephorus gives 2500 (Tti'xoi for the length of St. Matthew, and 2200 for that of
the Gospel according to the Hebrews. The authority here cited is a list of ecclesias-
tical books, with the length of each, which is evidently very old, though only
preserved by a ninth century writer. The reader will find it in Westcott's N. T.
Canon, p. 552.
t An abstract preserved by Photius {Cod. 177) gives us curious information about
a work of Theodore of Mopsuestia, directed against a Western writer whose name is
not given, but who plainly is Jerome ; and one of the charges brought against him is
that of having forged a fifth Gospel. Prof. Westcott has noted that the same charge
was brought by Julian the Pelagian (Augustine, Opus Imperf. cont. Julian., iv. 88).
X.] THE NAZARENE GOSPELS. lyg
tion whether the story may not be authentic. We know
from I Cor. xv. 7 that our Lord did appear to James, and
nothing forbids us to believe that a true tradition of that
appearance may have been preserved. But it is also possible
that this very verse of i Cor. may have suggested to the
Jewish Christian framer of the Nazarene Gospel to supple-
ment the defect of the authentic history by an invented
narrative of the details of our Lord's appearance to the vene-
rated head of the Jerusalem Church. And some suspicion is
suggested by the fact that St. Paul puts the appearance to
James quite late in the list of our Lord's appearances, while
the Nazarene account would lead us to regard it as one of the
first.
The next specimen which I shall produce deserves remark
on many accounts. It is quoted by Origen as well as by
Jerome, and so gives us reason to think that the same Hebrew
Gospel was used by these two writers. But you must observe
that although Origen believed that the original of Matthew's
Gospel had been in Hebrew (Euseb. vi. 25), it does not appear
that he identified it with the Hebrew Gospel which he quotes;
nor can I find that this idea was entertained by any of the
other Church writers who quote what they generally call the
Gospel according to the Hebrews. The notion seems to have
been peculiar to St. Jerome.
Our Saviour is introduced as saying * My mother the Holy
Ghost lately took me by one of my hairs and carried me to
the great mountain Tabor.' * The words 'by one of my hairs'
might easily be accounted for as an enlargement of St. Mat-
thew's 'led up of the Spirit' (iv. i), by an apocryphal addition
* Origen in Johan., torn. ii. 6; Horn, in Jerem., xv. 4; Hieron. in Mich., vii. 6;
in Isai., xv. 1 1 ; in Ezech., xvi. 13. The first passage quoted from Origen is curious.
In expounding St. John's words TravTo. Si ahrov iyevero, he includes the Holy Spirit
among the irdvTa ; and adds, that if anyone accepts the Gospel according to the
Hebrews, there is still no difficulty in interpreting the words ' my mother the Holy
Ghost,' &c., since Jesus said 'Whosoever shall do the will of my Father which sent
me, the same is my brother and sister afid tnother.'' In the second passage he is
explaining the words 'my mother' (Jer. xv. 10), and, in addition to other solution'^,
notices that which is suggested — 'if anyone receives "mv mother the Holv Gliost "
&c. '
N 2
i8o THE ORIGINAL LANGUAGE OF ST. MATTHEW, [x.
(founded on Ezek. viii. 3, Bel and the Dragon, 36), and this
would be an indication that this Hebrew Gospel is posterior
to our Greek St. Matthew. But the phrase ' My mother the
Holy Ghost ' requires more comment. In the Aramaic the
Holy Spirit is denoted by a feminine noun ; consequently, in
the Gnostic sects which took their origin where a Shemitic
language was spoken, and which deduce the origin of things
from a male and female principle, the Holy Spirit is usually
the female principle. Hence Hilgenfeld, who tries to discover
in St. Matthew an anti-Pauline Hebrew nucleus, considers
that the part ascribed in the first chapter to the Holy Spirit
in the generation of our Lord shows that this chapter at least
was no part of the original Hebrew, but must have been
added by the Greek translator or rather adapter. But St.
Jerome gives no hint that the Gospel which he read was
defective at the beginning; and it must be borne in mind
that if a Gnostic writer spoke of the Holy Spirit as the
mother of Christ it would be with reference to His premun-
dane generation. He could without inconsistency adopt
Matthew's account of the miraculous birth of Jesus, but
would probably lay stress chiefly on the union of Jesus with
a higher power at his baptism. In the passage of the
Nazarene Gospel which relates the baptism, the Holy Spirit
addresses our Lord as ' My Son.' The narrative runs : ' It
came to pass, when the Lord had come up from the water,
the entire fountain of the Holy Spirit descended and rested
upon him and said to him. My Son, in all the prophets did I
await thee that thou mightest come and I might rest in thee :
for thou art my rest, thou art my firstborn Son that reignest
for ever.' I may as well quote also the account this Gospel
gives of our Lord's coming to be baptized : ' Behold the
mother of the Lord and his brethren said to him, John the
Baptist baptizeth for the remission of sins ; let us go and be
baptized by him. But he said to them, Wherein have I sin-
ned that I should go and be baptized by him, except, per-
chance, this very thing that I have said is ignorance r'
I have given examples enough to show that this Nazarene
Gospel was a very different book from our St. Matthew. Lest^
X.] THE NAZARENE GOSPEL. l8i
however, it should be thought that the difference betweeu
the books arises from one of them having received interpola-
tions, I shall show you how differently a story is told whicli
both have in common : ' Another rich man said to Jesus,
Master, what good thing shall I do that I may live ? He
said. Go and sell all that thou hast, and distribute among the
poor and come and follow me. But the rich man began to
scratch his head and was displeased. And the Lord said to
him. How canst thou say thou has kept the law and the
prophets, since it is written in the law, Thou shalt love thy
neighbour as thyself: and behold, many of thy brethren,
children of Abraham, are clothed with dung and dying with
hunger, while thy house is full of many good things, and
nothing is sent out of it to them.' And turning to his disciple
Simon, who sat beside him, he said, 'Simon son of John, it is
easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for
a rich man to enter into the kingdom of heaven.' * Again, the
man with the withered hand is made to say, 'I was a mason
seeking a livelihood by the labour of my hands. I pray thee,
Jesus, to restore me to health, that I may not beg my bread
in disgrace' (Hieron., in Adait. xii. 13). If so ran the original
Hebrew St. Matthew, our Greek Evangelist must have been
a most unfaithful translator.
Again, the parable of the talents was improved so as not
to inflict so severe a punishment on mere sloth. There are
three servants ; one multiplies his talent ; another hides it ;
the third wastes it with harlots and riotous living. The
second is only rebuked ; the third is cast into prison. f The
* This passage is given in the 'vetus interpretatio ' of Origen's Commentary on
Matthew xix. (torn. xv. 14, Delarue, iii. 671). The passage is not found in the extant
Greek.
t This is told by Eusebius in one of the Greek fragments of his ' Theophaneia,'
published by Afai {Nov. Pat. Bibl. iv. 155). The passage does not seem to be
contained in the Syriac version translated by Lee, which, however, contains (p. 234)
another quotation from the Hebrew Gospel. Some critics, who think unfavourably
of other variations of the Nazarene Gospel from the Canonical narrative, find marks
of originality in this version of the parable of the talents. But to me this variation
seems to show plainly the handiwork of a corrector who fancies he is making an
improvement and really changes for the worse. And I suspect that this corrector
was acquainted with Luke xv.
1 82 THE ORIGINAT. LANGUAGE OF ST. MATTHEW, [x.
onl}' oilier things about the Hebrew Gospel which I think it
worth while to quote are, that instead of relating that the
\eil of the Temple was rent, it told that a lintel of the Temple
of immense size was shattered; and that in the Lord's Prayer?
instead of 'daily bread' it had ' bread for the morrow.' This
is the meaning of the word ImovaioQ, adopted by Bishop Light-
foot {New Testament Revision, Appendix) ; and it is no small
argument in his favour that such was the interpretation
accepted in Palestine apparently before the end of the first
century. But if the Aramaic had been the original, and had
said plainly ' bread for the morrow,' it seems to me not likely
that so difficult a word would have been used in the transla-
tion. The Greek fathers were as much puzzled by it as our-
selves {see Origen de Orat. 27, quoted by Lightfoot New Testa-
mejit Revision, p. 195).
It would be time wasted if I were to accumulate quotations
for the mere purpose of showing that the Nazarene Gospel
was not the original of our St. Matthew. The only wonder
is, how St. Jerome could ever have permitted himself to think
or say that it was. As time went on he certainly became
cautious about asserting it, and usually quotes it as ' the
Gospel written in the Hebrew language which the Nazarenes
read' ; and he sometimes adds, 'which is called by most the
original of St. Matthew '.* But it is still surprising that
he should have accepted this Gospel as the original St.
Matthew at a time when he could not have been ignorant of
its character : for the very first time he speaks of it he tells
that he had already translated it into Greek and Latin, and
quotes the story of our Lord's appearance to James. How-
* 'In evangelio quo utuntur Nazaraei et Ebionitae, quod nuper in Graecum de
Hcbraeo sermone transtulimus, et quod vocatur a plerisque Matthaei authenticum '
{in Matt. xii. 13, written in a.d. 398). 'Evangelium quod Hebraeo sermone con-
scriptum legunt Nazaraei ' (in Is. xi. 2, written in 410). See also m Ezek. xviii. 7
(written in 413). 'In evangelio juxta Hebraeos, quod Chaldaico quidem Syroque
sermone sed Hebraicis Uteris scriptum est, quo utuntur usque hodie Nazareni —
secundum Apostolos, sive ut plerique autumant, juxta Matthaeum — quod et in
Caesariensi habetur bibliotheca ' {Dial. adv. Pelag. iii. written in 416). Jerome's
first mention of the book is in his Catalogue of Ecclesiastical Writers, written in
392.
X.] THE NAZARENE GOSPEL. 183
ever, our surprise may abate a little when we remember that
long before Jerome's time the belief had been accepted in the
Church, that St. Matthew's Gospel had been originally written
in Hebrew. It was notorious that the Judaizing sects had a
Gospel in their own language which they designated as St.
Matthew's ; and no one ignorant of their language had any
reason for doubting the appellation to be correct. St. Jerome
would therefore, no doubt, embrace with eager expectation
the opportunity of obtaining access to so valuable a help to
the criticism of the New Testament text, and would count the
power of copying this document as one of the most precious
fruits of his Shemitic studies. But after he had become ac-
quainted with it, and had found that instead of enabling him
to correct a reading here and there in the Greek St. Matthew,
it was a work so different from the Canonical Gospel that a
new translation was necessary in order to inform a Greek
reader of its contents, how was it that Jerome did not then
perceive that unless he owned the two books to have been
different from the beginning, he must either hold the Canonical
St. Matthew to have been an unfaithful translation, or else
the Nazarene Gospel to have been since foully corrupted ? In
answering this question we must call to mind what was the
great work of Jerome's life. When he became acquainted
with the Hebrevi/- Bible he found it in many respects to be very
different from the Septuagint and its Latin translations, which
were in current use all over the Christian world. He set him-
self to revise the current text, so as to bring it into conformity
with the original Hebrew ; and on account of the preference
he gave to the latter, he met with much opposition and
calumny from his contemporaries. Now it is reasonable to
suppose that, notwithstanding some striking variations, there
was a good deal of resemblance between the Nazarene Gospel
and the Canonical Gospel of St. Matthew. The differences
were probably not greater than Jerome had found in many
places between the Hebrew and Greek texts of the Old Testa-
ment. I believe, then, that Jerome, taking up the Nazarene
Gospel with every prepossession in its favour, was not hin-
dered by these differences from accepting it as the original
1 84 J'ln^: ORIGINAL LANGUAGE OF ST. MATTHEW, [x.
text of St. Matthew, and that he gave it the preference which,
in the case of the Old Testament books, he had given to the
Hebrew over the Greek text. I do not know that he ever
quite abandoned this view, though as years went on he
became more cautious in expressing it. But though we
gratefully follow St. Jerome in using an Old Testament text
cleared of the accretions which, in Greek and Latin Bibles,
had gathered round the original, we may rejoice that he
could not succeed in persuading the Church to exchange the
Greek for the Aramaic St. Matthew.*
When we have arrived at the conclusion that the Hebrew
Gospel known to St. Jerome was not the original of St. Mat-
thew, but to all intents a fifth Gospel, we have still to consider
what we ought to think of it. Is it to be ranked with our
Canonical four or with the Apocryphal Gospels, of which I
have next to speak ? I am conscious that it is difficult for us
to divest our minds of prejudice when we try to make a purely
literary comparison of the Hebrew and the Canonical Gospels.
However freely we acknowledge that there was nothing in the
nature of things to forbid our having five Gospels, yet, as the
Church for so many centuries has only acknowledged four,
we are not now inclined to reopen the question ; and we can
scarcely be quite impartial in our comparison of words we
have venerated from our childhood with words which come to
us as strange and novel. So, perhaps, I might distrust my
own judgment when the story of the rich man scratching his
head impresses me, in respect of claim to priority over the
Canonical narrative, as on a level with the versions of New
Testament stories which good ladies sometimes publish for
the use of children. It is therefore a satisfaction to me that,
in asserting the immense superiority in originality and sim-
plicity of our Greek St. Matthew over the Nazarene Gospel, I
have the adhesion of the great majority of those critics who
pay least regard to the authority of ecclesiastical tradition.
* Some light is thrown on Jerome's statement, that he translated the Nazarene
Gospel into Greek, by the fact that his version of the Psalms and of the Prophets was,
with his approval, rendered into Greek by Sophronius {De. Vir. Illustr. 134, Praef.
in Pss.).
X.] THE NAZARENE GOSPEL. 185
Indeed, critics of the sceptical school have generally adopted
Schleiermacher's idea, that the Hebrew St. Matthew con-
tained nothing but discourses ; and so they have felt no
temptation to take under their patronage this Nazarene
Gospel, which clearly dealt in narrative just as much as the
Canonical. Hilgenfeld is almost the only critic of note who
attributes originality to this Hebrew Gospel. But he owns
that he is the advocate of a nearly abandoned cause. Volk-
mar, Strauss, Renan, Keim, Lipsius, Weizsacker agree in the
■opinion which I express in the words of Anger quoted by
Hilgenfeld: 'EvangeliumHebraeorum,testantibus quae super-
sunt reliquiis, cognatum cum Ev. Matthaei, iis in rebus, in
quibus ab eo differt, nunquam certo formam principalem,
plerumque indubitate formam derivatam praebet.' Indeed it
is quite intelligible that the traditions of a small sect, which
was isolated from the Christian world, and on that account
uncontrolled in its procedure, should be liable to depravation
and corruption, from which our Gospels were secured, if by
nothing else, by the mere fact that they so rapidly became
the property of mutually distant Churches.*
When we have acknowledged that this Nazarene Gospel,
so far from being the mother, or even the sister, of one of our
Canonical four, can only claim to be a granddaughter or
grandniece, it does not follow that it stands on no higher
level than the Apocryphal Gospels. It is at least favourably
distinguished from them by not being open to the charge
which I brought against the rest (p. 120), that they are silent
about our Lord's public life, concerning which it is not in-
credible that true traditions might be in circulation; while
they speak copiously on matters about which the narrators
were not likely to have had means of real knowledge. We
may disregard tales of the latter kind as idle chatter, and yet
think ourselves bound to give a hearing to stories concerning
* So Renan, v. 104 : 'Notre Matthieu s' est consei-ve intact depuis sa redaction
definitive, dans les dernieres annees du i«'' siecle, tandis que I'Evangile hebreu, vu
I'absence d'une orthodoxie, jalouse g^rdienne des textes, dans les Eglises judaisantes
de S3Tie, a ete remanie de siecle en siecle, si bien qu' a la fin il n'etait pas fort supe-
rieur a un Evangile apocryphe.'
i86 THE ORIGINAL LANGUAGE OF ST. MATTHEW, [x.
our Lord's public life which circulated at no great distance
from Him in time or place. But I own that, after giving them
a hearing, I have not felt disposed to attribute to them any-
high value. The most favourable verdict I have in any case
been able to pass is, that I will not venture to say that some
of them may not have had a foundation in truth. For ex-
ample, the saying ' Be ye good money-changers', or another
quoted by Jerome, ' Be ye never glad but when you see your
brother in charity', may, for all I know, have been derived
from some actual sayings of our Lord.
Before I quit the subject of this Hebrew Gospel, I ought to
mention that the earliest trace of its existence is that Ignatius
[ad Smyrii. 3), in arguing against a Docetic conception of our
Lord's body, says, ' And when, after His resurrection, He
came to Peter and His company. He said, "Take, handle me,
and see that I am not a spirit without body " ' [Saijudviov
aawixaTov). We might suppose that this was a free quotation
of Luke xxiv. 39 ; but we find from Jerome that the words
' incorporale daemonium ' were found in his Nazarene Gos-
pel, to which accordingly he refers this quotation.* It would
be quite natural that Ignatius, being a native of Syria, should
use an Aramaic Gospel. On the other hand, it is to be re-
marked that Eusebius, who quotes this phrase from Ignatius
[H. E. iii. 36), does not know where he got it; and yet Euse-
bius, at least when he wrote the Theophaneia, knew the
Hebrew Gospel. Again, Origen in the preface to his Df/n
Apx^i' (Delarue, i. 47) says that the saying is derived from
the apocryphal book Dodrina Petri. It is best to acknow-
ledge that our means of information do not enable us to speak
positively as to the filiation of these different documents. In
any case we know that Hegesippus, in the second century,
used the Hebrew Gospel (Euseb. H. E. iv. 2 2).t
I return to the question as to the original language of St.
Matthew, respecting which the evidence takes a new com-
* De Vir Illiistr. i6; In Isai. Lib. i8, Praef.
t On the New Testament Quotations of Ignatius, see Zahn, Ignatius von
Antiochien, p. 595, etseqq. ; and Lightfoot's Index, Ignatius, ii. p. 1107. The Frag-
ments of the Hebrew Gospel have been often collected. The most recent collections
X.] THE NAZARENE GOSPEL. 1 87
plexion from what we have learned as to the Nazarene Gos-
pel. We might have lightly regarded the assertion that
Matthew's Gospel was originally written in Hebrew, if it
were made only by men who had never seen the book, or who
did not understand the language, and were therefore incom-
petent to judge whether the Aramaic book which was in use
among certain Jewish sectaries could justly claim priority
over the Greek Gospel. But the question seemed decided by
the testimony of St. Jerome, who had himself examined the
Aramaic book. But now Jerome, when cross-examined,
passes over as a witness to the opposite side, convincing us
ot the comparative lateness of the only Aramaic Gospel that
any of the witnesses had seen. We have therefore to fall
back on the earlier witnesses, and we have now to consider
what their evidence is worth, especially when we bear in
mind that if their opinion was influenced by belief in the
pretensions made for the Hebrew Gospel of their own day,
they were mistaken in that belief. If, for example, we think
the ' it is said ' of Eusebius sufficient evidence to induce us to
believe that Pantaenus was shown in India a Gospel in
Hebrew letters, we may still reasonably doubt whether this
was a copy of the original St. Matthew left there by St. Bar-
tholomew, or simply a copy of the Nazarene Gospel. As for
our earliest witness, Papias, I do not attach overwhelming
weight to his easy reception of the statement that Matthew's
Gospel was originally Hebrew. He knew that Palestine was
bilingual, so that the thing would appear to him probable;
and it supplied a key to difficulties he may have met with in
harmonizing the Gospels ; but it is very unlikely that he him-
self either saw the Gospel, or could read it if he did see it. If
we had not better evidence, I doubt if we could attribute
much value to the opinion of a bishop of Phrygia as to the
extent to which Palestine had been bilingual fifty years be-
fore ; for this is a point on which distance of place is a great
are Westcott, Introduction to the Study of the Gospels, 452, et seqq. ; Nicholson, The
Gospel according to the Hebreivs ; Hilgenfeld, Novum Testamentum extra Canoneni
Receptum, the section treating of the Gospel according to the Hebrews having been
lately published in a second edition, 1884.
1 88 THE ORIGINAL LANGUAGE OF ST. MATTHEW. Ix.
bar to accurate knowledge. I could ask questions as to the
language or dialect spoken in different parts of the Continent
that I daresay most of you would beg to be excused from
answering. I doubt whether many educated Frenchmen
would have confidence in saying whether a Welsh Member
of Parliament would address his constituents in Welsh, or an
Irish one in Irish.
Actually, however, I believe that Greek was as generally
spoken in Palestine in our Lord's time as English now is in
the West of Ireland. Greek was the language of the law
courts and of business. Accordingly, a knowledge of Greek
could only be dispensed with by those who were too high or
too low to be concerned in mercantile matters. I think, how-
ever, that Josephus has been misunderstood when he has
been supposed to say [Ani. xx. 12) that those of high rank
did not know Greek. What he says is, that a knowledge of
foreign languages was an accomplishment in which they took
no pride, it being one possessed by the lower class of freemen,
and even by slaves. ' Those only were regarded as wise who
were accurately acquainted with the law, and were able to
interpret the Holy Scriptures.' In the Acts, you will re-
member that the chief captain, taking Paul for a leader of
sicarii, is surprised that he can speak Greek. On the other
hand, when Paul addresses the people from the Temple steps,
they expect him to speak Greek, but are gratified, and become
attentive, on being addressed in their own language. Peter's
discourse on the day of Pentecost, and his address to Cor-
nelius, must, from the nature of the case, have been delivered
in Greek ; and it is not unreasonable to think the same of
some other speeches recorded in the early chapters of the
Acts. Dr. Roberts, in his interesting book, ' Discussions on
the Gospels', contends that our Lord Himself commonly
spoke Greek, and he at least makes it probable that He did
so sometimes.* He appeals to what we are told (Mark iii. 7]
of a great multitude having followed our Lord ' from Idumea
and from beyond Jordan, and they about Tyre and Sidon ',
* On the other side of the question deserves to be studied an essay by Neubauer
Studia Biblica, 1885.
X.] GREKK ORIGINAL MORE PROBABLE. jga
the presumption being that if they followed Him they could
understand His teaching; and people from the regions just
named would not be likely to do this unless He spoke Greek.
He draws another proof from St. John's report of our Lord's
conversation with Pilate, in which we are not told that the
services of an interpreter were employed, Greek seems ta
have been more prevalent in Galilee, which is called Galilee
of the Gentiles, than in Jerusalem. St. Matthew, as a collector
of taxes, could hardly have dispensed with a knowledge of
Greek. We know that the two Jewish Apostles, Peter, the
apostle of the circumcision, and James, the head of the
Jerusalem Church, have left Epistles in Greek. And, what
is remarkable, the letter of that specially Jewish Apostle,
St. James, is perhaps the best Greek in the New Testa-
ment.
The conclusion, then, which I draw from these facts is,
that there is not the least difficulty in believing that Matthew
might have written a Gospel in Greek, even on the supposition
that he intended it only for the use of the Christians in Pales-
tine; and the first Gospel contains internal evidence that it
was meant to have a wider circulation. On the other hand,
the proof I have given from Josephus (p. 143) of the literary
use of the Aramaic language in his time makes it equally
easy to accept evidence of the existence of an Apostolic
Hebrew Gospel, if only decisive evidence for its existence
were forthcoming. But it does not appear that any of the
witnesses had themselves seen such a Gospel, and there is no
evidence of the existence of any Greek text but the one which
was universally regarded as authoritative. Cureton imagined
that he could gain evidence for the Hebrew original of St.
Matthew from the Syriac version which he published, and
which he contended had not been made from Greek, but from
the original Aramaic. However, on that point he has failed
to convince scholars.* I cannot help thinking that if there
* See his Preface, p. vi., and an interesting section on the Hebrew Gospel, pp.
Ixxiv., &c. Renan says (v. 98) : C'est bien a tort qu'on a suppose que la version
syriaque de Saint M itthieu publiee par Cureton a ttj faite sur rorij^hial arameen de
Saint Matthieu. L'idee qu'elle serait cet original memc est tout a fait chimtrique.
I go THE ORIGINAL LANGUAGE OF ST. MATTHEW, [x.
had existed in use among Hebrew-speaking Christians what
was known to be the real original Gospel written by St.
Matthew, such a corrupt version of it as that circulated
among the Nazarenes could not have gained acceptance ; and
that the origin of the latter Gospel is more easily explained
if we suppose that it was in Greek the facts of the Gospel
History had been authoritatively published, and if we regard
the Nazarene Gospel as an attempt made by one not very
scrupulous about accuracy to present these facts to those who
spoke Aramaic. For these reasons, and on account of the
signs of originality already mentioned, which are presented
by the Greek Gospel, I am disposed to pronounce in favour of
the Greek original of St. Matthew.
But it has been objected. The great majority of the early
witnesses who tell us that Matthew wrote a Gospel tell us
also that he wrote it in Hebrew. If you do not accept their
testimony on the latter point, why accept it on the former ?
and then what reason is there for supposing that our present
Greek Gospel comes from St. Matthew at all ? Well, I do
not think that the two things stand on the same level of testi-
mony. In the case of Papias, for example, it seems to me
plain that the Gospel of which he speaks bore the title of St.
Matthew, and was accepted as such by the Christian world of
the time. The statement that it had been written in Hebrew
rests on a private tradition, for all we know, first made public
by Papias himself; and Papias has been generally condemned
as over credulous with respect to some of the traditions which
he accepted. If the Greek Gospel had been, as some suppose,
only based on the Hebrew Gospel of Matthew, but was
actually the work of one of the second generation, I do not
know why the name of the real author should have been sup-
pressed ; for the second and third Gospels bear the names of
those who were supposed to be their real authors, and not
those of the Apostles on whose authority they were believed
to rest. So that, if Matthew did not write the first Gospel, I
do not think the name of Matthew would have been necessary
to gain it acceptance in the Church. In any case, the fact of
this acceptance by the Church may suffice for our faith ; for
X.J GREEK ORIGINAL MORE PROBABLE. igj
though I believe the first Gospel to have been written by an
Apostle, and the second and third not, I make no difference
in my reception of them, nor do I find that any such differ-
ence was ever made by'Christians. From the earliest times
of which we have knowledge all were alike received as
indisputably authentic records of the deeds and words of
•Christ.
XI.
APOCRYPHAL AND HERETICAL GOSPELS.
SOME fifty years ago or more, a Mr. Hone,* who was at
that time an opponent of orthodoxy, if not of Christian-
ity (though I understand he afterwards regretted the line he
had taken), published what he called the Apocryphal New
Testament, which had considerable sale at the time, and
which may still be picked up on stalls or at auctions. The
object of the publication clearly was to disparage the pre-
eminent authority which we ascribe to the books of our New
Testament, by making it appear that those which we honour
had been picked out of a number of books with tolerably
equal claims to our acceptance, the selection having been
made by persons in whom we have no reason to feel much
confidence. The work professes to be an answer to the
question, ' After the writings contained in the New Testament
were selected from the numerous Gospels and Epistles then
in existence, what became of the books that were rejected by
the compilers ? ' The epoch of the compilation is apparently
assumed to be that of the Council of Nicaea. The writer, at
least, quotes a mediaeval story, that the selection of Canonical
books was then made by miracle, the right books having
jumped up on the table, and the wrong ones remained under
it ; and it would seem as if, though rejecting the miracle, he
received the fact that the Council settled the Canon. He pro-
* The same who gained a victory over the Government of the day by an
acquittal on a charge of blasphemous libel, tried before Lord Ellenborough in
1817.
XI.] THE APOCRYPHAL GOSPELS. ig3
ceeds to quote some remarks from Jortin on the violence of
the proceedings at the Council, and we are given to under-
stand that if the selection was not made then, it was made by
people not more entitled to confidence. He then gives a
selection of Apocryphal Gospels, Acts and Epistles, taken
from works of orthodox writers, but divided by himself into
verses (and, where that had not been done before, into
chapters), obviously with the intention of giving to these
strange Gospels, Epistles and Acts, as nearly as possible the
same appearance to the eye of the English reader as that pre-
sented by the old ones with which he was familiar.
I need not tell you that the Council of Nicaea did not
meddle with the subject of the Canon, and so we need not
trouble ourselves to discuss the proofs that the members of
that venerable Synod were frail and fallible men like our-
selves. The fact is, that as I have already told you, authority
did not meddle with the question of the Canon until that
question had pretty well settled itself; and, instead of this
abstention weakening the authority of our sacred books, the
result has been that the great majority have far higher autho-
rity than if their claims rested on the decision of any Council,
however venerable. They rest on the spontaneous consent of
the whole Christian world, Churches the most remote agree-
ing independently to do honour to the same books. Some of
the books which Mr. Hone printed as left out by the compilers
of our Canon were not in existence at the time when that
Canon established itself; and the best of the others is sepa-
rated, in the judgment of any sober man, by a very wide
interval from those which we account canonical. Mr. Hone's
insinuation has, I understand, been repeated in a later editioii,
which I have not seen, in a still grosser form ; the title-page
being ' The Suppressed Gospels and Epistles of the Original
New Testament of Jesus Christ, venerated by the primitive
Christian Churches during the first four centuries, but since,
after violent disputations, forbidden by the bishops of the
Nicene Council, in the reign of the Emperor Constantine.'
A work having a title not unlike Hone's was published a
few years ago by Hilgenfeld : ' Novum Testamentum extra
o
ig4 THE APOCRYPHAL GOSPELS. [xi.
Canonem receptum.' But it is a work of a very different
kind from Hone's catch-penny publication, having been
compiled by a man of real learning-. It includes nothing
that is not really ancient, and the greater part of it is occupied
with the writings of the so-called Apostolic fathers, which,
indeed, also appear in Hone's collection. I have thought it
■would be useful to give you, in this course of lectures, some
account of those writings which at any time obtained credit
in the Church of the same kind as was given to our Canonical
Scriptures, though in degree infinitely below that. I speak,
then, to-day of Apocryphal Gospels. Hilgenfeld does not
admit into his collection any of the Apocryphal Gospels that
have come down to us entire ; I presume, not judging them
of sufficient antiquity to deserve a place. What he gives are
merely the fragmentary extracts, which different fathers have
preserved, of the Ebionite Gospels, of which I spoke in the
last lecture, and of one or two heretical Gospels, of which I
shall speak to-day.
Of Gospels which have come down to us entire, I place,
first, on many grounds, that called the Gospel of James, or
Protevangelium, which has come down to us in more than
fifty MSS., and has been translated into many languages both
of East and West. The object of this Gospel is clearly sup-
plementary to our Gospels, and it is intended to satisfy the
curiosity of Christians with regard to the things which took
place before the birth of our Lord. If we are to ascribe to
the book any ' tendency' beyond the simple desire to gratify
curiosity, the doctrine which the inventor seems most solici-
tous to establish is that of the perpetual virginity of the
Virgin Mary.
It is this book which invented the names Joachim and
Anne for the parents of Mary. It tells how they had been
childless to old age ; how an angel appearing separately to
each of them, announced to them the birth of a child ; how
they vowed to dedicate to the Lord that which should be
born, and how, in fulfilment of this vow, Mary was brought
to the Temple at the age of three years. When she comes to
the age of twelve, the priests will not take the responsibility
XI.] THE PROTEVANGELIUM. ig^
of having- charge of a marriageable virgin at the Temple, and
they seek a widower to whose charge to commit her. All the
widowers are assembled ; and in order to choose between
them a miraculous test is employed, the idea of which is de-
rived from the history of Aaron's rod that budded. They
each give in their rod, and from Joseph's rod alone* there
issues a dove, so that he is chosen to have the charge, much
against his will, for we are carefully told that he had children
already. The story of the appearance of the angel Gabriel
and the annunciation of the Saviour's birth is told almost in
the words of Luke, except with the addition that the angel
appeared to Mary as she was drawing water. We find men-
tion made also of the dumbness of Zacharias, and of the tax-
ing under Caesar Augustus, in such a way as to leave no room
for doubt that Luke's Gospel was used ; while the account of
Herod and the wise men, the explanation of the name Jesus,
* because he shall save his people from their sins ', and other
particulars, are so given as to make it equally clear that this
Gospel presupposes St. Matthew's. There is a story that
when Mary's pregnancy was discovered, both she and Joseph
were made to clear themselves by drinking the water of
jealousy. The birth of her child is made to take place, not in
the stable of the inn, but in a cave by the roadside where the
labour-pains suddenly come on her. A midwife is found,
who expresses the greatest amazement at a virgin bringing
forth. Salome, who, on hearing of this prodigy, refuses to
believe unless she herself verify the fact, is punished by
having her hand withered, until, on her repentance, she is
healed by]_touching the child. The work is supposed to be
written by James, immediately after the death of Herod; and
the last things related are a miraculous rescue of the infant
John the Baptist from the massacre of the children, by means
of a mountain opening and hiding him and his mother; and
a consequent murder of Zacharias the priest by Herod's com-
mand, when his child could not be found. This story may be
* Accordingly, a prominent feature in pictures of the Marriage of the Virgin, by
Raphael and his predecessors, is that of the disappointed suitors breaking their use-
less ro Is.
O 2
ig5 THE APOCRYPHAL GOSPELS. [xk
regarded as bearing witness to the presence in the Gospel
used by the fabulist, of the text, * Zacharias whom ye slew be-
tween the Temple and the altar'. His blood is represented as
miraculously congealing, and refusing to be removed till the
avenger came.*
From this sketch of the contents of the Protevangelium
you will see that it is merely an attempt to embroider with
legend the simpler narrative of the earlier Evangelists, and
that it could not have come into existence if they had not
gained a position of acknowledged credit long before.
The Gospel which I have described can certainly lay claim
to very high antiquity. It was undoubtedly in full circulation
before the end of the fourth century, for it is clearly used by
Epiphanius in his work on Heresy, written about 376.! We
can, without quitting undisputed ground, carry the evidence
of the use of the book back to the very beginning of this cen-
tury ; for Peter of Alexandria, who died in 311, gives an
account of the death of Zacharias, which is clearly derived
from this Gospel. J In the preceding century Origen [tn Matt.y
torn. X. 17) speaks of the opinion that the 'brethren of our
Lord' were sons of Joseph by a former wife, as a tradition
derived from 'the Gospel according to Peter '§ and the 'book
of James'; and I see no sufficient reason for doubting that
this was in substance the same as the still extant book which
* This story of the blood is derived from a Jewish story of a miraculous bub-
bling of the blood of Zacharias the son of Jehoiada, which refused to be stilled,
though Nebuzaradan slew 94,000 of the chief of the Jews in the hope that by
the addition of their blood that of Zacharias might be quieted. — See Whitby's com-
mentary on Matt, xxiii. 35, or Midi-asch Echa Rabbati (Wiinsche's translation),
p. 21.
t Haer. Ixxix. 5 ; Ixxviii. 7 : see also Greg. Nyss. Orat. in diem Natal, Christi.
0pp. Paris, 1638, vol. iii., 346.
\ Routh's Rell. Sac. iv. 44.
§ Of this book no extracts have been preserved, and apparently it never had a
very wide range of circulation. It dates from the second century, and our chief
information about it is from a letter of Serapion, bishop of Antioch at the end of
that century, who had at first permitted the use of it in his diocese, but withdrew his
permission on closer acquaintance with the book, which though in the main orthodox,
contained some things that favoured the Docetic heresy (Euseb. H. E., vi. X2; see
alho iii. 3 and 25).
XI.] THE PROTEVANGELIUAI. 197
bears the name of James. It is true that Origen elsewhere,*
not professing- to quote the book of James, but relating a tra-
dition which had come to him, gives an account of the death
of Zacharias different from that already mentioned. He is
said to have been put to death, not on the occasion of the
slaughter of the Innocents, but later, and because he had per-
mitted Mary, notwithstanding the birth of her child, to stand
in the place assigned to virgins in the Temple. The truth
seems to be that more than one of those who accepted from
the Protevangelium that the Zacharias slain between the
Temple and the altar was the father of the Baptist, attempted
to improve on the account there given of the cause of his
death. A Gnostic story on the subject is told by Epiphanius
[Haer. xxvi. 12) ; and another orthodox account is reported by
Jerome in his commentary on Matthew xxiii. 35. We might
be sure that the Protevangelium was the book of which Ori-
gen speaks, if we had earlier traces of its existence ; but the
indications are uncertain. Clement of Alexandria [Strom, vii.
16) has the story of the midwife's attestation of Mary's vir-
ginity ; but it must be owned that Tertullian seems ignorant
of this tale {De Cam. Christ. 23) : and although he knows a
story [Scorpiace 8) of stones retaining the marks of the blood
of Zacharias, the reference seems to be to the Jewish story
about the son of Jehoiada, already quoted. Justin Martyr
has also been claimed as recognizing the Protevangelium :
both, for instance, represent our Lord's birth as taking place
in a cave ; but this may have been a local tradition (see p. 71).
Other coincidences have been pointed out by Hilgenfeld, for
instance, the phrase -yagav Xafdovaa Mapiafx [Trypho 100; Pro-
tev. 12). On the whole, I regard the Protevangelium as a
second century composition; and though I admit that the
form now extant may exhibit some variations from the origi-
nal text, I do not believe that these changes could have been
considerable, or such as to affect the general character of the
document. You see there is no great misstatement in describ-
ing this as one of the books rejected by the framers of our
* Series Cjiiiin. in Matt. J 25.
iq8 the apocryphal gospels. [xi.
Canon. It was a book which, in point of antiquity, mtghi\iSiWQ
got into our Canon, unless, indeed, it be admitted that a book
only making its appearance in the middle of the second cen-
tury was far too late to have a chance of being placed on a
level with our Gospels.
I pass briefly over Gospels which bear the same relation
to the Protevangelium that it bears to the Synoptic Gospels :
and which, if that be the child of these Gospels, are only their
grandchildren : I mean fictions which, taking the Protevan-
gelium as their basis, enrich with further ornaments and sup-
plements the story as it was there told. Of such a kind is the
Gospel of the Pseudo-Matthew, a work not earlier than the
fifth century. Some of the particulars, however, which it
added to the story have passed into current ecclesiastical
mythology. For instance, it tells how Mary, after coming
out of the cave, laid her child in a manger, and how the ox
and the ass which were there adored the child; thus fulfilling
the prophecy, ' the ox knoweth his owner and the ass his
master's crib' ; as also another prophecy of Habakkuk: for in
the beginning of the third chapter, where we translate ' in the
midst of the years make known ', the Septuagint has ' in the
midst of two animals thou shalt be known'. You must be
familiar with the ox and the ass in all stories and pictures of
our Lord's birth. This Gospel tells also of wonders that took
place in the flight to Egypt : how lions and leopards adored
the child, and harmlessly bore company to the party ; how a
palm-tree at the child's command bowed down its head and
supplied its fruit to satisfy his mother's need ; how, when he
entered the idol temple in Egypt, the idols all fell with their
faces to the ground, and there lay broken and shattered. This
Pseudo-Matthew contains at the end a section taken from the
false Gospel, of which I have next to speak.
The Gospel of St. Thomas treats of the infancy and child-
hood of our Lord. This work, in its original, does not appear
to have taken its rise in the Church, but rather to have been
manufactured in a Gnostic workshop : not, indeed, in any of
those schools of heresy which taught that our Lord only
became Christ at His baptism (for to such teaching the
XI.] THE GOSPEL OF ST. THOMAS. 199
doctrine was directly opposed which made Him exercise
miraculous power in His childhood), but rather in the school
of Docetism, which denied the true humanity of our Lord : for
in these legends all trace disappears that He was, in the real
truth of His nature, man. We may believe that there was a
desire to do our Lord honour in the invention of tales of the
early exercise of His miraculous power, but if so, the result
sadly failed to correspond to the design : for there is none of
the Apocryphal Gospels which is so repulsive to a Christian
reader, on account of the degrading character of its represen-
tations of our Lord. In its pages the holy child is depicted
as (to use Renan's forcible language, vi. 514) * un gamin
omnipotent et omniscient', wielding the power of the God-
head with a child's waywardness and petulance. It tells, for
example, that He was playing and making sparrows out of
mud; that He did this on the sabbath, and that when com-
plaint was made against Him, He clapped His hands and the
sparrows took life and flew away ; and again, that He threw
all the clothes in a dyer's shop into a single vat of blue dye,
and on being called to account for the mischief He had done,
commanded the clothes to be taken out, and lo, every one
was dyed of the colour its owner wished. We are told that
when He was drawing water for His mother and happened to
break the pitcher. He brought the water safely home in the
skirt of His garment ; and that, when His father, working at
his carpenter's trade, found a piece of wood too short for the
place it was meant to occupy, the child gave the wood a pull,
when it became of the right length. We learn to appreciate
more justly the character of the miracles related in the New
Testament when we compare them with those found in this
Gospel, the majority of its stories being tales of wonder of
no higher moral worth than the prodigies of the Arabian
Nights. But some of them are even malevolent miracles,
such as it shocks us to read of as ascribed to our Blessed
Lord. Boys who spill the water out of little ponds He had
made for His play are cursed by Him, and thereon wither
away; another boy who knocks up against Him in the street
is in like manner cursed, and falls down dead. The accusers
200 THE APOCRYPHAL GOSPELS. [xi.
\vho complain to Joseph of the child's conduct are struck with
blindness. The parents of one of the children whose death
He has caused are quite reasonable in their complaint to
Joseph : ' Take away that Jesus of thine from this place, for
He cannot dwell with us in this town ; or, at least, teach Him
to bless and not to curse.' The child likewise shows Himself
from the first as omniscient as He is omnipotent. When He
is brought to a master to be taught His letters, and is bid to
pronounce Aleph, He refuses to go on to Beth until the
instructor has taught Him all the mysteries of Aleph ; and,
on his failing to do this, the child not only shows that He
knows all the letters, but teaches him mysteries with regard
to the shape and powers of each, which fill the hearers with
amazement. And in other stories He is made to show that He
has no need of human instruction. These accounts may profit-
ably be compared with Luke's statement, that Jesus increased
in wisdom and knowledge ; and with his narrative of our Lord
sitting in the midst of the doctors, not for the purpose of teach-
ing them, as these stories would have it, but ' hearing them
and asking them questions'.
This Gospel, however, can claim a very early parentage-
The work, in the shape (or rather shapes) in which we now
have it, has, no doubt, received many alterations and develop-
ments since the time of its first manufacture.* But at the
beginning of the third century a Gospel bearing the name of
St. Thomas was known both to Hippolytus and to Origen ;t
and Irenaeus (l. xx.j refers to the story just mentioned, con-
cerning the attempt to teach our Lord His letters, as a tale in
circulation among heretics.^ And this Gospel in its de-
veloped form obtained wide circulation in the East. From
such a Gospel Mahomet seems to have drawn his conceptions
of our Saviour [Reiian, vi. 515).
* According to the Stichometry of Nicephorus (see p. 178), it contained 1300
stichoi, which would correspond to a larger book than that we have ; whence we may
conclude that the parts most deeply tainted with heresy were cut out when the book
was preserved for orthodox use. For instance, the words quoted by Hippolytus du
not appear in our present text.
t Hippol. Ref. Haer. v. 7 ; Origen, in Luc, Horn. i.
X A coincidence with Justin Martyr has been pointed out. Justin (Dial. 88)
XI.] THE GOSPEL OF NICODEMUS. 20r
In the Gospels which I have described, the public minis-
terial life of our Lord is avoided, and the inventors profess to
give details of His life before He entered on His ministry.
That to which I next come professes to supplement the
Canonical Gospels at the other end. It has been current
under the name of the Gospel of Nicodemus ; but this name
is modern, and criticism shows that the book is to be divided
into two parts, of different dates and authorship. The first
part gives a full account of the trial of our Lord, and it seems
to be identical with what has been known under the name of
the Acts of Pilate. Tischendorf has claimed for this part a
very high antiquity, Justin Martyr twice refers his heathen
readers [Apol. i. 35, 48, and probably 38), in confirmation of
the things he tells concerning our Lord's death, to the Acts
of Pilate, preserved in their own records. Tertullian does the
same {Apol. 21). The best critics suppose that Justin Martyr
did not himself know of any such Acts of Pilate, but took for
granted that he had sent his master an account of his doings,
which would be sure to be found in the public records. But it
is also possible that some Christian had already committed the
pious fraud of fabricating Acts to answer this description, and
that Justin Martyr was uncritical enough to be deceived by
the fabrication. Tischendorf then thinks that this Gospel
of which I speak contains the very Acts to which Justin
refers ; and the consequences in an apologetic point of view
would be enormous. For these Acts are quite built up out of
our four Canonical Gospels, including even the disputed
verses at the end of St. Mark ; St. John's Gospel being the
one principally used. If, then, these Acts are as early as the
first half of the second century, it would follow that all our
Gospels are far earlier. But I do not think that Tischendorf s
contention can be sustained, and cannot venture to claim
greater antiquity than the fourth century for the Acts in their
states that our Lord, working as a carpenter, made dporpa Ka\ C^yd, words which
occur £v. Thorn. 13. But I am inclined to think that it was the pseudo-Evangehst
who here borrowed from Justin, the latter being completely silent as to miracles
performed by our Lord in His childhood, although in the chapter cited they could
hardly fail to have been mentioned if they had been known to the writer.
202 THE APOCRYPHAL GOSPELS. [xi.
present form.* The latter part of what is known as the Gos-
pel ofNicodemus contains an account of the descent of Christ
to the under world. Two of the saints who were raised at His
resurrection relate, how they had been confined in Hades
when the Conqueror appeared at its entrance ; how the gates
of brass were broken and the prisoners released, Jesus taking-
with Him to Paradise the souls of Adam, Isaiah, John the
Baptist and the other holy men who had died before Him.
This story of a descent of our Lord to hell is of very great
antiquity, and to it, no doubt, reference is made in that clause
which in comparatively late times was added to the Creed.
In the preaching of Thaddeus to Abgarus, of which I shall
speak later on, part of the subject is said to have been how
Jesus was crucified and descended into hell, and burst the
bands which never had been broken, and rose again, and also
raised with Himself the dead that had slept for ages; and how
He had descended alone, but ascended with a great multitude
to the Father. It may suffice to have said so much about
Apocryphal Gospels of the supplemental class, if I merely
add that these stories, though formally rejected by the Church,
supplied abundant materials for legend, and are the source of
many a name still current : Dismas and Gestas, the two
robbers who were crucified with our Lord ; Longinus, the
soldier who pierced His side with a spear, or, according to
some accounts, the centurion who superintended His cruci-
fixion ; Veronica, in some stories the woman who had the
* The statements for which the Acts of Pilate are appealed to by Justin and
Tertullian are not to be found in the Gospel under consideration ; nor is its form
such as would be used by the composer of what were intended to pass for Roman
official acts. On this subject see Lipsius Die Pilatusacten, and article ' Gospels
Apocryphal ' in Smith's Dictionary of Christian Biography . I consider that a
limit in both directions to the age of this Gospel is given by its adoption of the date
March 25 as that of the Saviour's Passion. This is quoted by Epiphanius {Haer. 50),
whence we may conclude that our Acts are earlier than a.d. 376 ; but the date itself,
I cannot doubt, was first invented by Hippolytus in the early part of the third century.
His whole system of chronology is based on an astronomical cycle by means of which
he imagined himself able to calculate the day of the Jewish Passover in any year ; and,
according to this cycle, March 25 would be the day in the year 29 which Hippolytus
supposed to be the year of the Passion. But the cycle is worthless, and March 25
could not have been the Passover, or close to it, in that year.
XI.] HERETICAL GOSPELS. 203.
issue of blood, but, according to tlie popular tale, the woman
who gave Him her handkerchief to wipe His face, and who
received on it His true likeness.
In passing to the subject of heretical Gospels, I may just
mention that a few evangelic fragments have been preserved,
the source of which cannot be specified. For example, Justin
Martyr,* Clement of Alexandria and Hippolytus, all quote,
as a saying of our Lord, ' In whatever things I find you, in
these will I judge you'; but we do not know from what docu-
ment they took the saying. The doctrine which it is intended
to convey is that of Ezek, xviii., viz. that in the case alike of
the wicked man who turns from his wickedness, or of thie
righteous man who turns from his righteousness, judgment
will pass on the man according to the state in which death
finds him. In the appendix to Wescott's Introduction to the
Study of the Gospels you will find a complete list of the non-
canonical sayings ascribed to our Lord.
It would be easy to make a long list of the names of
Gospels said to have been in use in different Gnostic sects;
but very little is known as to their contents, and that little
is not such as to lead us to attribute to them the very slightest
historic value. The earliest heretical Gospel of which quota-
tions are numerous is that 'according to the Egyptians', the
birthplace of which is probably truly indicated by its title,
our knowledge of it being chiefly derived from Clement of
Alexandria. Very soon after the rise of Christianity there
came over the Western world a great wave of ascetic teaching
from the East. If we can venture to trace a very obscure
history, we may name India as the place where the move-
ment originated. In that hot country very little food is
absolutely necessary for the sustainment of life; and there
were some who made it their glory to use as little as possible,
and in other ways to detach themselves from that world of
matter whence it was believed all evil had flowed. The
admirers and imitators of these men by degrees sprcctv'
themselves outside the limits of their own land. At any
rate, whencesoever the teaching was derived, it became
* Justin, Dial. 47 ; Clem. Alex. Quis dives, 40; Hippol. De Uiiivcrs.
204 HERETICAL GOSPELS. [xi.
troublesome to the Christian Church in the very first years
of its existence. Scarcely had St. Paul found himself able
to relax his struggles against those who wanted to impose
on his Gentile converts the yoke of circumcision and the
Mosaic Law, when he was forced to do battle with a new
set of opponents, whose cry was 'Touch not, taste not,
handle not' (Col. ii. 21), who 'forbad to marry, and com-
manded to abstain from meats' (i Tim. iv. 3). Several of
the Gnostic sects had in common the feature of Encratism ;
that is to say, the rejection, as absolutely unlawful, of the
use of marriage, of flesh meat, and of wine. Irenaeus (i. 28)
tells this of Saturninus, one of the earliest of the Gnostics.
Their principles obtained converts among heathens as well
as among Christians: Porphyry, for instance, the great
adversary of Christianity, has also a treatise {De Ahstinentia)
against the use of animal food. And even the Christians
who refused to recognize Encratism as a binding rule were
persuaded to acknowledge it to be a more perfect way of life.
Among ourselves, for example, vegetarianism is regarded as
a harmless eccentricity; but in early times of Christianity,
even those who used animal food themselves came to think
of the vegetarian as one who lived a higher life, and
approached more nearly to Christian perfection. But it
was the Encratite doctrine of the absolute unlawfulness of
the marriage life which provoked the hottest controversies-
The principal apocryphal Acts of the Apostles proceeded
from men of Encratite views; and in these the type of story
is of constant recurrence : how an Apostle persuades a young
couple to abandon an intended project of matrimony; or how
persecution is stirred up against the Christian missionaries
by husbands whose wives these preachers have persuaded to
desert them. The refutation of Encratism is the subject of
the third book of the Stromateis of Clement of Alexandria;
and this leads him to speak of the Gospel according to the
Egyptians as a work in vogue in that sect, and to give some
extracts from it. They contrast remarkably with the simplicity
of the genuine utterances of our Lord. 'Salome said, "How
long shall death prevail?" And He said, "As long as ye
xi.l THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO THE EGYPTIANS. 205
women bring forth ". And she said, " Then did I well in not
having children" ? And He said, "Eat every herb, but eat
not that which hath bitterness". And again when Salome
asked when the things about which she enquired should be
known, and when His kingdom should come, He answered,
"When ye trample under foot the garment of shame, and
when the two become one, and the outside as the inside, and
the male with the female neither male nor female" '.*
But I must not linger over heretical writings which have
no bearing on modern controversies. I go on to speak of a
document by means of which it has been attempted, though
with now confessed ill-success, to establish the posteriority of
two of our Canonical Gospels : I mean the Gospel of Marcion.
Marcion, who came forward as a teacher about A.D. 140, is
usually classed with the Gnostics ; yet he deserves a place by
himself, for he does not appear to have derived his heretical
notions from these propagators of a medley of Christian, Jew-
ish and heathen ideas, but to have worked out his system for
himself. As the son of a bishop, he had received a Christian
education ; but he was perplexed by that great problem of the
origin of evil, which has been a puzzle to so many. He took,
as his principle to start with, the Gospel maxim, 'A good tree
cannot bring forth corrupt fruit.' It followed then, he con-
cluded, that the Maker of the universe cannot be good. But
the God of the Old Testament claims to be the Maker of the
universe. This God also threatens to inflict punishment : in
other words, to inflict suffering — to do evil. We must then
believe in two Gods — the God of the Old Testament, a just
God, the Creator, who alone was known to the Jews ; and a
good God, who was first revealed by Christ. For Christ Him-
self said, ' No man has known the Father but the Son, and
he to whom the Son will reveal him.' Marcion drew out in
antitheses the contradictions which he imagined he found be-
tween the Old Testament and the New, and between the Old
Testament and itself. But how was this disparagement of
* Clem. Alex. Strom, hi. 6 and 9: Ex. Scr. Theodot. 67; Pseud. Clem. Rom.
Ep. 12. Notices of the Gospel according to the Egyptians are also found in Hippol.
Ref. V. 7 ; Epiph. Ilacr, 02.
2o6 HERETICAL GOSPELS. [xi.
the Old Testament to be reconciled with the New Testament
itself? In the first place, Marcion has to sacrifice all the origi-
nal Apostles as unfaithful preachers of the truth. Paul alone
is to be trusted, and even Paul must be expurgated. We
have had examples in our modern 'tendency' critics of the
Synoptic Gospels, that it is easy to establish that a document
teaches anything you please if you are at liberty to cut out of
it everything that contradicts your theory. So Marcion dealt
with his Apostolicon, which consisted of ten Epistles of St.
Paul. He had his Gospel also, with which he coupled no
author's name, but which can be proved to be St, Luke's Gospel,
with every part cut out which directly contradicted Marcion's
theory. Tertullian devotes a whole book to Marcion's Gos-
pel, going regularly through it, and undertaking to show that
the heretic can be refuted from his own Gospel. Epiphanius
also notes at considerable length the differences between
Marcion's Gospel and St. Luke's. And from these and other
minor sources we can, with tolerable completeness, restore
Marcion's Gospel.
Now, it happens in one or two cases that readings (not
•connected with Marcion's peculiar theory) which Tertullian
reprobates as corruptions of Marcion's are still to be found in
some of the oldest MSS. of the Gospels, and we have reason to
think that in these cases Tertullian was in error in thinking
his own copy right, and Marcion wrong. Tertullian also
blames Marcion for entitling Paul's Epistle to the Ephesians
as to the Laodiceans ; but it happens that in one or two of the
oldest MSS. the words kv 'E^strt^ are absent from the address
of that Epistle ; and many critics think that Marcion was
right, and that this was indeed the letter which the Colos-
sians were directed by Paul to procure from Laodicea.
Finally, Marcion is blamed by Tertullian for not including in
his Apostolicon the three Pastoral Epistles of St. Paul. But,
as we shall find in another lecture, the sceptical school of the
present day are of the same opinion, and gladly claim Mar-
cion as a witness in their favour. So the theory suggests
itself — it was only through ignorance and prejudice that Ter-
tullian and other fathers accused Marcion of mutilating the
XI.] MARCION'S GOSPEL. 207
Gospels : they thought because his Gospel was shorter than
theirs that he must have mutilated the Gospel ; but the truth
was, that he, living in the very beginning of the century at
the end of which they lived, was in possession of the real
original Gospel before it had been corrupted by additions. I
have told you how it has been attempted to recover a Hebrew
Anti-Pauline Gospel by cutting out of St. Matthew everything
that recognizes the calling of the Gentiles. That, after all, is
unsatisfactory work, there being no means of verifying that
such a Gospel as is thus arrived at was ever current. But it
seems a fine thing to recover the opposition Gospel — a
Pauline, anti-Jewish Gospel — and to have the evidence of
Marcion that this was really current at the beginning of the
second century. On this matter our sceptical opponents were
left to puzzle out the matter for themselves with little help
from the orthodox, who either took no notice of what
.seemed to them a wild theory, or else exclaimed against it
without any detailed attempt to refute it. The falsity of the
theory was exposed by persons very willing to believe in
it ; indeed the death-blow to the theory was given by Volk-
mar, whose name I have had occasion to mention to you in
connexion with some very wild speculations. He and others
reconstructed the Marcionite Gospel from the patristic testi-
mony, and comparing it with our St. Luke, asked them-
selves. Which has the greater claim to originality ? It had to
be borne in mind that Marcion's doctrine went far beyond
Paul's: that while Paul contended against Jewish exclusive-
ness, and wished to put Gentiles on the same level, it is
certain that he was not hostile to the Jews and their religion,
in the way that Marcion was. Well, the result of examina-
tion was, that the features that distinguished Marcion's Gos-
pel from our St. Luke were clearly not Pauline but Marcionite;
and, on mere doctrinal grounds, these critics arrived at the
conclusion that Marcion's Gospel was the mutilation and not
Luke's the amplification. Their arguments convinced their
opponents, and the figment that Marcion's Gospel was the
original St. Luke may now be regarded as, by the consent of
all competent judges, quite exploded by criticism. The author
of ' Supernatural Religion,' however, thought proper to revive
2o8 MARCION'S GOSPEL. [xi.
this moribund theory, and this led to a new examination of it
by Dr. Sanday.* He took the passages which Marcion owned
as belonging to the original Gospel, and minutely examined
the style and the vocabulary, comparing them with the lan-
guage of the passages which Marcion rejected ; and the result
was so decisive a proof of unity of authorship, that the author
of ' Supernatural Religion ', though not apt to confess defeat,
has owned himself convinced, and has abandoned this part of
his argument. But this abandonment is really an abandon-
ment of great part of his book. For what is the use of con-
tending that Justin Martyr and others who lived still later in
the second century were ignorant of St. Luke's Gospel, if it
has to be owned that Marcion, who wrote quite early in the
century, was acquainted with that Gospel, and attached to it
such value that he joined it with the Epistles of St. Paul,
making it the basis of his entire system ?
Before I part with Marcion I ought to notice another use
that has been made of his attempt to make a new Gospel.
The attempt to place Marcion before Luke may be regarded
as having utterly collapsed ; but it has been thought that
ground might be gained for inferring that Marcion must have
come before the fourth Gospel. It is said, Marcion's object •
was to get possession of a strong anti-Jewish, ultra-Pauline
Gospel. The fact that he could do nothing better than take
St. Luke's Gospel and modify it for his purpose by plentiful
excisions shows, it has been said, that he knew nothing of St.
John's Gospel, which would have exactly answered his pur-
pose. But nothing can be more inconsiderate than this off-
hand criticism. If St. John's Gospel can be called anti-Jewish,
it is not so in the sense that Marcion is. It makes no opposi-
tion between the God of the Old Testament and that of the
New ; on the contrary, it so connects the two dispensations
that Marcion would have found even more trouble necessary
to adapt the fourth Gospel to his purpose than that which he
has spent on the third. * His own received Him not ', says
St. John in the first few verses : that is to say, the Logos is
* See his ' Gospels in the Second Century.' The chapter on Marcion had
previously been published as an article in the Fortnightly Revieiv.
XI.] MARCION'S GOSPEL. 209
identified with the God of the Jews, and claims that nation as
His own people. The one verse (iv. 22] in the discourse with
the woman of Samaria — ' Salvation is of the Jews ' — has been
an insuperable stumbling-block to all critics who would
exaggerate the anti-Jewish tendency of this Gospel. The
Old Testament writers are appealed to as the best witnesses
for Christ : ' Had ye believed Moses ye would have believed
me, for he wrote of me ' (v. 46), * Abraham rejoiced to see my
day ' (viii. 56). ' These things said Esaias when he saw his
glory and spake of him' (xii. 41). *Ye search the Scriptures
and they are they which testify of me' (v. 39). The temple
which the Jews had built for the worship of their God, Jesus
claims as his Father's house : * Make not my Father's house a
house of merchandise ' (ii. 16). The Old Testament is full
of types of his work on earth : the brazen serpent (iii. 14), the
manna in the wilderness (vi. 32), the Paschal Lamb (xix. 36).
Great importance is attached to the testimony of John the
Baptist, who, according to Marcion, like the older prophets,
did not know the true Christ ; and if there had been nothing
else, the story of the miracle of turning water into wine would
have condemned this Gospel in Marcion's eyes.
I own, then, that when I see one sceptical writer after
another building an argument on the assumption that if
Marcion had known the fourth Gospel he would have made it
the text-book of his system, I cannot but ask myself, Which
is it that these critics have never read — the Gospel of St.
John, or the authorities which describe the system of Marcion ?
You will find that the fourth Gospel so swarms with recogni-
tions of the identity of the God of the Jews with the Father
of our Lord, and of the authority of the Old Testament writers
as testifying to Him, that Marcion would have had work to
do on every chapter before he could fit it to his purpose — a
task which he was under no temptation to undertake, since,
as we shall presently show, the fourth Gospel was never
intended to stand alone, but was written for those who had
an independent knowledge of the facts of our Saviour's life :
so that no modification of the fourth Gospel would have
enabled Marcion to dispense with another Gospel.
P
XII.
THE JOHANNINE BOOKS.
Part I.
THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
I COME at length to consider the fourth Gospel, which
has been the subject of special assaults. In connexion
with it I will discuss the other Johannine writings, the
Epistles and the Apocalypse. I do not think it necessary to
spend much time on the proofs that the first Epistle and the
Gospel are the work of the same writer. There are numerous
striking verbal coincidences between them, of which you will
find a list in the introductions to the commentaries on the
Epistle by the Bishop of Derry in the 'Speaker's Commen-
tary', and by Professor Westcott in a separate volume. I
give only a few examples of common phrases: 'That your
joy may be full' ['iva 77 X"/*" v/ulmv y TmrXnpijjfiivr], i J. i. 4; J.
xvi. 20); 'Walketh in darkness and knoweth not whither he
goeth' {iv ry (TKOTia TTspnraTH, koi oi/k olSe ttov vrrayei, I J.
ii. II ; J. xii. 35) ; ' Have passed from death unto life' (juera-
/3f|3?)Ka;U£v Ik tov Bavarov dg t^v ^a»)v, I J. iii. 14 ; J. V. 24) ;
jiyviocTKOfxEv rhv aXridtvov, (i J. V. 24; J. xvii. 3). Moreover,
the Epistle gives to our Lord the titles ' only begotten ' (iv. 9 ;
J. i. 14) and 'Saviour of the world' (iv. 14; John iv. 42, and
iii. 17). And remember that this phrase, 'Saviour of the
world', so familiar to us, conveyed an idea novel and startling
to the Jewish mind of that day. I also take notice of the
XII.] THE FOURTH GOSPEL. 211
mention of 'the water and the blood' in the Epistle (v. 6),
which we can scarcely fail to connect with St. John's history
of the Passion. But besides these, and several other, ex-
amples of phrases 'common to both works, there is such a
general resemblance of style, thought, and expression, that
critics of most opposite schools have agreed in recognizing
common authorship.
I think, therefore, that it would be waste of time if I were
to enumerate and answer the points of objection to this view
made by Davidson and others of his school, whose work
seems to me no more than laborious trifling. These micro-
scopic critics forget that it is quite as uncritical to be blind to
resemblances as it is to overlook points of difference. And
there cannot be a more false canon of criticism than that a
man who has written one work will, when writing a second,
introduce no ideas and make use of no modes of expression
that are not to be found in the first. On the contrary, a
writer may be pronounced very barren indeed if he exhausts
all his ideas and expends all his vocabulary on one produc-
tion, I am sure that any unprejudiced judge would decide
that while the minute points of difference that have been
pointed out between the Gospel and the first Epistle are no
more than must be expected in two productions of the same
writer, the general resemblance is such, that a man must be
devoid of all faculty of critical perception who cannot discern
the proofs of common authorship.
The main reason for denying the common authorship is
that, if it be granted, it demolishes certain theories about St.
John's Gospel. For instance, one of the doctrines of the
Tiibingen school was, that the fourth Evangelist was so
spiritual that he did not believe in a visible second coming
of Christ : ' Instead of Christ's second coming we have the
Spirit's mission to the disciples. Jesus comes again only in
the Comforter. Future and present are comprehended in the
one idea of eternal life whose possession is present. There
is, therefore, no future judgment.' This doctrine about St.
John is rather inconveniently pressed by the passage, John
v. 28, 'The hour is coming in the which all that are in the
P 2
212 THE JOHANNINE BOOKS. [xii.
graves shall hear the voice of the Son of Man and shall come
forth : they that have done good unto the resurrection of life,
and they that have done evil unto the resurrection of dam-
nation/ Scholten coolly disposes of this troublesome passage
by setting it down as an interpolation. It is equally necessary
to reject the 21st chapter, which contains the words [v. 22),
*■ If I will that he tarry till I come.' At any rate the second
coming is the sure hope of the Apostle when he wrote the
Epistle. It is then *the last time'; the disciples are exhorted
to live so that they may have confidence and not be ashamed
before Him at His coming (ii. 18, 28). Yet the Epistle uses
just the same language as the Gospel about eternal life as a
present possession : * We have passed from death unto life
because we love the brethren.' In this, and in other in-
stances which I need not detail to you, the arguments
against the common authorship show only how ill-founded
are the critic's theories about the doctrine of the Evangelist
— theories chiefly founded on his not having said certain
things, which, however, when he is allowed to speak for
himself a little more, he does say.
As to the external history of the first Epistle, I merely
mention that it is quoted by Polycarp [c. 7), by Papias
(Euseb. III. 39), by Irenaeus ill. xvi.,* and repeatedly by
Clement of Alexandria (e.g. Strom. II. 15)! and Tertullian
(e.g. Adv. Prax. 15; De Piidic. 19). In the Muratorian
Fragment it is spoken of, not, in what might seem its
proper place, among the Epistles, but immediately in con-
nexion with the Gospel (see the passage quoted, p. 48).
When the list of Epistles is given, only two of St. John
are mentioned. The fact that in this document the first
Epistle is detached from the other two and connected with
* The language of Irenseus suggests that he read the second Epistle as if it were
part of the first. In the passage here referred to, he introduces his quotation with the
words ' Johannes in epistola sua', as if he knew but one. A little further on he
quotes a passage from the second Epistle with the words 'in praedicta epistola'.,
He had also quoted the second Epistle, i. xvi.
t The form of quotation iv rfi fj.ei(ovi eTnaroAfj implies also an acknowledgment
of the seoond E|>istle.
xii.] THE GOSPEL AND THE FIRST EPISTLE. 213
the Gospel is ably made use of by Bishop Lightfoot {Co/i-
temporary Review, October, 1875, p. 835), in confirmation of a
theory of his, that the first Epistle was originally published
with the Gospel as a kind of commendatory postscript.*
Augustine, followed by other Latin authorities, calls this
the Epistle to the Parthians [Qiiaest. Evangel. II. 39). It has
been conjectured that this may have been a corruption of a
Greek title irpoq napdivovg. The ground is not very con-
clusive, namely, that Clement of Alexandria tells us {Hypotyp.
p. ion, Potter's edition) that the Second Epistle of St. John
was known under this title. Gieseler plausibly conjectures
that in both cases a corruption took place of the title tov
Trapdivov, which was commonly given to John in early times,
and which may have been added to the inscriptions of the
Epistles.
The fourth Gospel, as I have said, has been the subject of
far more serious assaults than the others. If the others are
allowed to have been published soon after the destruction of
Jerusalem, the fourth is not assigned an earlier date than the
latter half of the second century. Such, at least, was Baur's
theory ; but in the critical sifting it has undergone, the date
of the fourth Gospel has been receding further and further
back in the second century, so that now hardly any critic with
any pretension to fairness puts it later than the very begin-
ning of that century, if not the end of the first century, which
comes very close to the date assigned it by those who believe
in the Johannine authorship.
In the value he attaches to the fourth Gospel, Renan is a
singular exception among sceptical writers. He is ready
enough to grant the antiquity of our documents, though
claiming for himself an intuitive sagacity which can dis-
criminate the true words and actions of Jesus from what may
have been added by the piety of the second generation of
Christians. To St. John's Gospel Renan attaches particular
value. The discourses, indeed, of Jesus, recorded by St. John,
• On the attestation borne by the first Epistle to the Gospel, it is particularly
worth while to consult Hug's Introduction, II. 245.
2 14 '^^^' JOHANNINE BOOKS. [xii.
are not to Renan's taste, and he rejects them with depreci-
ating- epithets which I need not repeat ; but the account given
of the life of Jesus he treats as preferable, in a multitude of
cases, to the narrative of the Synoptic Evangelists. In par-
ticular he declares that the last month of the life of Jesus can
only be explained by St. John, and that a multitude of traits
unintelligible in the Synoptic Gospels assume in St. John's
narrative consistency and probability. He is the more ready
to attribute this Gospel to St. John because he imagines that
he finds in it a design unduly to exalt that Apostle, and to
show that on different occasions he was honoured by Jesus
with the first place. His theory is, that John in his old age
having read the evangelic narratives then in circulation, re-
marked in them several inaccuracies, and was besides annoyed
at finding that only a secondary place in the history of Christ
was assigned to himself, that he then began to dictate a
multitude of things which he knew better than the others, and
with the intention of showing that on many occasions where
Peter alone was spoken of in those narratives, he had figured
with him and before him. These precious notes Renan
supposes to have been distorted by the mistakes or careless-
ness of John's disciples. In order to reconcile his belief in
the antiquity of the Gospels with his rejection of their historic
authority, whenever it is convenient for him to do so, Renan
imagines the case of a life and recollections of Napoleon
written separately by three or four soldiers of the Empire
thirty or forty years after the death of their chief. It is clear,
he says, their narratives would present numerous errors and
contradictions : one would put Wagram before Marengo ;
another would write without hesitation that Napoleon turned
out the government of Robespierre ; a third would omit ex-
peditions of the highest importance. But one thing would
stand out clearly in these artless notes, and that is, the
character of the hero and the impression he made on those
about him. And in this point of view such popular histories
would be worth far more than a formal and official one.
But in this comparison one point of essential difference
is overlooked. Three or four soldiers of the Empire would
XII.] THE FOURTH GOSPEL. 215
be competent witnesses to such facts as lay within their range
of observation. They would be incompetent witnesses to the
order and design of battles, changes of ministry, plans of
statesmanship, and other things out of their sphere. If they
meddled with such matters in their stories we should not be
surprised to find errors and contradictions. But to have a
real comparison to lives of our Lord written by Apostles, we
should imagine lives of Napoleon written by three or four of
his marshals. In that case a statement concerning his battles
in which all agreed would justly be regarded as of the highest
authority. Take the account of any of our Lord's miracles,
and especially that of the Resurrection. We ask. Is the
narrator telling a wilful lie ? 'No' is answered by almost all
our antagonists. Well, then, could he be mistaken? 'Yes,'
answer Strauss and his school. 'He lived a long time after
the event, and only honestly repeated the stories which had
then got into circulation about the founder of his religion.'
But if we admit, as Renan in his first edition was willing
to do, that the (lospel is the work of an Apostle and an eye-
witness, the possibility of a mistake can no longer be asserted
with any plausibility. I think, therefore, that Renan's re-
viewers of the sceptical school were quite right in regarding
him as having made a most dangerous concession in admitting
that John's Gospel has the authority of the Apostle of that
name. The authority I say, for Renan does not now at least
maintain that it was actually written by John himself, but
rather that it was the work of a disciple who bore to John
the same relation which, according to Papias, Mark bore to
Peter.
It remains for us, therefore, to examine the arguments
which are urged against the Johannine authorship. Now,
with respect to external evidence, I have already expressed
my belief that John's Gospel stands on quite as high a level
of authority as any of the others. Suffice it now to say that
if it be a forgery it has had the most wonderful success ever
forgery had : at once received not only by the orthodox, but
by the most discordant heretics — by Judaizing Christians,
Gnostics, Mystics — all of whom owned the necessity of
2i6 THE JOHANNINE BOOKS. [xii.
reconciling their speculations with the sayings of this
Gospel.
Of the reasons why its Apostolic origin has been dis-
believed, I will place first that which I believe to have had the
greatest influence, and to have been the cause why other
reasons have been sought for, namely, the impossibility of
reconciling the Gospel with the denial of our Lord's Divinity.
Critics now-a-days trust far more to their own powers of
divination than to historical testimony. It is an assumed
principle with them that there can be no miracle ; that Jesus
was a man like others ; that He must have been so regarded
by His disciples; that the opinion that He was more than man
could only have gradually grown up; that, therefore, a book
in which the doctrine of Christ's Divinity is highly developed
bears on the face of it the marks of late date. This is a pre-
possession against which it is hard to struggle ; the forms of
scientific inquiry may be gone through, but the sentence has
been passed before the evidence has been looked at. What-
ever be the pretext on which the book is condemned, the real
secret of the hostility to it is the assumption that a belief
in our Lord's Godhead could not have existed among the
Apostles who had companied with Him during His life, and
that it must have grown up by degrees among the new
generation of Christians who had not known our Lord after
the flesh, and who merely reverenced in their ideal Christ a
personification of all that was pure and noble in humanity.
St. John's Gospel, if admitted as of authority, would make
Christ from the first claim and receive a homage to which no
mere man is entitled. There was a time when Socinians en-
deavoured to reconcile their system with the evangelical
records, but that attempt is now abandoned as hopeless, and
accordingly the overthrow of at least St. John's Gospel be-
comes a necessity.
Strauss, on whose principles the question whether Jesus
was more than man cannot even claim discussion, argues that
' Jesus in John's Gospel claims to have a recollection of a
divine existence reaching back to a period before the creation
of the world. Such a recollection is inconceivable to us, be-
XII.] THE FOURTH GOSPEL. 217
cause in accredited history no instance of it has occurred. If
anyone should speak of having" such a recollection, we should
consider him as a fool or as an impostor. But since it is diffi-
cult to believe that Jesus was either of these, we cannot allow
that the words attributed to him were really spoken by him.'
Similarly Strauss is offended with the whole tone of the lan-
guag'e of Jesus about Himself, as reported in this Gospel, the
manner in which He insists on His divinity, puts His own per-
son forward, and makes adherence to Himself the first duty of
His disciples. ' The speeches of Jesus about himself in this
Gospel,' says Strauss, ' are an uninterrupted doxology only
translated out of the second person into the first, from the
form of address to another into an utterance about a self.
When an enthusiastic disciple calls his master (supposed to
have been raised to heaven) the light of the world — when he
says of him that he who has seen him has seen the Father,
that he is God Himself, we excuse the faithful worshipper such
extravagances. But when he goes so far as the fourth Evan-
gelist, and puts the utterances of his own pious enthusiasm
into the mouth of Jesus, in the form of Jesus's utterances
about himself, he does him a very perilous service.'
I admit it; a very perilous service if Jesus be no more than
man. Assuredly, in that case, we cannot admire him as a
faultless man. We must regard him, to speak the plain truth,
as one who, however excellent, disfigured his real merits by
his own exaggerated pretensions, who habitually used inflated
if not blasphemous language respecting the dignity of his own
person ; such language, in short, as naturally led to the con-
sequence that he, though man, came to be worshipped as God.
However, the question with which we are immediately con-
cerned is not whether Jesus possessed superhuman power and
authority, but whether He claimed it. The self-assertion of
Jesus in the fourth Gospel can reasonably be made a plea for
discrediting the authority of the writer, only if it can be made
out that such language on our Lord's part is inconsistent with
what is elsewhere told of Him. And this is what is asserted.
It is said that in the Synoptic Gospels Jesus is only a moral
reformer, anxious to give to the commands of the law their
2i8 THE JOHANNINE BOOKS. [xii.
highest spiritual meaning, and rejecting the evasions by
which a compliance with their letter was made to excuse a
breach of their spirit. In the Fourth Gospel, on the contrary,
Jesus puts forward Himself. He is the Way, the Truth, and
the Life, the only door by which man can have access to God.
We may freely own that John's Gospel gives greater
prominence to this class of our Lord's utterances, but we deny
that they are at all inconsistent with what is attributed to Him
in the Synoptic Gospels. On the contrary, the dignity of the
Saviour's person, and the duty of adhering to Him, are as
strongly stated in the discourses which Matthew puts into his
mouth as in any later Gospel : ' Whosoever shall confess me
before men, him will I confess also before my Father which
is in heaven ; Whosoever shall deny me before men, him will
I also deny before my Father which is in heaven ' ; ' He that
receiveth you receiveth me, and he that receiveth me receiveth
him that sent me ' (x. ^2, 33, 40). ' Come unto me all ye that
labour and are heavy laden and I will give you rest; Take
my yoke upon you and learn of me, for I am meek and lowly
in heart, and ye shall find rest for your souls' ; 'AH things
are delivered unto me of my Father, and no man knoweth the
Son but the Father, neither knoweth any man the Father
save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal him'
(xi. 27, 28, 29). Again, His present glory and power is ex-
pressed in the promises : ' All power is given unto me in
heaven and in earth ' ; ' Lo, I am with you alway, even unto
the end of the world' (xxviii. 18, 20). 'I will give you a
mouth and wisdom which all your adversaries shall not be
able to gainsay nor resist '( Luke xxi. 15). But it is a small
matter to prove that our Lord promised that after His depar-
ture from the world He should continue to be to His disciples
an ever-present and powerful protector. What He declared
concerning His second coming more decisively marks Him out
as one who claimed to stand on a different level from ordinary
men. St. Matthew represents Him as telling that all the
tribes of the earth shall *see the Son of Man coming in the
clouds of heaven with power and great glory, and that he
shall send /us angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and
xii.] OUR LORD'S SELF-ASSERTION. 219
they shall gather together his elect from the four winds, from
one end of heaven to the other ' (xxiv. 30). He goes on to
tell (xxv. 31) how all nations shall be gathered before Him
while He sits on the throne of His glory and pronounces judg-
ment upon them ; and the judgment is to be determined
according to the kindness they shall have shown to Himself.
The Synoptic Evangelists all agree in representing Jesus as
persisting in this claim to the end, and as finally incurring
condemnation for blasphemy from the high-priest and the
Jewish Council, because, in answer to a solemn adjuration, He
professed Himself to be that Son of Man who was one day to
come in the clouds of heaven, as Daniel had prophesied (Matt,
xxvii. 65 ; Mark xiv. 62 ; see also Luke xxii. 60). Now,
reflect for a moment what we should think of one who de-
clared his belief that on that great day, when mankind shall
stand before the judgment-seat of God, he should not stand
like others, to give account of the deeds done in the body, but
be seated on the throne of judgment, passing sentence on the
rest of the human race. If we could think of him as, after
all, no more than a man like ourselves, we must set him down
as, in the words of Strauss, either a fool or an impostor. We
can only avoid forming such a judgment of Jesus by believing
Him to be in real truth more than man. It follows that the
claims which the Synoptic Gospels represent our Lord as
making for Himself are so high, and, if He was really mere
man, are so extravagant, that if we accept the Synoptic
Gospels as truly representing the character of our Lord's
language about Himself, we certainly have no right to
reject St. John's account, on the score that it puts too ex-
alted language about himself into the mouth of our Lord.
If it is objected that the ascription of such language to
Jesus belongs to a later stage of Christian thought, and that
they who had known their Master after the flesh could not
have held the high views concerning His Person which this
ascription implies, we can easily show that, in works of
earlier date than anyone has claimed for the Fourth Gospel,
no lower view is expressed of the dignity of our Lord. I
have already said (p. 26) that Baur acknowledged the Apo-
2 20 THE JOHANNINE BOOKS. [xii.
calypse to have been written by St. John ; and the same view-
is taken by Renan and by many other critics of the same
school, who draw from their acknovvledg-ment of the Johan-
nine authorship of the Apocalypse the strongest argument
against that of the Fourth Gospel ; for they hold it to be one
of the most certain conclusions of critical science that the two
books could not have had the same author. But other critics
of the same school have been clear-sighted enough to perceive
that the acknowledgment of the Johannine authorship of the
Apocalypse necessitates the abandonment of the argument
we have just been considering. For the dignity ascribed to
our Lord in the Book of Revelation is such that it requires
some ingenuity to make out that the Gospel attributes to
Him any higher. All through the Revelation Jesus plainly
holds a position far above that of any created being. He is
described as ' the beginning of the creation of God ' (iii. 14).
He sits on the throne of the Father of all (iii. 21). He is the
object of worship of every created thing which is in the
heaven and on the earth, and under the earth, and in the
sea, and all things that are in them (v. 13). His blood has
been an atonement which sufficed to purchase to God men of
every tribe and tongue and people and nation (v. 9). He is
King of Kings and Lord of Lords (xix. 16).
When I was speaking of the lofty claims which our Lord,
as reported by the Synoptic Evangelists, made for Himself, I
omitted to mention one illustration. Those who wished to
do Him honour are related to have saluted Him as Son of
David (Matt. xx. 30, xxi. g) : the Jewish rulers, who saw all
that was implied by such a title, and feared the fatal conse-
quences to their nation which would follow from an attempt
to restore David's earthly kingdom, hoped that the Galilean
prophet would disclaim so perilous an honour, and asked
him to rebuke his disciples (xxi. 15). He not only accepted
the honours offered him, as so plainly his due, that if his
disciples were to hold their peace the very stones would cry
out, but he went on to intimate that the title Son of David
was less than he could rightfully claim, and he pointed out
that the Messiah was described in the Book of Psalms as
XII.] CHRISTOLOGY OF THE APOCALYPSE. 221
David's Lord (xxii. 43). I am disposed to connect with this
the words ascribed to our Lord in the Apocalypse (xxii. 16) :
* I am the root and the offspring of David.' It is possible to
give the word piX^a the secondary meaning, * scion ' (having
regard to Isa. xi. 10; Rom. xv. 12 ; Rev. v. 5) ; yet I prefer
to give it the meaning 'root', which implies existence prior
to David, because the idea of priority is unmistakeably
expressed in other passages. There is one passage in
particular where the antecedence to all created things of
Him who in the Revelation is called the Word of God is
expressed in such a way as not to fall short of an ascription
to Him of the titles and prerogatives of the Supreme God.
Whom but the Supreme God should we imagine to be speak-
ing when we read (i. 8) : * I am the Alpha and the Omega,
saith the Lord God, which is, and which was, and which is to
come, the Almighty' ? Read on a little way (ver, 17), and we
find One who is unmistakeably our blessed Lord addressing
the Apocalyptic seer with like words, which are again re-
peated (xxii. 13), *I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first
and the last, the beginning and the end'. The fourth Gospel
puts into the mouth of our Lord no claim of Godhead stronger
or more express than what the glorified Saviour is represented
as uttering in the book of the Revelation. And this ascrip-
tion to Him of glory not distinguishable from that of the
Supreme is a prevailing characteristic of the book. The Son
of God sits down with His Father in his throne (iii. 21) ; and
this throne is called, ' the throne of God and of the Lamb '
(xxii. I, 3; cf XX. 6). The doctrine of the Gospel (v. 2-^) that
• all should honour the Son even as they honour the Father '
is deeply stamped on the Apocalypse.
To some critics it has seemed incredible that one who had
known Jesus, and conversed with Him as a man like himself,
should pay Him divine honours such as it was natural enough
for enthusiastic disciples to render, in whose eyes the Founder
of their religion was but an ideal Personage. On that account
they have refused to believe that the fourth Evangelist can
be one who had been a personal companion of our Lord.
But here we find that the Gospel presents no more exalted
22 2 THE JOHANNINE BOOKS. [xii.
conception of the Saviour's dignity than that which is oifered
in the book of the Revelation, the apostolic authorship of
which so many critics of all schools are willing to acknow-
ledge.* In confirmation of the view that the Apocalypse was
written by a personal hearer of our Lord, I may notice that
echoes of the Gospel records of the words of Jesus are to be
found more frequently in this than in any other New Testa-
ment book, except perhaps the Epistle of James. f And I
cannot help thinking that we should find still more coinci-
dences if we had a fuller record of the words of Jesus than
that preserved in the Gospels. Thus St. James (i. 12) refers
to our Lord's promise of a 'crown of life', and Zeller hence
drew a proof (Hilgenfeld's Zeitschrift^ 1863, p. 93) that the
author of that Epistle used the Apocalypse, Rev. ii. 10 being
the only New Testament place where such a promise is put
into the mouth of our Lord. But it seems to me much more
probable that we have here reminiscences by two independent
hearers, James and John, of words actually spoken by our
Lord, of which traces are also to be found 2 Tim. iv. 8, i Pet.
v. 4. So, again, the coincidence of the phrase 'book of life',
Phil. iv. 3, with that which is found in the Apocalypse, iii. 5,
and in five other places, is, I think, most easily explained by
the supposition that this very phrase had been used by our
Lord. See Luke x. 20.
Again, when the prominence given to the doctrines of
our Lord's divinity and pre-existence is made a ground for
assigning a late date to the fourth Gospel, we must remember
that these doctrines are taught in documents earlier than
either Gospel or Apocalypse — I mean St Paul's Epistles. I
refer in particular to the passage in the Epistle to the Colos-
sians (i. 15-18), which is quite as strong as the prologue to
St. John. Christ is there the ' image of the invisible God, the
firstborn of every creature; for by him were all things created
that are in heaven and that are in earth, visible and invisible,
* See, for example, the passages cited from Baur and Zeller b}' Archdeacon Lee
in the Speaker s Commentary, p. 406.
t For example: — i. 7, Matt. xxiv. 30; ii. 7, Matt. xi. 15, &c. ; ii. 23, Matt. xvi.
27 ; ii. 26, Matt. xxiv. 13 ; iii. 3, Matt. xxiv. 42 ; iii. 5, Matt. x. 32.
XII.] JOHN'S AND PAUL'S DOCTRINES. 223
whether they be thrones or dominions, or principalities or
powers; all things were created by him and for him; and he
is before all things, and by him all things consist; and he is
the head of the body the Church; who is the beginning, the
firstborn from the dead, that in all things he might have the
pre-eminence.' Baur very consistently refuses to believe that
this was written by St. Paul: but most critics, even of the
sceptical school, have owned that the evidence for the
genuineness of the Epistle to the Colossians is too strong
to be resisted, especially connected as it is with the Epistle
to Philemon, which bears an unmistakeable stamp of truth,
and which is utterly beyond the invention of any forger.
In this connexion I have pleasure in referring to an
excellent comparison of the theology of St. John with that
of St. Paul by Mr. J. J. Murphy [Scientific Bases of Faith, p.
365), where he founds an argument for the truth of their
doctrine on the coincidence of two independent witnesses.
Both are found to express the same doctrines, but in quite
different language; whereas if the fourth Gospel had been
indebted to St. Paul we should have found there some of
St. Paul's expressions as well as his doctrine.*
I have devoted so much time to the objection brought
against the fourth Gospel from the character of its Chris-
* Compare the teaching of each of the Apostles on the Deity of Christ (John i. i,
iii. 13, XX. 28 ; Rom. ix. 5, Phil. ii. 6) ; his pre-existence (John vi. 62, viii. 58, xvii.
5 ; Col. i. 17) ; his work of creation (John i. 3 ; i Cor. viii. 6, Col. i. 16) ; the asso-
ciation of his name with that of God on terms of equality (John v. 18, 23, xiv. 10, 23,
xvii. 3, 10; 2 Cor. xiii. 14; Gal. i. i ; Eph. v. 5, i Thess. iii. 11) ; the voluntariness
of his humiliation (John x. 17 ; 2 Cor. viii. 9, Phil. ii. 7) ; his present power and
glory (John iii. 35, xiv. 14 ; Rom. xiv. 9, 1 Cor. xv. 25, Eph. i. 20, Phil. ii. 10) ;
that by him only access is had to the Father (John xiv. 6 ; Eph. ii. 18, i Tim. ii. 5) ;
that by faith in him we are justified (John iii. 15, vi. 47, xi. 25, xx. 31 ; Rom. iii. 22,
V. I, Gal. ii. 16, Eph. ii. 8) ; that atonement has been made by him (John i. 29, vi.
51, I John i. 7, ii. 2, iii. 5 ; Rom. iii. 24, v. 9, l Cor. v. 7, Gal. iii. 13, Eph. i. 7) ;
that his life is the source of his people's life (John vi. 53 ; Rom. v. 10) ; that they are
united with him (John xv. 5 ; i John ii. 5, iii. 6, iv. 13 ; Rom. viii. 17, 2 Cor. xiii.
5, Gal. ii. 20, iii. 27) ; that our relation to him is like his relation to the Father
(John X. 14, 15, xiv. 20, xv. 9; i Cor. iii. 22) : on all these points you will find a
wonderful similarity of substantial doctrine with great variety of expression. The two
witnesses are clearly independent, and their teaching is the same.
224 ^^^ JOHANNINE BOOKS. [xii.
tology, because, though not really the strongest, it is I believe
the most influential; and the reason why other arguments
have been sought for is the fear that the reception of the
fourth Gospel would give apostolic authority to a view of our
Lord's person which the objectors are determined to reject-
I consider that I have shown that this view was at least
that accepted among Christians several years before the date
claimed either for Gospel or Apocalypse; and that I have
shown also that though the fourth Gospel may give greater
prominence than do the preceding three to those utterances
of our Lord in which He asserts His own superhuman
character, there is nothing in such utterances unlike what
is found in every report of the language which He habitually
used.*
* At the very time when the first edition of these lectures was published, the
Hibbert Lectures were delivered in London, by Dr. Pfleiderer, Professor of Theology
at Berlin, a pupil of Baur's, but who has retired from some of his masters' extreme
positions. Pfleiderer still maintains the anti-Paulinism of the Apocalypse, but he is
in perfect agreement with what I had said as to the identity of the Christology of the
book with that of Paul ; and as to the impossibility of denying the Joliannine origin
of the Gospel, on account of its Christology, without on the same ground denying
that of the Apocalypse. I cannot forbear quoting at length : —
' Like the Pauline Christology, that of the author of the Apocalypse hinges on
the one hand on the expiatory death, and on the other on the celestial glory of
Christ, whilst the earthly life of Jesus is referred to only so far that Christ is called
the " Offspring of David " and the " Lion of Juda " ; just as Paul in the Epistle to
the Romans had connected Christ's descent from David with his Divine Sonship.
As Paul denominated Christ the Passover slain for us, so our author likes to
describe him as " the Lamb slain for us " , and finds in his violent death a proof of
his love for us and an expiation to purify us from the guilt of sin, a ransom to redeem
us to God. Again, as Paul calls Christ the first-fruits of them that slept, so in the
Apocalypse we find him termed the first-born from the dead. As, according to Paul,
Christ has been exalted to the regal dignity of divine dominion over all, so, according
to our author, he has taken his seat on the throne by the side of his Father, par-
ticipating therefore in his divine dominion and power; he is the Lord of the churches,
holds their stars, or guardian angels, in his hand, and is also Ruler of nations and
King of kings, the all-wise and almighty Judge of the nations ; indeed, to him is due
a worship similar to that of God himself. As the author of the Apocalypse in his
apotheosis of Christ as an object of worship thus almost outstrips Paul, neither does
he in his dogmatic definitions of Christ's nature at all fall behind the Apostle. Lilvc
Paul, he calls Christ the " Son of God " in the metaphysical sense of a god-like spiri-
tual being, and far beyond the merely theocratic significance of the title. As Pauj
had said, "The Lord is the Spirit", so our author identifies Christ with the Spirit, or
XIII.] THE APOCALYPSE. 225
XIII.
Part II.
THE FOURTH GOSPEL AND THE APOCALYPSE.
I come now to discuss the objection that is most relied
on, and to which I have already referred, that the Apocalypse
and the fourth Gospel are so different in style and character
that it is impossible to believe they can have been written
by the same person ; and that since John the Apostle wrote
the Apocalypse he could not have written the Gospel. This
argument is borrowed from Dionysius of Alexandria, who
lived in the third century, and who made the converse use
of it, namely, that as John wrote the Gospel he could not
have written the Apocalypse. And certainly, if we had to
assign to the Apostle but one of the two, and were only
guided by external evidence, we should have more reason to
assign him the Gospel. The only point of advantage for the
Apocalypse is that Justin Martyr happens to name the
Apostle John as its author, while he uses the Gospel with-
celestial principle of revelation which speaks to the churches and rules in them. As
Paul had had a vision of Christ as the Man from heaven in celestial light and glory,
so the author of the Apocalypse likewise beholds Him in a super-mundane form like
imto a son of man, his face shining as the sun. As Paul had described the celestial
Son of Man as at the same time the image of God, the agent of creation, the head of
every man, and finally even God over all, so the Christ of the Apocalypse introduces
himself with the predicates of Divine majesty, " I am the Alpha and the Omega, saith
the Lord God, who is and who was and who is to come, the All-powerful" ; and he
is accordingly called also " the Head of creation" and "the Word of God ", that is,
the mediating instrument of all divine revelation from the creation of the world to the
final judgment.
' It appears from this that the similarity of the Christology of the Apocalypse to
that of Paul is complete ; this Christ occupies the same exalted position as the Paul-
ine Christ above the terrestrial Son of Man. Would such a view of Christ be con-
ceivable in the case of a man who had lived in personal intercourse with Jesus ? I
think we have in this another proof that the author of the Apocalypse was not the
Apostle John.' — Pfleiderer, Hibbert Lectures, pp. 158-161.
Q
2 26 THE JOHANNINE BOOKS. [xiii.
out mention of the Evangelist's name. On the other hand,
the proof of early acknowledgment, by heretics as well as by
orthodox, is rather stronger for the Gospel (see p. 58); and
the reception of the Gospel in the Church was unanimous,
which is more than we can say for the Apocalypse.
However, in either case, the external evidence is amply
sufficient. For the Apocalypse, in addition to Justin, I
could quote Papias and quite a long list of second century
witnesses to its recognition in the Church (see Westcott, N.
T. Canon, Index, p. 587). I content myself with appealing
to Irenseus, whose testimony to the four Gospels has been
already produced (p. 37). He is equally strong in his witness
to the Apocalypse. A remarkable passage is one (v. 30) in
which he discusses whether the true reading of the number
of the beast is 666 or 616, both readings being found in MSS.
of his time; as they are still.* Irenseus declares that the
reading 666 is that of the best and oldest copies, and is
attested by those who had seen John face to face. We
cannot but be struck by this mention of a traditional know-
ledge of the prophecy concurrent with the evidence of the
written copies. The estimation in which Irenaeus held the
book is evidenced by the sense he expresses of the guilt and
penalty incurred by those who substituted the erroneous
number for the true, though he trusts that those may obtain
pardon whose adoption of the error was not wilful. The
denunciation (Rev. xxii. 18, 19) had previously been clearly
referred to by Dionysius of Corinth (Euseb. iv. 23). Irenaeus
gives examples of Greek names the arithmetical value of the
.sum of whose letters amounts to 666 {tvavQuQ, XaTiivoQ, retrav),
but he does not venture to express a confident decision in
favour of any solution; because he looks on the Apostle as
having designedly left the matter obscure, since if he had
wished the name to be known at the time he would have
spoken plainly. And whatever reasons there were for hiding
the name at the first must still exist in the time of Irenaeus.
* For it was not long ago that the vision was seen, but almost
* 616 is the reading of Codd. C, ii.
XIII.] THE APOCALYPSE. 227
in our own generation, at the end of the reign of Domitian.'
I shall presently return to speak of the statement here made
as to the date of the book. The Muratorian Fragment twice
refers to the Apocalypse. In speaking of Paul's Epistles the
writer says that Paul had written letters to seven churches,
following the order of his predecessor John, who in the
Apocalypse had written to seven churches. Further on he
says : * We receive only the Revelations of John and of Peter,
the latter of which some of us will not have read in the
Church.' Of this Apocalypse of Peter I must take another
opportunity to speak.
We may assume, then, that in the time of Irenseus the
Apocalypse was commonly received, and that on it were
founded the expectations that generally prevailed of a per-
sonal reign of our Lord on earth for a thousand years. But
these expectations soon assumed a very gross and carnal
character. I will quote the tradition which Irenaeus (v. ^;^)
cites from Papias, a tradition which consoles us for the loss
we have sustained of the work in which Papias collected un-
written records of the Saviour's teaching, and which probably
was one of the causes which moved Eusebius (iii. 39) to pro-
nounce Papias a man of weak understanding. 'The elders
who saw John, the disciple of our Lord, remember to have
heard from him that our Lord taught and said : The days
shall come in which vines shall grow, each having 10,000
shoots, and on each shoot 10,000 branches, and on each
branch 10,000 twigs, and on each twig 10,000 clusters, and
on each cluster 10,000 grapes ; and each grape when pressed
shall yield 25 measures of wine ; and when any of the saints
shall have taken hold of one of these clusters another shall
say : I am a better cluster ; take me and bless the Lord
through me. Likewise, also, a grain of wheat shall produce
10,000 ears, and every ear 10,000 grains, and every grain ten
pounds of pure white meal, and the other fruits, seeds, and
vegetables in like manner. And all the animals using the
food thus yielded by the earth shall be peaceful and agree
together, and be subject to man with all subjection. ... And
He added : Tlie.se things are credible to believers. And when
Q 2
228 THE JOHANNINE BOOKS. [xiii.
Judas the traitor did not believe, and asked Him, How shall
such growth be accomplished ? the Lord said : They shall see
who come to those times.'*
This is a specimen of the kind of notions which were
current under the name of Chiliasm ; and spiritual men were
shocked at seeing their Christian brethren looking forward
to a kind of Mahometan paradise, the chief enjoyment of
which was to consist of the pleasures of sense, not excluding
those of the grossest kind. Hence arose a strong reaction
against Millennarian ideas, and hence also a disposition to
reject the inspiration of the book on which the Millennarians
mainly relied. There were in the third century some who
ascribed the book to the heretic Cerinthus. Caius, a learned
Roman presbyter at the beginning of the third century (Euseb.
ii. 28), rejected a book of revelations purporting to be written
by a great Apostle, but ascribed by Caius to Cerinthus, in
which the author professed to have been shown by angels
that after the resurrection men should inhabit Jerusalem,
should be the slaves of lusts and pleasures, and should spend
1000 years in marriage festivities. Some have understood
this description as applying to our Canonical book, and, in a
passage presently to be quoted from Dionysius of Alexandria,
Dionysius has been thought to refer to Caius. But this is
more than doubtful ; for the author of the Apocalypse no-
where describes himself as an Apostle, nor describes Millen-
narian happiness as consisting in sensual gratifications; and,
besides, the passage already cited from the Muratorian Frag-
ment shows that the Roman Church of Caius' time did recog-
nize the Apocalypse as St. John's; and the same thing
* Great light has been cast on the probable source of this tradition of Papias
through the publication from the Syriac, by Ceriani (Milan, 1866), of a Jewish book
called the Apocalypse of Baruch. It is included in Fritzsche's ' Apocryphal books
of the Old Testament' (Leipzig, 187 1). Fritzsche judges the book to have been
written not long after the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus. The book contains
(c. 29) a description of the times of the Messiah, in which it is predicted that a vine
shall have 1000 shoots, each shoot 1000 clusters, each cluster 1000 grapes, and each
grape shall yield a measure of wine. It is reasonable to think that this book furnished
the original of the story, which, before it reached Papias, had been considerably
improved, and had come to be referred to a saying of our Lord.
XIII.] MILLENNARIANISM. 229
appears from the use of the book of the Revelation by Hippo-
lytus, who was contemporary with Caius. It was rather in
the East that its authority decayed. It is not included in
the Peshitto Syriac,* and Jerome tells us that the Greeks of
his time did not receive it {Ep. \zc)^ ad Dard.). Eusebius
speaks doubtfully about it, and seems divided between his
own judgment, formed from the contents of the book, which
inclined him to reject it, and the weight of external evidence
in its favour, which he found it hard to set aside. He con-
sequently shrinks from expressing his own opinion, and tries
to cast on his readers the responsibility of forming a judgment
[H. E. III. 25, 39). Towards the end of the fourth century
there were a few, of whom we are told by Epiphanius and
Philaster [Haer. 60), who ascribed both Gospel and Apoca-
lypse to Cerinthus. Epiphanius calls them Alogi, but it is a
mistake to suppose that there was a sect of heretics of the
name. This was only a clever nickname invented by Epi-
phaniusf {Haer. 51, 3) for the opponents of the Logos Gospel,
the word being intended to denote the irrational character of
their opposition. I do not know that there were ever enough
of them to make a sect; and they seem unworthy of notice,
since their objections as refuted by Epiphanius do not profess
to have rested on any grounds of external testimony. Their
ascribing the Gospel to Cerinthus shows that they believed
in its antiquity, since Cerinthus was contemporary with St,
John, This report of the evidence justifies me in saying that
if we were compelled to abandon one or other, we should have
far more countenance from antiquity for ascribing the Gospel
* Yet we find Theophilus of Antioch using the book before the end of the second
century (Euseb. iv, 24). Ephraem Syrus cites Rev. v. 1-3 {Serm. Exeg. in Ps. cxl. 3.
0pp. Syr. ii. 332).
t It is a small slip, that Canon Westcott [Speaker's Commentary, p. xxix)
makes Philaster as well as Epiphanius use this name. It is peculiar to the latter
writer, who expressly claims the invention for himself. It was probably from
Hippolytus that both writers derived the counting opposition to the Johannine
writings as a heresy ; but there is no reason to think that the opponents were united
into a sect, any more than those who denied all the 150 Psalms to have been written
by David (Pliilast. Haer. 130) ; or who denied the Epistle to the Hebrews to have
been written by St. Paul {Haer. 89) ; or who asserted the plurality of worlds (Haer.
115); or who held that the age of the world was uncertain {Haer. 112).
2 30 THE JOHANNINE BOOKS. [xiii.
to St. John than for attributing to him the book of Revelation.
At the same time I regard the evidence for the latter as amply
sufficient, because the testimony in its favour is a century or
two earlier than the doubts which arose concerning it, and
which seem to have arisen entirely from unwillingness to
accept the doctrine of a future reign of our Lord on this
earth.
I wish now to state a little more fully the argument of
Dionysius of Alexandria, because it is an interesting speci-
men of an early application of critical science to discriminate
the claims of different books ascribed to the same author.
Dionysius was bishop of Alexandria from 247 to 265, and had
been the successor of Origen as president of the Catecheti-
cal School of Alexandria. Origen had acknowledged the
Apocalypse as the work of the Apostle John, and, by his
favourite method of allegorical interpretation, had got over
the difficulties which the literal acceptance of its doctrines
might have occasioned. But the mass of simple believers
could not be satisfied with these philosophical refinements,
and protested against them. The argument which I am
about to quote was offered first on what seems to me a very
remarkable occasion. Dionysius of Alexandria is a man
whom we know mainly by some extracts from his writings
preserved by Eusebius ; and there is none of the early fathers
who impresses me more favourably as a man of earnest piety,
good sense, moderation, and Christian charity. On the oc-
casion to which I refer he worked what I account one of
the greatest and most authentic miracles of ecclesiastical his-
tory. His diocese being much troubled with disputes on the
Millennarian controversy, he assembled those whom perhaps
another bishop would have denounced as heretics ; and he
held a three days' public discussion with them : the result
being what I have never heard of as the result of any other
public discussion— that he talked his opponents round, and
brought all to complete agreement with himself [H. E. Vli.
24). I am, however, less surprised at this result from the
specimen which Eusebius gives us of the manner in which
Dionysius dealt with the authority of the leading Millen-
XIII.] DIONYSIUS OF ALEXANDRIA. 231
narian of his district, Nepos, who was then not long dead ;
and whose name had at that time the authority which that of
Keble has now, the favour in which his sacred poetry was
held gaining favour for a certain school of theological
opinions. Nothing can be more conciliatory than the grace-
ful way in which Dionysius speaks of Nepos and of the ser-
vices which he had rendered the Church, in particular by his
composition of hymns, for which Dionysius expresses a high
value, though he claims the liberty which he is sure Nepos
himself, if living, would have allowed him, of testing his
opinions by Scripture. The most formidable difficulty Diony-
sius has to encounter in dealing with the Millennarians is the
Apocalypse, and this he meets by a theory of his own. The
criticism of Dionysius, and his denial that the John of the
Apocalypse was the Apostle John, rests, you will observe, on
no external evidence, and is opposed to the uniform tradition
of the Church up to that time. Dionysius begins by saying
that some of his predecessors had utterly rejected this book,
criticizing every chapter, declaring it to be unintelligible and
inconsistent; and asserting that the title 'Revelation of John'
was doubly false. For they said that a book so obscure did
not deserve to be called a Revelation ; and that the author
was not John the Apostle, but Cerinthus, one of whose notions
was that the kingdom of Christ should be earthly, consisting
of those carnal and sensual pleasures which he most craved
for, and (for a decorous cover to these) feastings and sacrifices
and slaughters of victims, ' But, for my part ', proceeds
Dionysius, ' 1 do not venture to reject the book, since many
of the brethren hold it in esteem ; but I take it to be above
my understanding to comprehend it, and I conceive the inter-
pretation of each several part to be hidden and marvellous.
For, though I do not understand, yet I surmise that some
deeper meaning underlies the words. These things I do not
measure and judge by my own reasoning ; but, giving the
chief place to faith, I am of opinion that they are too high for
me to comprehend. I believe also the author's name to be
John, for he himself says so, but I cannot easily grant him to
be the Apostle the son of Zebedee, whose is the Gospel that is
232 THE JOHANNINE BOOKS. [xiii.
inscribed " according to John ", and the Catholic Epistle, for
I infer from the tone [fjdoc;) of each, and the character of the
language, and from what is called the S/e^aywyr/ of the book
[general method], that he is not the same person.' The
arguments which Dionysius then proceeds to urge are, first,
that the Evangelist mentions his name neither in the Gospel
nor in the First Epistle, and in the other two Epistles only
calls himself the Elder, while the author of the Apocalypse
calls himself John three times in the first chapter and once in
the last : but never calls himself the disciple whom Jesus
loved, or the brother of James, or the man who had seen and
heard the Lord. It is to be supposed that there were many of
the name of John, as for example we read of John Mark in
the Acts. Many who admired John, no doubt, gave the name
to their children for the love they bore him, just as many of
the faithful now call their , children by the names of Peter and
Paul. 'And it is said that there are two tombs at Ephesus,
each bearing the name of John's tomb.' He next argues that
there is great similarity of style between the Gospel and
Epistle, and a number of expressions common to both, such
as life, light, the avoiding of darkness, with the command-
ment of love one towards another, &c., none of which are
to be found in the Revelation, which has not a syllable in
common with the other two ; that Paul in his Epistles men-
tions having been favoured with revelations, and that there is
no corresponding mention in the Epistle of St. John. Lastly,
he presses the argument from the difference of style : ' the
Gospel and Epistle', he says, 'are written not only with-
out offending against the Greek language, but even most
eloquently in point of expression, reasoning, and literary
construction, far from containing any barbarous word, or
solecism, or vulgarism. For the Apostle, it seems, possessed
either word, even as God gave him both — the word of know-
ledge and the word of language ; but as for this writer, that
he saw a revelation and received knowledge and prophecy, I
will not gainsay ; yet I perceive his dialect and tongue to be
not accurately Greek, nay, that he uses barbarous idioms, and
in some cases even bolecis>nis, instances whereof it needs not
XIII.] DIONYSIUS OF ALEXANDRIA. 233
that I should now detail ; for neither have I mentioned them
in ridicule — let no one suppose it — but only as criticizing the
dissimilarity of the books ' (Euseb. H. E. vil. 25).
This passage contains all the arguments used by modern
writers against the common authorship of Gospel and Apoca-
lypse, except one which I have already answered, namely,
that the Apocalypse is the work of a Judaizing Christian, the
Gospel that of one of ultra-Pauline liberality. I have shown
that in this respect the Apocalypse is completely Pauline
{see p. 31).
I do not think it necessary to spend much time on the first
argument of Dionysius, viz. that founded on the fact that the
author of the Apocalypse has given his name, both in the
first and third person, while both Gospel and Epistle are
anonymous. In such a matter it is very possible that the same
man might act differently on different occasions, even though
we could assign no reason for his change of conduct. But in
this case a sufficient reason can be given. In the Old Testa-
ment the rule is that the historical books (with the exception,
indeed, of the Book of Nehemiah) are all anonymous; but
every prophetical book, without any exception, gives the
name of the prophet to whom the vision or prophecy was
communicated. The whole book of the Revelation is framed
on the model of the Old Testament prophecies, so that it is a
matter of course that it should begin by naming the seer whose
visions were recorded, while it would be quite natural that a
historical book by the same author should be anonymous.*
Nor can more stress be laid on the remark that John does
not in the Apocalypse call himself an Apostle, or the disciple
whom Jesus loved. The simplicity of the language ' I John ',
without further description of the writer, is, when well con-
sidered, rather a proof of Apostolic authority. A writer per-
sonating the Apostle would have taken care to make the
Apostleship unmistakeably plain to the reader ; and another
* The transition from the third to the first person 'his servant John' (i. i), *I
John ' (i. 9, xxi. 2, xxii. 2), is exactly parallel to the usage of Isaiah (i. r, ii. i, vi. i,
&c.), and of Daniel (i. 6, vii. i, 2, 15, &c.).
234 THE JOHANNINE BOOKS. [xiii.
John writing with an honest purpose would have distinguished
himself plainly from John the Apostle. But this author
betrays no desire to make himself prominent ; and the idea of
any other person being mistaken for him does not seem to
have crossed his mind.
Very much more consideration is due to the argument
which Dionysius founded on the difference of language be-
tween the Revelation and the other Johannine books. Thus,
he says, we do not find in the Revelation the Johannine
words, ^6ujj, (f>(ijg, aXiiOeia, xapig, Kpiaiq, &c. It must be owned
that, whereas the likeness between the language of the Gospel
and of the First Epistle is such that even a careless reader
can hardly fail to notice it, there are several of the words
frequently occurring in the other Johannine books which are
either rare in the Apocalypse or absent from it. But then it
must be remembered how completely different the subjects
treated of in the Apocalypse are from those which are dealt
with in the other books. It is not wonderful that a writer
should use different words when he wants to express an
entirely new circle of ideas. On the other hand, when we
look beyond the superficial aspects of the books, and carefully
examine their language, we arrive at a result quite different
from that obtained by Dionysius. There is found to be so
much affinity both of thought and diction between the various
books which have been ascribed to John, that we can feel
confident that all must have proceeded, if not from the same
author, from the same school.
I proceed to lay before you some of the proofs that if we
adopt the now pretty generally accepted opinion that John
the Apostle wrote the Apocalypse, we shall find ourselves
bound to hold that the Gospel was written either by the
Apostle himself, or by a disciple of his who had not only
thoroughly adopted his master's doctrine, but even much of
his language. I have spoken already of the identity of the
Christology of the Apocalypse with that of the Gospel, the
doctrine of our Lord's pre-existence being taught as distinctly
in the former [e.g. iii. 14) as in the latter. I have shown (p. 31)
that the book of the Revelation refuses to own the unbeliev-
XIII.] THE DICTION OF THE APOCALYPSE. 235
ing Jews as true Jews. This, also, is in complete harmony
with John viii. 39, which refuses to recognize as children of
Abraham those who did not the works of Abraham. Let me
now direct your attention to the title given to our Lord in the
Apocalypse (xix. 13), the 'Word of God', which at once con-
nects that book with the Gospel and the Epistle. The Logos
doctrine of the Gospel has been considered as a mark of late
authorship, or at least as indicating an author more subject
to Alexandrian influences than the historical John is likely to
have been. On that subject I have spoken already (p. 73).
But now we find that in the Apocalypse, which is admitted
by Renan and by a host of Rationalist writers to be the work
of John, and to which they assign an earlier date than ortho-
dox critics had claimed for any of the Johannine books, this
very title ' Logos ' is given to the Saviour. All objection,
therefore, against the likelihood of the Apostle having used
this title at once disappears. A second title repeatedly given
to our Lord in the book of Revelation is the Lamb. No-
where else in Scripture is it used thus as a title of the Saviour,
except in the first chapter of the Gospel — ' Behold the Lamb
of God'. It is scarcely necessary for me to call your attention
to the sacrificial import of this title. The two books else-
where (John xi. 51, 52 ; Rev. v. g) unequivocally express the
same doctrine, which can be stated in words which I am
persuaded John had read ' Ye were not redeemed with corrup-
tible things, as silver and gold, from your vain conversation
received by tradition from your fathers, but with the precious
blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without
spot' (i Pet. i. 18, 19).* It is plain what dignity must have
been ascribed to the person of Him to whose death such far-
reaching efficacy is attributed.
* This is one of several coincidences between Peter's Epistle and the Johannine
books : I Pet. ii. 5, 9, Rev. i. 6 ; t Pet. v. 13, Rev. xiv. 8, xvii. 5 ; i Pet. i. 7, 13,
Rev. i. I, iii. i8 ; I Pet. i. 23, i John iii. 9, John i. 13, iii. 5 ; i Pet. i. 22, i John
iii. 3; I Pet. V. 2, John x. 11, xxi. 16; i Pet. iii. 18, i John iii. J; i Pet. i. 10, John
xii. 41 ; r Pet. v. 13, 2 John i. These coincidences seem to me more than acciden-
tal. When I come to treat of Peter's Epistle I will give my reasons for preferring
the explanation that John had read that Epistle to the supposition that the Epistle is
post-Johannine.
236 THE JOHANNINE BOOKS. [xiii.
We have in the beginning of the Revelation (i. 7) : 'Every
eye shall see him, and they also which pierced him.' Now
the piercing of our Lord is only recorded by St. John ; and in
this passage the prophet Zechariah is quoted in a form differ-
ing from the Septuagint, but agreeing with the Gospel. We
have repeatedly the phrase ' he that overcometh ', which is of
frequent occurrence in all the Johannine books: Rev. ii. 7, 1 1,
iii. 5, xii. II, xxi. 7 ; John xvi. 33 ; i John ii. 13, iv. 4, v. 4.
The remarkable word aXtfOivog occurs nine times in the Gos-
pel, four times in the Epistle, ten times in the Revelation,
and only five times in all the rest of the New Testament.
Similar evidence may be drawn from the prevalence of the
words fiapTvpiu) and fxaprvpia in all the Johannine books. In
the Revelation (ii. 17) Jesus promises believers 'the hidden
manna'; in the Gospel (referring also to the manna) 'the
true bread from heaven ' (John vi. 32). In the Gospel (vii. 37)
Jesus cries, ' If any man thirst, let him come unto me and
drink'; in the Apocalypse (xxii. 17), ' Let him that is athirst
come ; and whosoever will, let him take of the water of life
freely.'* The abiding of God with man is in both books pre-
sented as the issue of Christ's work (John xiv. 23; Rev. iii. 20,
xxi. 3).
I have produced instances enough to establish decisively
that there is the closest possible affinity between the Revela-
tion and the other Johannine books. The only question on
which there is room for controversy is whether that affinity is
* Other coincidences are : ffKtjvovv, John i. 14, Rev. vii. 15, xii. 12, xiii. 6, xxi. 3;
'Lord thou knowest', Rev. vii. 14, John xxi. 15-17; exeiv fiepos (= to partake),
John xiii. 8, Rev. xx. 6 ; a(pa.TTeiv, i John iii. 12, Rev. v. 6, 9, 12, vi. 4, 9, xiii. 3, 8,
xviii. 24; o^is, John vii. 24, xi. 44, Rev. i. 16; Ttjpe'iy rhv \6yov, Rev. iii. 8, lO,
xxii. 7, 9, John viii. 51-55, xiv. 23, xv. 20, xvii. 6, i John ii. 5 ; kfipaicTri, twice in
the Revelation, five times in the Gospel. None of these expressions are found in
the New Testament, except in the Johannine books. Christ is compared to a bride-
groom, John iii. 29, Rev. xix. 7, xxi. 2, xxii. 17. Other examples will be found in
Davidson, whose candour here and elsewhere in fairly presenting the evidence on
both sides is worthy of all praise. Nothwithstanding the perversity of some of his
decisions, and, what is more irritating, the oracular tone of infallibility with which he
enunciates his private opinions as if they were ascertained facts, Davidson has done
great service to English students by collecting a mass of information which they will
not easily find elsewhere.
xm.] THE DICTION OF THE APOCALYPSE. 237
such as by itself to be a sufficient proof of identity of author-
ship. In deciding on this question attention ought of course
to be paid to the differences that have been pointed out. For
example, our Lord's title is the 'Word of God' in the Reve-
lation, simply the 'Word' in the Gospel. Christ is the Lamb
in both books ; but in the Gospel 6 ajuvog, in the Revelation
TO apviov ; but the latter form may have been preferred in order
to give more point to the opposition which in the latter book
constantly prevails between to apviov and to Bripiov. In the
Gospel there is a manifest reason why the Baptist, pointing
to Jesus, should use the masculine, not the neuter. So, again,
we have in the Revelation ' he that overcometh', absolutely,
but in the preceding books with an object: 'he that over-
cometh the world', &c. There are likewise peculiarities of
the Gospel which are absent from the Apocalypse, such as
the use of 'iva with the subjunctive instead of the ordinary
construction with the infinitive, and fondness for ovv as a con-
necting-link in a narrative. It would be important to discuss
these differences if I were contending that it is possible by
internal evidence alone to decide between the hypothesis that
the author of the Gospel was the same as the author of the
Revelation, and the hypothesis that the one was a disciple
and imitator of the other. But the question with which we
are actually concerned is different : it is whether we are bound
to reject the very strong external evidence for identity of
authorship, on the ground that internal evidence demonstrates
that both works could not have had the same author. I have
shown that no such result can be obtained under the present
head of argument, the resemblances between the books being
far more striking than the differences. I suppose there are
no two works of the same author between which some points
of difference might not be found by a minute critic, especially
if the works were written at some distance of time from each
other. No two books can be more alike than the First and
Second Epistles of St. John ; eight of the thirteen verses of
which the latter consists are to be found in the former, either
in sense or expression. Yet Davidson is careful to show that
a minute critic would be at no loss for proofs of diversity of
238 THE JOHANNINE BOOKS. [xiii.
authorship. The one has ei' rig, the other lav ng ; the one
epx^/iiivov iv aapKiy the Other IXriKvBoTa iv crapKiy and so on.
Some years ago Dr. Stanley Leathes* applied to our English
poets the methods of minute criticism that have been freely
used on our sacred books. He found that of about 450 words
in Milton's L' Allegro, over 300 are not to be found in the
longer poem // Penseroso, and over 300 do not occur in the
still longer poem Lycidas. So likewise, of about 590 words in
Tennyson's Lotos-eaters, there are 360 which are not found in
the longer poem CEnone.
I pass to the last and strongest of the arguments of Dio-
nysius, that drawn from the solecisms of style. The Gospel
and First Epistle are written in what, if not classical Greek,
is smooth, unexceptionable, and free from barbarisms and
solecisms in grammar. The Greek of the Revelation is start-
ling from the first : John to the seven churches of Asia, grace
to you and peace otto 6 wy koi 6 y\v koi 6 Ipyonivog, and from
the seven spirits which are before his throne kox airb 'Irjaov
HpiaTOV 6 fxaprvg b Tnarog, to him that loved US roi ayawCjvTL
rj/nag kol XovaavTi rtinag koi eTro'itjaev I'^fiag [iaaiXdav. Instances of
false apposition such as occur in this example present them-
selves several times where a noun in a dependent case has a
nominative in apposition with it.f It is not worth while to
discuss other deviations from Greek usage, several that have
been noticed not being peculiar to the Apocalypse.
Some well-meaning critics have set themselves to extenu-
ate these irregularities, and they have at least succeeded in
showing that some considerable deductions ought fairly to be
made from the list. They have produced from classical writers
examples of anacoluthon, of false apposition, of construction
ad sensum ; and it is urged with reason that we are not to
expect in the abrupt utterances of a * rapt seer, borne from
vision to vision', a regard for strict grammatical regularity,
which is frequently neglected in calmer compositions.
At the revival of learning, many excellent men were
* Boyle Lectures, 1868, p. 283.
t Thus: TTjs Ka.iV7)s ^lipovcTaXiiiJ., tj Kara^aivovcra (iii. 12), vwo/xovi] tHov ayiwv, oi
TTipovuns ras ivroKds (xiv. 12), rhv Spdnofra, 6 6(pts 6 a.pxo-'^os (xx. 2).
XIII.] THE DICTION OF THE APOCALYPSE. 239
shocked at the assertion of scholars that barbarisms and
solecisms were to be found in New Testament Greek; and
those who were called * Purists ' endeavoured to clear the
sacred writers from what they regarded as a dishonouring
aspersion. They ought to have reflected that it would be just
as reasonable to maintain that the sacred writers ought to
have been empowered to write in English, as in any kind of
Greek save that which was spoken at the time and in the
place in which they lived. It is difficult for us now to imagine
how anyone could have persuaded himself to think that a
miracle must needs have been wrought to enable the sacred
writers to use a language not their own, thus obliterating the
evidence which the character of the style bears to the time
and circumstances under which the books were written.
In the case of the Apocalypse, the character of the lan-
guage corresponds very well with what might be expected
from the author to whom it is ascribed. It gives us no reason
to disbelieve that this author had a sufficiency of Greek for
colloquial purposes. His anacolutha do not prove him to be
ignorant of the ordinary rules of Greek construction. The
very rules which he breaks in one place he observes in others.
The use of such a phrase as cnrb 6 mv could not possibly be the
result of ignorance that awo governs the genitive case. One
who could make such a mistake through ignorance would be
incapable of writing the rest of the book. This example is
rather to be paralleled by ' I AM hath sent me ', in the autho-
rized version of Ex. iii. 14. This very text seems to have
suggested the 6 wv of St. John, while 6 ijv is a bold attempt
to supply the want of a past participle of the substantive verb.
As for 6 Ipxofifvog, there may possibly be a reference to our
Lord's second coming, but it is also quite possible that the
form Ecro/ueuoc, which only occurs once 2V. T., was not familiar
to the writer. As there may be a great difference between
the copiousness of the vocabulary possessed by two persons
who speak the same language (the stock of words that suffices
to express the ideas of the rustic being wholly inadequate for
the necessities of the literary man), so there maybe equal differ-
ence in respect of the variety of grammatical forms habitually
240 THE JOHANNINE BOOKS. [xiik
employed. In particular there is sure to be such a difference
between the language of the native and that of the foreigner.
One who learns a language late in life finds it hard to obtain
a mastery of any complicated system of inflexions ; and this,
no doubt, is why we find that in the modern languages of
Europe which are derived from the Latin the varieties of case
endings have been in great measure obliterated. We can
thus understand how it is that John, accustomed to Aramaic,
which has no case endings, though not ignorant of the use of
the oblique cases, is glad to slide back into the use of the
nominative. Then, again, of the forms known to gramma-
rians several are but rarely needed for practical use ; and with
want of practice the power of correct use is apt to be lost.
When I was young, members of the Society of Friends affected
the use of the second person singular, but its use elsewhere
had become so obsolete that they were unable to employ it
grammatically. * Thee ' became a nominative case, and was
made to agree with a verb in the third person.* A foreigner
who has learned to manipulate correctly the grammatical
forms which are of frequent occurrence will be apt to find
them insufficient for his needs when he proceeds to literary-
composition. John, for example, might be in the constant
habit of employing the participle present, and yet not be
equally familiar with the use of participles future. The
Apocalypse, then, is exactly what might have been written
by one whose native language was Aramaic, who was able to
use Greek for the ordinary purposes of life, but who found a
strain put on his knowledge of the language when he desired
to make a literary use of it.
But how is it then that the Greek of the Gospel should
be so much better, if both books were written by the same
author r I am not sure that the Greek of the Gospel does
display so very much wider a knowledge of grammatical
forms. A grammarian does not find so much at which to
take exception; but this may be because less has been
* Tennyson also has been lately accused of bad grammar iu his use of the second
person singular by employing ' wert ' in the indicative mood instead of ' wast '. In
this matter, however, he is kept in countenance by several preceding poets.
XIII.] SOLECISMS OF THE APOCALYPSE. 24 1
attempted. It is much easier to turn into another language
such sentences as 'In the beginning was the Word', &c.,
than such a phrase as ' which is and which was and which is
to come'. It is on account of this more restricted range of
grammatical forms that the Gospel of St. John has been so
often used as the first book of a beginner learning a foreign
language.*
But without extenuating too much the superiority of the
Greek of the Gospel over that of the Revelation, two ex-
planations of that difference can be given. The opinion of
critics, orthodox as well as sceptical, now tends to reverse the
doctrine of older writers which made the Apocalypse much
the later book of the two, and to give it, on the contrary, ten,
perhaps twenty, years of greater antiquity than the Gospel.
Admit that St. John was no longer young when he came to
Ephesus, and therefore that no very radical change in his
language was to be expected ; still, living in a Greek city,
and with crowds of Greek disciples about him to whom he
would daily have to expound his doctrines in their own
language, he could not fail to acquire greater facility in its
use, and a power of expressing his ideas such as he had not
possessed when he had merely used the language for ordinary
colloquial purposes. There would have been fair ground for
suspicion, if there had been no superiority over the Greek of
the Apocalypse, in a book written after a score of years,
during which the author was speaking little or no Aramaic,
and must have been habitually speaking Greek.
The second consideration is that of possible assistance.
I have known two letters sent to the Continent bearing
the same signature, written in the same foreign language,
but possibly differing from each other in grammatical
accuracy as much as the Gospel and Apocalypse ; and the
explanation was not that the writer was different, but only
* The above was written before I had read Canon Westcott's Introduciioti, who
says (p. 1) : 'To speak of St. John's Gospel as "written in very pure Greek" is
altogether misleading. It is free from solecisms, because it avoids all idiomatic
expressions.' And he goes on to remark that there is at most one instance of the
use of the oratio obliqua.
R
242 THE JOHANNINE BOOKS. [xii.
that, in the one case, not in the other, he had taken the pre-
caution before sending his composition to get it looked over
by a better linguist than himself. St. Paul, we know, habi-
tually used the services of an amanuensis ; so also may St.
John ; and for all we know the disciple may have been a
better Greek scholar than his master. If a solecism were
dictated to him he might silently correct it (as we find that in
the later MSS. scribes have corrected several in the Apoca-
lypse), or he might at least call his master's attention to it.
The linguistic differences, therefore, between the Apocalypse
and the Gospel could all be accounted for by the supposition
that John wrote the former book with his own hand, and in
the latter employed the services of an amanuensis.
Such explanations being available, the differences of lan-
guage that have been pointed out come very far short of
demonstrating diversity of authorship. The conclusion, then,
to which I consider we are led by a comparative study of the
books is, that the Apocalypse and the other Johannine books
clearly belong to the same school : the first is as closely
related to the rest as the Epistle to the Hebrews is to St.
Paul's Epistles. If we regard the evidence from language
solely, I do not think we are in a position either to affirm or
deny that the same man wrote all the books. There are
resemblances between them such as to make it very credible
that it was so ; but at the same time there are differences which
indicate that the Revelation must at least have been written
at a different time or under different circumstances from the
others. Some other topics of internal evidence will afterwards
come under consideration.
XIV.] THE DATE OF THE APOCALYPSE. 243
XIV.
Part III.
THE DATE OF THE APOCALYPSE.
It will be convenient if before proceeding further I state
in more detail the modern theory as to the date of the book
of Revelation. I have already said that modern critics, who
agree with Dionysius in assigning the Gospel and Apocalypse
to different authors, differ from him by claiming Apostolic
authority for the latter, not the former. And in this case we
have the singular instance of sceptical critics assigning to a
New Testament book an earlier date than the orthodox had
claimed for it. The latter, following Irenaeus, had assigned
the Apocalypse to the reign of Domitian, and had regarded it
as the last work of the Apostle John, written in extreme old
age. Modern critics, on the other hand, are willing to grant
the book a quarter of a century of greater antiquity. From
the verse xvii. 10, * there are seven kings ; five are fallen, and
one is and the other is not yet come ', they infer that the book
was written after the death of five Roman emperors, and
during the reign of the sixth. There is a difference in the
way of counting Roman emperors, which however is made
not to affect the result. If we begin the reckoning with
Augustus, Nero is the fifth, shortly after whose death the
book is supposed to be written. In fact this fixes the date
within very narrow limits, for the reign of Galba only lasted
from May 68, to January 69. The more usual computation
made Julius the first of Roman emperors,* and this is adopted
by Renan ; but the date which he assigns the book is the
same ; for his theory is that though Nero was really dead at
the time, he was supposed by the author of the book to be
* See the authorities quoted by Renan, VAiitechnst, \). 407.
R 2
244 ^^^^ JOHANNINE BOOKS. [xiv.
still living, so that the five kings then dead were Nero's five
predecessors.
The disappearance of Nero was so sudden, and his death
witnessed by so few persons, that vague rumours got abroad,
especially in Asia and Achaia, that he was not really dead.
Tacitus tells us {Hz'st ll. 8, 9) that an impostor speedily took
advantage of this state of feeling. He is said to have been of
servile origin, was like Nero in personal appearance, and had
the same musical skill. Giving himself out to be the emperor,
he got some followers about him, and established himself in
a little local sovereignty, the centre of his power being Cyth-
nos (one of the Cyclades not far from Patmos), to which island
he had been driven by tempests when crossing the sea. But
his power was of short duration ; for he was slain early in the
reign of Otho, and his body was sent round to different cities,
in order completely to dispel the delusion which he had
excited. Some twenty years later, however, there was again
talk of a false Nero, the pretender this time having presented
himself in Parthia, where he obtained credence, protection,
and support (Suet,, NerOy 57). The belief that the matricide
Nero had fled beyond the Euphrates is expressed in the
Sibylline books, IV. iig, 137, and accordingly the book con-
taining the verses referred to is judged to be a Jewish com-
position of the date 80 or 90. Now the Apocalyptist is
regarded by Renan and the other interpreters of the same
school as having shared this belief about Nero, This is what
is supposed to be implied in the verses xiii, 3, 12, 14 : *I saw
one of his heads as it were wounded to death ; and his deadly
wound was healed ' ; and again, xvii, 1 1 : * The beast that was
and is not, even he is the eighth, and is of the seven, and
goeth into perdition ', which is interpreted to mean that Nero,
one of the seven emperors, was to return and rule for a time
as the eighth. The mention of the kings of the East, xvi, 12,
is interpreted as containing a reference to the Parthians, by
whose aid Nero was to be restored,*
* I note here that it is an attempt to combine inconsistent hypotheses when quo-
tations are accumulated which speak of the beUef that Nero had fled to Parthia, and
when this belief is ascribed to the Apocalyptist. For we only hear of Parthia in
XIV.] KENAN'S THEORY AS TO THE APOCALYPSE. 245
This is the theory which is elaborated in Renan's fourth
volume [U Antechrist). It was at once accepted by a writer
\n\h% Edinburgh Review (Oct., 1874), whom I imagined at the
time (I do not know whether or not correctly) to be Dean
Stanley ; and more recently by Archdeacon Farrar [Expositor,
1881). Renan's view, and it is that most popular among
Rationalist critics, is that this work was written by the
Apostle John at Ephesus in that crisis which agitated every
Jewish mind, the great Jewish war with the Romans, in the
end of the year 68 or beginning of 69, a couple of years before
the destruction of Jerusalem. What the seer is supposed to
anticipate and to predict in the beginning of the eleventh
chapter is that the siege would to a certain extent be success-
ful, and the city be trodden under foot of the Gentiles for
three years and a-half ; but that the Temple should not be
taken, for that our Lord's second coming should rescue the
Jews and be accompanied by the destruction of Rome.
The 'beast' of the Revelation is said to be Nero, and
Renan has revelled in the accumulation of a multitude of
offensive details, which have been faithfully transcribed by
his English followers, with the view of showing how applicable
the title of wild beast was to that monster. But, in my opinion,
no one who compares the book of Daniel with the Apocalypse
will require any ingenious explanation of the use of the
imagery of beasts in the latter book beyond the fact that it
occurs in the former. It is supposed, however, that all doubt
has been now removed through the discovery in quite recent
times of the true explanation of the mysterious number 666.*
This is said to be Nero Caesar written in Hebrew letters
IDp lll^t And what is supposed to demonstrate the cor-
connexion with Nero full twenty years after that emperor's death ; and naturally it
would not be until after all trace of him had disappeared from the West that the
imagination would spring up that he was hiding in the distant East. If, as Renan
would have it, John wrote in the reign of Galba, and beheved the impostor of
Cythnos to be the veritable Nero redivivus, he could not also believe Nero to be then
lurking in Parthia.
* There are rival claimants for the honour of this discovery— Fritzsche, Senary,
Reuss, and Hitzig. See Farrar, Expositor, p. 347.
t Thus : J = 50, n = 200, 1 = 6, J = 50, p = 100, e = 60, n = 200 ; total = 666.
246 THE JOHANNINE BOOKS. [xiv.
rectness of this solution is, that it accounts equally for the
numbers 666 and 6i6, both of which were early found in MSS.
of the Apocalypse (see p. 226). For the difference is explained
as arising from a difference in the way of spelling Nl/owv with
or without the final letter, the numerical value of which in
Hebrew is 50.
Who the false prophet was, who is described (xiii. 11,
xix. 20) as working miracles and compelling men to worship
the beast and receive his mark, these interpreters are less
agreed. One (Volkmar) gravely maintains that the person
intended is St. Paul, who by instructing Christians (in Rom.
xiii.) to submit to the higher powers had made himself the
prophet of Nero. Another suggests that it might be the
historian Josephus. A third contends for Simon Magus.
Archdeacon Farrar upholds the claims of the emperor Ves-
pasian. But these modern expositors of the Apocalypse all
agree in putting forward an interpretation from which it
results that the book is in every sense of the word a false
prophecy — a prediction falsified by the event. It foretold
that Nero was to recover his power, but in point of fact he
was then dead; it foretold (and apparently in ignorance of
the prophecy which Matthew has put into the mouth of our
Lord) that the temple should not be taken; but actually not
one stone of it was left upon another; and finally it foretold
that the provinces should cast off the Roman domination
and destroy the imperial city; for this is the interpretation
given to chap. xvii. 16, 17 — the ten horns, into whose heart
God had put it for a time to give their kingdom to the beast,
shall now hate the whore, make her desolate and naked, eat
her flesh, and burn her with fire. But in point of fact, the
wars that followed the death of Nero had no such result.
On the contrary, under the Flavian emperors, the dominion of
Rome was more firmly established than ever.
I confess that I am under a certain disadvantage in criti-
cizing any theory which professes to give the true interpre-
tation of the Apocalypse, for I have to own myself unable to
give any better solution of my own, feeling like one of
Cicero's disputants, 'facilius me, talibus de rebus, quid
XIV.] THE MODERN THEORY INCREDIBLE. 247
non sentirem, quam quid sentirem, posse dicere.' However I
am bound to state the difficulties which prevent me from
accepting the theory, now becoming fashionable, as furnishing
the true solution.
And it seems almost enough to appeal to the estimation
in which the Apocalypse has been held from the first. Is it a
credible hypothesis that any man ever gained for himself per-
manent reputation as an inspired prophet by making a pre-
diction which was falsified within a year of the time when it
was delivered ? According to this theory, St. John does not,
like some pretenders to the gift of prophecy, make himself
pretty safe by postponing to some tolerably distant future the
date when his prophecy is to come to pass. He undertakes
boldly to foretell the event of the great military operation of
his time. For a parallel case we should imagine Victor
Hugo or some other French prophet in Christmas, 1870,
issuing a prediction that Paris should to a certain extent be
taken, and a third part of the city burnt, but that the
Germans should not get the mastery over the whole ; for
that there would be an uprising of the other German nations
against the Prussians, ending with the total destruction ol
the city of Berlin, to the great joy of Europe. We can
imagine some one mad enough to make such a prophecy as
this ; but if so, can we imagine that a prediction so wild and
so unfortunate should make the reputation of the prophet,
and that the book which contained it should live for gene-
rations as an inspired document ? In the case of the Apoca-
lypse, as we are asked to understand it, the seer could hardly
have had time to publish his predictions before he must have
himself wished to recall or suppress them, their failure was
so rapid. Possibly within a month after they were made the
pretended Nero was killed and his imposture exposed. Then
came a rapid succession of emperors, proving that it was a
mistake to limit their number to seven, and, not long after,
the destruction of Jerusalem, from which the Temple did not
escape.
According to this theory, too, we must suppose that the
intention of the Apocalypse was understood at the time it was
248 THE JOHANNINE BOOKS. [xiv.
published. For otherwise what object could there be in the
work .'' It was intended, we are told, to inspire in Christians
certain hopes and expectations ; and in order to have this
effect, its general purpose, at least, must have been made
plain. And yet the knowledge of the writer's meaning com-
pletely perished. Irenaeus, separated from the book by only
one generation, and professing to be able to report the tradi-
tion concerning the number of the Beast handed down by
men who had seen John face to face, is utterly ignorant of its
purport. The solution of Nero for 666 is quite unknown to
him, and he is so far from connecting the book with the times
of Nero as to refer the work to the reign of Domitian. He
has not the least suspicion that recourse is to be had to the
Hebrew alphabet, but treats it as a self-evident principle that
Greek numerals are to be employed.*
The argument just used, that permanent reputation could
not have been gained by a prophecy which signally failed,
may seem to lose its force if it be true (as the Edinburgh
Reviewer contends) that St. John's prophecy, as he under-
stands it, did not fail. ' It is perfectly certain,' he writes,
* that Nero did not in fact return ; that the Roman Empire
did not in fact break up till more than three centuries later ;
that not a part but the whole of Jerusalem and of the Jewish
Temple was destroyed ; that the Second Advent of our Lord
to judgment did not soon, nay, has not yet, occurred. But
in spite of all this, we venture to say that the Apocalypse of
St. John, that Hebrew prophecy, on the whole, has neverthe-
less not failed ; that, properly understood, its forecasts have
been, for every rational and religious purpose, successful.'
* rod \6yov SiSdffKovros rfixas, in 6 apiOfxhs tov opSfxaTos tov drjplov /cara t^v tuv
"E.Wi)V(iiv y\iri<pov Sio tuv iy avrf ypafifj.a.Tcoi' \_i/x(paiveTai. Euseb. ZT. £. v. 8] sex-
centos habebit et sexaginta et sex (Lat. trans., Iren. v. 30). I suspect that Eusebius,
in abridging his extract, has slightly distorted the meaning. He makes Irenseus say
that reason teaches that the calculation must be made by Greek letters, which seems
a bold assertion. But I take it that what Irenseus looks on as established by the
arguments he has used is that the numerical value of the Greek letters in the name
of the beast must make, not 616, but six hundreds, six tens, six units. But either
way he takes for granted, without doubt, that the calculation must be made by Greek
numerals.
xiv.] IMPUTATION OF FAILURE, HOW DECLINED. 249
And he goes on to explain that it is religious confidence in
God which is the essential teaching of all the Hebrew books ;
that in the Bible 'all ethical speculation is reduced to its
ultimate and most practical terminology in the word "faith."'
In details we are very likely to be entirely mistaken, but they
who have believed will find at last that they were not de-
ceived, that Christ, not Antichrist, rules the universe, that
God and not the devil is supreme, and must in the end be
triumphant. Mere soothsaying, we are told, was never in
any marked degree the intention of prophecy at all. But
when 'Apocalypse', which may be called the decay, the
senility of prophecy, began to busy itself with mere world-
empires and with the political succession of events, it cannot
be a matter of surprise if its predictions went astray. But
though a succession of Apocalyptic efforts to sketch out the
future triumph of ' God's kingdom ' over the world-empires
signally failed in time, in place, in circumstance, it more
signally came true in the barbarian overthrow of the Roman
Empire, and the establishment of modern Christendom.
Substantially the same view is taken by Archdeacon
Farrar. He censures Luther's remark that ' for many rea-
sons he regarded the book as neither apostolic nor prophetic'
The Archdeacon holds it to be both, and considers that
Luther's unwarrantable judgment proceeded from a deficient
acquaintance with the necessary characteristics of the Apo-
calyptic style. The Apocalyptic method differed from the
prophetic, and appears to stand upon a lower level of pre-
dictive insight. But the prophecies of this book have
' springing and germinant developments.' Nero did not, as
was popularly supposed, take refuge among the Parthians,
and was not restored by their means ; but the prophecy has
received an adequate fulfilment in the appearance of suc-
cessive Antichrists with Neronian characteristics, Domitian,
Decius, Diocletian, and many a subsequent persecutor of the
saints of God.
It is not the business of this course of lectures to discuss
the proper method of interpreting prophecy; for the purposes
of my argument it is enough to know what was the method of
250 THE JOHANNINE BOOKS. [xiv.
interpretation which prevailed at the time the Apocalypse
was published. Now I feel myself safe in saying that the
view is quite modern which regards prophecy as a kind of
sacred song of which the melody only need be attended to,
the words to which the air is set being quite unimportant.
The ideas of the Jewish mind had been formed by the Mosaic
direction (Deut. xviii. 22) : 'When a prophet speaketh in the
name of the Lord, if the thing follow not nor come to pass,
that is the thing which the Lord hath not spoken, but the
prophet hath spoken it presumptuously.' Even if this rule
had not the sanction of revelation, it expresses the view of
the matter which uninstructed people are apt to take. It may
be true that ' mere soothsaying is not the intention of pro-
phecy ' ; but still they will think that if what the prophet says
is not sooth he is no real prophet. And it is difficult to put
them off with evasions, A fortune-teller accused of obtaining
money on false pretences would plead in vain that though the
actual good things she had promised were not fulfilled, her
customers would find her predictions true, in the sense that if
they had faith and patience something good would somehow,
at some time or other, turn up, I remember what success
Dr. Gumming had as an interpreter of Apocalyptic prophecy ;
how eagerly new books of his were welcomed, and by what
thousands they were sold. But he did what St. John is said
to have done, namely, venture on predictions, the truth of
which the next following three or four years would test.
Dr. Gumming was surely entitled to all the allowances for
want of accuracy in his forecasts that can be demanded for
the author on whom he commented ; yet, when the things
which he foretold did not come to pass, his credit fell and his
books disappeared. And I see no reason to think that Ghris-
tians in the first century were more indulgent critics of Apo-
calyptic predictions. And so I still feel that the success
obtained by the Book of the Revelation of St. John throws a
great difficulty in the way of our receiving the modern ex-
planation of its design. If the book, considered as a pro-
phecy, failed as completely as Dr. Gumming's, why did it not
fall into the same oblivion as Dr. Gumminsf's books ?
XIV.] IMPERFECT SUCCESS OF MODERN SOLUTIONS. 25 I
When I lay down one of those modern essays which claim
to give a key to the meaning of the book, on the ground of a
plausible explanation of three or four selected texts, and then
take up the book itself, I find such a want of correspondence
that I can only compare the case to a claim to have solved a
double acrostic, advanced on the score of a fair guess at two
or three of the ' lights \ without any attempt being made to
elucidate the rest. If the book was intended to assure the
minds of Christians by informing them of the result of the
siege of Jerusalem, or of the political movements of their own
time, that idea is strangely cast into the background. It is
only the opening chapters which appear to speak of then
present events, and these are occupied not with temporal
matters in Judea, but with the spiritual condition of the
Churches of Asia Minor. The theme of the whole book is our
Lord's second coming ; it is only by laborious search that a
verse here and there can be found, of which a political ex-
planation can be offered. In order to accept the most success-
ful of the explanations, a good deal of charitable allowance
for vagueness must be made. If we are to confine interpreters
to the date they themselves fix, the reign of Galba (and a later
date involves the abandonment of the key-text, that about
the seven kings), at that time the blockade of Jerusalem had
not been formed ; and so the description (xi. 2) of the capture
of the city, and of the treading down of the outer court of the
Temple by the Gentiles, must be owned to have been suggest-
ed by nothing which had then actually occurred. It is idle
to suppose, as some have done, that xvii. 16 refers to the
burning of the Capitol, for that only took place in the subse-
quent contests between the parties of Vitellius and Vespasian :
idle also to find references in the book to the assumption by
Vespasian of miraculous power at Alexandria, or to his for-
bidding corn ships to sail to Rome : still more idle to find
references to the supposed flight of Nero to Parthia. Take
the book anywhere, and ask the interpreters to condescend to
details, and point out how they are to be explained as refer-
ring to events in the reign of Galba, and they are at once at
a loss. I have already referred to the discordance between
252 THE JOHANNINE BOOKS. [xiv
interpreters of this school as to who is intended by the false
prophet. Still less can they explain what is told about him.
He works miracles; he brings fire down from heaven; he gives
life to the image of the beast and makes it speak ; he causes
those that refuse to worship the beast's image to be killed ; he
causes all to receive the mark of the beast in their right hand
or in their forehead : he permits no man to buy or sell who
has not this mark.* Who is there at the date in question who
can be described as having done, or as being thought likely to
do, any of these things ? Renan explains the prohibition to buy
or sell as referring to the use of the imperial effigy on coins,
which a strict Jew would think it idolatrous to use. Our
Lord's question, * Whose is this image and superscription ' ?
may assure us that before the reign of Nero Jews had been
asked to use such coins, and had made no scruple. Then
again, who are the two witnesses (ch. xi.) from whose mouth
fire proceeds to destroy their enemies, who have power to
withhold rain and to smite the earth with other plagues, who
are finally to be slain, and whose bodies are to lie three days
and a-half in the streets of Jerusalem ? I think that interpre-
ters ought to be modest in their belief that they have got the
right interpretation of the second verse of this chapter when
they must own that their method will not carry them a single
verse further. On the whole, it seems to me that Dr. Gum-
ming could find quite as many 'coincidences to justify his
methods of interpretation as those on which the more recent
school relies.
But it has been supposed that a demonstration of the
correctness of the latter methods is afforded by the fact that
the numerical value of the letters of Nero Caesar is 666, and
that this is so unquestionably the right solution of the number
of the beast, that we may regard Irenaeus's ignorance of it
as a proof that he knew nothing about the matter. It seems
* Neither Farrar's nor Renan's explanation of this is so natural as that we have
here a plain prediction of ' boycotting '; and sure enough wappveWos makes 666.
But seriously, exclusion from ordinary traffic was a common result of the calumnies
circulated against Christians (see the letter of the Churches of Vienne and Lyons,
Euseb. V. I, a document which quotes the Apocalypse as Scripture).
XIV.] MULTIPLICITY OF SOLUTIONS. 253
to me, on the contrary, that a man must know very little of
the history of the interpretations of this number if he can
flatter himself that because he has found a word the numerical
value of whose letters makes the required sum he is sure of
having the true solution. Pages might be filled with a list of
persons whose names have been proposed as solutions of the
problem. Among the persons supposed to be indicated are
the emperors Caligula, Titus, Trajan, and Julian the Apostate,
Genseric the Vandal, Popes Benedict IX. and Paul V., Maho-
met, Martin Luther, John Calvin, Beza, Archbishop Laud,
and Napoleon Bonaparte. There are three rules by the help
of which I believe an ingenious man could find the required
sum in any given name.* First, if the proper name by itself
will not yield it, add a title ; secondly, if the sum cannot be
found in Greek, try Hebrew, or even Latin; thirdly, do not
be too particular about the spelling. The use of a language
different from that to which the name properly belongs allows
a good deal of latitude in the transliteration. For [example,
if Nero will not do, try Caesar Nero. If this will not succeed
in Greek, try Hebrew ; and in writing Kaisar in Hebrew be
sure to leave out the Jod, which would make the sum too
much by ten. We cannot infer much from the fact that a key
fits the lock if it is a lock in which almost any key will turn.
Irenseus, I think, drew a very sensible inference from the
multiplicity of solutions which he was himself able to offer.
He says (v. 30) : — ' It is safer therefore and less hazardous to
await the event of the prophecy than to try to guess or divine
the name, since haply the same number may be found to suit
* I remember that I once sent to Bishop FitzGerald a proof that 666 was the
sum of the letters of the name of some opponent at the time, but was rash enough to
add that I believed that no retaliation could be made either on his name or mine. In
reply he presented me with the solution r«JDS\ir nD ; but he added the Horatian
caution: —
Tu ne quassieris, quera mihi quem tibi
Finem Di dederint, nee Babylonios
Tentaris numeros.
Young computers must be warned against an error into which some have fallen,
viz. that of confounding the *Episemon', which denotes six in the Greek arithmeti-
cal notation, either with the final sigma, or with the comparatively modem abbrevia-
254 'i'i^E JOHANNINE BOOKS. [xiv.
many names. For if the names which are found to contain
the same number prove to be many, which of them will be
borne by the coming One will remain a matter of inquiry.'
But it may be urged that though we could not build much
on the fact that the letters of Nero Csesar make 666, yet the
correctness of this solution is assured by its also giving the
explanation of the number 6i6. But not to say that it
shares this advantage with other solutions containing a name
ending in wv, let us consider what is assumed when we lay
stress on the fact that a single name gives the explanation of
two different numbers. It is assumed that the answer to the
riddle must have been better known than the riddle itself.
There must have been a wide knowledge that Nero Caesar
was intended, and that the calculation was to be made in
Hebrew letters, whereupon calculators who spelt the name
differently adapted the number in their copies to the sum
which they respectively brought out. But if there had been
such widespread knowledge of the solution as is thus assumed,
it is incredible that it should have been so completely lost
when Irenaeus tried to learn what was known of the matter
by the disciples of John, and was quite sure that the calcula-
tion was to be made by Greek letters. I think, therefore, that
no interpreter at the present day is justified in feeling the
assurance, professed by some, that his solution is the only
right one.
Although I find myself unable to believe that Irenaeus
could be entirely in error as to the whole object and driftj of
tion for trr, which printers now use also for the Episemon, thereby so misleading
simple readers, that I have found in a scientific article the information that the name
of this numerical sign is Stau ! It need hardly be said that no light is cast on the
number 666 by observing how it looks when expressed in modern cursive characters.
In extant uncial mss. the number is written in words at length, and Irenaeus appears
to have so read it in his own MS., though he conjectures that the various reading
6i6 originated in MSS. where the number was written in letters. His words are
(v. 30), 'Hocautem arbitror scriptorum peccatum fuisse, ut solet fieri, quoniam et per
literas numeri ponuntur, facile literam Graecam quae sexaginta enuntiat numerum, in
iota Graecorum Uteram expansam.' [See Heumann in Biblioth. Brem., I. p. 869;
Godet, Bibl. Studies, N. T., p. 353 (Lyttleton's Transl.) ; Farrar, Early Days of
Christianity, Bk. IV., c. xxviii. s, 5).
XV.] THE QUARTODECIMANS. 255
the Apocalypse, I do not see equal difficulty in the supposition
that he might have been mistaken as to the date. I believe
that it is an earlier book than the Gospel, both on account of
the character of the Greek and for other reasons, on which
see Westcott's Introduction [Speaker's Commentary, p. Ixxxvi).
Nor do I think the time soon after the death of Nero an im-
probable date. I am well disposed to adopt Renan's conjec-
ture, that St. John had been in Rome and witnessed the
Neronian persecution, and that his book was written while the
impression made by those scenes of blood was still fresh (Rev.
xvii. 6; xviii. 20, 24; vi. 9, 10).
XV.
Part IV.
THE FOURTH GOSPEL AND THE QUARTODECIMANS.
I come now to state another objection to the antiquity of
the Fourth Gospel, which has been repeated in tones of the
utmost triumph, as if it were unanswerable. At least it used
to be ; but even the few years that I have been lecturing have
been long enough to enable me to see the dying out of some
objections that once were regarded as formidable. This argu-
ment, which I am now about to state, was not long since
greatly relied on by the assailants of the Gospel ; but now I
think the more candid and cautious are inclined to abandon
it as worthless. What the argument aims at proving is, that
the Quartodecimans, who in the second century predominated
in the Churches of Asia Minor, did not recognize the authority
of the Fourth Gospel, or own John as its author. Now since,
according to all the evidence, Asia Minor was the birthplace
of that Gospel, and the place where its authority was earliest
acknowledged, the fact of its actual reception there is so well
256 THE JOHANNINE BOOKS. [xv.
established, that it is natural to think there must be some
flaw in an argument which undertakes to show by an in-
direct process that the Asiatic Churches could not have
accepted it.
The objection is founded on a real difficulty in an apparent
discrepancy between the Fourth and the Synoptic Evangelists.
In reading the first three Evangelists we feel no doubt that
our Lord celebrated the feast of the passover on the night
before He suffered. St. Matthew tells us expressly (xxvi. 17)
that on the first day of unleavened bread our Lord sent the
message — * My time is at hand, I will keep the passover at
thy house with my disciples' ; that the disciples did as Jesus
commanded, and made ready the passover, and when the
even was come Jesus sat down with the disciples. St. Mark
(xiv. 12) adds that this was 'the day when they sacrificed the
passover'. St. Luke closely agrees with St. Mark, and adds
(xxii. 15) that our Lord said : ' With desire I have desired to
eat this passover with you before I suffer, for I say unto you I
will not any more eat thereof until it be fulfilled in the king-
dom of God.' Thus, according to these three Evangelists,
our Lord ate the passover on the evening of the first day of
unleavened bread, and suffered the following day. St. John,
on the other hand, tells us (xiii. i) that the supper at which
our Lord told the disciples that one of them should betray
Him was 'before the feast of the passover'. When Judas
leaves the room, the other disciples think that Jesus has com-
missioned him tq buy the things that they had need of against
the feast (xiii. 29), implying that the feast was still future.
Next day the Jews refuse to enter the judgment-seat, that they
might not be defiled, but might eat the passover (xviii. 28).
Thus the impression left by John's narrative is, that Jesus did
not eat the passover, but that He suffered on the first day of
the feast, being Himself the true passover. Baur's theory
is that one great object of St. John's Gospel was to bring
out this point, that Christ was the true passover ; and he
quotes St. John's application (xix. 36) as a prophecy concern-
ing Christ, of the law of the passover, ' neither shall ye break
a bone thereof (Ex. xii. 46, Num. ix. 12). It has been doubted
XV.] THE QUARTODECIMANS. 257
whether the quotation is not rather from the Psalms, from
which John quotes so many other prophecies of Christ : ' He
keepeth all his bones, not one of them is broken' (xxxiv. 20);
but I am not inclined to dispute the reference to the passover,
as to which Baur only expresses the general opinion of ortho-
dox interpreters.
Now, that there is here a real difficulty I freely acknow-
ledge; for there seems a force put on the words of John, if our
Lord's Last Supper be made the passover supper, or else a
force put on the words of the Synoptic Evangelists if it be
not.* It probably requires only a fuller knowledge of some of
the facts connected with the usages of the time to remove the
discrepancy. The ancient authorities (the Bible, Josephus,
and Philo) leave some points undetermined on which we de-
sire information, while regulations cited from the Talmud are
open to the doubt whether they are as ancient as our Lord's
days. Without knowing, for example, what latitude the
usages of that period permitted as to the time of holding the
feast, we cannot tell whether to accept solutions which
assume that the priests did not eat the passover at the same
time as our Lord's disciples. Some have suggested that our
Lord may have anticipated the time usual among the Jews,
in order to partake of the feast with His disciples before
He suffered; others adopt Chrysostom's conjecture that the
Jewish rulers postponed their passover in their occupation with
arrangements for the capture and trial of our Lord. It has
been pointed out that what St. John tells of the scruple of the
Jewish rulers to enter the praetorium does not imply (as some
* The view that the Last Supper was the passover is advocated, among recent
writers, by Wieseler, Synopsis, p. 313; by M'Clellan, Commentary, p. 473; by
Edersheim, Life of Jesus the Messiah, ii. p. 479. See also Dean Plumptre's Excur-
sus in Ellicott's Commentary. The opposite view is maintained by Sanday, Fourth
Gospel, p. 201; and by Westcott, Introduction to Gospels, p. 344; and in the
Speaker'' s Commtfitary. This latter view was held by Clement of Alexandria, by
Hippolytus, and by early Christian writers generally. Several quotations will be
found in the Preface to the Paschal Chronicle (Bonn edit., p. 12), that from Clement
being particularly interesting. But as on this point the earhest fathers had no more
means of real information than ourselves, the opinion of a father has no higher autho-
rity than that of an eminent critic of our own day.
S
258 THE JOHANNINE BOOKS. [xv.
have inferred) that the Evangelist meant his readers to regard
this incident as having taken place on the morning of the day
on which the passover was afterwards to be eaten. The pass-
over would not be eaten till the evening ; but before that time
the defilement contracted by entering the heathen house could
have been removed. Consequently it is urged that what the
Jewish rulers proposed to eat must have been something to be
partaken of immediately : either the passover proper, their
regular celebration of which at an earlier hour that night had
been interrupted, but of which they regarded themselves still
in time to partake in the early morning on their return home
from their interview with Pilate ; or else the ' Chagigah', a
free-will offering made on the morning following the pass-
over, but to which, according to competent authorities, the
name 'passover' might be applied.
However, our present business is not to harmonize the
Gospels, or remove their apparent inconsistencies. Such a
work belongs to a later stage of the enquiry ; and, as I said
before, concerns Christians alone, and is one with which those
who stand without have nothing to do. Critics, I think, over-
rate their knowledge of the Jewish usages of the time, who
suppose themselves in a position to assert that there is a real
disagreement between St. John and the other Evangelists.
But what we have now to consider is whether, even supposing
there be such a real disagreement, this makes it impossible to
believe in the early date of St. John's Gospel. Now, to my
mind, the conclusion is quite the reverse — this, and other
seeming contradictions between St. John and the earlier
Evangelists being, as I think, inconsistent with the ascription
of a late date to the Gospel. For let us suppose that the
fourth Gospel was not written until after the other Gospels
had had time to gain acceptance, and to be generally received
among Christians as the authentic account of their Master's
life ; and is it conceivable that a forger, wishing to pass off
his performance as the work of an Apostle, would have set
himself in flagrant opposition to the general belief of Chris-
tians ? John is quite silent about many most important events
in our Lord's life : in fact, as a general rule, the things which he
XV.] CONTROVERSY CONCERNING DAY OF PASSION. 259
relates are the things not told in the former Gospels ; yet he
makes no mention of preceding writings, and does not declare
any intention of supplementing them, A forger would either
have made a Gospel which he might hope to pass off as an
independent complete account of the Saviour's life, or else he
would profess to take the existing histories as his basis, and
to supply what was wanting in them. And certainly the
forger of a supplemental history would be cautious to dovetail
his work properly into the accepted story. He would not
venture, without a word of explanation, to make statements
seemingly in direct contradiction to what the Church had
received as the true Apostolic tradition. It seems to me,
then, that the phenomena presented by the fourth Gospel
can only be explained either by the hypothesis that it was
published at so early a date that its writer was not aware of
any necessity to take notice of other accounts of the Saviour's
life ; or else that it was written, as the Church has always
believed it was, by an Apostle whose own authority stood so
high that it was unnecessary for him to trouble himself to
consider what others had said before him.
I believe that the latter explanation is the true one. All
agree in placing the publication of John's Gospel so late that
it is incredible but that other Gospels had previously been
published, of which the writer could not be ignorant. No one
whose own knowledge of our Lord's life was second-hand
would have ventured to dispense with a careful study of the
traditions which rested on the authority of his immediate fol-
lowers ; but it is quite conceivable that the person least likely
to study what had been said by others would be one who was
conscious that he needed not to learn the facts from any other,
but could himself testify ' what he had heard, what he had
seen with his eyes, what he had looked upon, and his hands
had handled, of the Word of Life'.
I have now to explain how this discrepancy, real or
apparent, between the Gospels, has been connected with the
Easter controversies of the second century. There is still a
good deal of uncertainty as to the exact point at issue in these
disputes ; but this much in general you are aware of, that the
S 2
26o THE JOHANNINE BOOKS. [xv.
Churches of Asia Minor, where the Apostle John, according-
to the most trustworthy tradition, spent the last years of his
life, celebrated their paschal solemnities on the day of the
Jewish Passover, the fourteenth day of the first month,* and
that they cited the Apostle John as the author of this custom.
The Churches of the West, and indeed of the rest of Christen-
dom generally, held their paschal feast on the following Sun-
day, and continued the preliminary fast up to that Sunday,
and after their Quartodeciman brethren had broken it oif.
There can be no doubt that the Western paschal feast was
intended to commemorate the Resurrection of our Lord. In
the Christian Church the weekly Resurrection feast was in-
stituted before the annual feast ; and it is plain that those
who made their paschal feast coincide with their weekly
celebration of the Resurrection did so in order to celebrate
with peculiar joy that Lord's day which in the time of year
most nearly approached to the time of His rising from the
dead.
But what was the Eastern feast on the fourteenth day of
the month intended to commemorate ? The Tubingen school
make answer, the Last Supper of the Lord. And then their
argument proceeds thus : — The Asiatics commemorated the
Last Supper on the fourteenth day of the month : they there-
fore adopted the reckoning of the Synoptic Gospels, accord-
ing to which the Last Supper was held on the fourteenth,
and the Passion took place on the following day.f And since
the Churches of Asia cited John as the author of their custom,
they must, if they knew the fourth Gospel, have rejected its
* According to Exod. xii. 6, the passover was to be killed on the 14th day
' between the evenings'. Since the Jewish day began with the evening, some have
understood from this that the passover was to be killed on the beginning of the
Jewish 14th day, or, as we should count it, on the eveiring of the 13th. But the best
authorities are agreed that the passover was killed on the afternoon of the 14th, and
eaten the following night, which, according to Jewish count, would be the 15th.
(Joseph., Bell. Jud. vi. 9, 3.)
t That is, as we count days ; but the Last Supper and the Passion took place on
the same Jewish day. The question, How did the Asiatic Churches count days }
materially affects Baur's argument ; but I do not discuss it, there being other reasons
for regarding that argument as worthless.
XV.] HISTORY OF EARLY PASCHAL DISPUTES. 26 1
claims to proceed from John the Apostle, since it apparently
makes the fourteenth the day not of the Supper, but of the
Passion. The whole argument, you will perceive, rests on
the assumption that the Asiatic paschal feast was intended to
commemorate the Last Supper ; but where is the proof of that
assumption ? There is absolutely none.
And now, perhaps, you may be inclined to dismiss the
whole argument; for if one is at liberty to assume things
without proof, it is shorter work to assume at once the thing
you wish to establish, instead of professing to prove it by an
argument the premisses of which you take for granted with-
out proof. However, as I have entered on the subject, I had
better lay before you all that is known as to the details of
these early Easter controversies. You will see that our infor-
mation is so scanty that if we try to define particulars we are
reduced to guessing. But it will appear, I think, that the
Tiibingen guess is a very bad one. In fact what can be less
probable than that the Asiatic Churches should make the
Last Supper their one great object of annual commemoration,
leaving the Crucifixion and the Resurrection uncelebrated ?
There are three periods in the second century in which we
hear of these paschal disputes. The earliest notice of the
controversy is in the account given by Irenaeus (Euseb. v. 24)
of the visit of Polycarp to Anicetus, bishop of Rome ; on
which occasion we are told that ' neither could Anicetus pre-
vail on Polycarp not to observe [the 14th Nisan] (^17 rripHv),
inasmuch as he had always observed it with John the Apostle
of our Lord, and the other Apostles with whom he had associ-
ated ; nor could Polycarp prevail on Anicetus to observe
[Trjptlv], for he said that he ought to follow the example of the
presbyters before him'. Here we see that the Eastern custom
was 'to observe' the day: the Western, 'not to observe it'.
The language of Irenaeus is so vague, that it even leaves it an
open question whether the Roman bishops before Soter had
any Easter celebration at all, for he speaks of the difference
between Anicetus and Polycarp as more fundamental than
that involved in the Easter disputes of his own time. At any
rate, we are not told in what way the Easterns observed the
262 THE JOHANNINE BOOKS. [xv.
day, nor in commemoration of what. No argument seems to
have been used on either side but the tradition of the respec-
tive Churches. It does not appear that any question of
doctrine was involved : and Polycarp and Anicetus parted on
the terms of agreeing to differ, Anicetus even in token of
respect yielding to Polycarp the office of consecrating the
Eucharist in his Church.
It seems to me likely that Polycarp was right in thinking
that the most ancient Christian paschal celebrations did coin-
cide in time with the Jewish. We know that the days of the
week on which our Lord suffered and rose from the dead were
ever kept in memory by the Church, and were celebrated from
the earliest times ; but there is no trustworthy tradition as to
the days of the year on which these events occurred. Our
complicated rules for finding Easter serve to attest that among
nations whose calendar was governed by the solar year, the
annual celebration of our Lord's death and resurrection did
not begin until so long after the events that the day of the
year on which they occurred was not certainly known. We
know, however, from the Acts, that Christians of Jewish birth
continued to observe the customs of their nation, including,
doubtless, the passover. And not merely the Judaizing Chris-
tians, but Paul himself. For in addition to what we elsewhere
read of his compliance with Jewish institutions, we have plain
indications of his keeping this feast at Philippi, when St.
Luke tells us (Acts xx. 6) that they sailed away from Philippi
after the days of unleavened bread, St. Paul's wish at the
time being to keep the next great Jewish feast, that of Pente-
cost, at Jerusalem. He says also, in the first Epistle to the
Corinthians (xvi. 8) : — ' I will tarry at Ephesus until Pentecost.'
But we cannot doubt either, that when the Apostles kept the
passover feast they would give it a Christian aspect. The very
first recurrence of that season could not but bring vividly before
their minds all the great events which the preceding passover
had witnessed. Now this is quite independent of any theory
as to the day of the month on which our Lord suffered. If we
suppose that He suffered on the fifteenth, then the Apostles'
celebration of the passover feast would, doubtless, especially
XV.] HISTORY OF EARLY PASCHAL DISPUTES. 263
remind them of the last occasion on which the Lord had eaten
the same feast with them ; if we suppose that He suffered on
the fourteenth, their passover feast would equally call to
memory the death of Him who was the true Passover. To
myself it seems certain, that — since the great difference
between East and West was that the East only celebrated
one day, the West a whole week, commemorating the Cruci-
fixion and Resurrection on different days — the Eastern paschal
feast must have included a recollection of all the events of
this great season. We find very early traces that the feast
was preceded by a fast; and it is scarcely credible that, as
the Tiibingen theory demands, Christians would have fasted
up to the day before their anniversary of the Crucifixion,
and then changed their mourning into joy on that whicli
had been at first a day of mourning and sorrow.
Wherever Jewish Christians formed a large part of a
Church, the time of their paschal feast would naturally coin-
cide with that of the Jews, though the mode of celebration
might be different. The Christians would, no doubt, make
their commemoration of the Lord's death in that rite by which
He Himself instructed them to show it forth. But they pro-
bably agreed with the Jews in the use of unleavened bread at
this season ; for I would understand Paul as giving a spiritual
interpretation to an already existing custom, when he says
(i Cor. V, 7), ' Christ our passover is sacrificed for us : therefore
let us keep the feast, not with the leaven of malice and
wickedness ; but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and
truth.' While the time of celebration where Jews were nume-
rous naturally coincided with that of the Jewish passover, it
no less naturally was independent of it where Jews were few.
Afterwards, when the hostility between Jews and Christians
became more intense, it was made a point to celebrate on a
different day from the Jews; and to this possibly is owing the
rule, which we still observe, that if the full moon falls on a
Sunday, Easter is not till the Sunday after.
The second time at which we hear of paschal disputes is
about the year 170, when we are told that there was much
disputing on this subject at Laodicea; and that the celebrated
264 "^^^ JOHANxNTINE BOOKS. [xv.
Melito of Sarclis wrote a book on this subject. The occasion
of it appears to have been that a leading Christian named
Sagaris suffered martyrdom at Laodicea on the 14th Nisan ;
and that when in the following year great numbers of Chris-
tians came together thither from different cities in order to
celebrate the anniversary of his death, the diversity of their
Easter usages arrested attention and excited controversy.
Eusebius, who tells us so much (iv. 26), has not preserved
enough of Melito's writings to inform us of the particulars of
the dispute ; but we know otherwise that Melito was a Quar-
todeciman as being one of the leading bishops of Asia Minor.
There are, however, two short fragments purporting to come
from another celebrated contemporary bishop of the same
district, ApoUinaris of Hierapolis, these fragments having
been preserved by an anonymous writer of the sixth century.*
In these ApoUinaris argues that our Lord suffered on the
14th. He evidently used St. John's Gospel, for he refers to
the water and blood which came from our Lord's side. It is
much disputed whether, as the Tubingen school assert, Apol-
linaris was one of a minority in Asia Minor who had been
converted to the Western custom, and who wrote in oppo-
sition to Melito ; or whether he and Melito were on the same
side — both Quartodecimans, and only contending with those
who set on wrong grounds the celebration of the 14th day.
For our purpose it is immaterial to decide the question. At
this stage of the controversy the arguments did not rest
merely on traditional custom, but Scripture was appealed to.
And ApoUinaris argues from St. John's Gospel that the 14th
was the day on which our Lord suffered, and accuses those
who held the opposite theory of so interpreting the Gospels
as to set them at variance with each other. It is evident that
at this time the authority of St. John's Gospel was recognized
by the Quartodecimans : of which we have a further proof in
the fact that Melito counted our Lord's ministry as lasting
for three years, f a deduction which cannot be made from the
Synoptic Gospels without the help of John's.
* Paschal Cliron. (Bonn edit.), p. I2 ; Routh, Rell. Sac. I. p. i6o.
f This appears from a passage preserved byAnastasius Sinaita; see Routh, Rell.
Sac. I. 121.
XV.] QUARTODECIMAN USE OF FOURTH GOSPEL. 265
The third stage of the dispute was at the end of the century,
when Victor of Rome excommunicated the Asiatic Churches
for retaining their ancient customs. In excuse for Victor it
must be said that trouble had been caused him by a presbyter
of his own Church, Blastus, who wanted to introduce the
Quartodeciman practice at Rome. A man might be very
tolerant of the usages of a foreign Church as long as they
were kept at a distance, but might think himself bound to
put them down when they were schismatically introduced
into his own Church.* Victor was boldly resisted by Poly-
crates, in a letter, of which a most interesting fragment is
preserved by Eusebius (v. 24). In this Polycrates appeals in
defence of the Asiatic custom to ' John, who leaned on the
Lord's breast ' at supper. I need not remind you that this
description of John is derived from the fourth Gospel. Thus,
it seems to me that the appeal which has been made to the
Quartodeciman controversy, instead of being unfavourable to
the authority of the fourth Gospel, really establishes its great
antiquity. The only two Quartodeciman champions of whom
we know anything, Melito and Polycrates, both owned the
authority of that Gospel. To these I am inclined to add
Apollinaris ; but if the Tiibingen school are right in saying
that he was not one of the Quartodecimans, and that he used
St. John's Gospel in arguing against them, at least he does
so without any suspicion that its authority would be questioned
by his opponents. In fact, if it could be shown that the fourth
Gospel was at variance with Quartodeciman celebration, the
fact of its reception by the leading men of that party would
prove that the authority of that Gospel must have been well
established before the Quartodeciman disputes arose, else
those against whom it was used in controversy would surely
have questioned its authority, had there been any ground for
suspicion.
* The Catholics generally looked on the Quartodecimans as quarrelsome people
who schismatically refused to conform to the custom of the rest of the Christian world.
Thus Hippolytus [Ref. viii. 18) describes them as (pL\6v€tKoi tV (pvo-^v, ISicoTaL t))v
yvaiffiu, fj.axif^'i'fepoi rhv TpSirov ; and Athanasius, quoted in the Paschal Chronicle
{p. 9, Bonn edit.), as ^iKoveiKovvres, i<pevp6vTes eavroTs ^r}Tr]/xara, ■rrpo<p6.crst. jxe;/ rov
awTTipitidovs -ndaxa, ^pyf) 5e Trjs iSlas epiSos X"P"' f^aXiara.
266 THE JOHANNINE BOOKS. [xv.
I have said that it is more than doubtful whether it was
at all essential to the Quartodeciman system to count the
15th as the day of the Saviour's Passion ; but in any case it
is absurd to suppose that those who so computed denied the
authority of the fourth Gospel. This very point is disputed
by harmonists to this day: some decide for the 14th, some
for the 15th; and yet we know that the one party and the
other alike admit John's Gospel and Matthew's as of equal
authority.
Note. — Astronomical calculations have been used to determine the day of the
Jewish month on which our Lord suffered. We may assume it as certain that He
suffered on a Friday. I am aware that Canon Westcott {Gospels, p. 345) offers
arguments in support of the view that the day was Thursday ; but the point is one on
which it does not seem to me possible that Christian tradition should go wrong. If this
day was the 15th Nisan, so also must the ist of Nisan have been Friday. In that
case, therefore, the year must have been one in which the passover month began on a
Friday. On the other hand, if it was on the 14th He suffered, the 15th, and conse-
quently the 1st of the month, must have been Saturday. Now among the Jews, the
evening when the new moon was first visible in the heavens would be the commence-
ment of a new month. Astronomical tables enable us to determine for any month
the time of ' conjunction ': that is to say, the moment when absolutely nothing but
the dark side of the moon was turned towards the earth. At that moment, of course,
it would be invisible, and it would not be until about thirty hours afterwards that the
crescent of the young moon might be seen after sunset.
I had computed the new moons for the possible years o*" the Passion, using simple
rules given by De Morgan in his Book of Almanacs, when I found that the table had
been already given in Wieseler's Syiiopsis (p. 407, Cambridge Ed.) from a calcula-
tion made by a German astronomer, Wurm ; and I have since found that the same
computation had been made for Mr. M'^Clellan by Professor Adams (see M<=Clellan's
Commentaiy N. T., p. 493). The year A. v>. 29 is that which Hippolytus supposed
to be that of the Passion ; and this date was adopted by many subsequent fathers.
I have already mentioned (p. 202) that Hippolytus used an erroneous table of full
moons, which led him to fix the date of the Passion as March 25th. But that was so
many days after the actual occurrence of the full moon, that it is inconceivable the
passover could have been kept on that day ; and, from the considerations that have
been just explained, it can be inferred that the Passion did not take place on any day
in that year. The astronomical new moon took place about eight in the evening of
Saturday, April 2nd. On Sunday night the moon would be too young to be visible ;
but on Monday night it would be forty-six hours old, when it could not fail to be
seen, so that that evening would be pretty sure to be the first of the month. The
month could not possibly begin either on Friday or Saturday. But in the year 30
the conjunction took place at eight in the evening of Wednesday, March 22nd, and
XV.] ASTRONOMICAL CALCULATIONS. 267
we infei- in the same way that the month began on Friday the 24th. This, therefore,
is a possible year of the Passion. Proceeding in like manner, we find that the month
began in 31 on a Tuesday, and in 32 on a Monday. In ^^, however, the conjunction
took place at one in the afternoon of Thursday, March 19th. At six o'clock next
evening the moon would be 29 hours old, and probably would be visible ; but it is
possible it might not have been observed till Saturday evening. Similar arguments
lead us to reject the year 28, but admit 27 as a possible year, in which case the day
would be Friday. The following table exhibits the date of new moon and the pro-
bable first day of the passover month for the years A. D. 27-36 : —
A.D. Time of true New Moon. Moon first visible.
27. March 26, 8 p.m., Friday, March 28.
28. March 15, 2 A.M., Tuesday, March 16.
29. April 2, 8 P.M., Monday, April 4.
30. March 22, 8 p.m., Friday, March 24.
31. March 12, i a.m., Tuesday, March 13.
32. March 29, II p.m., Monday, March 31.
( Friday, March 20, or
33. March 19, I p.m., | Saturday, March 21.
/ March 9, 9 a.m., Wednesday, March 10.
I or ( Thursday, April 8, or
' April 7, I P. M., ( Friday, April 9.
35. March 28, 6 A.M., Tuesday, March 29.
36. March 16, 6 p.m., Sunday, March 18.
The year 30 is that which Wieseler looks on as the probable year of the Passion ;
and since in that year the passover month began on a Friday, he concludes that our
Lord suffered on the 15th Nisan, as the Synoptic Gospels would lead us to suppose.
But Caspari, Chronological and Geographical Introduction to Life of Christ, Edinb.,
1876, pp. 17, 196, has pointed out that Wieseler has here made a mistake. As the
Jewish days begin with the evening, the appearance of the moon on Friday evening
was the beginning, not the end, of the first day of the month, which would include
Saturday. The 15th Nisan, therefore, was also a Saturday, and the day of the Pas-
sion (assuming it to have been a Friday) must have fallen on the 14th, which was 7 th
April. So that the conclusion is just the opposite of what Wieseler supposed, and
if we can build on astronomical calculations, they altogether favour John's account.
In fact the table shows only one year, 34, in which the passover could have been
celebrated on Thursday evening; and that is subject to a double doubt, viz. as to
which was the passover month, and as to the day on which it began. If it be the
case that John was able on such a point to correct a false impression received by
readers of the Synoptics there can be no stronger proof of the authority of his
Gospel.
268 THE JOHANNINE BOOKS. [xvi.
XVI.
Part V.
THE GOSPEL AND THE MINOR EPISTLES.
The result at which I arrived (p. 242), from a comparison
of the diction of the Gospel and the Apocalypse, left it an
open question whether the former were written by the author
of the latter, or by a disciple of his. To-day I propose to
make a further examination of the contents of the Gospel,
with the view of obtaining, if possible, a more definite con-
clusion.*
I. The author of the fourth Gospel was a Jew.
(i) I remark, in the first place, the familiarity with the
Old Testament which he exhibits. Quotations from it occur
as frequently as in what has been regarded as the Jewish
Gospel, St. Matthew's ; and in two or three cases they are made
directly from the Hebrew, not the Septuagint. These cases
are, the passage from the 41st Psalm (xiii. 18), 'He that
eateth bread with me hath lift up his heel against me', and
that (xix. 37) from Zechariah xii. 10, 'They shall look on him
whom they pierced'. The prophecy also (Isaiah vi. 9, 10)
which is so often referred to in the New Testament, and which
is quoted by St. Matthew (xiii. 14) nearly in the words of the
Septuagint, appears in quite a different rendering in St.
John (xii. 40).
(2) Next I note his acquaintance with the Jewish feasts.
It is remarkable that this Evangelist (said to be anti- Jewish)
has alone recorded our Lord's attendance at these feasts, and
* In this lecture I chiefly reproduce the arguments of Dr. Sanday [Fourth Gospel,
eh. 19), with the additions made to them by Prof. Westcott in the Introduction to
his Commentary on St. John's Gospel. I also make use of an appendix added by
Renan to the 13th edition ,of his Vie de Jesus, in which he justifies tlie preference he
had expressed (see p. 214) for the narrative as given in the fourth Gospel.
XVI.] THE FOURTH EVANGELIST A JEW. 269
has used them as land-marks to divide the history. It is in
this way we learn, what we should not have found from the
Synoptic Gospels, that our Lord's public ministry lasted more
than one year. Three passovers are directly mentioned
(ii. 13, 23; vi. 4; xiii. i,xviii. 28); besides another feast, named
generally * a feast of the Jews ' (v. i ), with respect to which
commentators are divided whether or not it was a passover.
The feast of Tabernacles is spoken of with a note that the last
was the 'great day of the feast' (vii. 37), and this verse
contains what seems a plain allusion to the rite, practised at
this feast, of pouring forth water from the pool of Siloam.
Mention is likewise made of that feast of the later Jews,
instituted without any express divine command, which com-
memorated the dedication of the Temple after its profanation
by Antiochus Epiphanes (x. 22).
(3) In connexion with the preceding, I note the acquaint-
ance shown with Jewish customs and habits of thought.
There are, for instance, repeated references to the customs
in connexion with purification: the * waterpots after the
manner of the purifying of the Jews' (ii. 5), the question
about purifying between John's disciples and the Jews (iii.
25), the coming up of Jews to Jerusalem, previous to the
passover, in order to purify themselves (xi. 55), the fear of
our Lord's accusers to defile themselves, previous to the
passover, by entering the heathen Prsetorium (xviii. 28), and
the Jewish scruple against allowing the bodies to remain
on the cross on the Sabbath day (xix. 31]. We learn, more-
over, from St. John (what other testimony confirms) that
baptism was not a rite newly instituted by John the Baptist,
but one known to the Jews before; for the question is not
put to the Baptist (i. 25), What is this new thing that thou
doest ? but he is asked why he baptized, seeing that he
claimed for himself no official position, neither to be the
Christ, Elias, nor 'the prophet'. Then, again, the Evange-
list, in his well-known narrative (ch. iv), shows his knowledge
of the state of feeling between the Jews and Samaritans (see
also viii. 48) ; he is familiar with current Rabbinical and
popular notions, as for instance concerning the connexion
2 70 THE JOHANNINE BOOKS. [xvi.
between sin and bodily suffering, in the question (ix. 2),
* Who did sin, this man or his parents, that he was born
blind'?; as to the importance attached to the religious
schools (vii. 15); the disparagement of the 'dispersion' (vii.
35) ; and with the Rabbinical rule against holding converse
with a woman (iv. 27). I have already had occasion to notice
one passage which has been a terrible stumbling-block in
the way of those who would ascribe the book to a Gnosti-
cizing Gentile of the second century. In the very passage
where the claims of spiritual religion, apart from any dis-
tinction of place and race, are most strongly set forth, the
prerogatives of the Jew are asserted as strongly as they are
by St. Paul himself when he has to answer the question,
* What advantage then hath the Jew ' ? This Gospel puts
into our Lord's mouth the words (iv. 22), 'Ye worship ye
know not what, we know what we worship ; for salvation is
of the Jews'. If these words be invention, assuredly they
are not a Gentile or a Gnostic invention (see also p. 209),
I do not present the argument from the language, because
to enter into details would make it necessary to discuss what
phrases can positively be asserted to be Hebraisms ; but the
whole colouring of the diction, and still more of the thoughts,
is essentially Hebrew.*
The best argument! that can be used in opposition to
those I have produced is that founded on the constant use of
the phrase *the Jews', which seems to imply that the writer
was not a Jew. But the use of the phrase presents no
difficulty when we remember the late date of the Gospel,
and that it was written in a Greek city where *the Jews'
were in all probability the bitterest adversaries of the Chris-
tian Church. I need only refer to the hard things said of
* For proofs, see Sanday, p. 289 ; Westcott, pp. vii., li.
t The description of Caiaphas as 'high-priest that year' (xi. 49, 51; xviii. 13)
does not oblige us to suppose the writer to be so ignorant of Jewish affairs as to
imagine the high-priesthood to be an annual office. All that the words assert is that
in that year when 'one man died for the people', Caiaphas was the high-priest. The
repeated changes made by the government in the high-priesthood at this time are
mentioned by Josephus {Aiitt. xviii. 2, 2).
XVI.] THE EVANGELIST A PALESTINIAN. 271
*the Jews' many years before by St. Paul (i Thess. ii. 14-16),
who more than any other gloried in being able to call him-
self a Jew (see p. 30).*
II. The writer was a Jew of Palestine.
We may infer this from his minute acquaintance with the
topography of the Holy Land. Thus he knows the small
town Cana of Galilee (ii. i, 11, iv. 46, xxi. 2), a place not
noticed by any earlier writer ; Bethsaida, the native place of
Philip, Peter, and Andrew (i. 44) ; Bethany beyond Jordan
(i. 28), for this seems to be the true reading instead of Beth-
abara of the common text ; he knows the exact distance from
Jerusalem of the better known Bethany (xi. 18); he knows
the city Ephraim near the wilderness (xi. 54) ; -^non near to
Salim, where John baptized (iii. 23) ;t Sychar the city of
Samaria, where Jacob's well was, of which the Evangelist
tells that the ' well is deep ' (iv. 11), as indeed it is, more than
a hundred feet ; he knows the whole aspect of the place ; the
mountain where the Samaritans worshipped, that is to say,
INIount Gerizim, which rises to a sheer height of eight hun-
dred feet above the village, and where the remains of a temple
are still visible ; and he knows the rich cornfields at the base
of the mountain {v. 35).+
There is the same familiarity with the topography of Jeru-
salem. He speaks of Bethesda, the pool near the sheep gate,
having five porches ; of the treasury near the temple ; of
Solomon's porch ; of the pool Siloam, which name he cor-
* In John vii. i, ol 'louSaTot seems to mean the inhabitants of Judaea as opposed
to the Galileans, a use of the word natural enough in a Galilean writer. The word
will bear this meaning in most of the passages where it occurs in this Gospel, of
course setting those aside where the word would in any case be used in a book in-
tended for Gentile readers, as, for instance, where customs or feasts of 'the Jews' are
spoken of. But vi. 41, 52, will not admit this interpretation, since it is not said that
the objectors were visiters from Judaea.
t On this Renan remarks, Vie de Jesus, p. 492, ' On ignore, il est vrai, oil etait
Salim ; mais hhuiv est un trait de lumiere. C'est le mot ^Enawan, pluriel Chaldeen de
Ainou^n, "fontaine". Comment voulez-vous quedes sectaires hellenistes d'Ephese
eussent devine cela .'' lis n'eussent nomme aucune localite, ou ils en eussent nomme
une tres-connue, ou ils eussent forge un mot impossible sous le rapport de I'etymo-
logie semitique.'
% See Stanley's Sinai a7id Palestine, ch. v., ii., p. 240, and edit.
272 THE JOHANNINE BOOKS. [xvi.
rectly derives as the 'sending forth ' of waters; of the brook
Kedron ; of the place that is called the pavement, but in the
Hebrew Gabbatha; of the place of the skull, called in Hebrew
Golgotha. I would also notice the graphic description of the
aspect of the Temple on the occasion of its cleansing by our
Lord ; the animals for sacrifice, sheep, oxen, and doves^
crowding its courts; and the money-changers, who are
described as sitting, the sellers of the animals naturally
standing.
Now even a single topographical reference may give a re-
velation of the writer's nationality. I remember, at the begin-
ning of the Crimean war, when we knew nothing here of the
authorship of the brilliant war correspondence which began to
appear in the Times, how a comparison, in one of the early
letters, of some scenery to that of ' the Dargle,' suggested to
us the inference, This writer must be an Irishman. If a novel
appeared in which the scene was laid in Ireland, and mention
freely made of small Irish localities, and of different Dublin
public buildings, we should feel little doubt that the writer
was either an Irishman, or one who had spent some time in
Ireland ; and yet I need not say how much easier it is now,
than in the days when the Gospel was written, for a writer to
get up from books the details which would add verisimilitude
to his narrative.
The work of a native of Palestine may also be recognized
in the knowledge of local jealousies which the writer exhibits.
One outside a country thinks little of the distinctions between
different provinces. But here we seem to have a picture
drawn by a Galilean who had smarted under the haughty
contempt with which the inhabitants of Jerusalem regarded
his province : ' Can there any good thing come out of Naza-
reth .?' (i. 46). 'Shall Christ come out of Galilee?' (vii, 41).
' Search and look, for out of Galilee ariseth no prophet ' (vii.
52). Note also the scorn of the rulers and the Pharisees for
the opinion of the vulgar. ' This people who knoweth not
the law are cursed ' (vii. 49).
Further, the writer is as familiar with the history of the
Temple as with its external aspect. One of the data used at
THE GOSPEL A WORK OF THE FIRST CENTURY 273
present in calculating the chronology of our Saviour's ministry-
is the remark recorded by St. John (ii. 20), ' Forty and six
years was this Temple in building.' Counting the commence-
ment of the forty-six years from the time recorded by Josephus,
we obtain a date for our Lord's ministry in close agreement
with what we are led to by other considerations. But is it
credible either that a forger in the second century, when the
science of chronology was unknown, could have had the
information rightly to state the interval between the begin-
ning of the Temple building and our Lord's ministry, or,
that if he had made a random guess, he could have hit the
truth so accurately ?
III. I come next to the question. It having been thus
proved that the writer was a Jew, was he a Jew of the first or
of the second century ? And this question is not difficult to
answer, for the subjects which engage interest, and which
excite controversy, differ from age to age. Even in the life-
time of one man they change. Compare Paul's earlier
Epistles with his later, compare the Epistles to the Romans
and Galatians with those to Timothy and Titus, and you will
find that the controversy about justification with or without
the works of the Law, which is the main subject of the earlier
Epistles, is hardly alluded to in the later. This is one of the
tests by which was exposed the forgery of the Decretal
Epistles ascribed to the early Popes, that the controversies
and topics with which these letters deal are not those of the
centuries when the alleged writers lived, but those of the
ninth century, when the letters were really written. Now
test the fourth Gospel in this way, and you will find that the
controversies with which it deals, and the feelings which it
assumes, are those of the first century, not the second. The
Messianic idea that pervades the Gospel is not that which
prevailed after the Gnostic heresies arose, but that which
existed before Jerusalem was destroyed, when the Jews still
expected the Messiah to be a deliverer who should establish
a temporal sovereignty and make the Jews the rulers of the
surrounding nations. This Evangelist tells us, what we do
not learn from the Synoptic Gospels, that the impression pro-
T
274 ^^^ JOHANNINE BOOKS. [xvi.
duced by the miracle of feeding the multitude was such that
they were about to come by force to make our Lord a king,
evidently believing that they had now found him who would
lead them against the Romans, and victoriously restore the
kingdom to Israel. And we are told that our Lord was
obliged to withdraw Himself from their importunity to a
mountain alone. It was because He refused to proclaim a
* kingdom of this world ' that the Jews found it hard to own
as their Messiah one who, though Lie could preach and heal,
yet seemed unable to bring them the deliverance or the glory
which they desired. St. John represents the prudent Jewish
rulers as resolved to put down the prophesying of Jesus,
because they feared that the political consequences of His
assertion of His kingdom would be an unsuccessful revolt
against foreign rule, the result of which would be that the
Romans would come and take away their place and nation
(xi. 48). And St. John brings out with great clearness the
fact that it was as a pretender to temporal sovereignty that
Jesus was accused before Pilate, who, though personally in-
clined to dismiss the complaint, was withheld from doing so
through fear of exciting the jealousy of his own emperor by
his remissness, if in such a matter as this he showed himself
not Caesar's friend (xix. 12), Remember that the state of
Jewish feeling which I have described was quelled by the
destruction of Jerusalem, and judge whether it is probable
that a writer of the next century would have been able to
throw himself into the midst of these hopes and feelings, and
to reproduce them as if they were part of the atmosphere
which he had himself breathed. Then, again, the topics
introduced are those which were discussed in our Lord's
time, and not a hundred years afterwards. For example,
what Gnostic of the second century would have cared to
discuss a breach of the Sabbath, and to inquire when the
duty of Sabbath observance (admitted to be the general rule)
was overborne by a higher obligation ? See, again, how
familiar the writer is w4th the expectations which before our
Lord's coming the Jews had formed of what their Messiah
was to be. He was not to be from Galilee. ' Shall Christ
XVI ] THE EVANGELIST AN EYE-WITNESS. 275
come out of Galilee ? Hath not the Scripture said that Christ
Cometh of the seed of David, and out of the town of Bethlehem,
where David was r' (vii. 42) ; 'We have heard out of the Law
that Christ abideth for ever' (xii. 34); 'We know this man
whence he is, but when Christ cometh no man knoweth
whence he is' (vii. 27); 'When Christ cometh, will he do
more miracles than these which this man hath done'?
(vii. 31).
IV. I regard it, then, as proved that the writer of the fourth
Gospel was a Jew, not very distant in time from the events
which he relates. Is there, then, any reason why we should
refuse credence to the claim, which he himself makes four
times, to have been an eye-witness of our Saviour's life? (i. 14,
xix. 35, xxi. 24, I John i. i.) There is nothing against
admitting this claim, but everything in favour of it. It is
quite remarkable how frequently the Evangelist throws him-
self into the position of the original disciples, and repeats
their reflections or comments; these being such as, though
appropriate at the time, would not be likely to have occurred
to one who was not himself a disciple. There are three
instances in the very second chapter. The effect of the
miracle of the turning the water into wine is said to have
been that 'his disciples believed on him' [v. 11). Again, 'his
disciples remembered that it was written, the zeal of thine
house hath eaten me up' {v. 17). Again, 'when therefore he
was risen from the dead, his disciples remembered that he
had said this unto them, and they believed the Scripture and
the word which Jesus had said ' [v. 22). Why is this pro-
minence given to the reflections of the disciples ? Is it likely
that a forger of the second century, who wished to exhibit the
glory of the Logos, would say, what sounds so like a truism,
ihat His disciples believed on Him? If they had not, they
would not have been disciples. It would surely have been
more to the point to tell the effect upon the guests: and a
forger would hardly have failed to do this. But all is ex-
plained when we suppose that a disciple is speaking, and
recording how that favourable impression produced by the
testimony of the Baptist, which had disposed him to join the
T 2
276 THE JOHANNINE BOOKS. [xvi.
company of Jesus, was changed by this miracle into actual
faith. I leave other instances of the same kind to be traced
out by yourselves, only taking notice now of one of them :
how we are told that the disciples who took part in the
triumphal entry of Palm Sunday understood not at the time
what they had been doing, but, after Jesus was glorified^
' remembered that these things were written of him, and
that they had done these things unto him' (xii. i6).
I think we may also conclude that the writer had been a
disciple of the Baptist as well as of our Lord. This appears
from the fulness of the opening chapter, which deals with
the Baptist's ministry, and which is best explained if we
suppose the Evangelist to be the unnamed disciple who,
together with Andrew, heard the testimony, * Behold the
Lamb of God'. And if the Evangelist had heard the story
from another he would scarcely have added the minute detail
that it was the tenth hour of the day when the conversation
with Jesus took place. We trace the work of a disciple of
the Baptist in more than one subsequent allusion to that
testimony, and, above all, in one remarkable periphrasis,
which is undoubtedly what no forger would have imagined,
' Jesus went away beyond Jordan into the place where John
at first baptized, and there he abode ; and many resorted unto
him and said, John did no miracle, but all things that John
spake of this man were true' (x. 41). To describe the place
of Jesus's sojourn as the place where John at first baptized,
and to record the impressions of those who had been affected
by the Baptist's teaching, and were hesitating whether or
not they should attach themselves to Jesus, would not actually
occur to anyone who had not himself moved in the same
circle. Indeed, the prominence given to the Baptist in the
fourth Gospel is in itself a proof how near the writer was to
the events which he records. A modern reader seldom realizes
the importance of the work done by the Baptist in preparing
the way of Jesus. Yet the .Synoptic Gospels tell of the repu-
tation and influence gained by John (Matt. xiv. 5, Mark vi. 20,
Luke XX. 6; cp. Acts xviii. 25, xix. 3). They tell also that
there was such a connexion between John and his successor,
THE EVANGELIST A DISCIPLE OF THE BAPTIST.
277
that any who acknowledged the divine mission of the Baptist
would be bound in consistency to own the authority of Jesus
(Matt. xxi. 25, Mark xi. 31, Luke xx. 5). The fourth Gospel
explains fully what the connexion was, by telling that it was
among the disciples of the Baptist that Jesus first gained
followers, who joined Him in consequence of the testimony
borne to Him by John. This testimony is again referred to
as furnishing part of the credentials of Jesus (v. ^2, ;^;^). But
we have no reason to think that in the second century John
occupied such a place in the minds of men as would lead a
forger to lay such stress on his authority.
Other notes of autoptic testimony are the minute parti-
culars of time, and place, and persons that are mentioned ;
that such a discourse took place in Solomon's porch (x. 2^) ;
such another in the treasury (viii. 20) ; another, as I mentioned
a moment ago, at the tenth hour ; another (that with the
woman of Samaria) at the sixth (iv. 6) ; that such another
miracle was performed at the seventh hour (iv. 52) ; that this
or that remark was made, not by the disciples generally, but
by Philip (vi. 7, xiv. 8), or Andrew (vi. 9), or Thomas (xi. 16,
xiv. 5), or Judas, not Iscariot (xiv. 22). The name of the
servant whose ear Peter cut off is given (xviii. 10). In two
different places the native town of Peter and Andrew is
mentioned as Bethsaida (i. 44, xii. 21): the Synoptic Gospels
would rather have led us to conjecture Capernaum.
There is one passage in particular which by its graphic
character forcibly impresses me with the conviction that I
read the testimony of an eye-witness : I mean the account
(xx. 3) of the conduct of Peter and an unnamed disciple (who
is unmistakeably the Evangelist himself), when Mary Magda-
lene came running to tell them that the body of our Lord had
been removed from the sepulchre ; how the younger was
foremost in the race, but contented himself with looking into
the sepulchre ; how Peter, with characteristic boldness, went
in, and how the other disciple then followed the example set
him. Il - iy but an eye-witness devised all these details, so
minute and so natural, we must credit him with a literary skill
such as we nowhere else find employed in the manufacture
278 THE JOHANNINE BOOKS. [xvi.
of apocryphal Gospels. But there remains to be mentioned a
touch so subtle, that I find it impossible to ascribe it to a
forger's invention. Not a word is said as to^the effect of what
he had seen on the mind of Peter ; but we are told that the
other disciple went in and saw and believed : for as yet they
had not known the Scripture, that Christ must rise again from
the dead. Is it not plain that the writer is relating his own
experience, and recalling how it was that the idea of the
Resurrection opened on his mind as a reality ? And lastly,
note that we have here the work of no reckless forger. To
such a one it would cost nothing to record that he and Peter
had then seen our Lord. But no; the disciples are merely
said to have returned to their own home. It is Mary Mag-
dalene who remains behind and first enjoys the sight of the
risen Saviour.
V. If it has been proved that the author of the fourth
Gospel was an eye-witness, little time need be spent on the
proof that he was the Apostle John ; for few would care to
dispute this, if forced to concede that the Evangelist actually
witnessed what he related. To accept him as an eye-witness
implies an admission that the things he tells are not mere
inventions : and some of these things could only have been
known to one of the inner circle of disciples who surrounded
our Lord. The Evangelist tells what these disciples said to
one another (iv. 33, xi. 16, xvi. 17, xx. 25, xxi. 3, 7); what
they thought (ii. 11, 17, 23, iv. 27, xiii. 22, 29); what places
they were accustomed to resort to (xi. 54, xviii. 2, xx. 19).
The epilogue to the Gospel (xxi. 24) identifies its author with
him whom it describes as the disciple whom Jesus loved ;
and even if there had not been this explicit declaration, the
way in which that disciple is introduced (xiii. 23, xix. 26,
XX. 2, xxi. 7, 20, and probably xviii. 15), irresistibly conveys
the impression that the Evangelist wished his readers to
understand that he himself was that disciple. The disciple
whom Jesus loved must surely have been one of those three
(Peter, James, and John), who in the Synoptic Gospels are
represented as honoured by our Lord's special intimacy ; and
in this Gospel that disciple is expressly distinguished from
XVI.] JOHN THE ELDER. 279
Peter (xiii. 24, xx. 2, xxi. 7, 20), while we know that James
was dead long before the fourth Gospel was written fActs
xii. 2).
There is, however, one writer whose claims to the composi-
tion of the Gospel must be carefully considered, namely, one
of the most shadowy personages in ecclesiastical history, John
the Elder. A whole school of critics speak of him with as
assured confidence as if he were a person concerning whose
acts we had as much information as concerning those of Julius
Caesar ; but in truth his very existence seems to have been
first discovered by Eusebius, and it is still a disputed matter
whether the discovery be a real one. I have already quoted
(p. 90) the passage of Papias's preface, from which Eusebius
drew his inference. In naming the 'elders', whose traditions
he had made it his business to collect, having mentioned
Andrew, Peter, Philip, Thomas and James, John and Mat-
thew, Papias adds immediately afterwards the names of
Aristion and John the Elder. Eusebius inferred from the
double mention of the name that two Johns are spoken of:
the first, who is coupled with Matthew, being clearly the
Evangelist ; the second, who is described as the ' elder ', and
whose name is placed after that of Aristion, being a different
person. Eusebius had learned from Dionysius of Alexandria
(see p. 232) to recognize the possibility that there might have
been more Johns than one ; yet it must be observed that
Dionysius himself had failed to notice that Papias had given
any countenance to his suggestion. Irenaeus also (see p. Qij
seems to be ignorant of this second John, and he is equally
unrecognized by the great majority of later ecclesiastical
writers.
It would be important if we could exactly know what
Papias meant by calling the second John 'the elder'. It can
scarcely mean only that he held the office of presbyter in the
Church; for then Papias would not have used the definite
article as he does, not only here in the preface, but after-
wards, when he cites a saying of this John with the formula,
'This also the elder said' (p. 91). But Papias had used the
phrase ' the elders,' as we might use the phrase ' the fathers',
28o THE JOHANNINE BOOKS. [xvi.
in speaking of the venerated heads of the Church in a former
generation. And since he gives this title to John, and with-
holds it from Aristion, it does not appear that we can lay any
stress on the remark of Eusebius, that he places Aristion's
name first. Further, this very title 'elders' is given by
Papias to Andrew, Peter, and the rest whom he first enume-
rates, and therefore he cannot be supposed, in giving this
title the second time to John, to intend to place him in a
different category from those in his first list. The only fact,
then, which remains for us to build on is, that Papias in his
preface names John twice over; but whether this is a mere
slovenliness of composition, or whether he really means to
speak of two Johns, is a matter on which it seems to me rash
to speak positively, on such scanty knowledge as we have of
Papias's work. It may be assumed that none of the subse-
quent passages in that work where John is mentioned speaks
decisively on the present question, else Eusebius would have
quoted it.
But though we cannot accept the existence of the second
John as a proved fact, we may at least receive it as an
admissible hypothesis, and may examine whether it enables
us to give a better account of the Johannine writings.
Judging merely by the diction, we could easily believe that
the author of the Apocalypse was different from the author
of the other books; so that if we reject the notion of Eusebius,
that John the Elder, not John the Apostle, was the author of
the former, we must still inquire whether we can invert
the relation : Did John the Apostle write the Apocalypse,
and John the Elder the Gospel r But here we are incon-
veniently pressed by the results we have just obtained,
namely, that he who wrote the Gospel must have been an
eye-witness and a close companion of our Lord. If this were
not the Apostle, there must have been in our Lord's company
one of whom the Synoptic Evangelists have told us nothing,
and he no ordinary disciple, but the disciple whom Jesus
loved, and who at the Last Supper reclined in the bosom of
our Lord. Further, the name of this disciple was John,
and here we have the additional difficulty that (as remarked,
XVI.] JOHN THE ELDER. 281
p. 62) the fourth Gospel gives no intimation of the inter-
course of our Lord with any John but the Baptist. We can
easily acquiesce in the suggestion that the Evangelist thought
it needless to name himself; but if there was in our Lord's
company a second John holding one of the highest places
among His disciples, is it possible that the Evangelist could
pass over him also in silence ?
It follows, then, irresistibly, that if the writer of the fourth
Gospel was not John the Apostle, he at least wished to be
taken for him, and desired that his readers should think of no
one else. Let us see, then, how the hypothesis works, that
the Gospel was written by a disciple of John, who wished to
sink his own personality, and to present the traditions he had
gathered from his master's teaching, together with some modi-
fications of his own, in such a form that they might be taken
for the work of John himself. But this hypothesis will not
bear to be burdened with the addition that the recording
disciple was John the Elder ; for his is a personality which
refuses to be suppressed. If this were 'John the Elder', whose
traditions Papias set himself to collect, he must have been
a notable person in the Church of Asia, and we can hardly
help identifying him with the John who is said to have lived
to the reign of Trajan, and to have been the teacher of Poly-
carp and other early Asiatic bishops.* At all events we
cannot help identifying him with the author of the second
and third Epistles, who designates himself as 'the elder'.
These Epistles are recognized by Irenseus and b}'' Clement of
Alexandria (see p. 212). Their brevity and the comparative
unimportance of their matter caused them to be looked on
with some suspicion. Origen tells of some who did not
regard them as genuinef (Euseb. vi. 25) ; and they are not
* Ecclesiastical tradition speaks so constantly only of one John in Asia, that
Scholten, Keim, and others have rid themselves of the double John by denying that
the Apostle John was ever in Asia ; but the arguments they offer in support of their
paradox are so weak that I have not thought it worth while to discuss them.
t Origen's immediate object apparently would lead him to present the least
favourable view of disputed books. He is deprecating the multiplication of books,
and with that object remarking how small is the number of books of Scripture.
Compared with all the Churches 'from Jerusalem round about unto lUyricum to
282 THE JOHANNINE BOOKS. [xvi.
included in the Peshitto Syriac* Jerome was disposed to
ascribe them not to John the Apostle but John the Elder
[De Vir. Jllust. g). Other proofs may be given of reluc-
tance, on the part of those who recognized them, to set them
on a level with the first Epistle.
I believe that these hesitations arose from the fact that
these Epistles were not included in the public reading of the
early Church — a thing intelligible enough from the private
nature of their contents. The antiquity of the letters is un-
doubted, and they are evidently precious relics of a venerated
teacher carefully preserved by the Asiatic Church ; but to
those who were ignorant of their history they appeared to
stand on a different level from the documents sanctioned by
the public use of the Church. If the external evidence leaves
any room for doubt about the two minor letters, internal
evidence removes it ; for the hypothesis of forgery will not
stand examination. A forger would surely inscribe his
composition with some well-known name : he would never
have referred the authorship to so enigmatical a personage
as ' the elder '. But above all, the contents of the third Epistle
exclude the supposition of forgery, for which indeed no con-
ceivable motive is apparent. The writer represents {v. ii)
that he had sent a letter to a Church, but that his messengers,
instead of being received with the hospitality which was the
invariable rulef of the Christian societies, were absolutely
rejected. The man who claimed to take the leading part in
the government of the Church not only failed to receive them
himself, but, under pain of excommunication, forbade anyone
else to do so. This is clearly a case not of inhospitality but
-which Paul fully preached the Gospel' (Rom. xv. 19), how small is the number of
Churches to which he wrote Epistles, and these but short ones. Peter has left only-
one undisputed Epistle : there may be a second, but that is controverted. John owns
(xxi. 25) how many of the deeds of Christ he has of necessity left unrecorded ; and
(Rev. X. 7) that in his Apocalypse he had not been permitted to write all that he had
heard. He has left also a very short Epistle. There may be likewise a second and a
third, for the genuineness is not universally acknowledged ; but in any case they do not
make up 100 arixoi in all. (Origen, In Joann. v., Proef. 1-4, pp. 94-96, Philocal. ch. 5).
* Ephraem Syrus quotes 3 John 4. [De Tifn. Dei. 0pp. Gr. I. 76 F.)
t See Rom. xii. 13, Heb. xiii. 2, i Peter iv. g, i Tim. iii. 2, v. 10, Tit. i. 8;
XVI.] THE THIRD EPISTLE. 283
of breach of communion. The bearers of ' the elder's ' letter
are treated precisely as he himself had directed that heretical
teachers should be treated. ' If there come any unto you,
and bring not this doctrine, receive him not into your house,
neither bid him God speed : For he that biddeth him God
speed is partaker of his evil deeds' (2 John 10, 11). We may
well believe (since we know the fact from the Epistle to the
Corinthians] that schisms and dissensions existed even in
Apostolic times ; but this was a state of things a forger was
not likely to invent or even to recognize. It is certain, then,
that these two letters are no forgeries, but genuine relics of
some great Church ruler, preserved after the circumstances
which had drawn them forth were forgotten. And if ever
the argument from identity of style and matter can be relied
on, it is certain also that tradition has rightly handed down
the belief that the writer was no other than the author of the
first Epistle and the Gospel.
If this identity be established, it follows at once that that
author is no unknown person who hides his personality under
the cover of a great name. He comes forward in his own
person, claiming great authority, sending his legates to an
old established Church, and treating resistance to his claims
on the part of the rulers of such Churches as idle prating
{(p'XvapB'iv), which he is confident that by his presence he will
at once put down. And, according to all appearance, his
anticipations prove correct, and his rule over the Churches
of Asia is completely acquiesced in. When such a man pub-
lishes a Gospel containing a clearly implied claim on the
part of the writer to be * the disciple whom Jesus loved ', I
and compare Acts xvi. 15, xvii. 5, xxi. 8, 16, Rom. xvi. 23. We learn from the
newly-discovered ' Teaching of the Twelve Apostles ' that it was found necessary in
the early Church to make regulations in order to prevent the readiness of Christians
to entertain strangers from being traded on by idle persons, who tried to make the
]3retence of preaching the Gospel a means of living without working. ' Let every
Apostle who comes to you be received as the Lord. But he shall only stay a single
day, but if need be another day also. But if he stays three days he is a false prophet.
Let the Apostle when he leaves you take nothing but bread enough to last till he
reaches his quarters for the night. But if he asks for money he is a false prophet '
{ck. xi.).
284 THE JOHANNINE BOOKS. [xvi.
cannot suppose the claim to be made on behalf of someone else,
but must regard it as exhibiting the grounds of the authority
which the writer himself exercised. And no account of the
matter seems satisfactory but the traditional one, that the
writer was the Apostle John.
To the historical inquirer, then, the minor Epistles of St.
John, being not impersonal like the first Epistle, have an
importance quite out of proportion to their length. And
though the light they cast on the writer's surroundings be
but that of a lightning flash, enabling us to get a momentary
sight of a position of which we have no knowledge as regards
its antecedents or consequents, yet enough is revealed in that
short glimpse to assure us of the rank the writer occupied,
and of the struggles which were at first necessary to establish
his authority. Everything harmonizes with the traditional
account that John came late in life to Asia Minor, where he
must have found Churches of Paul's founding long established.
There is nothing incredible in the statement that leading
persons in such Churches at first resisted the authority, not
of John himself, but of emissaries sent by him. The autho-
rity which these emissaries claimed may have seemed an
intrusion on the legitimate rule possessed by the actual
governors of the Church. It is remarkable that John appears
to have found the form of government by a single man already
in existence : for Diotrephes singly is spoken of as excom-
municating those who disobeyed his prohibitions. Bishop
Lightfoot is disposed {Phtltppta7is, pp. 202, 206, 7th ed.) to
attribute a principal share in the establishment of episcopacy
to the action of John in Asia Minor. But if the view here
taken is right, John did not bring in that form of government
but found it there ; whether it was that Paul had originally
so constituted the Churches ; or that, in the natural growth
of things, the method of government by a single man, which
in political matters was the rule of the Roman Empire, proved
to be also the most congenial to the people in ecclesiastical
matters. It is impossible for us to say whether the rejection
of John's legates was actuated solely by jealousy of foreign
intrusion, or whether there may not also have been doctrinal
XVI.] THE THIRD EPISTLE. 28 S
differences. Diotrephes may have been tainted by that
Docetic heresy against which the Apostle so earnestly
struggled (i John iv. 3 ; 2 John 7).
Some have identified the hospitable Caius of the third
Epistle with Paul's host at Corinth (Rom. xvi. i^,) ■* but no
argument can be built on the recurrence of so very common
a name. This third Epistle professes to have had a compa-
nion letter : *I wrote somewhat to the Church,' says the writer
{tj. 9) ; tjpa\l>a ti, which seems to imply some short composi-
tion. I believe that we have that letter still in the compa-
nion Epistle which has actually reached us. By those who
understand the inscription as denoting an individual it has
been variously translated : whether as in our version, ' to the
elect lady ', or ' to the elect Kyria ' or to the * lady Electa '.
I do not delay to discuss these renderings, because I believe
that it is a Church, not an individual, which is described {v. i)
as known and loved by all who know the truth, of which it
is told that some of her children walk in the truth [v. 4), to
which the precept of mutual love is addressed (e/. 5), and
which possessed an elect sister in the city whence the letter
was written [v. 13). We are not called on to explain why
this mode of addressing a Church should have been adopted ;
but we can account for it if we accept Renan's conjecture {see
p. 255) that Peter on his last visit to Rome had been accom-
panied by John, who, after Peter's martyrdom, escaped to
Asia Minor. Certain it is that these two Apostles appear to
have had very close relations with each other (Acts iii. i,
viii. 14, John xiii. 24, xviii. 15, xx. 2, xxi. 7); that the
Evangelist shows himself acquainted with Peter's martyrdom
(xxi. ig); while the Apocalypse exhibits marks of the impres-
sion made on the writer by the cruelties of the Neronian
persecution. If, as I believe, Peter's Epistle was written
from Rome, and if John was with Peter when he wrote
it, it would be natural that the words of that letter should
stamp themselves on his memory ; and I have noted [see
p. 235) some coincidences between Peter's Epistle and the
* Pseud. -Athanas., Synods. Sac. Scrip, ch. 76 (Athan. t. 11. p. 202, Ed.
Bened.).
2 85 THE JOHANNINE BOOKS. [xvi.
Johannine writings. It would then be only a reproduction
of the phrase 17 Iv Ba/3uXw)'t (rvv£K\tKTi] (1 Peter v. 13), if John
applies the title kXeKn) to the two sister Churches of Asia
Minor ; while again his description of himself as the elder
would be suggested by 6 f7u/i7r()8C7j3i'rEpoc (i Peter v. i).
What I have said about the second Epistle is in a great
measure conjectural; but I wish you to observe that the un-
certainty which attaches to all conjectures does not affect the
inferences which I have drawn from the third Epistle, and
which I count as of great importance. At the present day
Baur has more faithful disciples in Holland than in Germany,
A typical representation of the form which Baur's theories
take among his disciples of the present day is to be found in
a book called the ' Bible for Young People ', of which the
New Testament part is written by a Dr. Hooykaas, and of
which an English translation was published a few years ago.
In this book the disciple whom Jesus loved is volatilized
away.* We are taught that the last chapter of the fourth
Gospel is intended only to give a symbolical revelation of
certain passages of old Church history. If it is said that the
disciple whom Jesus loved is to remain when Peter passes
away, this only means that the authority of Peter, whose
supremacy over the Apostolic communities is not disputed,
was only to last during his life, whereas the disciple who
read into the soul of Jesus will retain his influence till the
perfecting of the Kingdom of God. Who is meant by this
disciple is not clear. The author is greatly tempted to think
of Paul, but can find nothing to countenance this conjecture ;
so he has to be satisfied with setting him down as an ideal
personage. In the presence of such attempts to turn the
Gospel narrative into allegory, we have cause for gratitude
that the short letter to Caius has been preserved to us. It
matters little that we are ignorant of the circumstances that
drew it forth, and that Diotrephes and Demetrius are to us
* The notion that the disciple whom Jesus loved is not to be identified with the
Apostle John, but is only an ideal personage, originated, as far as I know, with
fvnother Dutch divine, Scholten. See ' Der Apostel Johannes in Kleinasien ' (Berlin,
1872), p. no.
XVII.] THE FOURTH GOSPEL AND THE SYNOPTICS. 287
little more than names. But we see clearly that the letter
contains solid facts which cannot be allegorized, and that the
writer is no abstraction, but a man busy with active work and
engaged in real contests, one who claimed the superinten-
dence of distant Churches, and who vigorously asserted his
authority against those who refused obedience. I have looked
for other solutions but can acquiesce in none, save that he is
the Apostle John.
XVII.
Part VI.
THE FOURTH GOSPEL AND THE SYNOPTICS.
There is one class of objections to the Johannine author-
ship of the fourth Gospel which I might decline to discuss,
as being outside the limits I have assigned m5''self in this
course of lectures : I mean objections founded on real or
apparent contradictions between the fourth and the Synoptic
Gospels. For this is an argument which the objectors, on
their own principles, have no right to urge. They do not
believe that the writers of New Testament books were aided
by any supernatural assistance, and therefore they have no
right to demand"^ from them more minute exactness of detail
than other writers exhibit under similar circumstances. Now,
we feel lively interest when a veteran statesman or soldier
gives us his recollections of stirring events in which in his
younger days he had taken part. But when such recollec-
tions are published, and compared with records made at an
earlier date, it is the commonest experience in the world to
find discrepancies, and these sometimes in particulars by no
means unimportant. Yet we simply conclude that on these
points the old man's memory may have played him false, and
288 THE JOHANNINE BOOKS. [xvii.
are not tempted to doubt the genuineness of the book which
purports to be his memoirs. If, then, we have found reason
to believe that the fourth Gospel contains an aged Apostle's
recollections of the life of the Master whom he had loved, we
should have no reason to give up that belief, even if we were
unable to refute the allegation that these recollections are in
some points at variance with earlier records. It would be
possible to grant that the later account in some points needed
correction, while yet we might believe the picture it presents
of the life and work of our Lord to be, on the whole, one of
the highest interest and value. But, though for the sole pur-
pose of an inquiry as to the authorship of the fourth Gospel,,
we might set aside as irrelevant a great deal of what has been
said as to contradictions between this Gospel and its prede-
cessors ; yet so many of these alleged contradictions melt
away on examination, that I think it well to give some little
discussion to a subject important from other points of view.
A very important question to be settled in using the
fourth Gospel is, What verdict are we to think the Evange-
list means to pass on those things which are related in the
Synoptic Gospels, but omitted in his ? It is notorious that
the things recorded in this Gospel are, for the most part, dif-
ferent from those related by the other Evangelists, so that it
may be regarded as exceptional when St, John goes over
ground which they have traversed. Among the things
omitted by St. John are some of the most important events
of our Lord's life. Thus, the institution of the rite of the
Lord's Supper finds no place in his account of the night
before the Passion, nor does he mention the Agony in the
Garden. Now, Renan and a host of Rationalist critics with
him, in using St. John's Gospel, go on the principle that he
is to be understood as bearing testimony against whatever
he does not relate ; that we are to assume that he either had
never heard of the things which he passes over in silence, or
else means to imply that they never occurred. There is no
better instance on which to test Renan's principle than that
to which he confidently applies it in the opening sentence of
his Life of Jesus, 'Jesus was born at Nazareth, a little town
xvn.] THE OMISSIONS OF THE FOURTH GOSPEL. 289
of Galilee '. When we inquire on what authority Renan has
ventured on this correction of the traditional account of our
Lord's birthplace, we find his main reliance is on the fact
that John 'knows nothing' of the journey to Bethlehem; that
' for him Jesus is simply of Nazareth or of Galilee, on two
occasions when it would have been of the highest importance
to make mention of the birth at Bethlehem'.* Now, if you
have not read your Bible with care, it may surprise you to
learn that it is quite true (as De Wette before Renan had
pointed out) that not only does St. John's Gospel contain no
assertion of the birth at Bethlehem or of the descent from
David, but it reports more than one uncontradicted assertion
of the opposite. In the first chapter [vv. 45, 46) Philip tells
Nathanael, ' We have found him of whom Moses in the law
and the prophets did write, Jesus of Nazareth the son of
Joseph ', to which Nathanael answers, * Can there any good
thing come out of Nazareth ' ? an objection to which Philip
makes no direct reply. Again, in the 7th chapter [vv. 41, 42)
we are told of the difficulty which the birth of Jesus put in
the way of his reception, * Others said, This is the Christ, but
some said. Shall Christ come out of Galilee ? Hath not the
Scripture said, that Christ coraeth of the seed of David, and
out of the town of Bethlehem where David was?' No answer
is given to these difficulties ; nor, again, are we told that
Nicodemus had any reply to make when his brother mem-
bers of the Sanhedrin exclaim, on his taking our Lord's
part, ' Art thou also of Galilee ? search and look, for out of
Galilee ariseth no prophet' (vii. 52). Thus St. John tells us
expressly that there were current objections to the acknow-
ledgment of our Lord's claims, which ran thus : ' Jesus is not
of David's seed, as it was foretold the Messiah should be,
Jesus was born at Nazareth, but the prophet foretold that the
Messiah should be born at Bethlehem ; therefore Jesus is not
the Messiah of whom the prophets spoke,' And the Evan-
gelist does not give the slightest hint how these difficulties
are to be got over.
* V:, de yhus, p. 22.
U
2 go THE JOHANNINE BOOKS. [xvii.
There are two ways of explaining his silence : one is that
he did not know what answer to give to these objections ;
the other, that he knew his readers did not require any
answer to be given. If it were not that the first is the ex-
planation adopted by Renan, I should have thought it too
absurd to need serious refutation. It is certain that the
Evangelist believed that Jesus was the Messiah, and also
that he believed in the Old Testament. How is it possible
that he could take pleasure in bringing out the fact that the
Jews held that there was a contradiction between acknow-
ledging the Messiahship of Jesus, and acknowledging the truth
of the Old Testament prophecies, unless he had in his own
mind some way of reconciling this alleged contradiction r
And since critics of all schools hold that John's Gospel was
written at so late a date that the Synoptic accounts of our
Lord's birth at Bethlehem, of the seed of David, must then
have been many years in circulation, and have had time to
become the general belief of Christians, it is ridiculous to
think that John had any way of answering the Jewish objec-
tion different from that which must have occurred to all his
readers.
We can well believe that John would not have cared to
repeat the objection if he knew no answer to it; but it is easy
to understand why, knowing the answer, he did not trouble
himself to state it formally. When we repeat the story of a
blunder committed by ignorant persons, we do not think it
necessary to demonstrate their error if we are addressing
l)ersons who understand the subject. For example, a very
\vorthy man, some fifty years ago, declaiming against the
necessity of human learning in an ambassador of Christ,
exclaimed, ' Greek, indeed ! I should like to know if St. Paul
knew Greek.' In repeating such a story to educated persons,
we leave it to speak for itself. We do not think it necessary
to expand into formal argument the statement that St. Paul
did know Greek, and that the fact that he wrote Epistles in
that language is one of the reasons why it is desirable that
persons should learn it whose duty it will be to expound these
Epistles. Every disputant is pleased to find his opponent
XVII.] ST. JOHN WRITES FOR INSTRUCTED READERS. 291
relying on an argument which he is sure he can in a moment
demolish. And so every Christian reader of St. John's Gospel
has read with a certain satisfaction and triumph how the
Jews would have been willing to acknowledge the Messiah-
ship of Jesus, only for this, that it was necessary the Messiah
should be born at Bethlehem, and be of the seed of David.
We are all ready with the answer, ' Why, so Jesus was.' And
now we are asked to believe that the Evangelist did not
sympathize with his readers in this matter ; that he wrote in
perplexity what they read in triumph, A critic who can so
interpret the Gospel commands admiration for his ingenuity
in contriving to go wrong on a point which scarcely any
previous reader had been able to misunderstand.
I should not have cared to spend so many words on this
matter, if it were not that the study of this example calls
attention to some peculiarities of the Evangelist's style, and
also throws some light on the question whether the fourth
Evangelist had seen the preceding Gospels. I ask you, then,
in the first place, to observe that no writer is more in the
habit than St. John of trusting to the previous knowledge of
his readers : and it is not strange that he should; for at the
late period when he wrote, he was not addressing men to
whom Christianity was a novelty, but men to whom the facts
of the history were already known. In the very first chapter
[v. 40) he describes Andrew as Simon Peter's brother, taking
for granted that Simon Peter* was known. A reference to the
Baptist (iii. 24) is accompanied by the parenthetical remark,
* for John was not yet cast into prison', evidently intended for
men who knew that John's career had been thus cut short,
but who needed the explanation that the events which the
Evangelist is relating occurred while the Baptist was still in
activity. He does not directly tell of the appointment of the
twelve Apostles, but he assumes it as known (vi. 70), * Have
not I chosen you twelve, and one of you is a devil?' His
narrative does not inform us that Joseph was the reputed
* It may be mentioned that John (i. 43) gives Peter the nami Cephas, which is
not fomid in the Synoptic Goipels, but is recognized by St. Paul (i Cor. i. 12, iii. 22,
ix. 5, XV. 5 ; Gal. ii. 9).
U 2
2g2 THE JOHANNINE BOOKS. [xvii.
father of our Lord, but this appears incidentally when the
Jews ask, ' Is not this Jesus the son of Joseph, whose father
and mother we know ?' (vi. 42, see also i. 45). The Baptism
of our Lord is not expressly mentioned, but it is implied in
the account the Baptist gives of his having seen the Spirit
descending on him (i. 32). The Ascension is not related, but it
is thrice referred to (iii. 13, vi. 62, xx. 17). As a general rule
this Evangelist prefers to leave unspoken what he can trust
his readers to supply. He does not claim to be the unnamed
disciple who heard the testimony of John the Baptist (i. 40),
nor to be the unnamed disciple through whose interest Peter
was admitted to the high-priest's palace (xviii. 16) ; yet there
can be little doubt that in both cases the impression received
by most readers is that which the writer intended to convey.
I have already (p. 62) noted the most striking example of this
writer's 'ignorance', that he 'knows nothing' of the Apostle
John ; yet few dispute that if he were not that Apostle him-
self, he was one who desired to pass for him.
This Evangelist repeatedly brings the knowledge which
he assumes to be shared with him by his readers into contrast
with the ignorance of the actors in the events he relates.
Hobbes explained laughter as arising from a sudden conceit
of our own superiority to someone else ; and though it may
be doubted whether this gives a sufficient account of all our
mirthful emotions, it is certain that it is by exciting this
conceit of superiority that literary artists have produced some
of their most telling effects. Even a child is pleased when
he can boast to his fellows that he knows something which
they do not ; and this is a kind of pleasure through which,
when they can give it to their spectators, dramatic authors
have found the surest way to win applause. No scenes are
more effective than when the character on the stage is repre-
sented as ignorant of something known to the spectators, and
in his ignorance using expressions which have a reference the
speaker does not dream of. The staple of most comedies is
that someone on the stage is deceived, or is under a misap-
prehension, while the spectators are in the secret ; and their
pleasure is all the greater the more convinced the deceived
XVII.] THE IRONY OF ST. JOHN. 293
person is that he knows everything. Thus the duped father
in Terence believes that he is the only wise man of the
family —
Primus sentio mala nostra ; primus rescisco omnia,
Primus porro obnuntio :
but the slave presently puts the feelings of the spectators into
words —
Rideo hunc ; se primum ait scire, is solus nescit omnia.
The effect of tragedy is equally heightened when a personage
is represented as ignorant of his real position. In the CEdipus
Rex* of Sophocles much of the tragic effect is derived from
the king's unconsciousness that he is himself the object of
the wrath of heaven ; while, as the spectators hear him
denounce the author of the city's calamities, they are thrilled
by the knowledge that it is on himself he is imprecating
vengeance.
Touches of the same kind are as effective in historical
narrative as in the drama. Every reader remembers the
effect of Isaac's question, when bearing the fuel for Abraham's
sacrifice, 'My father, behold the fire and the wood, but where
is the lamb for the burnt offering'? In one touch the con-
trast is brought out between the boy's ignorance and the
father's and the reader's knowledge that he is himself the
destined victim. If the ending of the story were not happy,
nothing could have a more tragic effect than this simple
question. To the same principle is due the effectiveness of
another Scripture story, Nathan's parable, by which David's
indignation against tyrannical injustice is raised to the
highest point before he knows that he is himself the culprit
on whom he pronounces sentence.
Now passages of the character I have described occur to
an unusual amount in St. John's Gospel. I believe that in
that Gospel can be found as many cases as in all the rest of
* Much of what is said here I have said elsewhere in a Paper contained in a
volume of sermons now out of print, called ' The Irony of St. John ' ; the title of
which, as well as its use of the word ' irony ', were borrowed from Bishop Thirlwall's
celebrated Essay on ' The Irony of Sophocles ' {Philological Museum, ii. 483).
294 THE JOHANNINE BOOKS. [xvii.
the New Testament where the characters are introduced as
speaking under misapprehensions which the reader knows
how to correct. Sometimes the Evangelist himself tells how
their mistakes are to be corrected, as where the Jews say
(ii. 20), 'Forty and six years was this temple in building,
and wilt thou rear it up in three days ' ? the Evangelist adds
'but he spake of the temple of his body'. But in the
majority of cases no explanation is given. A few verses
before one of the passages relied on by Renan, the Jews ask
(vii. 35, 36), ' Whither will he go that we shall not find him ?
Will he go unto the dispersed among the Gentiles and teach
the Gentiles ? What manner of saying is this that he said,
Ye shall seek me and shall not find me, and where I am
thither ye cannot come ' ? But no explanation is given of the
true answer to this question. Nicodemus asks (iii. 4), ' How
can a man be born when he is old ? Can he enter the second
time into his mother's womb and be born ' ? Yet the meaning
of the answer made him would be unintelligible to one not
already impregnated with Christian ideas. The woman of
Samaria misunderstands our Lord's saying when she says
(iv. 15), 'Sir, give me this water that I thirst not, neither
come hither to draw '; yet the Evangelist passes on without
remark. And so, in like manner, when the Jews asked,
*How can this man give us his flesh to eat' ? (vi. 52). But
the most striking examples of the introduction of characters
speaking truths of which they have themselves no conscious-
ness, are that of Caiaphas (xi. 50), declaring that it was
'expedient that one man should die for the people'; and that
of Pilate (xix. 21) insisting, in spite of the chief priests'
remonstrance, in inscribing on the title on the cross, not
that our Lord sm'd He was the King of the Jews, but that He
was the King of the Jews.
I have given proof more than sufficient to show that no
writer is more in the habit than St. John of trusting to his
reader's previous knowledge, and that no one understands
better the rhetorical effect of leaving an absurdity without
formal refutation, when his readers can be trusted to perceive
it for themselves. For the secret of an orator's success is if
XVII.] ST. JOHN KNEW OF PREVIOUS GOSPELS. 295
he can contrive that his hearers' minds shall not be passive,
but shall be working with him, and even running before him
to the conclusions which he wishes them to draw. It is to
me amazing that Renan, who professes to value this Gospel
so highly, should never have discovered this characteristic
of its style, but should treat the book as if he had to do with
an author like Euclid, who is careful to guard matter-of-fact
readers from misapprehension by appending quod est ahsitr-
dum to the conclusions which he does not wish them to
believe. It would not have been worth while to make so
much comment on Renan's want of literary tact in misunder-
standing St. John's statements about our Lord's birthplace,
if this had been an isolated piece of stupidity; but full
discussion was necessary; because if Renan is wrong in this
case it is because he proceeds by a faulty method, which
misleads him equally whenever he has to deal with incidents
omitted by St. John.
From the facts that have been stated I draw the further
inference that, at the time when St. John wrote, he knew that
other Gospels had been written. The thing is in itself likely.
We may gather from the last chapter that it, at least, was not
written until after the death of Peter. It is true that this last
chapter has been imagined to be the work of another hand,
but I know no good reason for thinking so. It is not a good
reason that the Gospel has seemed to come to an end in the
preceding chapter ; for there is nothing strange in an author's
adding a postscript to his work, whether before publication
or in a second edition.* There is no external evidence of any
kind to induce us to separate the authorship of the last chap-
ter from that of the rest, and there is complete identity of
style. It is not only those who have been nicknamed ' apolo-
gists ' who defend the genuineness of this chapter. Hilgen-
feld, for instance {^Einleittuig, p. 719], notices the mention of
the Sea of Tiberias, Thomas called Didymus, Nathanael of
Cana of Galilee, and the disciple whom Jesus loved ; and I
* Quite similar phenomena present themselves in the conclusion of the Epistle to
the Romans.
296 '^li^ JOHANNINE BOOKS. [xvii.
would add that the reference to the former history in v. 20 is
quite in St. John's manner (see xii. 50, xi. 2, xviii. 14, xix. 39).
llilgenfeld also points out the resemblance of the phrases wc
aTTO Trrj;^'^*^ StoKoajwi', V. 8, with wc otto aTo^'ihiv ^aKairevre (xi. 18) ;
of the bread and fish {6\papiov kol aprov), v. 9, with the same
words (vi. 11), the word b^apiov being-, in the N. Z!, peculiar
to St. John ; and the 6 naprvpCjv -mpX tovtmv, v. 24, with i. 34,
xix. 35. And I think there is a wonderful trait of genuineness
in the words {v. 22), * If I will that he tarry till I come, what
is that to thee ' r The great age of the Apostle had seemed to
justify the interpretation which some disciples had put on the
words, 'that that disciple should not die'. The Evangelist
evidently accepts it as a possibility that this may be the true
interpretation of them, but he contents himself with recording
what the words of Jesus actually were, and pointing out that
they do not necessarily bear this meaning. I do not believe
that a forger of the next century could have given such a
picture of the old age of the beloved disciple, looking and
longing for the reappearance of his Master, thinking it pos-
sible that he might live to see it, yet correcting the belief of
his too eager followers that he had any guaranteed promise
that he should.
Now, if this 2 ist chapter be an integral part* of the Gospel,
John must have written after the death of Peter ; but at that
late period other Gospels had been written, and John did not
live so completely out of the Christian world as not to be
likely to have seen them. But what to my mind proves
* It has been attempted to separate the last two verses from the rest, and to
ascribe them to John's disciples. But with regard to ' We know that his testimony
is true ' (v. 24), Renan owns that very nearly the same words occur again in 3 John
12 (where, however, olSas seems the true reading); and he might have added that
they have a close parallel in John xix. 35. oiSafiei' is a favourite Johannine word,
occurring five times in the six verses i John v. 15-20.
Renan states (Vze de Jesus, p. 535) that v. 25 is wanting in the Sinaitic MS. ; but
this is a slip of memory. What Renan had in his mind was that Tischendorf had
expressed his opinion that this verse was in a different hand from the rest. He
thought that the scribe, whom he calls A, who wrote the rest of the Gospel, had
stopped at the end oiv. 24, and that d. 25 with the subscription was added by the
corrector, whom he calls D, and who, he believes, was also one of the transcribers of
this and of the Vatican MS. If this were so, it would be probable that v. 25 had been
XVII.] ST. JOHN KNEW OF PREVIOUS GOSPELS. 297
decisively that he had is the fact that he can venture to state
most formidable objections to the Messiahship of Jesus with-
out giving a word of refutation. If Christians were then
dependent on traditional rumour for the belief that Jesus was
born at Bethlehem, that He was of the seed of David, that
Joseph was not His real father, I cannot believe that John
would have refrained from giving his attestation to the truth
of these beliefs, or have left his readers without his assurance
that the answer they might be expected to give to the Jewish
objectors was the right one. The fact, then, that John felt
himself called on to give no answer to the objection that
Christ must, according to the prophets, be of the seed of
David, and of the town of Bethlehem, appears to me to be a
proof that he knew that his readers had in their hands at least
one of the Gospels which contain the genealogy tracing our
Lord's descent from David, and which relate the birth at
Bethlehem.
I draw the same inference from the supplemental character
of St. John's Gospel. As I think that mere accident will not
account for the likeness to each other of the Synoptic Gospels,
so also do I think that mere accident will not account for the
unlikeness of St. John's to the others. If he had written an
account of our Saviour's life without any knowledge that
other accounts had been written, it is incredible that he could
liave so successfully avoided telling what is related in these
other accounts. It is exceptional if we find in St. John any-
thing that had been recorded by his predecessors ; and when
wanting in the archetype of the Sinaitic, and had been added by the corrector from a
different source.
But Tregelles did not share Tischendorf's opinion as to there being a difference of
handwriting; and Dr. Gwynn has noted that the same indications whence Tischendorf
infers (see p. 161) that the scribe D wrote the conclusion of St. Mark, prove that he
did not write the conclusion of St. John. Contrary to the practice of that scribe, the
name 'Iwdvvris is written in the subscription here with two v's ; and the final ' arabes-
que ', as Tischendorf calls it, or ornament drawn with a pen between the last line and
the subscription, is exactly of the same pattern as that found in the other books
•written by the scribe A, and is quite different from the four written by the scribe D,
viz. Tobit and Judith, St. Mark and i Thess. (the last leaf in each of these two JV. T.
books having been cancelled and rewritten by D). There is, therefore, no ground
to imagine that v. 25 is in any way discredited by the testimony of the Sinaitic MS.
298 THE JOHANNINE BOOKS. [xviu
we do, there is usually some obvious reason for its insertion.
Thus the miracle of feeding the five thousand is used by St.
John to introduce a discourse peculiar to his Gospel. The
true explanation, I am persuaded, is that which has commonly
been given, viz. that this Evangelist, knowing what accounts
Christians already had in their hands, wrote his Gospel with
the intention of supplementing these previous accounts. When
he omits what his predecessors had related, he is not to be
supposed to discredit them, or to wish to contradict them; but
it is part of his plan not to bear testimony to what had been
sufficiently attested already.
That St. John's silence is neither the silence of ignorance
nor of disparagement becomes still plainer when we examine
each instance severally. Thus he does not relate the institu-
tion of the Eucharistic Feast; and Renan takes this omission
as a proof that our Lord did not then institute the rite, a con-
clusion in which vStrauss on other grounds agrees. And cer-
tainly for anyone who does not acknowledge our Lord's
Divinity, it is an important thing to overthrow, if possible,
the Synoptic account of this part of the history. For see
what is involved in the acceptance of this account. That our
Lord should on this night have spoken of his approaching
death Strauss believes to be possible enough. He thinks
that Jesus must have seen what feeble support followers, who
understood him but imperfectly, were capable of giving
against relentless foes. His idea is that when Jesus, as
master of the household, broke the bread, and poured out the
wine, for distribution among his disciples, the thought may
have involuntarily presented itself to him that even so
would his body soon be broken, even so his blood soon be
poured forth, and that he may have expressed some such
gloomy foreboding to his disciples. But if we grant, what
Strauss admits to be possible, that Jesus, looking on his
death as a sacrifice, may have regarded his blood as the con-
secration of a new covenant between God and mankind, and
that in order to give a living centre to the community which
he desired to found he may have commanded the perpetual
repetition of this distribution of bread and wine, we are led to
EARLY CHRISTIAN BELIEF AS TO THE EUCHARIST.
299
views of our Saviour which can hardly fall short of those held
by the Church. At the moment when Jesus sees that death
can be no longer escaped, and that the career which he had
planned has ended in failure, he calmly looks forward to the
formation of a new Society which shall own him as its founder.
He foresees that the flock of timorous followers, whose disper-
sion on the next day he ventures to predict, will recover the
shock of their disappointment and unite again. As for the
shameful death, the thoughts of which oppress him, instead of
anticipating that his followers will put it from their thoughts,
and blush to remember their credulity when they accepted as
their Saviour one unable to save himself, he commands his
disciples to keep that death in perpetual memory. Notwith-
standing the apparent failure of his course, he conceives him-
self to be a unique person in the world's history ; and, in
Strauss's words, he regards his death as the seal of a new
covenant between God and mankind. Further, he makes it
an ordinance of perpetual obligation to his followers that
they shall seek the most intimate union with his body and
blood, and holds out to them this closeness of perpetual union
with himself as the source of all spiritual life. He intimates
that the rite then being enacted was comparable with the first
setting apart of the Jewish nation to be God's peculiar people;
and as Moses had then sprinkled the people with blood, say-
ing, ' Behold the blood of the covenant which the Lord hath
made with you ' (Ex. xxiv. 8), so now he calls his own the
blood of the new covenant. This legislation for a future
Church was made at a moment when his most attached dis-
ciples could not be trusted to remain with him for an hour,
and when he had himself predicted their desertion and de-
nial. Surely, in the establishment of the Christian Church,
with its perpetual Eucharistic celebrations, we have the fulfil-
ment of a prophecy, such as no human forecast could have
dreamed of at the time the prophecy was uttered.
The case I have been considering must be added to the
proofs given above (p. 218) that the Synoptic Gospels repre-
sent our Lord as using, concerning His own claims, no less
lofty language than does St. John's. For what mere man
300 THE JOHANNINE BOOKS. [xvii.
has dared to set such a value on his own life as to speak of it
as a sacrifice for the sins of the world, the source of all good
to mankind ? If with respect to the institution of the Eucha-
rist St. John is to be regarded as contradicting the account of
the Synoptics, we must inquire which account is the more
credible ; and then we have to consider that the Synoptic
account is not only the earlier, but is confirmed by the per-
petual practice of the Church. The very first time we read of
Christian communities after the day of Pentecost we are told
of their 'breaking of bread ' (Acts ii. 42, 46) ; and if we want
more information about the rite, we obtain it from a docu-
ment earlier than either the Synoptic Gospels or the Acts,
namely, St. Paul's First Epistle to the Corinthians, in which,
having spoken of * eating the Lord's Supper' (xi. 20), he goes
on to give an account of the institution of the rite, in strict
agreement with that in St. Luke's Gospel. How great value
Christians, from the earliest times, attached to the eating
Christ's flesh and drinking His blood, appears from words
which I cite without scruple, since the progress of criticism
has tended to dispel the doubts once entertained about the
genuineness of the Ignatian epistles, ' I wish for the bread of
God, the heavenly bread, the bread of life, which is the flesh
of Jesus Christ the Son of God, and as drink I desire his
blood, which is love incorruptible ' (Ignat. Ep. ad Rom. 7).
But now comes the most singular part of the discussion.
So far is it from being the case that such language must be
regarded as at variance with a Gospel which tells nothing of
the institution of the Eucharist, that these words of Ignatius,
or, if you will, of Pseudo-Ignatius, have been generally
accepted as evidence that the writer was acquainted with
St. John's Gospel. When St. John wrote, Eucharistic cele-
l)rations were prevailing widely, if not universally, over the
Christian world ; and many years before, St. Paul had told
how our Lord had commended the rite with the words, 'This
is my body', ' this is my blood'. Renan would have us believe
that St. John intended by his silence to negative that account,
yet no writer has done so much to strengthen the belief which
we are told he desired to oppose. In fact one of the argu-
XVII.] THE EUCHARIST RECOGNIZED BY ST. JOHN. 301
merits which sceptical writers have used to induce us to assign
a late date to the fourth Gospel is the resemblance of the
language of the sixth chapter to the Eucharistic language of
the writers of the second century. They say that in the Syn-
optic Gospels the Eucharist is but a memorial, or that at most
there is a reference to some atoning efficacy attached to the
Passion of Christ. In Justin Martyr, on the other hand, the
Eucharist is a means by which spiritual nourishment is mysti-
cally conveyed to the soul. He speaks of these elements as
no longer common bread and wine, and he teaches that as
the divine Logos became flesh and blood for our salvation, so
our flesh and blood, by partaking of this heavenly nourish-
ment, enter into communion with a higher spiritual nature
[Apol. I. 66). This is evidently the same doctrine as that
taught (John vi. 55), 'My flesh is meat indeed and my blood
is drink indeed. He that eateth my flesh and drinketh my
blood dvvelleth in me and I in him.' And in Lecture VI. I
have taken pains to show that Justin derived his doctrine from
St. John.
I own I do not think it possible satisfactorily to explain
John vi. if we exclude all reference to the Eucharist. If both
the Evangelist knew and his readers knew that our Lord had
on another occasion said, * Take, eat, this is my body; drink
this, this is my blood', they could hardly help being reminded
of these expressions by that discourse about eating His flesh
and drinking His blood. On this point St. John's Gospel
throws light on the Synoptic account. It softens the apparent
harshness and abruptness of these words at the Last Supper,
when we learn that this language about eating His flesh and
drinking His blood was not then used by our Lord for the
first time. We are told that in a discourse delivered at the
Passover season of the preceding year (John vi. 4), our Lord
had prepared the minds of His disciples to receive the idea of
communion with Him by eating His flesh and drinking His
blood. His language, then, at the Last Supper, instead of
causing perplexity to the disciples, would remind them of the
discourse spoken at the preceding passover season, and would
remove the perplexity caused by His previous dark sayings.
202 THE JOHANNINE BOOKS. [xvii.
The words, 'Take, eat, this is my body', would then mean to
them, Hereby can you do that which perplexed you when I
spoke of it before.
In any case there can be no doubt of the fact that the
discourse recorded in John vi. has had the effect of greatly
increasing the value attached by Christians to the Eucharistic
rite, and it cannot plausibly be maintained that this effect
was one which the narrator neither foresaw nor intended ;
that he was ignorant of this ordinance or wished to disparage
it. And if the result of the previous investigation has been
to establish that this Evangelist habitually relies on the pre-
vious knowledge of his readers, we cannot doubt that in this
as in other cases he speaks words (jxuvavTa aweTolaiv ; and
that he gives no formal account of the institution of the
Eucharist, only because he knew that his readers had other
accounts of it in their hands.
Very nearly the same things may be said about St. John's
omission of our Lord's command to His disciples to go and
baptize all nations. If by his silence he intended to disparage
the rite of baptism, it is a strange accident that it is words of
his which caused Christians to entertain an even exaggerated
sense of the absolute necessity of that rite, and which sug-
gested the name avay^wrjaig, by which in the middle of the
second century baptism was generally known (Justin Martyr,
Apol. I. 6 1, with an express reference to our Lord's words to
Nicodemus).
And so likewise as to the Ascension. Although John
does not formally relate it, he not only refers to it in two
texts already quoted, ' What and if ye shall see the Son of
Man ascend up where he was before ' (vi. 62) ; * Touch me not,
for I am not yet ascended to my Father' (xx. 17); but he
assumes the fact, not in a single verse, but throughout the
Gospel. The Evangelist is never weary of teaching that
Jesus is a heavenly person, not an earthly ; His true home
heaven, not earth. The doctrine of the pre-existence of
Christ is made to smoothe away all difficulties in admitting
the fact of the Ascension. ' No man hath ascended up to
heaven but he that came down from heaven, even the Son of
XVII.] CAREFUL COMPOSITION OF FOURTH GOSPEL. 303
Man which is in heaven.' If, then, St. John, who so frequently
declares that Jesus had been in heaven before He came to
earth, does not bear formal testimony to the fact that Jesus
returned to heaven after He left earth, it can only be that he
was aware that this was already well known to his readers by
the attestation of others.*
I think it needless to multiply proofs that St. John did not
write for men to whom the story of our Lord's life was un-
known ; but that on the contrary he constantly assumes his
reader's knowledge of the leading- facts. Instead of taking it
as our rule of interpretation that lie contradicts whatever he
does not report, we should be much nearer the truth if we
held that he confirms what he does not contradict. And the
more we study this Gospel, the more weight, we find, deserves
to be attached to the Evangelist's even indirect indications
of opinion. The Synoptic Gospels may fairly be described
as artless narratives of such deeds and words of Jesus as
had most fastened themselves on His disciples' recollection ;
but the fourth Gospel is avowedly written with a purpose,
namely, * that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ the
Son of God, and that believing ye might have life through
his name' (xx. 31). The Gospel bears the marks of having
been written after controversy concerning our Lord's Person
had arisen. The writer seems like one who has encountered
objections, and who therefore anticipates difficulties by expla-
nations. For example, he meets the difficulty, If Jesus
walked on the sea because there was no boat in which He
could follow His disciples, how was it that the multitude was
able subsequently to follow Him ? (vi. 22,.) He meets the
more formidable difficulty, How could Jesus be divine if He
was deceived in His judgment of one whom He had chosen
to be an apostle ? (ii. 24, vi. 71, xiii. 1 1.) He is emphatic in
his testimony to facts which would confute the Docetic theories
prevalent when he wrote (xix. 35). All this gives the more
weight to those passages in the Gospel which assert or imply
* Renan remarks (iv. 408) that the story of our Lord's Ascension was known to
the writer of the Apocalypse ; for that on this story is base 1 the account of the resur-
jection, followed by an ascension, of the two witnesses, xi. 12.
304 THE JOHANNINE BOOKS. [xvii.
the doctrine of the Godhead of our Lord. We know that we
are not wresting chance expressions to a use different from
that which the writer intended ; but that these utterances
are the deliberate expression of the Evangelist's firm con-
viction.
If we find reason to think that St. John knew of previous
Gospels, it is difficult to believe that these were other than
those we have now, which all own were written before his.
There are several coincidences between St. John's Gospel and
the Synoptics, but perhaps hardly sufficient of themselves to
prove his obligation to them. He refers (iv. 44) to words of
our Lord which he had not himself recorded, ' For Jesus him-
self testified that a prophet hath no honour in his own country'
[see Matt. xiii. 57). In the story of the miracle of feeding the
five thousand, which is common to all four Gospels, there are
coincidences, which, however, may be explained as arising
from independent familiarity with the facts. The mountain
unto which our Lord ascended to pray is, as in the other
Gospels, ' the mountain ' to opog. In Matthew and Mark a
distinction is carefully made between the two miracles of
feeding the multitude, the baskets taken up being in the
former case Kocpivoi, in the latter airvpiSiQ — a distinction, by the
way, scarcely to be accounted for if we assume that the
common element of those Gospels was only Aramaic. St.
John agrees with the earlier Gospels in the use of the word
Kotpivoi. St. John preserves a feature that distinguishes Mark
from Matthew, the 200 pennyworth of bread which the dis-
ciples exclaim would be needed to supply the people. Some
minute critics have accused John of love of exaggeration
because he says (vi. 7) that Mark's 200 pennyworth (vi. 37)
would not be enough. It is odd that there is another coinci-
dence between John and Mark in which the difference is the
other way. The ointment with which our Lord was anointed
might, according to John (xii. 5), have been sold for 300
pence, according to Mark (xiv. 5) for more than 300 pence.
The most striking coincidence between these two evangelists
is in the words by which this ointment is described, pvpov
vapSov TTiari/cfjc, the last a word which puzzled even Greek
xvii.J ST. JOHN'S COINCIDENCES WITH SYNOPTICS. 305
commentators. If the conclusion of St. Mark's Gospel be
genuine, there is a further coincidence in the relation of the
appearance to Mary Magdalene. John agrees with Luke in
naming one of the Apostles ' Judas, not Iscariot,' who is
otherwise named in Matthew and Mark. We could not build
much on the mere fact that Mary and Martha are named by
both ; still less on the name Lazarus, which in Luke occurs
in a different connexion ; but the description (xii. 2) of Martha
as * serving', and the part ascribed to the two sisters in ch. xi.
are in close harmony with St. Luke's account. Again, both
Evangelists speak of Satan entering into Judas (Luke xxii. 3,
John xiii. 27) ; and of the Holy Spirit as sent by Jesus (Luke
xxiv. 49, John xvi. 7). There appears to be a reference to an
incident, more fully recorded by John, in Luke xxiv. 12, but
there is uncertainty as to the reading.
An interesting question is. Where could John have read
the story of our Lord's Ascension ? If I have been right in
contending that John would not have omitted to state formally
where our Lord had been born unless he knew that this had
been done already, it seems also that he would not have
omitted to tell of the Ascension unless he had known it to
have been previously related. But if this be so, we have only
the choice of three suppositions, and the acceptance of any of
them leads to interesting consequences. Either (i) John read
Mark xvi. ig, and then it would follow that words, which
have been questioned because they were not in some of the
copies seen by Eusebius, were in the copies used by St. John;
or (2) he read the words ave^iptro tic t6v ovpavov in Luke
xxiv. 51, and this is also opposed to the decision of modern
critics ; or (3) John was acquainted with the Acts of the
Apostles, and read the account of the Ascension in the first
chapter.
I have spoken of the things omitted by John and told by
the Synoptics. I had intended to speak of the things told by
John and omitted by the Synoptics ; but I have not left my-
self time to speak of more than one. I refer to the fact, of
which notice has often been taken, that the Synoptics relate
no visit of our Lord to Jerusalem during His public ministry
X
3o6 THE JOHANNINE BOOKS. [xvii.
save that which ended in His death; while the scene of almost
all the discourses recorded by John is laid at Jerusalem, and
he relates visits of our Lord on the occasion of more Jewish
feasts than one. In fact it is by the help of St. John's Gospel,
and by the feasts there mentioned, that the duration of our
Lord's ministry is calculated. If we had none but the Synop-
tic Gospels we might acquiesce in the notion taken up by
some of the early fathers from the phrase, ' the acceptable
year of the Lord ', that His ministry lasted but one year.
It used to be one of the stock objections to St. John that
he is here opposed to the more credible account given by the
Synoptics. But the tide has now turned, and Renan has
pronounced that on this question there is a signal triumph
for the fourth Gospel. In the first place, it would be ex-
tremely improbable that our Lord should have failed to do
what every devout Jew made a point of doing — attend the
Jerusalem feasts. We know that our Lord's parents complied
with this ordinance, and brought Himself up to Jerusalem,
when He was only twelve years of age. We know that our
Lord's Apostles scrupulously attended the feasts. After the
Passover at which He suffered, they still came up to the
following Pentecost. Even St. Paul, who was not considered
sufficiently national, made it a point to attend the feasts ;
and we are told how on one occasion he resisted the pressing
entreaties of Gentile converts to make a longer stay with
them, because he was anxious to attend a feast at Jerusalem
(Acts xviii. 20; see also xx. 16). What, then, can we suppose
to have been the conduct of Jesus Himself, who more than
once declared that He came not to destroy the law but to
iiilfil it ? Further, if our Lord made His appearance in Jeru-
salem for the first time at His last Passover, it seems incredible
that the Jerusalem priests and rulers should have conceived
.so sudden a jealousy of their visiter, should instantly come to
the conclusion that His existence was incompatible with the
safety of the nation, should at once concert measures for His
destruction, should immediately succeed in finding one of His
followers accessible to bribery, and carry all their schemes
into execution within a space less than a week. All becomes
XVII.] OUR LORD'S VISITS TO JERUSALEM. 307
plain and intelligible, if we accept John's account that Jesus
and the Jewish rulers had been on more than one previous
occasion in collision, so that He was well known to these
rulers, who had resolved on His death before His last visit to
the city. St. John likewise gives a reason why on this
last visit a crisis was brought about. According to him,
it was the miracle of the raising of Lazarus which on
the one hand made the Jews feel that it was necessary to
take some decisive step in contravention of the claims of
Jesus; and on the other hand roused the hopes of His ad-
herents to such a pitch that they went out to meet Him, and
led Him in triumphal procession into the city. Matthew
harmonizes with this account, although he does not state
distinctly, as John does, that the procession which escorted
Jesus was made up of Galilean Jews who had come up to the
feast. For Matthew (xxi. 10, 11,) represents the multitude as
crying, This is Jesus the Prophet of Nazareth, of Galilee;
while the inhabitants of Jerusalem are moved, saying. Who is
this ? There seems to be no ground for the common illustra-
tion of popular fickleness in the change of the cries from
' Hosanna ' to ' Crucify Him '. It would seem to be multitudes
of Galileans who cried ' Hosanna ' ; of the native citizens who
-shouted ' Crucify Him '.
But to proceed with my argument, that the first visit of our
Lord and His Apostles to Jerusalem was not that Passover at
which He suffered. What is decisive is the fact, that when we
turn to the Acts of the Apostles we find the headquarters of
the disciples and the centre of the Apostolic mission at once
established in Jerusalem : which would be highly improbable
if they had arrived there for the first time only a few days
before the Crucifixion. Thus, if there was a real contradiction
between St. John and the Synoptic Gospels (and contradiction
tliere is none, for his account is plainly only supplementary
to theirs ; but if contradiction there were) we must, on all
grounds of historic probability, accept John's account as the
true one. But when we examine the Synoptic Gospels a little
more closely, we find several traces of a Judaean ministry. I
will not lay stress on the last verse of the 4tli of Luke, though,
X2
2o8 THE JOHANNINE BOOKS. [xvii.
according to the chief modern critics, we ought to read,
* preached in the Synagogues of Judaea ', not Galilee. This is
the reading of Codd. J^, B and c, three of the most ancient
extant mss. But I may remark, in the first place, that, accord-
ing to the Synoptic Gospels, Judas the traitor was (as the
name by which he is commonly known indicates) a native of
Kerioth in Judaea (Josh. xv. 25); that Joseph of Arimathea, *a
city of the Jews' (Luke xxiii. 51), or Ramathaim, was a dis-
ciple ; that the account of the borrowing of the ass at Beth-
phage implies that our Lord was already known there; as
does also the demand of the room at Jerusalem in which to
eat the Passover. The supper given at Bethany, in the house
of Simon the leper, was clearly given by friends, not by
strangers. But most decisive of all are these words, recorded
both by St. Matthew and St. Luke : ' O Jerusalem, Jerusalem^
haw often would I have gathered thy children together', which
plainly implies previous warnings and visitations. The result
is, that on this point, on which a former school of rationalist
critics had pronounced John's Gospel not historically trust-
worthy, because opposed to the Synoptics, he turns out not to
be opposed to them, and to state nothing but what, on grounds
of historic probability, we must pronounce to be true. We
have here, then, as Renan has said, a signal triumph for the
fourth Gospel.
XVIII.
THE ACTS OF THE APOSTLES.
r COME now to speak of the book of the Acts of the
i- Apostles.* It is, as I said (p. 34), a very vital matter
with unbelievers to bring this book down to a late date. For
if it must be conceded that this work was written by a compa-
nion of St. Paul, it will follow that the still earlier book, the
rjospel, which confessedly! has the same authorship, must
have been written by one in immediate contact with eye-
witnesses, and must be regarded as thoroughly historical,
I need not spend much time in discussing the external
evidence. At the end of the second century, the earliest time
of which we have copious Christian remains, the evidence of
Irenaeus, TertuUian, and Clement of Alexandria, shows the
authority of the Acts as well established as that of the Gos-
pels.J The Muratorian Fragment treats of this book next
after the Gospels. § There is an undisputed reference to the
* This is the title of the book in Clement of Alexandria, in TertuUian, in the
Muratorian Fragment, and in Cod. B. The title ' Acts ' in the Sinaitic MS., a title
used also by Origen, must be regarded only as an abridgment. The full title is given
in the subscription in the Sinaitic.
t This is 'a fact which no critic ventures to impugn' (Davidson, ii. 146). 'On
ne s'arretera pas a prouver cette proposition, laquelle n'a jamais ete serieusement con-
testee ' (Renan, Les Apotres, p. x.).
X Iren. iii. 14, 15; Clem. Alex. Strom, v. 12, Hypotyp. i. in 1 Pet. (p. 1007,
Potter's edition), see Euseb. vi. 14 ; Tert., adv. Marcion. v. r, 2 ; De Jejun. x.
§ See p. 48. Notwithstanding the corruption of the passage which speaks of the
Acts, the general drift is plain, viz. that the writer means to say, however erro-
neously, that it was Luke's plan only to relate things at which he had himself been
present ; and that we are thus to account for the silence of the Acts as to Peter's
martyrdom, and as to Paul's journey to Spain.
3IO THE ACTS OF THE APOSTLES. [xviii.
Acts in the letter of the Churches of Vienne and Lyons, A. D.
177 (Euseb. v. i) ; and since it has been proved (see p. 207)
that Marcion, in the early part of the century, found the third
Gospel holding an established rank, we cannot doubt that the
Acts had obtained currency at the same period. There are
several coincidences with the Acts in other second century
writers ; but about these I do not care to wrangle with critics
who regard evidence that comes short of demonstration as no
evidence at all. When, for example, Clement of Rome [ch. 2)
praises the Corinthians for being ' fonder of giving than receiv-
ing',* we cannot prove that he had in his mind our Lord's
saying (Acts xx. 35), 'It is more blessed to give than to receive' ;
and when Ignatius [ad Smyrn. 3) tells how our Lord, after the
Resurrection, ate and drank with the disciples [awi^a-yiv Kai
(TweTnev), we cannot demonstrate that he knew the o-ui/E^ayo/ucv
Ktti (Twiiriofjiev of Acts x, 41, or that in calling heretical teachers
* wolves ' [ad Philad. 2), he was thinking of Acts xx. 29. Let
us allow that Hermas may have been ignorant of Acts iv. 12,
when he says, that there is none other through whom we can
be saved than through the great and glorious name ( Vis. iv. 2) ;
and that it may be pure accident that Polycarp chanced upon
words so like those of Acts ii. 24, when he says {ad Philipp. i.),
' Whom God raised up, having loosed the pains of Hades '.
Eusebius tells (iv. 29) that Dionysius of Corinth relates that
Dionysius the Areopagite, who was converted to the faith by
Paul the Apostle, according to the account given in the Acts,
was the first bishop of Athens ; and as we have not got the
letters of Dionysius, we cannot confute anyone who may be
pleased to say that the reference to the Acts was only made
by Eusebius, and that it was through some other source Dio-
nysius found that there had been an Areopagite of his own
name. In like manner let us admit the possibility that Papias,
who mentions Justus, surnamed Barsabas, may have derived
his knowledge of him from some source different from the
Acts ; and I frankly own that anyone may refuse to accept
the opinion, which I hold myself, that Papias, who used St.
XVIII.] EXTERNAL EVIDENCE. 3 1 1
Matthew's Gospel, would have adopted the account which
that Gospel gives of the death of Judas Iscariot, if he did not
read a different story in some document to which he attributed
equal authority.* It is true, that if we accept the traditional
account of the authorship of the Acts, the coincidences I have
mentioned, and several others, are at once accounted for; but
if anyone choose to say that they are all accidental, though I
think his assertion very improbable, I do not care to dispute
the matter with him.
In fact, it is much more important for a critic, who
opposes the received authorship of the Acts, to impugn
these early quotations than it is for us to maintain them. If
Clement of Rome, before the end of the first century, read
the book, there can be no reasonable ground for doubt that
the work is as early as the Church has always held it to be;
but if Clement makes no quotation from it, no inference can
be drawn from his silence about a book to which his subject
in no way called on him to refer. But in point of fact, our
reception of the Acts scarcely at all depends on these proofs
of the early use of the book. It is an important point, no
doubt, to establish that the book we have now was received
without hesitation by the Christian Church as far back as we
can trace its history; yet if this work were a new 'find',
recently disinterred from some Eastern library, we still
might be confident that we have here some genuine remains
of the apostolic age. In fact, the internal evidence of the
latter chapters of the Acts proves irresistibly that these
contain matter which must have proceeded from an eye-
witness. In saying this, I say no more than our adversaries
acknowledge. Davidson says (ii. 136) of the so-called 'we'
sections of the Acts, that is to say, the sections in which the
writer uses the first person plural, that they are 'charac-
* ApoUinarius of Laodicea, through whom we obtain our knowledge 'of this
matter, reconciles the accounts in Matthew and in the Acts by stating, as on
Papias's authority, that Judas did not die when he hanged himself, but that his
body afterwards so swelled that in passing through a place wide enough for a cart to
go through, he was so crushed that all his bowels were emptied out (Routh, Rell.
Sac. i. p. 9).
312 THE ACTS OF THE APOSTLES. [xviii.
terized by a circumstantiality of detail, a vividness of
description, an exact knowledge of localities, an acquaint-
ance with the phrases and habits of seamen, which betray
one who was personally present'.
If you know nothing of the history of the controversy,
you will perhaps imagine that such a concession as I have
quoted, and which is no more than is readily made by all
critics of the same school, amounts to a recognition of the
antiquity of the book of the Acts. But this is not the only
case where theorists of the sceptical school will make a forced
concession, and hope to save the main part of their hypothesis
from destruction. These hypotheses are like some living
beings of low organization, which it is hard to kill, because
when you lay hold of one of them, the creature will leave
half its body in your hands, and walk off without suffering
any apparent inconvenience. When we encounter a theory
impugning the authority of one of our New Testament books,
if we point out passages in the book containing marks of
genuineness which cannot plausibly be contested, then so
much of the theory will be abandoned as disputes the genuine-
ness of these particular passages; but it is still hoped to
maintain the spuriousness of the rest.* If it is pointed out
that the passages acknowledged as genuine are indissolubly
connected with some of those alleged to be spurious, the
theory will then be modified again, just so far as is necessary
to meet this new difiiculty. In the present case the marks
of genuineness in the 'we' sections are too strong to be
denied. It is therefore found unavoidable to own that this
part of the book of the Acts is a real relic of the apostolic
age; but the Tubingen theory is that some compiler who lived
in the second century happened to get possession of memo-
randa really made by a travelling companion of St. Paul,
whose name we don't know, and that the compiler incorporated
these in a narrative, in the main unauthentic, and intended
to disguise the early history of the Christian Church. Thus,
Hooykaas (see p. 286) says (v. 33), ' As to the later fortunes
of St. Paul, the writer of Acts had access to some very good
* In particular, this is the history of the criticism of the 2nd Epistle to Timothy.
XVIII.] THE 'WE' SECTIONS. 313
authorities, the best of all being the itinerary or journal of
travels composed by one of the Apostle's companions. Por-
tions of this work he took up almost unaltered into his own.
In this itinerary, then, we possess the records of an eye-
witness. This is of incalculable value'.
The 'almost unaltered' of this extract are words that all
critics of the same school would not adopt. The evidence of
identity of language and style is so strong as to convince
even prejudiced critics that the *we' sections, as they stand
now, bear marks of the same hand as that to which we owe
the rest of the book ; while also these sections contain rela-
tions of miracles which the same critics are unwilling to
believe were told by a contemporary. So the theory which
simply separated the authorship of the *we' sections from
that of the rest is owned to be inadequate; and it is now
usually presented with the addition that the second century
compiler, when incorporating these sections in his book,
revised and retouched them, and made to them some addi-
tions of his own.
Who was the original writer of the memoranda, rationalist
critics are not agreed. The claims of Timothy have been
strongly urged, notwithstanding that, to name no other
objection, Timothy is expressly distinguished from the
writer who uses the first person plural [ch. xx. 4, 5). Silas
has had his advocates, but the favourite seems to be Titus ;
and, accordingly, Hooykaas always refers to the author of
the memoranda as Titus (?). Why St. Luke, with or without
a note of interrogation, might not have been left in possession
of the authorship of the memoranda, even if he were deprived
of that of the rest of the book, is not, at first sight, easy to
explain : for even with critics of this school it ought not to be
thought a disadvantage to an hypothesis that it should have
some amount of historical attestation. Paul's Epistles (Col.
iv. 14, Philem. 24, 2 Tim. iv. 11) show that he had a compa-
nion of the name of Luke. If it were conceded that he was
the author of the 'we' sections, at least in their original form,
it would seem to explain why the whole book should be attri-
buted to him.
314 THE ACTS OF THE APOSTLES. [xviii.
But here is a circumstance of which it is well worth while
to take notice. The name of Luke is not found in connexion
with the Acts in any extant uncial MS. ; and we cannot but
think that the ascription would have been preserved, had it
been found in earlier MSS. On the other hand, the name of
Luke is invariably inscribed to the third Gospel. We can-
not, then, reasonably suppose the history of the ascription to
be that the name of Luke was originally attached only to the
latter part of the Acts; that it then passed to the whole book;
and being accepted, on the faith of their MSS., by Christians of
the second century, was afterwards extended to the Gospel
which they perceived to be of the same authorship. The true
history seems to be just the reverse. It would appear to be
from the Gospel that the name of Luke passed to the Acts ;
and then a verification of that ascription is afforded by the
fact that we find from the Epistles that Paul had a compa-
nion named Luke. In any case, I cannot account for the
reluctance of rationalist critics to own Luke as the author of
what they regard as the original portions of the Acts, except
through a feeling on their part that the name of Luke is
indissolubly connected with the third Gospel.
It is time that I should formally remind you what those
' we ' sections of which I have been speaking are. They
begin Acts xvi. 9. Luke appears to have joined Paul at
Troas, and to have accompanied him to Philippi. There he
seems to have been left behind; for when Paul leaves Philippi
the use of the pronoun * we' ceases, and is not resumed until
Paul returns to Philippi, some six or seven years after. Then
[ch. XX. 5) the ' we' begins again, and continues till the arrival
in Jerusalem (xxi. 18). It begins again in chap. 27 with Paul's
voyage, and continues till his arrival in Rome, xxviii. 16. I
may add that in Codex D, which in the Acts is full of untrust-
worthy additions to the text, the tradition that Luke was of
Antioch is attested by a * we ' in Acts xi. 28, the prophecy of
Agabus being described as having taken place 'when we were
gathered together '. I only mention this reading, but not as
having any title to your acceptance. Some have excluded
from the ' we ' sections the part containing Paul's address at
XVIII.] THE 'WE' SECTIONS. 315
Miletus ; but unreasonably. For, though in the latter part of
the 20th chapter the narrator has had no occasion to speak in
the first person, he claims in the first verse of the next
chapter to have been one of the party who had to tear them-
selves away from the sorrowing embraces of their Ephesian
friends.
I may mention here that some thoughtless objectors* have
taken for a note of spuriousness in this narrative what is
really a proof of genuineness. Paul, it is said, is represented
(xx. 17) as in such a hurry to get to Jerusalem that he will
not visit Ephesus, yet afterwards he spends a week at Tyre
(xxi. 4), and 'many days' at Caesarea [v. 10). But it is quite
natural that Paul should calculate his time differently before
crossing the sea and afterwards. Even in times much later
than St. Paul's, travellers in those seas have not been able to
count on expedition. The author of Eothen says that when
he read the Odyssey he had thought ten years rather a long
time for the hero to spend on his voyag-e home from Troy, but
that since he had had personal experience of navigation in
these parts, he had come to the opinion that Ulysses had a
fair average passage. It appears (xx. 16) that Paul at the
beginning of his voyage was by no means sure of being able
to reach Jerusalem at the time he wished. Actually, he only
succeeded in obtaining a passage in a ship which went no
further than Patara. He could not foresee what delay he
might encounter there ; but after he had caught a ship for
Tyre, and made a prosperous voyage thither, he could calculate
his time differently; and notwithstanding his week's delay at
Tyre, might feel that he had several days at his disposal at
Csesarea before he needed to begin his land journey to Jeru-
salem. There are other frivolous objections, all proceeding
on the assumption that Paul owned a yacht, or chartered a
ship of his own, whereas I suppose the probability is, that he
had to accommodate himself to the movements of the ships
in which he found passage. Thus, why did not Paul go him-
self to Ephesus instead of sending a messenger to fetch his
* See Hooykaas, vi. 332.
\
3i6 THE ACTS OF THE APOSTLES. [xviii.
friends from that city ? I daresay because he did not choose
to run the risk that the ship might sail without him if he
went away from Miletus, Why did not Paul send his message
from Trogyllium, which was nearer, rather than from Miletus ?
I suppose because he knew that the ship would not make a
sufficiently long delay at Trogyllium, and that it would at
Miletus. At the same time it may be remarked that MSS. are
not unanimous as to the ship having touched at Trogyllium
at all. But, in short, I think the best rationalist critics show
their wisdom in abandoning all direct assaults on the *we'
sections as futile, and in restricting their efforts to the sepa-
ration of these from the rest of the book.
But in this they have great difficulties. I pass over the
initial difficulty, which to me seems sufficiently formidable : —
How are we to account for the fact that an unknown person
in the second century got exclusive possession of some of the
mostprecious relics of the apostolic age — relics the authenticity
of which is proved by internal evidence, and yet of which no
one but this compiler seems ever to have heard, while the
compiler himself vanished out of knowledge ? The rationalist
critics would scarcely make their story more miraculous if
they presented their legend in the form, that the * we' sections
were brought to Rome by an angel from heaven, who imme-
diately after disappeared. But new difficulties arise when
they try to tear the 'we' sections away from the rest of the
Acts ; for this book is not one of those low organizations
which do not resent being pulled asunder. It is on the con-
trary a highly organized structure, showing evident marks
that the whole proceeded from a single author. Thus refe-
rences, direct or implied, are repeatedly made from one part
of the book to another. The speech of Paul in the latter part
of the book (xxii. 20) refers with some verbal coincidences to
the part he took in the martyrdom of Stephen (vii. 58, viii. i).
In the 'we' section (xxi. 8) where Philip is mentioned, he is
described as ' one of the seven ' (Acts vi. 5), while his presence
at Ceesarea has been accounted for (viii. 40). Peter in his
speech (xv. 8) refers to former words of his recorded (x. 47).
Words are put into our Lord's mouth (i. 5) similar to words
XVIII.] UNITY OF AUTHORSHIP. 3iy
which in the Gospels are only attributed to John the Baptist,
and these words are quoted as our Lord's (xi. i6).*
I will notice one coincidence more between the earlier
chapters and the later, which I think not only proves unity
of authorship, but also that the author lived near the events —
I mean the part which both divisions of the Acts ascribe to
the Sadducees in the persecution of the infant Church. In
the Gospels the chief opponents of our Lord are the Scribes
and Pharisees. A Christian writer of the second century
would hardly have known or cared much about the internal
divisions among the Jews, and would naturally have followed
the Gospels in giving greater prominence to Pharisaic hos-
tility to the Gospel. But St. Luke makes us understand that,
after the death of our Lord, His disciples obtained among the
Pharisees toleration or friendship, which was refused them by
the Sadducees. The Resurrection was the main subject of
the Christian preaching, and this at once put the Christians
on the side of the Pharisees in their chief subject of dispute
with the Sadducees; while again the Pharisees found no diffi-
culty in believing the Gospel accounts of angelic messages,
which the Sadducees rejected as incredible. Further, the
charge of having shed innocent blood most painfully affected
the Sadducees, who at the time held the chief place in the
government of the nation (Acts v. 17, 28]. These considera-
tions make Luke's account highly credible, that the Jerusalem
Church counted among its members a large proportion of
Pharisees (xv. 5, xxi. 20). St. Paul in one of his Epistles
(Phil. iii. 5) confirms the account of the Acts that he had him-
self been a Pharisee ; and if Luke were a companion of Paul's
we can understand how he should have imbibed the feelings
which led him to give such prominence to the hostility of the
Sadducees to Christian teaching (iv. i, v. 17). In this repre-
sentation the book is consistent all through : the * Scribes that
were of the Pharisees' part' (xxiii, g) interfere to protect Paul
from the violence of the Sadducees, much in the same way as
* Other cross references are to be found on coraparing xi. IQ, viii. i ; xi. 25, ix.
30; XV. 38, xiii. 13; xvi. 4, xv. 28; xviii. 5, xvii. 14; xxi. 29, xx. 4; xxiv. 18, xxi.
26 ; xxvi. 32, XXV. II.
3i8 THE ACTS OF THE APOSTLES. [xviii.
the chief Pharisaic Rabbi, Gamaliel, is represented at the
beginning of the book (v. 39), as interfering on behalf of the
elder apostles.
An independent proof of the unity of authorship is ob-
tained from a study of the language. Tables have been made
of words, phrases, and turns of expression characterizing the
Gospel ; and these are found reappearing in the Acts, and in
all parts equally, in the latter chapters as much as in the
earlier. It is not easy to lay before you details of the proof
of the homogeneousness of the diction of the book, because
no inference could be fairly drawn from only a few examples
of recurring phrases, and it would be tedious to produce a great
many; but it is not necessary, since the point is acknow-
ledged, and is accounted for, as I have said, by the theory
that the later compiler revised and retouched the sections
which he borrowed. * From these linguistic and other phe-
nomena,' says Davidson (ll. 145), 'it is clear that the writer
of the book was not a mere compiler but an author. If he
used materials he did not put them together so loosely as to
leave their language and style in the state he got them, but
wrought up the component parts into a work having its own
characteristics.' And yet we are asked to suppose that, with
all this revision, the compiler did his work so clumsily as to
leave in that tell-tale 'we', the sections, too, where the 'we'
occurs being separated from each other in the most inartificial
manner. Here comes in the consideration that the compiler
of the Gospel and the Acts was evidently a person of con-
siderable literary skill. The less you believe (I will not say
in the inspiration of the writer, but) in his substantial truth-
fulness, the more you must admire his literary skill. Where
he and the other Synoptic evangelists differ in their language
in relating the same story, the difference is often accounted
for by the supposition that the third Evangelist gave the lan-
guage of his predecessors a literary revision. Take the letter
of Claudius Lysias in the Acts. If we are not to believe that
this was the real letter the chief captain sent, what dramatic
skill it required to have invented it, making the chief captain,
by a gentle distortion of the facts, give them the colouring
XVIII.] UNITY OF AUTHORSHIP. 31^
which sets his own conduct in the most favourable light.
There is the same dramatic propriety in the exordium of
Tertullus, the hearing before Agrippa, the proceedings before
Gallio ; or, to go back still earlier, in the story of Peter
knocking at the door, and Rhoda so delighted that she runs
off with the news without waiting to open to him. A critic
must be destitute of the most elementary qualifications for his
art who does not perceive that the writer of the Acts is no
uneducated clumsy patcher together of documents, but a
literary artist who thoroughly understands how to tell a story.
And yet we are asked to believe that this skilled artist,
having got possession of memoranda of one of Paul's com-
panions, shovels them into his book pell-mell, without even
taking the trouble to hide the discontinuity of his work by
turning the first person into the third. If we suppose Luke
to have been the author, there is no want of literary skill, but
only great modesty in the quiet way in which he distinguishes
these parts of the history of which he claims to have been an
eye-witness.*
What, then, are the motives why such violence should be
used to separate the ' we ' sections from the rest of the book ?
There are two principal reasons. One of these is that which
I explained in the first lecture. It is thought impossible that
a book, so pervaded by miracles as the Acts, could be the
work of one who was a contemporary with the events which
he relates. There are those now who seem to have got be-
yond the doctrine that a miracle is impossible ; they seem to
* Renan agrees in the conclusions here expressed. With regard to the supposi-
tion that the compiler merely retained the first person plural which he found in an
earlier document, he says [Les Apotres. xi.) : ' Cette explication est bien peu admis-
sible. On comprendrait tout au plus une telle negligence dans une compilation
grossiere. Mais le troisieme Evangile et les Actes forment un ouvrage tres-bien
redige, compose avec reflexion, et meme avec art, ecrit d'une meme main, et d'apres
un plan suivi. Les deux livres reunis font un ensemble absolument du meme style,
prcsentant les memes locutions favorites et la meme fa9on de citer I'Ecriture. Une
faute de redaction aussi choquante que celle dont il s'agit serait inexplicable. On est
done invinciblement porte a conclure que celui qui a ecrit la fin de 1' ouvrage en a ecrit
le commencement, et que le narrateurdu tout est celui qui dit '-nous" aux passages
precites.'
320 THE ACTS OF THE APOSTLES. [xviii.
hold it impossible that anyone should ever have believed in a
miracle. Whether the former doctrine be good philosophy or
not, I am not going to disscus ; but I am very sure that the
latter doctrine leads to bad criticism.
The history of the criticism on this very book shows
how very unsafe it is to take this principle as a guide. By
denying the contemporary authorship of all but the *we'
sections, it is, no doubt, possible to remove from the book
much of the supernatural ; but much is left behind. The
author of these memoranda also has several miracles to tell
of. I may remind you of all the occurrences at Philippi, the
testimony borne to Paul and Silas by the possessed damsel,
and her cure by them, the earthquake in the prison, and the
opening of the prison doors.* If the story of the shipwreck
is, beyond any other part, full of touches showing that we
have the report of an eye-witness, this part, too, contains the
supernatural facts of a vision seen by Paul, and of his predic-
tions as to the issue of the voyage, which are accurately
fulfilled. And when Paul and his companions get safe to
shore at Melita, we are told the story of the viper, and of
miraculous cures effected by Paul on the island. So the
remedy has been applied, of cutting out from the * we '
sections all the supernatural portions, and treating these as
additions made by the later compiler.!
* ' The circumstances relating to the imprisonment of Paul and Silas at Philippi
are sufficient to disprove the authorship of an eye-witness' (Davidson, ii. 149).
t This has been done, amongst others, by Overbeck in his Preface to his edition
of De Wette's Handbook on the Acts. Overbeck has at least decisively proved that
the ' we ' sections, as they stand now, are so full of the characteristics of the author
of the rest of the book, that the hypothesis that those sections were borrowed from
another is not tenable, unless we assert that the borrower interpolated them with
much of his own, and that in these interpolations he dishonestly used the pronoun
'we'. Overbeck' s Preface has been translated, and included in the publications of
the Theological Translation Fund. In the same volume is contained a translation of
the chief work of the Tiibingen school on the Acts, that by Zeller.
Zeller, a pupil and fellow-labourer of Baur's, was born in 18 14, and was Professor
of Theology at Berne in 1847; afterwards Professor of Philosophy at Heidelberg, and
at Berlin, 1872.
Franz Overbeck, born at St. Petersburg, 1837, Professor of Theology at Basle,.
1870.
XVIII.] SUPERNATURAL ELEMENT IN THE BOOK. 321
It can be shown that the parts which it is proposed to cut
out are indissolubly connected with those which are left be-
hind ; but I do not enter into the proof, because I hold that
criticism so arbitrary does not deserve an elaborate refutation.
And in truth it seems to me that the human intellect cannot
be less profitably employed than in constructing a life of
Paul, such as might have been written by a Christian of the
first century who conceived miracle to be an impossibility.
A critic might as well spend his time in making a new
edition of the play of Hamlet or Macbeth, cutting out as
non-Shaksperian every passage which implied a belief in the
supernatural.
But in addition to the predominance of the miraculous in
the Acts, every disciple of Baur has a reason for rejecting
the book, in its irreconcilable opposition to the Tiibingen
theory of the mutual hostility of Paul and the original
Apostles. Here we have what professes to be a history of
Paul by one of his friends ; and the writer is absolutely no
Paulinist in the Tiibingen sense of the word. He represents
Paul as on friendly terms with Peter and James, and these
Apostles as anxious to remove any cause of offence or sus-
picion between the Apostle of the Gentiles and the Church
of Jerusalem, while Paul himself is represented as most ready
to meet their wishes in this respect. Paul is represented as
observing Jewish ordinances, and as going up, on several
occasions, to the Jewish feasts at Jerusalem ; while in his
speeches, as reported by St. Luke, there is little or nothing
said about the doctrine of justification by faith without the
works of the law. Peter's speeches in the Acts so thoroughly
agree in doctrine with Paul, that they might have been
written by Paul or by one of his disciples. Finally, Peter is
made to anticipate Paul in the work of preaching to the
Gentiles, while Paul himself is represented as only led into
that work by the force of circumstances. When he and
Barnabas start on their first missionary tour, the method with
which they commence is to preach the Gospel only in the
synagogues of the Jews (Acts xiii. 5). But in such syna-
gogues there was always present a certain number of Gentiles,
Y
32 2 THE ACTS OF THE APOSTLES. [xviii.
who had revolted at the absurdities and immoralities of hea-
then religions, and who heard with interest, or who had even
formally embraced, the monotheism and pure morality of
Jewish teachers. Among these Gentile members of the
congregations Paul is represented as finding his most willing
hearers. And at Antioch in Pisidia, when the Christian
teachers encounter such violent opposition from the Jewish
part of the audience that they can no longer continue their
preaching in the synagogue, they gladly avail themselves of
the friendly reception which the Gentiles are willing to give
them, and continue their labours among them (Acts xiii. 46).
But the system of beginning by preaching to the Jews is kept
up in other cities.
"We are told by Baur's disciples that the history of Paul,
as told by Luke, which I have just summarized, is a complete
falsification of the true history. This true history is that
Paul, even before his conversion, had seen clearly that to
become an adherent of Jesus of Nazareth, who had been con-
demned by the Law, and been loaded with its curse, was to
renounce allegiance to the Law. It involved the acceptance
of a new way of salvation, in which Jews had no higher claim
than Gentiles, and it thus abandoned all national privileges.
In a word, the preaching of the Crucified drew with it the
overthrow of the whole Jewish religion. Viewing the matter
thus, Paul persecuted Christianity as a pestilent heresy. But
when he came to be shaken in his conviction that the cross
had refuted the claims of Jesus, and when he had accepted
tlie Resurrection as a facty he did not cease to see, what had
been evident to him before, that the acceptance of a crucified
Saviour involved a complete breach with the Law. So he
strove to find how this new revelation was to be reconciled
■with God's old one. He knew that he could get no light from
the Twelve, who did not see what he had discerned before his
conversion. So he retired to Arabia, thought out the whole
matter for himself, and the result was that he broke entirely
Avith his old past, and the Jew in him had died for ever. He
Avent to Damascus, and there at once began to preach to the
heathen. When obliged to flee thence, he preached to the
XVIII.] THE TUBINGEN VERSION OF PAUL'S HISTORY. 323
heathen elsewhere, making Antioch his headquarters. As
to his beginning by preaching to Jews, we are not to
believe a word of it. The communities of Judea probably
knew little of the substance of his preaching ; otherwise they
would have had little reason to be satisfied with it, for Paul
neither observed the Mosaic Law himself, nor permitted his
converts, whether of Jewish birth or not, to do so. We are
not to believe the author of the Acts, who would have us
think (xxi. 24, 25) that a difference was made as to the con-
duct of Jewish and of Gentile Christians in such matters.
Now, on comparing these two accounts, we cannot help
observing that it is the enemies of the supernatural who
give a miraculous account of that wonderful fact — the trans-
formation of Judaism, which was an exclusive and national
religion into Christianity, which was a catholic and all-
embracing one ; while St. Luke gives a perfectly natural
one. According to the Tiibingen account, Paul not only
passes with startling suddenness from the persecution of the
new religion to the adoption of it, but he adopts it in such a
way as to incur the opposition and hatred not only of the old
friends whom he was forsaking, but of all the previous profes-
sors of the new faith which he was joining. We are to look
on Paul as choosing a position of absolute isolation. We are
taught to believe that everything implying friendly relations
between Paul and earlier Christians is mere invention of St.
Luke. There is no truth, it is said, in the statement that Bar-
nabas had introduced Paul to the Jerusalem Churches (Acts
ix. 27) ; that Barnabas had been commissioned by the Jerusa-
lem Church to preach at Antioch ; that it was in consequence
of his invitation that Paul came there (xi. 22, 25); and that
their earlier preaching had been confined to Hellenists. Paul
had from the first struck out this new line of preaching to
heathen. He had broken completely with his past, given up
his Jewish observances, and was, in consequence, as soon as
his practices became known, hated as cordially by Jews who
owned Jesus to be the Messiah as by those who rejected Him.
And yet the new type of Christianity introduced by tliis eccen-
tric convert completely supplanted the old one. As soon as
Y 2
324 THE ACTS OF THE APOSTLES. [xviii.
the new religion comes under the congnizance of the historical
student, we find the Christian communities in every town con-
stituting parts of one great corporation, and all these commu-
nities of the type invented by Paul. If we search for survivals
of the original type of Christianity, we can find nothing
making pretentions to be so regarded, except, in one little
corner, a few Elkesaite heretics.
All this is truly marvellous, while the account of the canon-
ical writer is simple and natural. Luke knows what modern
theorists are apt to forget, that this champion of the Gentiles
was himself, by feeling and training, a Jew of the strictest
sort, and he does not pretend that the traces of such training
were suddenly obliterated. Paul's own Epistles show him to
be thoroughly a Jew, loving his nation with such affection as
even to be able to wish himself anathema from Christ for their
sake. The same Epistles confirm Luke's account, that he who
resisted the making Jewish observances obligatory on Gen-
tiles, had no such fanatical hatred of them as to refuse to
practise them himself. 'To the Jews,' he says, * I became as
a Jew, that I might gain Jews ; to them that are under the
law, as under the law, not being myself under the law, that I
might gain them that are under the law' (i Cor, ix. 20).
And here let me say in passing that I cannot agree with
some orthodox interpreters who regard the part which Paul
cook by James's advice in the Nazarite's vow on his last visit to
Jerusalem, as deceitful on his part, and as in its result a failure.
St. Luke's representation all through is, that though Paul
resisted the imposition of the Mosaic Law on Gentiles, he did
not forbid the practice of its observance by Jews ; and it was
as a practical proof of this that he exhibited himself in the
Temple taking part in a Jewish sacrifice. Nor do I see reason
to regard this step as unsuccessful : it was done for the satis-
faction of the Jewish Christians, of whom we are told there
were many thousands, and there is no reason to suppose it
had not the desired effect. It was unbelieving Jews from Asia
who set on Paul, and raised the cry that he had introduced
uncircumcised persons into the Temple.
I return to Luke's history of the admission of Gentiles into
IMPROBABILITY OF THE STORY AS TOLD BY BAUR. 325
the Church. This is, that they ordinarily first became hearers
of the word, through their having previously so inclined to
Judaism as to frequent the Synagogue worship ; and then that
when Gentile converts came to be made in large numbers, the
question, Must these men be circumcised before they can be
baptized ? came up as a practical one, and was decided by
Paul in the negative. Now all this history is so simple and
natural that I venture to say that if this were Baur's account,
and Baur's had been Luke's, Rationalist critics would raise a
loud outcry against the reception of a story so contrary to
historic probability. That Paul's relations with the heads of
the Jerusalem Church were friendly, whatever might have
been the coolness towards him of inferior members, is attested
by the Epistle to the Galatians, which tells that Peter was the
object of Paul's first visit to Jerusalem after his conversion,
that he saw James on the same occasion, and that these Apos-
tles with John afterwards formally gave him the right hand of
fellowship, and divided with him the field of labour. The
same Epistle also confirms Luke's account that Barnabas had
been a party to the admission of Gentiles on equal terms to the
Church ; for when afterwards, under the pressure of a depu-
tation from Jerusalem, there was a temporary abandonment of
this principle, Paul notes with surprise, as the climax of the
defection, that even Barnabas should have been carried away.
It is true that there is only one passage in Paul's speeches
in the Acts where the doctrine of justification by faith without
the deeds of the law is prominently dwelt on. I mean Acts
xiii. 39 : * By Him all that believe are justified from all things
from which ye could not be justified by the law of Moses.'
And perhaps we may add xxvi. 18. But then it must be
remembered that Paul is a character in real life, and not a
character in a play. In a play it is a common device to put
into the mouth of a character some pet phrase which he
is always repeating, and by which the audience learn to
recognize him. If the author of the Acts had not been a
real companion of Paul, but a literary man who made Paul
the hero of his story, our modern objectors show us how
the work would probably have been done. The Apostle's
326 THE ACTS OF THE APOSTLES. [xviii.
Epistles show how earnestly he contended for the doctrine of
justification by faith without the works of the law ; and so
phrases insisting- on this doctrine would have been tagged on
to all his speeches. But in real life a man whose career is
not very short has many battles to fight, and the controversies
in which at one time he takes an earnest part often die out
before his life-work is finished. These controversies with
Judaizing Christians form the chief topics of four Epistles all
written at the same period of Paul's life, namely, to the Ro-
mans, to the Galatians, and the two to the Corinthians. But
these topics are nearly as absent from the other Epistles* as
they are from the speeches in the Acts. In these last, where
he is addressing audiences of unbelievers, his subject natu-
rally is the Messiahship of Jesus, and the truth of His Resur-
rection. On the whole, I conclude that we are not justified in
tearing so homogeneous a book as the Acts in pieces on either
of the grounds alleged : that is to say, neither because the book
tells of miracles, nor because it gives an untrue representation
of the life and work of Paul.
On another ground the book has been alleged to betray
that it is not a real history, but a story made up to serve a pur-
pose. It is said that the compiler, whose object was to recon-
cile the Petrine and Pauline parties in the Church, put his
materials together, with the view of drawing a parallel between
Peter and Paul, and asserting their equality. If Peter is
miraculously released by an angel from prison, when his life
was threatened by Herod, Paul must be miraculously released
at Philippi. If Peter strikes Ananias and Sapphira dead,
Paul works a similar miracle on Elymas the sorcerer. And
again, Paul's contest with Elymas is said to have been in-
tended as a parallel to Peter's contest with Simon Magus. f
Peter hais worship offered him by Cornelius ; the people of
Lystra are on the point of sacrificing to Paul, and the people
* Phil. iii. 9 is nearly the only instance of their introduction.
t 'Paul's enoounter with Elymas the sorcerer in Paphos is similar to Peter's with
Simon Magus. The punishment inflicted upon him resembles Paul's own blindness
at the time of conversion ; and thus the occurrence is fictitious.' (Davidson, ii. 128).
This ' thus ' is beautiful.
xvin.] THE PARALLEL BETWEEN PETER AND PAUL. 327
of Melita call him a god. If sick persons are healed because
the shadow of Peter fell on them, from the body of Paul there
are brought to the sick handkerchiefs and aprons, and they
recover. And, as I have already said, Paul's great work of
preaching to the Gentiles has not only its counterpart, but
its anticipation, in Peter's conversion of Cornelius.
That a certain parallelism exists in the history of the Acts
between Peter and Paul need not be denied. The only ques-
tion is whether this was a parallelism existing in fact, or one
invented by the narrator. In all true history we have nume-
rous parallelisms. I barely allude to Plutarch's attempt to
find in the life of each Roman worthy a parallel to the history
of some Grecian great man. On the principles of criticism
by which the Acts have been judged, the history of France
for the first half of this century and the last years of the cen-
tury preceding, ought to be rejected as but an attempt to
make a parallel to the history of England one hundred and
fifty years before. Both stories tell of a revolution, of the
beheading of a king, of the foundation of a republic, suc-
ceeded by a military despotism, and ending with the resto-
ration of the exiled family. In both cases the restored family
misgoverns, and the king is again dethroned ; but this time a
republic is not founded, neither is the king put to death ; but
he retires into exile, and is replaced by a kinsman who suc-
ceeds, on different terms, to the vacated throne.
The attempt to account for the book of the Acts as written
for the sake of making a parallelism between Peter and Paul,
and to find a purpose for every narration included in the
book completely breaks down. It would only be a waste of
time if I were to tell you of the far-fetched explanations that
have been given as to the purpose why certain stories were
introduced ; and I shall presently offer what seems to me a
much simpler explanation of the choice of topics. But what
I think proves decisively that the making a parallel between
Peter and Paul was not an idea present to the author's mind,
is the absence of the natural climax of such a parallel — the
story of the martyrdom of both the Apostles. Very early tra-
dition makes both Peter and Paul close their lives by martyr-
328 THE ACTS OF THE APOSTLES. [xviii.
dom at Rome — the place where Rationalist critics generally
believe the Acts to have been written. The stories told in
tolerably ancient times in that Church which venerated with
equal honour the memory of either Apostle, represented both
as joined in harmonious resistance to the impostures of Simon
Magus. And though I believe these stories to be more
modern than the latest period to which anyone has ventured
to assign the Acts, yet what an opportunity did that part of
the story, which is certainly ancient — that both Apostles
came to Rome and died there for the faith (Clem. Rom. 5) —
offer to anyone desirous of blotting out the memory of all
differences between the preaching of Peter and Paul, and of
setting both on equal pedestals of honour. Just as the names
of Ridley and Latimer have been united in the memory of the
Church of England, and no count has been taken of their
previous doctrinal differences, in the recollection of their joint
testimony for their common faith, so have the names of Peter
and Paul been constantly bound together by the fact that the
martyrdoms of both have been commemorated on the same
day. And if the object of the author of the Acts had been
what has been supposed, it is scarcely credible that he could
have missed so obvious an opportunity of bringing his book
to its most worthy conclusion, by telling how the two servants
of Christ, all previous differences, if there had been any, recon-
ciled and forgotten, joined in witnessing a good confession
before the tyrant emperor, and encouraged each other to stead-
fastness in endurance to the end.
The absence of this natural termination to the book of the
Acts, while it is absolutely fatal to the theory on which I
have been commenting, is indeed hard to explain on any
theory which assigns a late date to the book. Every reader
feels some disappointment at the story being prematurely
broken off; and as I have already mentioned, this was one of
the things which the author of the Muratorian Fragment tried
to account for. We hear of Paul being brought to Rome, to
plead his cause before the Emperor. It is unsatisfactory
merely to be given to understand that for two years he got no
hearine- We ask what happened after that? Was the
XVIII.] PRINCIPLE OF LUKE'S SELECTION OF TOPICS. 329
Apostle then condemned, or was he set at liberty ? and if so,
did he carry out his once expressed intention of preaching
the Gospel in Spain, or did he return to visit the Churches
which he had previously planted ? And are we to believe
the story that he came a second time before the Roman tri-
bunal, and closed his life by martyrdom. The connexion of
St. Peter, too, with the Roman Church, is a subject on which
we should wish to have some authentic information.
To my mind the simplest explanation why St. Luke has
told us no more is, that he knew no more ; and that he knew
no more, because at the time nothing more had happened —
in other words, that the book of the Acts was written a little
more than two years after Paul's arrival in Rome. To this
two principal objections are made — (i) that the earlier book,
the Gospel, must have been written after the destruction of
Jerusalem, which it distinctly predicts; and (2) that the Acts
itself contains (xx. 25) a prediction that Paul should not
return to Ephesus: a prediction which, it is supposed, the
writer would not have inserted unless he had known that
Paul's life had ended without any return to Asia Minor. On
the latter objection I shall have more to say when I come
to treat of the Pastoral Epistles; and neither objection makes
the same impression on me as on those who believe prophecy
to be impossible. I am aware, however, that some very good
and orthodox critics assign the book a later date, and consider
that the account of the Gospel message preached by Paul at the
capital of the civilized world is a sufficient close and climax to
the history. But unless we suppose that St. Luke projected a
third work, which he did not live to execute, I find it hard to
explain his silence as to the deeply interesting period of
Church history which followed Paul's arrival at Rome, in any
other way than by assigning a very early date to the book.
I have already said that the explanations completely break
down which try to find some purpose in St. Luke's selection
of topics in the Acts ; and I need not tell you, for example,
what far-fetched reasons have been given for the introduction
of the Acts of the deacons, the account of the martyrdom of
Stephen, the history of Philip and the Ethiopian eunuch, and
330 THE ACTS OF THE APOSTLES. [xviii.
so forth. The Muratorian Fragment explains Luke's principle
of selection to be, that he tells of the things he had witnessed
himself; and I believe that if you add to this, * or of which he
had the opportunity of hearing- from eye-witnesses ', you will
have the true explanation. So Luke tells in the preface to
his Gospel how he made it his business to trace everything
from the very first ; and the Acts show what opportunities he
had of gaining information. If, for instance, we read the 8th
chapter of the Acts in connexion with the 21st, which tells of
several days which Luke spent in Philip's house, we have
decisive proof that the companion of Paul's travels was also
the compiler of the early history. To account for the inser-
tion of the 8th chapter, I know no other way which is not
forced in the extreme ; while nothing can be more natural
than that a visitor of Philip's, who was making it his business
to gather authentic records of the Apostles' labours, should
be glad to include in his collection a narrative so interesting,
communicated to him by the very lips of a principal actor.
The account which the Acts give of this Philip may, I
think, be regarded as proof of the antiquity of the book. For
the name of Philip has an important place in early ecclesias-
tical tradition. There is quite satisfactory evidence that a
Christian teacher of this name early settled in Hierapolis, that
he came to be known in Asia Minor as Philip the Apostle,
and that daughters of his were believed to have the gift of
prophecy, and were regarded with high veneration. Papias
(Euseb. iii. 39) speaks of these daughters, and represents some
of the traditions which he records as resting on their autho-
rity, Clement of Alexandria {Strom, iii. 6, and see Euseb»
iii. 30) says that Philip the Apostle had daughters whom he
gave in marriage to husbands. Polycrates of Ephesus (Euseb.
V. 24) states that Philip, one of the Twelve, had two daughters
who remained virgins to old age, and who died at Hierapolis ;
and a third daughter who had walked in the Holy Spirit, and
who rested at Ephesus. If we are to lay stress on Clement's
plural number, and to infer that Philip had more married
daughters than one, then, since he had two who did not
marry, we must conclude that he had at least four daughters.
PHILIP THE DEACON AND PHILIP THE APOSTLE.
33^
In the dialogue between Caius and Proclus, written at the
very beginning of the third century, the Montanist interlo-
cutor Proclus speaks of four prophetesses, daughters of Philip,
whose tomb was still at Hierapolis, and that of their father
as well (Euseb. iii. 31). There can be little doubt that Proclus
identified the Philip of Hierapolis with the Philip of the Acts,
as Eusebius expressly does. Whether they were right in
doing so is a question which cannot be confidently answered.
The Philip of the Acts lived at Csesarea, and is described as
one of the Seven ; the other Philip lived at Hierapolis, and
was regarded as one of the Twelve, It is quite possible that
two different Philips might each have four daughters ; yet the
simplest way of explaining the facts seems to be that the
Philip of the Acts, subsequently to Luke's visit, removed
from Palestine to Asia Minor;* and certainly it seems more
probable that the Hellenist Philip should so migrate than the
Apostle, who presumably was a Hebrew. We can believe,
then, that in process of time the veneration given Philip as
a member of the apostolic company caused him to be known
as an Apostle — a name which in early times had various ap-
plications, as I shall afterwards have occasion to remark —
and eventually to be popularly identified with his namesake
of the Twelve. Of the four daughters who were unmarried at
the time of Luke's visit, two may afterwards have married,
and one of these may have died early, or otherwise passed
out of sight.
If the Philip of Hierapolis was really not an Apostle, it is
needless to say what a stamp of antiquity the knowledge of
this fact puts upon Luke's book. But at present I am not
concerned with the question whether Philip the deacon after-
wards went to Hierapolis. I am merely pointing out that
Luke's intercourse with him accounts for the insertion of
some sections in the Acts. We are distinctly told of ' many
days ' of such intercourse, but it is likely that there was a
great deal more. Paul was for two years a prisoner at
* That this became the received opinion may be gathered from the fact that, in
Jerome's time, they showed at Csesarea the chambers of the four daughters, not the
tombs {£J>. 108, ad Eustochitwi).
332 THE ACTS OF THE APOSTLES. [xvni.
Caesarea ; and as Luke had been his companion in his journey
to Jerusalem, and was afterwards his companion in his journey
to Rome, it is likely that they were much together in the
intervening time, and therefore that Luke at Caesarea would
constantly see Philip. He would there hear from him of his
mission to Samaria, and of the subsequent mission thither of
Peter and John. He would also hear from him of the appoint-
ment of the Seven, of whom Philip had been one ; and no
doubt he would learn much from the same authority of the
most distinguished member of the Seven, Stephen, and of his
glorious martyrdom. At Caesarea Luke may very possibly
have met Cornelius ; and in any case he would be sure to
hear there of the remarkable step taken in his case by Peter.
Among the sources used by Luke, I see no objection to
include travelling memoranda made by himself; for though
I quite disbelieve the myth of a journal of Paul's companion
having fallen into the hands of an unknown person in the
next century, such a journal might easily have been preserved
and used by the writer ; and the exact details we meet with in
the account of Paul's last journey to Jerusalem, and his
voyage to Rome, have quite the air of a narrative made from
a diary. This supposition will at least serve to answer some
frivolous objections made to the 'we' sections from their
inequality of treatment. In one place it is said they give a
mere list of names. We took Paul in at Assos, and came to
Mitylene, and the next day over against Chios, and the next
day we touched at Samos, and the day after arrived at Mile-
tus. Then there will be a pretty full account. Then the
whole details of the shipwreck are given, but of the three
months at Melita scarcely anything is told. But anyone who
has kept travelling memoranda knows that this is exactly the
kind of thing they are apt to be ; where nothing interesting
occurred, only a bare register of the places where the night
was spent ; then perhaps some record of greater length, and
after the journey is for the time over, and the traveller settled
down in a place, no entry made at all.* On the whole, I
* Objections made by Baur to the credibility of the story told in the last verses
of the Acts have been repeated by his followers, but to me seem very unreasonable.
XVIII.] POSSIBLE USE OF TRAVELLING MEMORANDA. 333
consider that a study of the choice of topics in the Acts leads
to a conviction both of the unity of authorship, and also of
the author's care to write only of things concerning which he
had full means of information.
I come next to mention another consideration from which
the antiquity of the book of the Acts may fairly be inferred.
First let me premise that we may take it as acknowledged,
that if the compiler of the Acts was not Paul's travelling
companion, he was at least a Paulinist, well acquainted with
his master's manner. The vocabulary of Paul's speeches in
the Acts has been compared with that of Paul's Epistles, the
result being to extort the confession from an unfriendly critic
that the author of the Acts was undoubtedly familiar with the
Pauline diction.* It has been attempted to extenuate the
force of this concession by an attempted proof that the
Pauline speeches in the Acts also contain many of Luke's
favourite words. It is owned, however, that this cannot be
said of all the Pauline speeches. Thus, with regard to Paul's
The story is, that Paul, anxious to learn whether, on his trial before the emperor, his
release will be opposed by the heads of the Jewish community at Rome, puts himself
in communication with them. He finds that, during the long interval that had elapsed
since his arrest, the rulers at Jerusalem had let him drop out of sight. They had given
no commission against him, either by letter or message, to their friends at Rome. But
though these last had heard nothing against Paul personally, they had heard much
against his rehgion. He begs to be allowed to speak in its defence, and gets a
hearing accordingly. But the result is, that though he makes a favourable impression
on a few, the greater part go away unconvinced. This story seems to me to bear the
stamp of simple truth.
* The following is Davidson's abstract of the results of Lekebusch's study of
Paul's speech to the Ephesian Elders at Miletus. I copy it, chiefly for the sake of
the concluding sentence, in order to show how such e\'idence is met by a hostile critic.
The list of instances given might easily be amended by striking out two or three of no
great force, and adding others. ' SovXeveiv r^ Kvpltfi, Acts xx. 19, six times in Paul,
only in Matt. vi. 24, Luke xvi. 13 besides ; raireiuocppoa-vvn, xx. 19, five times in Paul,
only in i Peter v. 5 besides; viroffTeWcc, xx. 20, Gal. ii. 12; rh crvfupepov, xx. 20,
three times in i Cor., only in Heb. xii. 20 besides; SiaKovia, xx. 24, twenty-two
times in Paul; fiapTvpofiai, xx. 26, Gal. v. 3, Eph. iv. 17 ; Kadaphs iyci, xx. 26, Acts
xviii. 6 ; <pelSo/iai, xx. 29, seven times in Paul, only in 2 Pet. ii. 4, 5 besides; vovQenlv
XX. 31, seven times in Paul; iiroiKohofxeLu, xx. 32, six times in Paul, only in Judc 20
besides ; kovmv, active, xx. 35, thirteen times in Paul ; the hortative ypnyopCne,
XX. 31, I Cor. xvi. 13. These may show nothing more than a writer familiar with the
Pauline diction, as the author of the Acts undoubtedly was ' (Davidson, ii. 112).
334 THE ACTS OF THE APOSTLES. [xviii.
speech at Athens, Davidson says, 'It must be confessed,
however, that the discourse contains many peculiar expres-
sions, there being no less than twenty-six words in 19-34
which do not occur in Luke ' ; and his conclusion about this
speech is, ' We think that it is the speaker's to a considerable
extent. It is in harmony with the first Epistle to the Thessa-
lonians, and if it be a condensed summary of many addresses,
the sentiments and part of the language are probably Paul's '*
(Davidson, ii. log).
Now, with regard to the attempt to find traces of Luke's
hand in the report of other speeches of Paul, let me remark
that, admitting the attempt to be successful, the inference
that follows is exactly the opposite of what is supposed.
Let us concede that Luke had a monopoly of his favourite ex-
pressions, and that if we find one of them in a report of Paul's
speeches, we are entitled to conclude that Paul never uttered
that expression ; still if the speech in the main contains Paul's
sentiments, and Paul's language, we are bound to believe that
the other person who has left traces of his hand must be the
person who heard and reported the speech. We can easily
believe that the hearer of a speech, when he afterwards came
to write it down from memory, might, while giving the sub-
stance correctly, introduce a little of his own phraseology ;
but v^re may be sure that if a compiler of the next generation
got possession of a genuine report of speeches of Paul he
would incorporate them in his work "jerbatim. Thus, in my
opinion, if it be once acknowledged that the report of Paul's
* It must be obsen'ed that this speech does not occur in one of the 'we' sections,
so that if it be a genuine specimen of Paul's preaching, the hypothesis that the com-
piler of the Acts somehow got possession of a journal kept by Paul's travelling com-
panion, has to be supplemented by a farther hypothesis that he also got possession of
other genuine records of Paul's preaching. This speech has a character corresponding
to Paul's education. Tarsus was the central university town for Cilicia and Cyprus,
and was so famous that even Romans esteemed it. This country was the cradle of
.Stoicism. Amongst the Stoic teachers which it supplied were Zeno of Cyprus,
Persaeus of Cyprus, Chrysippus of Soli, and Aratus of Soli, who is quoted in the
speech. Paul, therefore, had been brought up in a Stoic atmosphere ; and in the
speech he takes the Stoic side against the Epicureans, in their doctrine about
Providence, about the unity of nature of all nations (v. 26), and about Pantheism,
all that is true in whicli is recognized (^. 28).
XVIII.] LUKE'S REPORT OF PAUL'S SPEECHES. 33^
speeches in the Acts exhibits familiarity with the Pauline
diction, a real proof that these speeches, before being written
down as we have them, had passed through the mind of the
compiler of the Acts, would go to confirm the traditional
opinion that this compiler had been a companion and hearer
of St. Paul. I may add in confirmation of this result, that
Alford has remarked that the speech (Acts xxii.), which was
spoken in Hebrew, contains no Pauline expression, while it
abounds in those peculiar to St. Luke ; on the other hand, the
speech (Acts xvii.) which Luke does not profess to have
heard himself, contains none of Luke's characteristic phrases.
But now I come to the point at which I was desirous to
arrive. If it is owned that the compiler of the Acts was a
Paulinist, * undoubtedly familiar with the Pauline diction ',
we ask how he acquired that familiarity. If it was not from
personal intercourse with the Apostle, it must have been from
diligent study of his Epistles, and such study a Paulinist of
the next generation could not fail to give. But the strange
point is that no satisfactory proof can be made out that the
author of the Acts had ever seen St. Paul's Epistles. If we
were to borrow our opponents' language, we might say that
St. Luke absolutely ' knew nothing ' of these letters. We can
find in the Epistle to the Hebrews, and in i Peter, clear
proofs of acquaintance with Paul's letters ; but not so in the
Acts. Can we imagine a compiler of the next century so
subtle as to give the speeches which he puts in Paul's mouth
a Pauline character, by employing that Apostle's vocabulary,
and yet avoiding anything like a direct echo of any passage in
the Epistles ? The nearest coincidence I can find is that in
the speech at Athens Paul says (xvii. 31), 'He will judge
the world in righteousness by that man whom he hath
ordained, whereof he hath given assurance unto all men in
that he hath raised him from the dead.' This is like what
Paul says in the beginning of the'Epistle to the Romans (i. 4),
* Declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the
spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead ' : so like
at least that we can easily believe both to have been utter-
ances of the same man ; yet the likeness is certainly not that
336 THE ACTS OF THE APOSTLES. [xviii.
of direct imitation. If the antiquity of the book of Acts were
undoubted, and that of Paul's Epistles disputed, I am per-
suaded that our opponents would not admit the validity of a
single proof we could produce of St. Luke's acquaintance with
those Epistles, while they could make out a very strong case
to prove his ignorance.
For example, Philippi is a place where, as I already re-
marked, the author of the ' we ' sections spent a considerable
time ; and its Church would, therefore, be one in which he
would take a lively interest. Yet he shows no sign of ac-
quaintance with the letter which, at a period a little later
than that included in the history of the Acts, Paul wrote to
the Philippian Church. In the account given in the Acts of
the formation of that Church, Lydia is the only person men-
tioned by name. If the Epistle had been forged by anyone
who had seen the Acts, that name would surely have been
found in it ; but it is absent. On the other hand, there is not
a word in the Acts about Epaphroditus, about the women
Euodia and Syntyche, about the name Clement, afterwards so
celebrated, about the gifts of money sent by the Philippian
Church to Paul at Thessalonica (Phil. iv. i6 ; see also z Cor.
xi. 9).* Thus the independence of the Acts and this Epistle
is clearly marked ; but at what an early date must each
writing have been composed, if the author of neither had seen
the other.
Take again the Epistle to the Galatians. The main topic
of the assailants of the Acts is the assertion that the book
contradicts that Epistle. I do not admit that there is any
real contradiction, but I think also that St. Luke when he
wrote had not seen that Epistle. There are some things men-
tioned in it, such as Paul's journey to Arabia, the rebuke of
Paul to Peter at Antioch, the dispute concerning the circum-
cision of Titus, which I think St. Luke would scarcely have
* Bishop FitzGerald used to think there was an obUque reference to the Mace-
donian gifts in o-yceixfTo tm \6y(f (Acts xviii. 5) ; the meaning being that these gifts
freed Paul from the necessity of working at his trade, and enabled him to devote
himself entirely to the preaching of the word. Canon Cook gives the same explana-
tion in the Speaker' s Commentary .
XVIII. j USE OF PAUL'S EPISTLES IN THE ACTS. ^^y
passed over in silence had he known that Epistle. Now a
writer of the second century could neither have been ignorant
of that Epistle himself, nor could he flatter himself that his
readers could be so. Thus the excuse will not serve that he
omitted these things in order to conceal from his readers that
there ever had been any variance between Paul and the original
Apostles. If that had been his object, he would have repeated
the same stories with some different colouring ; but he would
not have resorted to the ostrich-like device of being silent
about things told in a book which he knew his readers had in
their hands. But while I find it hard to think that the author
of the Acts could have been acquainted with the Epistle to
the Galatians, I see no difficulty in the supposition that he
was ignorant of it. If Luke had not been with Paul at the
time he wrote that letter, then unless Paul kept a copy of it,
or unless the Galatian Church sent him back a copy of his
own letter, one of Paul's immediate companions was just one
of the last persons in the Church to be likely to see it.
Again, it seems to me probable that Luke, when he wrote,
had not seen the Epistles to the Corinthians. Surely if he
had read i Cor. xv. 6, 7, his Gospel would have told something
of our Lord's appearance to James and to the five hundred
brethren at once; and if he had read 2 Cor. xi. 24, 25, the Acts
would have given some particulars about the five times when
in the synagogue Paul received forty stripes save one, of the
three beatings with rods, and the three shipwrecks. In the
case of I Cor., however, we have the strongest token that has
been found of indebtedness on Luke's part to Pauline epistles,
viz., the close resemblance between the words in which the
institution of the Eucharist is recorded in that Epistle and in
the Gospel. I am myself inclined to explain that resemblance
by the liturgical use of the words. Luke would probably have
often heard Paul when conducting divine service recite the
words of Institution, and so they would come into his Gosjael
in the same form. One other phrase is cited, 'Whatsoever is
set before you eat' (i Cor. x. 27), which nearly coincides with
the words in the direction to the Seventy (Luke x. 8), 'Eat
such things as are set before you', iaQ'uTt to. wapaTidifxeva vfxXv.
z
338 THE ACTS OF THE APOSTLES. [xviii.
If the coincidence is more than accidental, I should ascribe it
to the adoption as his own, by St. Paul, of well-known words
of our Lord. But the question whether Luke might have seen
one or two Epistles of St. Paul is one which I have no inte-
rest in contesting. However that be decided, two facts re-
main. First, the Acts say nothing as to Paul's having written
letters. Now, if the Acts had been compiled after these letters
had obtained general circulation, the compiler would at least
have mentioned, as every modern biographer of Paul does,
the fact of their composition, even if he had nothing to tell
about the circumstances which drew them forth. When
speaking, for example, of Paul's residence in Corinth, he
would have noted that thence Paul wrote his epistle to the
Church of Rome. Biographers of St. John, of whom I shall
speak in the next lecture, do not fail to tell the circumstances
under which he wrote his Gospel. But to the author of the
Acts St. Paul is known, not as a writer, but as a man of
action. We conclude, then, that this book must have been
written before the period when Paul's letters had passed from
being the special property of the several Churches to which
they were addressed, and had become the general property of
Christians. Secondly, the Acts not only do not mention Paul's
epistles, but show very scanty signs of acquaintance with them.
It follows, then, that the familiarity with Paul's diction which
the writer confessedly exhibits, if not obtained from a study
of his letters, must have been derived from close personal
intercourse.
The language of Peter's speeches in the Acts has also
been compared with that of Peter's first Epistle, the result
being to elicit several coincidences. Thus the idea that Jesus
was delivered by the determinate counsel of God occurs three
times in Peter's speeches (ii. 23, iv. 28, x. 42), and is found in
the Epistle (i. 2, 20, ii. 4, 6). The prophecy (Ps. cxviii. 22) of
our Lord, as the stone set at nought by the builders, is quoted
(Acts iv. 1 1, 1 Pet. ii. 6). And generally the Petrine speeches
in the Acts agree with the Epistle in their thorough harmony
with Paul's doctrine. But whether that is a reason for doubt-
ing their authenticity had better be postponed until I come to
discuss the Episde.
EXTERNAL CONFIRMATION OF LUKE'S ACCURACY. ;^^g
I have thought that the most important point on which to
dwell in the limited time at my disposal is the proof that the
compiler of the Acts was a companion of St. Paul. If this
were not established it would be useless to give proofs of
Luke's accuracy in particulars, and of his exact knowledge of
localities. It would simply be said that the compiler had
access to some very good sources of information. I may,
however, give you a few specimens of the argument into the
details of which I am not able to enter. On one point, for
instance, on which Luke's accuracy had been questioned,
further investigation has confirmed it. Sergius Paulus is
described (xiii. 7) as proconsul {avdv-rrarog) at Cyprus. Now,
we learn from Strabo (xiv. xvii. 25) that there were two
classes of provinces in the Roman empire, as arranged by
Augustus : one, the ruler of which was appointed by the
Senate ; the other, where military operations were likely to
be necessary, the ruler of which was appointed by the
emperor. The ruler of a senatorial province bore the title
of Proconsul ; that of an imperial province was called Pro-
praetor {avTi(TTpaTi}yog). Strabo further informs us that Cyprus
was governed by'ffrparrjyot. Hence it was inferred that these
were styled propraetors, and that Cyprus therefore was one of
the provinces which Augustus had reserved for himself; so it
had been set down as a mistake of Luke's that he called the
governor proconsul. But Strabo expressly places Cyprus on
the list of senatorial provinces ; and it is certain that the
(TTpaTrjyoi, by whom he tells us Cyprus was governed, bore the
title of Proconsul, and were praetors only as regards their
previous rank. This is clearly stated by Dion Cassius, who
further informs us (liii. 12, liv. 4) that though Cyprus had been
at first on Augustus's list, a rectification was subsequently
made by him, the disturbed province of Dalmatia, which had
been assigned toj the Senate, having been exchanged for
quiet provinces in the emperor's portion ; and that at that
time Cyprus reverted to the Senate. This is confirmed by
coins and other remains,* showing that down to and after the
* In Cesnola's Cyprus an inscription is given (p. 425), in which the words EITI
Z2
340
THE ACTS OF THE APOSTLES. [xviii.
time of Paul's visit the governor of Cyprus bore the title of
Proconsul. It may be mentioned that Pliny, in his Natural
History, for two books, II. and XVIII., quotes the authority of
a Sergius Paulus. The name is not so uncommon as to make
an identification certain ; yet, since in each of the two books
for which he cites the name, Pliny tells something about the
natural history of Cyprus, it is likely enough that the same
person is meant. At several of the other places which Paul
visited we have equal accuracy in the description of the
magistrates. At Corinth, Gallio is described as avdvirarog
(Acts xvii. 12). This was in the reign of Claudius. Under
Tiberius, Achaia was imperial ; under Nero it was indepen-
dent ; under Claudius it was senatorial, as represented by St.
Luke (see Tacit. Ann. i. 76; Sueton. Claudius 25). In Ephe-
sus the mention of avOvTraroL (xix. 38) is equally correct. At
Thessalonica, again, the magistrates are called politarchs
(Acts xvii. 6). Now this name is found in connexion with
Thessalonica in no ancient author ; but an arch which to this
day spans the main street of the city bears the inscription
that it had been raised by the seven politarchs.* It is a
curious coincidence, but one on which nothing can be built,
that among their names we find Gains, Secundus, and Sosi-
pater — all three names occurring Acts xx. 4, and that of
Secundus in connexion with Thessalonica. St. Luke men-
tions also the Demos of Thessalonica, an appropriate word
in speaking of a free city. liTparnyoi, praetors, seems a very
grand title for the two magistrates of the little provincial
city of Philippi (Acts xvi. 20); but Cicero, in one of his
orationsf a hundred years earlier, laughs at the magistrates
of an Italian provincial town who had the impudence to call
themselves praetors, and no doubt what happened then was
very likely to happen again. That Philippi was a Colonia
(Acts xvi. 12) is confirmed by Dion Cassius (li. 4). The
riATAOT [ANOjTriATOT occur. This may have been the Sergius Paulus of St. Luke.
I derive this reference, as well as other of the points noted above, from an article by
Bp. Lightfoot, Contemporary Review, May, 1878.
* Boeckh, Inscr. Gr. No. 1967 ; Leake's Northern Greece, lir. 236.
t De Leg. Agrar. contra Rullum, \ xxxiv. Ste also Hor. Sat. I. v. 34.
XVIII.] HAD THE WRITER READ JOSEPHUS ? 341
governor of Melita is neither Proconsul nor Propraetor, but
head-man, npioTog, a title the accuracy of which is attested
by inscriptions. (Boeckh, No. 5754). Luke's mention of
Iconium is noteworthy (Acts xiii. 51). Just before (xiii. 13),
he has described Perga as 'of Pamphylia', Antioch as 'of
Pisidia' : just after (xiv. 6), Lystra and Derbe as ' f/ie cities
of Lycaonia'. Iconium alone is named without geographical
designation. Now it seems likely that Iconium was at the
time extra-provincial; for Paul's contemporary Pliny {Na^.
Hist. V. 25) distinguishes it from Lycaonia proper as the
chief of fourteen cities which formed an independent
tetrarchy .*
Before leaving the subject of the Acts, I may mention one
of the newest attacks on it — so new, indeed, that the author
of Supernatural Religion had not discovered it when he pub-
lished his volume on the Acts in 1877; but shortly after,
having met an article by Holtzmann in Hilgenfeld'sZ^/Z^^/z?-?//
for 1873, he communicated an abstract of it to the Fortnightly
Review, Oct., 1877. St. Luke had been accused of certain
historical blunders, the evidence being that he is on certain
points at variance with Josephus ; for, of course, it is assumed
that, if there be a difference, Josephus is right and Luke
wrong. But Holtzmann imagined himself to have discovered
that Luke made use of the work of Josephus, and conse-
quently wrote later; and therefore not till after the close of
the first century. It is amusing to find that the main part of
the proof is that the names of different public characters
* I owe this remark to Dr. Gwynn, who has also observed with regard to the
titles of provincial magistrates, that the Acts of Paul and Thecla {see next lecture
show how easy it was for a later writer to go wrong in this matter. The ' proconsul '
at Antioch in these Acts (§ 32) is clearly a mistake; for the Syrian Antioch is meant,
and Syria was not a Senatorial Province. The case of the 'proconsul' at Iconium
(§§. 16-20) is less clear. Iconium apparently had its own tetrarch {see above) ; pos-
sibly its Duumviri, as a Colonia (Boeckh, 3991, 3993; Ecldiel, Doctr. Numm. Vet.
III. 32 ; Marquardt, Romische Staatsverw., 11. B. 30), or if counted as of Lycaonia, it
would belong at different times, to Galatia (Strabo xii. v. i ; vi. i), to Cappadocia
(Ptolemy, v. 6), to Asia (PHny, ut supr. [?], Boeckh, 3188). Of these, Asia alone
was a Senatorial province. If, however, the proconsul of Asia were intended, this
great official would not be found within call of a plaintiff in a third-rate and outlying
city of his province.
342 THE ACTS OF THE APOSTLES. [xviii.
mentioned by St. Luke are also mentioned by Josephus ;
for example, Annas and Caiaphas, Gamaliel, Herod, Felix,
Festus, &c. In the same way we can prove that the political
tracts ascribed to Dean Swift were in reality written in the
reign of George HI. ; for they mention Queen Anne, the
Duke of Marlborough, Harley, and St. John,^__^showing clearly
that the author must have read Smollett's History of England.
The author of Supernahiral Religion strengthens the'proof by
finding spread over eleven or more sections of Josephus some
of the words which occur in three verses of St. Luke's pre-
face. But in truth a man unacquainted with the literature of
the period is as incompetent to say whether the occurrence of
the same^words in different authors is a proof of literary ob-
ligation, as a negro who had never seen more^than two white
men in his life would be to say whether their likeness to each
other was a proof of close relationship. Thus Luke could
have found in the Septuagint the greater part of the words he
is accused of borrowing from Josephus. Others again (auroTr-
Tjjc for example), as Dr. Hobart has shown [Medical Language
of St. Luke, pp. 87-Qo), belong to the vocabulary of Greek
medical writers. Galen's prefaces have closer affinities with St.
Luke's than have those of Josephus.* Thus we find in Galen's
prefaces jthe complimentary epithet K/odrttrrt, the commence-
ment by liTH^i] with SoKa for apodosis, the phrases aKpi(5iog irapa-
KoXovOnaai and lirix^ipHv. Several of the wordsjon which an
argument has-been built are the common property of all who
use the Greek language. One of the words which it is assumed
Luke could not have known unless he had learned it from Jose-
phus is actually tutttw ; which would raise the question, if the
doubt had not occurred to one before, whetherjthe objector had
ever seen a Greek grammar. Perhaps the^highest point of
laughable absurdity is reached by Krenkel [LLilgenfeld' s Zeit-
schrift, 1873, p. 441), who thinks that Luke would not have
known how to describe our Lord as a ttoic st'wi' SwSeica if Josephus
* Galen wrote in the latter half of the second century, but his writings may be
taken as probable evidence of the usage of previous medical writers. The use of
eTTixeipeif as above, is found in Hippocrates some centuries earlier, as Dr. Hobart has
pointed out.
xrx.J APOCRYPHAL ACTS OF THE APOSTLES. 343
had not spoken of his own proficiency when he was TraTc tt^ jOt
TeacrapsaKaiSiKaTov erog. Krenkel suggests that Luke altered the
14 of Josephus into 12, because the latter was a sacred num-
ber. No doubt, if the difference had been the other way, it
would have been found that twice seven was the sacred
number.
Though Luke and Josephus frequently mention the same
people, the discrepancies between them are as remarkable as
the coincidences. For instance, the ' Egyptian ' who in Acts
xxi. 38 leads out 4000 Sicarii is in Bell, Jud. II. xiii. 5, at the
head of 30,000 ; and so on. Anyone, therefore, who says that
Luke read Josephus is bound to say also that Luke was a very
careless person who remembered very little of what he read.
And the best critics of the sceptical school have found them-
selves unable to execute the change of front from accusing
Luke of contradicting Josephus to accusing him of having
copied him.
XIX.
APOCRYPHAL ACTS OF THE APOSTLES.
In discussing the relation between St. Matthew's Gospel
and the so-called Gospel of the Hebrews, I was led, in a
former lecture, to speak of other non-canonical gospels ; and
thus I have come to include in the plan of these lectures an
account not only of the writings which have obtained admis-
sion into the New Testament Canon, but also of those which
at any time seemed to have pretensions to find their way
into it.*
* Until comparatively lately the most important collection of such writings was
that by Fabricius (Codex Apocryphus, N. T., Hamburg, 1719). In 1832 a new
Codex Apocryphus was commenced by Thilo, but he did not publish more than the
first volume containing Apocryphal Gospels. A collection of Apocryphal Acts was
published by Tischendorf in 1851, followed by Apocryphal Gospels in 1653, 2nd edit.
344 APOCRYPHAL ACTS OF THE APOSTLES. [xix.
This, then, would seem to be the place to treat of Apocry-
phal Acts of the Apostles; but though there is great abun-
dance of legendary tales of Apostolic labours and miracles,
there is scarcely any extant document, which either on the
ground of antiquity or of extent of acceptance, can make
remote pretensions to canonical authority. If we were to
judge by the number of New Testament books which modern
critics have rejected as spurious, we should be led to think
that the early Church was extremely easy in admitting the
claims of any document which aspired to a place in the
Canon. But actually we find cause to admire the extreme
rigour of the scrutiny to which any such claim was subjected.
We have already seen that the two minor epistles of St.
John (whose common authorship with the first epistle there is
no good reason to doubt) did not find acceptance at once, or
without controversy. Like hesitation was shown (and as I
believe without any just cause) in the case of St. James's
Epistle, of which I have still to speak. And though the story
of the labours and sufferings of the first preachers of the
Gospel constituted the reading which Christians found at
once most interesting and most edifying, it does not appear
that anyone dreamed of setting any record of Apostolic
labours on a level with that made by St. Luke. The con-
sequence was that this branch of Christian literature, being
not interfered with or controlled by ecclesiastical authority,
became liable to great variations of form. Successive re-
lators of these stories modified them to suit their respective
1876, and by a volume containing Apocryphal Revelations and some supplements to
his volume of Acts in 1866. Syriac Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles have been made
accessible by Professor Wm. Wright (London, 1871). A very important addition to
our sources of information wiU be made in Max Bonnet's Suppleme7itum Codicis
Apocryphi, of which the first part containing the Acts Of St. Thomas appeared in
1883. A complete account of all that is known on the subject will be found in Lip-
sius's Die apokryphen Apostelgeschichten U7id Apostellegenden, 1883, a work in two
large volumes. The publication of the part which treats of the Acts of Peter and
Paul has been delayed until some new materials have been made accessible.
Lipsius, Rd. A., born 1830, Professor of Theology at Jena. Though differing in
opinion from him on many important points, I cannot forbear to acknowledge the
obligations students owe to his ability, learning, and industry.
x:x.] GNOSTIC ACTS. 345
tastes or to express their doctrinal views ; so that now it is
often a difficult and uncertain task for critical sagacity to
recover the original form of the legends. The difficulty is
increased by the number of the documents that demand inves-
tigation, much still remaining to be done for a complete exa-
mination of the Greek and Latin lives to be found in Western
libraries, while considerable addition to the stock of materials
may be expected from Oriental sources.
That the Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles should be sub-
jected to some alterations and recastings was indeed a neces-
sity resulting from the fact that it was in heretical circles
that the majority took their origin. I have already (Lect. II.)
spoken of the Clementines, which were in fact Ebionite Acts
of Peter. There was still more active manufacture of apocry-
phal literature among the Gnostics, some of whom displayed
great fertility of invention, and had tales to tell of wonders
wrought by the Apostles which had as lively interest for the
orthodox as for the heretics. So members of the Catholic
Church who met with these Gnostic Acts found it easy to be-
lieve that the facts related in them were in the main true,
however much they might have been disfigured by heretical
additions.* And then it was a natural step to expurgate
these Acts, cancelling as spurious what was found distasteful
to orthodox feelings, or giving the story some modification
which would remove the offence. For instance, Encratism is
a prominent feature of the Gnostic Acts. The married life is
treated as absolutely unlawful. The apostolic preachers are
represented as having done a good work, when a couple
about to unite in wedlock have been prevailed on to abandon
the design, or when a wife has been persuaded to refuse fur-
ther intercourse with her husband. The persecution which
* The preface of the Pseudo-MeUto to his 'Passion of St. John,' in words repro-
duced in a forged letter of Jerome to Chromatins and HeHodorus, exemplifies the
opinion of an orthodox reviser concerning the work of his heretical predecessor :
' Quiedara de virtutibus quidem [et miraculis], quse per eos Dominus fecit, vera dixit ;
de doctrina vero multa mentitus est.' Thus, by a curious reversal of modern canons
of belief, the rule is, Beheve all the miraculous part of the story, and disbelieve the
rest.
346 APOCRYPHAL ACTS OF THE APOSTLES. [xix.
the Christian preachers meet with is frequently represented as
arising from the natural resentment of husbands at such
teaching. When these stories are repeated by an orthodox
narrator, the heretical character of the Encratism is removed.
The woman who separates herself is not a wife but a concu-
bine ; or there is some impediment of close kindred ; or the
separation is not intended to be permanent, but is only a
temporary withdrawal for purposes of devotion, or in order
more closely to attend to the ApostolicTpreaching.
I. There is no heretical taint in^the work which I take first
to describe, and which related the preaching of Addai or Thad-
daeus, to Abgarus, king of Edessa. I place it first because we
have an assurance of the antiquity of the story in the fact that
Eusebius accepted it as authentic, and gave an abstract of it,
at the end of the first book of his Ecclesiastical History. He
states that he derived his account from records written in
Syriac, preserved in the archives of the city of Edessa. This
city, the capital of Osrhoene, the northern province of Meso-
potamia, was for a long period a centre of theological culture
for Syriac-speaking Christians. It boasted with pride of the
early date at which it had received the Gospel ; and in time it
was believed to have derived special privileges from the recep-
tion by its king of a letter from our Saviour's own hand. The
barbarians should never be able to take the city. No idolater,
no Jew, no heretic could live in it. With these privileges,
however, we are not immediately concerned, since the belief
in them is of later origin than the story with which I have to
do. This is, that Abgar, one of several successive rulers of
Edessa who bore this name, being afflicted with a sore dis-
ease, and having heard of the mighty deeds of Jesus, wha
cured sicknesses by the power of His word alone, and who
even raised the dead, sent ambassadors to Him with a letter,
of which Eusebius gives a translation. In this he expresses his
belief that Jesus must be either God or the Son of God ; and
he begs Him to have pity on him and heal his disease. He
has heard of the plots which the Jews are contriving against
Jesus, and offers him refuge in his city, which though small
is of good consideration and well sufficient for them both.
XIX. j THE ABGAR LEGEND OF EDESSA.
347
Eusebius gives also a translation of what purports to be a
letter from our Lord in answer. In some versions of the story-
cur Lord's answer is verbal : in others the verbal answer
is turned into a letter by the apostle Thomas. It begins,
' Blessed art thou who hast believed in me without having
seen me ; for it is written of me that they who have seen me
shall not believe me, and that they who have not seen me
shall believe and live.' There seems to be here a clear use of
John XX. 29. The nearest Old Testament passage is Is. lii. 15,
and the resemblance of that is not very close. The letter goes
on to say that our Lord must finish all the things for which
He had been sent, and afterwards be taken up to Him that
had sent Him ; but that, after He had been taken up, He would
send one of His disciples, who should heal his disease and
give life to him and his people. Then the story relates that
after our Lord's Ascension, the apostle Judas, also called
Thomas, sent Thaddaeus, one of the seventy, who preached to
Abgar and healed him of his disease, the king declaring that
he had already so believed in Jesus that, if it had not been for
the power of the Romans, he would have gone with an army
to destroy the Jews who had crucified Jesus. Thaddaeus
teaches him the cause why our Lord had been sent into the
world, and tells him of our Lord's mighty work, and of the
mysteries which He spoke to the world ; how He abased Him-
self and humbled His Divinity, and was crucified, and de-
scended into Hades, and clove the wall of partition which
from eternity had never been cleft, and brought up the dead.
For He descended alone, but ascended with many to His
Father.* Eusebius concludes his abstract by telling that
Abgar offered Thaddaeus silver and gold ; but he refused, say-
ing, How shall we who have abandoned our own property
take that which belongs to others ? He gives the date, the year
340 — that is of the Seleucian era, corresponding to the year 28
or 29 of ours.
Either the book from which Eusebius made his extracts, or
an amplification of it, is still extant in Syriac. It is called
* This recognizes the story of the ' harrowing of hell ', told in the Gospel of
Nicodemus {see p. 202).
348 APOCRYPHAL ACTS OF THE APOSTLES. [xix.
The Teaching of A ddai, and was edited, with an English trans-
lation, by Dr. Phillips, in 1876. It contains, with only trifling
variations, all that is cited by Eusebius ; but it contains a
good deal more. For example, the letter of our Lord concludes
with a promise of inviolability to the city of Edessa. There is
a story of which you must have heard, but about which Euse-
bius is silent, that one of Abgar's ambassadors, being the
royal painter, took a picture of our Lord and brought it back
with him to Edessa. There is a correspondence between Abgar
and the emperor Tiberius, in which Abgar urges the Roman
emperor to punish the Jews for the murder of our Lord ; and
Tiberius answers that he had disgraced Pilate for his share in
the crime, but that he was prevented by troubles in Spain
from taking immediate steps against the Jews. And there is
a story about Protonice, the wife of the Emperor Claudius,
almost identical with that told of Constantine's mother He-
lena, namely, that she sought for our Lord's cross, and, find-
ing three, was enabled to distinguish the right one by apply-
ing them successively to a dead body, which was unaffected
by the touch of the crosses of the two thieves, but was restored
to life when touched by that of our Lord. It is a question
whether Eusebius designedly omitted all this matter, or whe-
ther it was added since his time. Lipsius, who has made a
special study of this story,* decides in favour of the latter sup-
position, a conclusion which I have no inclination to dispute.
He dates the original document used by Eusebius A. D. 250,
and the enlargement about 360. I have already {see p. 83) had
occasion to refer to one of the proofs that the document is not
earlier than the third century, viz. that it represents Addai as
using the Diatessaron in the public service. The reading
of Paul's Epistles and of the Acts of the Apostles is also
especially mentioned (p. 44). t
II. The work which I next consider might, on chronologi-
* Die edessenische Abgarsage, 1880.
t Dean Reeves tells me that no inference, as to the currency of the Thaddseus
legend in Ireland, can be drawn from the common use of the name Thady ; this being
but the representative of a Celtic name, signifying 'poet', and also known in the form
Teigue.
XIX.] THE ACTS OF PAUL AND THECLA.
349
cal grounds, have been placed first, for it has earlier attesta-
tion and was earlier written : the Acts of Paul and Thecla. In
this story, as I shall presently tell, Thecla is related to have
baptized herself, and consequently her case was cited against
Tertullian in the controversy whether or not it was permissi-
ble for females to baptize. He disposes of the citation [De
Baptismo, 17) by denying the authenticity of the book; and
makes the interesting statement that a presbyter in Asia had
confessed his authorship of the work, pleading that he had
made it through love of Paul, whereupon he was deposed from
his office. Thus we learn that the story of Thecla was current
in the second century ; and I know no good reason for doubt-
ing that it was, in its main substance, the same as that con-
tained in the Acts now extant. Notwithstanding Tertullian's
rejection, the story of Thecla is used as genuine by a whole
host of fathers : Ambrose, Augustine, Gregory Nyssen, Gre-
gory Nazianzen,Epiphanius,Chrysostom, and others.* Though
Eusebius does not directly mention Thecla, he shows his
knowledge of her story by calling another Thecla 77 koQ'
i7iuac GekAo [Mart. Pal. 3). His contemporary Methodius, in
his Symposium^ makes Thecla the victor in the contest of vir-
gins. The Acts were translated into Latin, Syriac, and Arabic.
These Acts of Paul and Thecla are deeply tinged with
Encratism. This sufficiently appears from the following
specimen of Paul's preaching : 'Blessed are the pure in heart,
for they shall see God, Blessed are they who keep the flesh
undefiled, for they shall become the temple of God. Blessed
are the continent (ot EYKpareie), for God shall speak unto them.
Blessed are they who renounce this world, for they shall be
called upright. Blessed are they who have wives as though
they had them not, for they shall inherit God. . . . Blessed
are the bodies of the virgins, for they shall be well pleasing
to God, and shall not lose the reward of their chastity.' This
sermon is delivered by Paul in the house of his host Onesi-
phorus at Iconium, where the story opens. The virgin Thecla
* Ambrose de Virginibiis ii. ; August. Cotitra Faust, xxx. 4; Greg. Nyss. Horn.
T4 in Cantic Canticor ; Greg. Naz. Orat. xxiv. in Laud. S. Cypr. 10, Frcecept ad
Virgg. V. 190; Epiphan. Hcer. Ixxviii. 16; Chrys. in Act., Horn. 25.
350 APOCRYPHAL ACTS OF THE APOSTLES. [xix.
overhears it from the window of her neighbouring house, and
is delighted with the Apostle's praises of virginity. She
hangs * like a spider' at the window for three days and nights
together, not leaving it either to eat or to drink, until her
mother in despair sends for Thecla's affianced husband
Thamyris, the chief man of the city. But his interference
is in vain ; Thecla has no ears for anyone but Paul.
Thamyris, going out, meets two of Paul's companions,
Demas and Hermogenes, men full of hypocrisy, and asks
them who this deceiver was who forbade marriages to take
place. They tell him that Paul robbed young men of their
wives, and maidens of their husbands, teaching them, ' Ye
have no part in the Resurrection unless ye remain chaste and
do not defile your flesh ' ; but they teach him that the
Resurrection has already taken place, consisting in the
generation of children, and in the obtaining the knowledge
of the true God.
I may remark in passing that the use of the names Onesi-
phorus, Demas, and Hermogenes, the parts ascribed to these
characters, and the doctrine about the Resurrection being
past already, show clearly that the writer of these Acts had
read the second Epistle to Timothy with which his work has
other verbal coincidences. These last coincidences might,
perhaps, be explained away as arising from additions made
by an orthodox reviser ; but a reviser would not be likely to
alter the names of the characters, Onesiphorus is described
as seeking for Paul (2 Tim. i. 17), and you may care to hear
the description by which he had been taught to recognize the
apostle. He was a man of small stature, with bald head,
bow-legged, of a healthy complexion (twEicrtKoc), with eye-
brows joined together, and a somewhat aquiline nose [juiKpoJg
iiripivog)* I have only mentioned the coincidences with
* On this description have been founded the representations of Paul's appearance
given by several later writers. The following is Renan's version : 'II etait laid, de
courte taille, opais et voute. Ses fortes epaules portaient bizarrement une tete petite
et chauve. Sa face bleme etait comme envahie par une barbe epaisse, un nez aqui-
lin, des yeui per9ants, des sourcils noirs qui se rejoignaient sur le front.' — Les
Apoires, p. 170,
XIX.] THE ACTS OF PAUL AND THECLA. 351
2 Timothy because this is a disputed book. These Acts are
full of coincidences with the New Testament. You may have
noticed two in the fragment of Paul's sermon which I quoted,
* Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God ', and
* they that have wives as though they had none '.
At the instigation of the false disciples, Paul is arraigned
before the proconsul ; but the first night of his imprisonment
Thecla, by gifts of , her personal ornaments, bribes the porter
of her own house to let her out, and the jailer to let her in,
and sits at Paul's feet and receives his instruction. There she
is found ; and when Paul is brought before the tribunal she
is sent for too; but when examined by the proconsul she
makes no answer, having no eyes or ears for any but Paul.
Though the proconsul had been willing to listen to the Chris-
tian doctrine preached_|by Paul, he now condemns him as a
magician, and has him whipped out of the city. As for Thecla,
her own mother pronounces that she ought to be burned,
in order that other women might learn not to follow so bad
an example ; and burned she accordingly would have been if
the pyre had not miraculously been quenched. Escaping
from the city, Thecla finds Paul, who with his company had
been fasting and praying for her deliverance. Onesiphorus
was with him, but he had parted with all his goods; so when,
after six days' fasting, they can hold out no longer, Paul has
to sell his upper garment in order to buy the bread and herbs
which, with water, constituted their fare. Thecla begs that
she may travel with Paul whithersoever he went ; but he
replies, * Nay, for the time is evil, and thou of fair form, lest
another temptation worse than the former come on thee and
thou not be able to resist.' ' Give me,' she said, ' the seal
in Christ, and no temptation shall touch me.' And Paul
answered, ' Thecla, be patient, and thou shalt receive the
water.'
She accompanies him then to Antioch, where her beauty
excites the passion of the Syriarch Alexander, and brings on
her new trials. In consequence of her resistance to him, she is
brought before the governor, and condemned to the wild beasts.
In the meantime she obtains that the virginity for which she
352 APOCRYPHAL ACTS OF THE APOSTLES. [xix.
was willing to undergo so much should be preserved, and is
committed to the charge of a lady, Trypheena, who later in
the story is spoken of as a queen and as a relation of the
emperor. Tryphsena receives her to take the place of her
deceased daughter, and Thecla requites the service by effica-
cious prayers which transfer the soul of this dead heathen to
the place of bliss. The lioness to whom Thecla is first ex-
posed not only licks her feet and refuses to touch her, but
defends her against the other animals let loose on her. But
when, after having killed some of the assailants, the faithful
lioness herself is slain, Thecla, seeing no further escape, jumps
into a tank where seals are kept, crying, as she does so, I am
baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the Last Day. There-
upon the sea monsters fall dead, and Thecla is surrounded
with a cloud of fire, so that neither can the beasts touch her
nor her nakedness be seen. I need not pursue the history.
When Paul takes leave of her, he bids her go teach the word
of God ; and she continues to a great age at Seleucia, living
on herbs and water, and there enlightening many people with
the word of God. Unless the last t<j)WTi(T£v is to be understood
to mean ' baptized,' there is no mention in the Acts, as they
stand now, of Thecla's baptizing anyone but herself. Jerome,
however, speaks contemptuously of the Acts of Thecla, as
containing a story of a baptized lion {De Vtr. Illust. 7).
Either this was a hallucination of memory on Jerome's part
(which I think by no means impossible, his story being
absolutely without confirmation), or this incident was expur-
gated from the version of these Acts which has reached us.
If we had not Tertullian's testimony that these Acts were
composed by a Church presbyter, against whom he brings no
charge of heresy, I should certainly refer them to the class of
Gnostic Acts, with which they have many features in common.
The exaltation of virginity seems to proceed as far as to a
condemnation of marriage, and to a denial to married persons
of a share in the Resurrection. The account of the Apostolic
company abandoning their worldly goods, and living on
bread and water, has certainly an Encratite complexion.
There is an account of an appearance to Thecla of our Lord
XIX.] THE ACTS OF PAUL AND THECLA. ^r^
in Paul's form which much resembles what we read in con-
fessedly Gnostic Acts ; while also a favourite incident in such
Acts is the obedience of brute animals to the word of the
Christian preachers. I think these Acts must have possessed
these features from the first ; for I know no example of Gnostic
recasting of Acts originally orthodox. Neither again can I
look on these Acts as an orthodox recasting of Gnostic Acts ;
for I find nothing in them which looks like a softening of
something originally more heretical. I therefore accept the
present as the original form of the Acts, and am willing to
believe, on Tertullian's authority, that they were the work of
a Church presbyter. But I think he must have worked on
Gnostic lines. From the manner in which Tertullian speaks,
I should date the composition of the Acts which he rejects
some twenty or thirty years before his own time — that is,
about 170 or 180 — and I believe that by that time Gnostic
Acts had been published which might have served this writer
as a model. I think that if the tendency of the work had been
felt by the Church of the time to be quite unobjectionable, the
author would scarcely have been deposed for his composition
of what he could have represented as an edifying fiction not
intended to deceive. But there is nothing surprising in the
fact that anything of heretical aspect in the book should after-
wards be overlooked or condoned. Some extravagance of
statement is easily pardoned to good men struggling against
real evils. At the present day, one point of Encratite doc-
trine— the absolute unlawfulness of the use of wine — is
insisted on by men who find sympathy and respect from
many who cannot be persuaded that the lawfulness of use
is disproved by the possibility of abuse. At the end of the
second century it was not merely that Christians saw their
brethren in danger of being seduced by the immoralities of
heathendom, * lasciviousness, lusts, excess of wine, revellings,
banquetings, and abominable idolatries ' ; there were those
who laid claim to the Christian name who covered that name
with disgrace. A later school of Gnostics drew from the doc-
trine of the essential evil of matter quite different conse-
quences from those of their ascetic predecessors. Instead of
2 A
354 APOCRYPHAL ACTS OF THE APOSTLES. [xix.
hoping- by mortification of the body to lighten the weight that
pressed down the soul, those men taught that it was folly to
strive to purify what was in its nature impure beyond remedy.
He who was truly enlightened would have knowledge to per-
ceive that the soul could not be affected by the deeds of its
grosser companion, but that he might give the flesh the grati-
fication which it craved, and fear not that his spirit should
suffer defilement. If men, fighting against these abominations,
forgot caution and moderation, they would not be judged
very harshly.
The extant Acts agree very well with Tertullian's account
that their author was a presbyter of Asia ; for it is in Asia-
Minor, and in those parts of it which adjoin Asia proper, that
the scene of nearly the whole story is laid. Von Gutschmid
has made interesting researches, showing that the names of
royal personages which occur in apocryphal Acts are often
those of real people ; and he has proved by the evidence of
coins that there really was a Queen Tryphsena, who conceiv-
ably might have been in Antioch at the time of Paul's visit.*
I have only to remark, in conclusion, that these Acts show no
signs of acquaintance with any struggle between Paulinists
and anti-Paulinists, the author being evidently unconscious
that there can be any in the Church who do not share his ad-
miration for Paul.
III. In order to let you better see the affinities of the story
of Thecla with Gnostic Acts, I take next in order the Acts of
St. Thomas, the remains of which are very complete, and their
Gnostic character beyond mistake. They include, indeed,
some hymns, copied in all simplicity by orthodox transcribers,
who, being ignorant of Gnostic mythology, did not understand
what was meant, but which betray their heretical origin at
once to those who are acquainted with Gnostic specula-
tions.
* ' Die Konigsnamen in den apokryphen Apostelgeschichten ' (Rhein. Museum,
1864, xix. 178). She was the divorced wife of Polemo II., Idng of Bosporus; and
Gutschmid ingeniously gives reasons for thinking that she was a descendant of the
celebrated Cleopatra and Mark Antony, so that she and the Emperor Claudius had
a common ancestor.
xix.J THE ACTS OF ST. THOMAS. 35^
Among the books read by Photius* {Bibl. 114), was a
volume purporting to be written by Leucius Charinus, and con-
taining the travelsf of Peter, John, Andrew, Thomas, and
Paul. Photius describes the book as both foolish and hereti-
cal. It taught the existence of two Gods — an evil one, the
God of the Jews, having Simon Magus for his minister ; and
a good one, whom, confounding the Divine Persons, it identi-
fied with Christ. It denied the reality of Christ's Incarnation,
and gave a docetic account of his life on earth, and in particu-
lar of His crucifixion ; it condemned marriage, and regarded
all generation as the work of the evil principle ; and it told
several silly and childish stories. We can satisfactorily trace
these Acts back to the fourth century by means of references
in writers of that date. At that time they were chiefly in use
among the Manicheans : yet there are grounds for looking on
them as more ancient than that heresy, which only began
towards the end of the third century. We do not find, indeed,
the name of Leucius in any writer earlier than the fourth
century; yet earlier writers show acquaintance with stories
which we know to have been in theLeucian Acts; whence the
conclusion has been drawn, which seems to me a probable
one, that these Acts are really a second century production,
and that they found favour with the Manicheans on account of
the affinity of their doctrines.
It is mainly for the light they throw on Gnostic ideas that
the Acts of Thomas deserve to be studied ; for they are a mere
romance, without any historic value. The name Thomas sig-
nifies * twin ', and in these Acts the Apostle's proper name is
* Photius, Patriarch of Constantinople, A.D. 858, had previously been sent by
the Emperor on an embassy to Bagdad. For the information of his brother Tarasius,
with whom he had been in the habit of reading, he made abstracts of the con-
tents of the books he read during his absence, criticizing their style and doctrine, and
sometimes giving extracts from them. Thus was formed his Bibliotheca, containing
an account of no fewer than 280 different works, a book which fills us with admira-
tion of the ability and learning of this indefatigable student, and to which we owe our
knowledge of several works now no longer extant.
t The stichometry of Nicephorus (see p. 178) contains a record of the number of
arixoi in the travels of Peter, John, and Thomas, respectively, viz. 2750, 2600,
1700.
2 A 2
356 THE ACTS OF THE APOSTLES. [xix.
given as Judas. The name Judas Thomas appears also in the
Edessan Acts, and may have been derived from these. But
in these Acts we are startled to find that the twin of the Apostle
is no other than our Blessed Lord Himself, the likeness of the
two being such as to cause one to be taken for the other. I
have already noticed the parallel story of the appearance of
our Lord to Thecla under the shape of Paul. The Acts begin
by telling how the Apostles cast lots for the quarter of the
world to which each was to preach the Gospel, and that India
fell to the lot of Thomas. This story of a division of the field
of labour among the Apostles by lot* is very ancient. It was
known to Eusebius [H. E. iii. i), who, in the passage referred
to, is quoting Origen. It is noteworthy that Eusebius there
names the districts obtained by the very five Apostles whose
travels are said by Photius to have been related by Leucius.
He assigns their districts — Parthia to Thomas, Scythia to
Andrew, Asia to John. Origen's account of the mission of
the other two Apostles has the air of being rather taken from
the Bible than from Apocryphal Acts, viz. Peter to the Jews
dispersed in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia ;
St. Paul, from Jerusalem round about to Illyricum ; it being
added that both Apostles ended their lives by martyrdom at
Rome. In the Gnostic Acts the allotment of labour among the
Apostles is regarded as having happened very soon after the
Ascension ; but what is apparently an earlier account repre-
sents the Apostles as forbidden to leave Jerusalem for twelvef
years. Such is the account of the second century writer
Apollonius [Euseh. v. i8) ; and we learn from Clement of Alex-
andria [Strom, vi. 5), that the story was contained in the apo-
cryphal 'Preaching of Peter and Paul '.
The Acts of Thomas relate that when India fell to the lot
of that Apostle he refused to go, notwithstanding that our
Lord, in a vision, encouraged him. He was weak in the flesh,
and how should a Hebrew preach the truth to the Indians }
It happened that there was then in Jerusalem a merchant
* I think Lipsius is right in supposing that this story was suggested by the cast-
ing of lots (Acts i. 23).
t The Clementine Recognitions say seven (i. 43, ix. 29).
XIX.] THE ACTS OF ST. THOMAS. 357
from India, charged by King Gundaphorus* to buy him a
carpenter. Our Lord met this man, and told him He could
sell him a slave of His, who was a very good workman, and
He sold him Thomas accordingly. The merchant finding
Thomas, showed him Jesus, and asked him, ' Is this your mas-
ter' ? ' Yes, he is my Lord,' was the reply. * Then I have
bought you from him,' So Thomas acquiesced in his Lord's
will.
The first recorded incident of his travels is that, at a city
where the ship touched, the King was making a marriage for
his only daughter ; and everyone, rich or poor, bond or free,
native or foreigner, was required to attend the feast. I can-
not delay to tell what took place at it, save that Thomas re-
fused to eat or to drink. But, in consequence of a miraclef
which he performed, he was brought in by the King to bless
the newly-married couple. When strangers had retired from
the chamber, and the bridegroom lifted the curtain which
separated him from his bride, he saw Thomas, as he supposed,
conversing with her. Then he asked in surprise, * How canst
thou be found here ? Did I not see thee go out before all ' ?
And the Lord answered, ' I am not Judas Thomas, but his bro-
ther.' Thereupon He made them sit down, and called on them
to remember what His brother had said to them. He taught
them all the anxieties, troubles, and temptations which result
from the procreation of children, and promised them that if
they kept themselves chaste they should partake of the true
marriage, and enter the bridechamber full of light and immor-
tality. The young couple obey this exhortation, much to the
grief of the King when he learns their resolution. He orders
Thomas to be apprehended, but he had sailed away.
When Thomas arrives in India, he is brought before the
King, and being questioned as to his knowledge of masons'
or carpenters' work professes great skill in either department.
* Von Gutschmid finds that this is the name of a real person, and hence concludes
that the stoiy must be more ancient than the Manicheans, who would not have been
likely to know this name.
t The story of this miracle is three times referred to by St. Augustine : Cont. Faust.
xxii. 79; adv. Adimant. xvii. 2 ; De Serin. Dom. in monte xx.).
358 APOCRYPHAL ACTS OF THE APOSTLES [xix.
The King asks him if he can build him a palace. He replies
that he can, and makes a plan which is approved of. He is
then commissioned to build the palace, and is supplied abun-
dantly with money for the work, which, however, he says he
cannot begin till the winter months. The King thinks this
strange, but being convinced of his skill, acquiesces. But
when the King goes away, Thomas, [instead of building,
employs himself in preaching the Gospel, and spends all the
money on the poor. After a time the King sends to know
how the work is going on. Thomas sends back word that
the palace is finished all but the roof, for which he must have
more money ; and this is supplied accordingly, and is spent
by Thomas on the widows and orphans as before. At length
the King returns to the city and, when he makes inquiry
about the palace, he learns that Thomas has never done any-
thing but go about preaching, giving alms to the poor, and
healing diseases. He seemed to be a magician, yet he never
took money for his cures ; lived on bread and water, with
salt, and had but one garment. The King, in great anger,
sent for Thomas. * Have you built me my palace ' ? * Yes.'
' Let me see it .' ' Oh, you can't see it now, but you will
see it when you go out of this world.' Enraged at being thus
mocked, the King committed Thomas to prison, until he
could devise some terrible form of death for him. But that
same night the King's brother died, and his soul was taken
up by the angels to see all the heavenly habitations. They
asked him in which he would like to dwell. But when he
saw the palace which Thomas had built, he desired to dwell
in none but that. When he learned that it belonged to his
brother, he begged and obtained that he might return to life
in order that he might buy it from him. So as they were
putting grave-clothes on the body, it returned to life. He
sent for the King, whose love for him he knew, and implored
him to sell him the palace. But when the King learned the
truth about it, he refused to sell the mansion he hoped to
inhabit himself, but consoled his brother with the promise
that Thomas, who was still alive, should build him a better
one. The two brothers then receive instruction, and are
XIX.] THE ACTS OF ST. THOMAS. 359
baptized. We learn here some interesting details about the
Gnostic rites, and the agreement of the ritual with that
described by Cyril of Jerusalem shows that, though most of
the words of the prayers put into the Apostle's mouth may be
regarded as the invention of the heretical composer of the
Acts, much of the ritual, and possibly even some of the
words simply represent the usage of the Church before these
Encratites branched off, and which they retained after their
separation.
Oil has so prominent a place in this ritual, that it was
supposed among the orthodox that the heretics, from whom
these Acts emanated, baptized with oil, not with water.* But
though in one case no mention is made of water baptism, it
may be gathered from the fuller account of other baptisms
that it was not omitted. It is, indeed, sometimes difficult to
know, when receiving the ' seal ' is spoken of, whether the
application of oil or of water is intended. Thus, in one place
(19, 30, Bonnet's ed.), we have Se'^ovrai rriv (T(ppayXda tov Xovrpov,
and immediately after (20, 9) 'Iva Sia tov eAatou ot^ovTai ttjv
<i(ppaj'iSa. But the explanation, no doubt, is that the use both
of the oil and the water were looked on as essential to the
rite; and in the passage referred to an incident is represented
as having occurred after the candidates had been sealed, but
before they had received to liriacppayKJiia ttiq a(ppayX^oQ- The
baptismal ceremony commenced with the pouring of oil on
the candidate's head by the Apostle, with words of benedic-
tion ; but throughout he is not represented as confining him-
self to a definite form of sacramental words, different forms
being represented as used on different occasions. Much
stronger forms of prayer are used, requesting our Lord's
presence in the consecrated oil, than in these Acts are used
with regard to the consecrated bread, e.g. (82, 6) linhmnaai
T(^i\a'n^ Kura^iujaov rourt^ ilg o koI to aov (iyiov ETrt^JJAti'^fT^at bvOf.ia
(compare Cyril. Hier. Ca^ec/i. xxi. 3). After oil had been
poured on the head took place the anointing of the candi-
dates : that is, as I suppose, the application of oil with the
* Turibius, Episi. ad Idacium et Ceponiitin.
36o APOCRYPHAL ACTS OF THE APOSTLES. [xix.
sign of the cross to different parts of the body. I find no
trace that different unguent was used on the two occasions,
though this was afterwards the practice. Thus [Constt. App.
VII. 22), yjp'icsiiq TTfiwTov T(^ tXaitf) ayit^, iireira (5aTrTLaaig vdari, koI
TeXevra'iov (T(j)payi(TEiQ fxvpif) (see also Cyril. Hier. xx. 3, and xxi.3).
In these authorities, and in later practice, this anointing
comes after the baptism, and not before. In one place in
these Acts we have the phrase aXei^Pag koi x/oto^ac, where the
latter word seems to refer to the pouring of oil on the head,
the former to the smearing of the unguent on the body.
Cyril's usage is the reverse. Xpteiv is the ordinary O. T. word
for the ceremonial anointing of priests, kings, &c. In the
case of female candidates, the Apostle himself only pours the
oil on the head, but leaves the subsequent anointing to the
women.
After the anointing, followed the baptism with water in
the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Appa'rently
immersion was used, for the candidates were completely
stripped, with the exception of a linen waist-cloth (Cyril,
XX. 2). When a fountain could not be had, water was brought
in in a trough (o-Ko^rj). We may gather from Herodotus, iv.
73, that it would be possible for the candidate to lie down in
such a vessel.*
After the baptism those who had been sealed received the
Eucharist. In most places the impression is conveyed that
no wine was used, and that it consisted of bread and water
only. In one place, however, the materials brought in for the
feast are Kpaaiv vSarog KOL ixpTov 'iva ', and the word Kpamg
suggests a mixture of wine. After the bread was blessed,
the sign of the cross was made on it, and it was distributed
with some such words as, ' This be unto thee for the remis-
sion of sins ' ; but, as already stated, there is considerable
variety in the words reported to have been used on different
occasions. We read more than once of a supernatural voice
uttering the * Amen'. In Justin Martyr's account of the Chris-
* Du Cange in his Glossary gives ffKacpT], with the Romaic diminutive aKa<piS6-
irov\o, as names for a baptismal font.
XIX.] THE ACTS OF ST. THOMAS. 361
tian ritual {ApoL I. 65) I understand him to describe the people
as joining vocally in the earlier prayers, which therefore must
have been prescribed forms ; but the Eucharistic thanksgiving
as uttered by the president alone, and as it would seem, ex-
tempore, the people at the end expressing their assent by an
Amen. St. Paul plainly refers to this mode of worship (i Cor.
xiv, 16), and its antiquity is proved by its being found in the
earliest heretical sects. We learn from an extract preserved
by Irenaeus (l. x. i) that in the second century the heretic
Marcus uses as an illustration the sound made when all
uttered the Amen together.* It need not surprise us there-
fore to find the Amen here.
But a tale is told showing the danger of receiving un-
worthily. A youth, who had committed a grievous sin, was
* convicted by the Eucharist', for on his partaking of the holy
food both his hands withered. Being called on to confess,
he owned that he had been enamoured of a woman : but
having been converted by the Apostle, and having learned
from him that he could not have life if he partook of carnal
intercourse, he had received the seal, and had endeavoured
to prevail on the woman he loved to dwell with him in
chastity. But, on her refusing to pledge herself to con-
tinence, he thought he had done a good work in slaying her,
for he could not bear the thought of her being polluted by
another. No difficulty is raised as to the forgiveness of
post-baptismal sin. The Apostle heals the young man and
restores the woman to life, who anticipates Dante in relating
what she had witnessed of the varieties of punishment in the
unseen world.
It would be tedious to go through all the stories. Suffice
it to say that the appearance of our Lord in the form of
Thomas is more than once repeated; and that there are, as
in other Gnostic Acts, tales of miracles performed on the
brute creation. In a work of this nature we read without
surprise that when on a journey the horses are unable to
* A couple of centuries later St. Jerome speaks of the thunder of the Christian
Amen : ' ad simiUtudinem caelestis tonitrui Ameia reboat ' {Pivcein. in Galat.
Lib. 2).
362 APOCRYPHAL ACTS OF THE APOSTLES. [xix.
proceed, the wild asses of the desert obeyed the Apostle's
summons, and picked out the four strongest of their number
to take the place of the exhausted horses; but it exceeds the
bounds even of hagiological probability that at the end of
his journey Thomas should employ one of the wild asses as
his curate, to exorcise a demon and to preach a sermon.
One of the tales which moved the contempt of Photius was
another story of a speaking ass, who claimed relationship
with Balaam's, and with the ass who bore our Lord.*
The journey which I have mentioned results in the mar-
tyrdom of Thomas. He converts the wife of the chief
minister of the sovereign of the country, who, in obedience
to the Apostle's instructions,t refuses further intercourse
with her husband. He complains to the King, but the
result is that the King's own wife and son become converts
to the same doctrine. Thomas has, by his miracles, gained
such estimation among the people that the King dares not
order his public execution, but by his command the four
soldiers who guarded the Apostle pierce him to death with
their spears. And this occasions a remark which is worth
quoting as exhibiting the docetic denial of the truth that
our Lord had a body like ours. Thomas observes that it was
fitting that his body, which was made of four elements,
should be pierced by four spears, but our Lord's body only
by one.
Notwithstanding the docetic tinge of the passage just
quoted, very orthodox language is elsewhere used as to our
Lord's twofold nature. He is addressed as 'Ijjo-ou 6 iTravmravo-
fXivog airo rrig oconropiag tov Ka/naTov u)g avBpwiTog koi tin. Tolg
KVjiiacn irspiTraTiov wg Beog. And again, 6 /uovoyevrig vwapxtovy 6
irpwTOTOKog ttoAawv aSfAc^wi', Ote f/c 0foi) vxpiarov, 6 avOpwirog 6
* Philaster also {Haer. 88) notes it as a characteristic of the Gnostic Acts : ' ut
pecudes et canes et bestige loquerentur.'
t Of these instructions the following is a specimen : ovk ucpeXrjffei <roi r) Kotvaivia
7] pvirapa t] irphs rhv ffhv &vdpa yivofxivT]' Koi yap avTT] airoffrepei anh ttjs Koivoovias rrjs
a\r]dtvrjs. The husband, therefore, is guilty of no misrepresentation when he com-
plams, 6 TrAaros iKe7vos roxJTo SiSdcTKei, 'Iva fjiii tjs yvvaiKi irpotrou.i.Xiia'ri iSia, Kol S if
(pvcis aTraiTuv olSev, Kal dehs ivofxodeT7}(Tev, ai/rhs avuTperrei.
XIX. J THE ACTS OF ST. THOMAS. 363
KaTu<ppovoviLitvog I'wc apri. You will have noticed the use made
in this quotation of St. John's Gospel and of the Epistle to
the Romans ; and in fact these Acts make copious use of the
New Testament ; of the Gospels, including John, several
times, the Acts, the Pauline Epistles, including the Epistle
to the Ephesians frequently, and both Epistles to Timothy,
the Epistle to the Hebrews, the first Epistles both of St.
Peter and St. John, and the Apocalypse.
There is nothing in the facts just stated which forbids us
to believe these Acts to have been earlier than the time of
Origen. The language used concerning our Lord's twofold
nature resembles that employed by Melito ;* and all the New
Testament books quoted were in full use at the end of the
second century. Eor instance, I see nothing either in the
Christology or in the New Testament Canon of these Acts
which would make it impossible to believe that they were
written by Tatian.f Not that I in the least believe that
this writer was capable of inventing the ridiculous stories
which these Acts contain; yet we can learn from them
what were the notions prevalent among the Encratites to
whom Tatian joined himself. And the word Gnostic is
one of such very wide application, being given to some
whom we should hardly own as Christians at all, that it is
interesting to learn how much of Catholic doctrine was held
by the Gnostic sects which were nearest to the Church. The
Encratites were especially formidable towards the end of the
second century, and the controversy with them occupies a
whole book of the Stromateis of Clement of Alexandria.
I should be disposed to conjecture Syria as the place of
manufacture of these Acts. I have already noticed their
agreement with the ' Doctrine of Addai ' in the use of the
* Otto's Apologists, Fragments vi. xiii. &c.
t A limit to the antiquity of these Acts is placed by the fact that the martyrdom
of Thomas was unknown to the Valentinian Heracleon, whose date may be roughly
placed at 170. Heracleon, quoted by Clem. Alex. {Strom, iv. 9), arguing against the
notion that the only way of confessing Christ was confession before a magistrate,
names Matthew, Philip, and Thomas, as never having had occasion to make this
kind of confession.
364 APOCRYPHAL ACTS OF THE APOSTLES. [xix.
name of Judas Thomas ; and the Acts of Thomas conclude
with telling of the removal of the body of Thomas to
Edessa.*
I have gone into so much detail about the Acts of Thomas
that I can say nothing about those of Andrew, which, in their
original form, were probably of equal antiquity ; or about the
Acts of Philip, a later production of the same school.
IV. The Acts of St. Peter. — I have already [see p. 14) told
you of the Clementine writings, founded, as it would seem, on
an earlier Jewish- Christian work, which related travels of
Peter, There is evidently much room for difference of opi-
nion between critics who, guided by internal evidence only,
attempt to separate the original portions of a work from sub -
sequent accretions. To me it seems certain that the original
' Circuits of Peter ' terminated with the Apostle's arrival at
Antioch, beyond which the existing forms of the Clementines
do not proceed. Two or three allusions to a subsequent con-
test of Peter with Simon Magus at Rome I believe to have
been inserted when the work was dressed up for Roman cir-
culation. Extant Acts which tell of the contest at Rome are
of later date, and of by no means Ebionite character, asso-
ciating Peter with Paul in joint opposition to the magician.
Those who have been trained in the Tubingen theory as to
the predominance of the Anti-Pauline party in the early
Church piously believe that the Acts relating the adventures
of Peter at Rome must be an orthodox recasting of anti-
Pauline Acts now lost, in which Paul, instead of opposing
Simon, was himself to be recognized under that name. But
of the existence of such Acts there is not a particle of evidence,
nor do I know of any passages in the extant Acts which sug-
gest that they originally bore an anti-Pauline aspect. Non-
Ebionite Acts of Peter are as old as the second century, for
we learn from a quotation by Clement of Alexandria [Strom.
VI. 5) that the '■ Preaching of Peter ' was of this character.f
* Rufinus tells {H. E. ii. 5), that Edessa claimed to possess the body of St.
Thomas.
t This book of the preaching of Peter is of very early date. It is several times
quoted by Clement, and was also used by Heracleon (Origen in Joan. tom. Xlll. I7)_
XIX. J THE ACTS OF ST. PETER. 35^
In truth, I consider that the first condition for either
tracing rightly the genesis of the Petrine legends, or under-
.standing the history of the early Church, is the rejection of
the speculations which Baur has built on the fact that in the
Clementine Homilies Paul is assailed under the mask of
Simon Magus. The consequence has been that his disciples
cannot hear Simon Magus named without thinking of Paul.
By a false historical perspective they project the image of
third century heretics back upon the first ages of the Church ;
and the climax is reached by Volkmar, who makes the Simon-
Paul myth antecedent to Luke, and finds in Acts viii. a covert
assault upon the Apostle of the Gentiles.* I have already had
occasion to mention (p. 19) that it is only in the Homilies,
which exhibit the latest form of the Elkesaite legends, that
the assault on Paul under the character of Simon is to be
found. The Clementine ' Recognitions,' which contain an
earlier form of the same story, are also decidedly anti-Paul-
ine. Paul figures in them as *the enemy', and as persecuting
the Church ; but as the date of the incident is before his
journey to Damascus, there is nothing in the story that might
not be accepted by a reader fully persuaded of the truth of
Luke's narrative. The writer shows his hostility to Paul only
by making no mention of his subsequent conversion or his
preaching to the Gentiles. And none of the language which,
in the Recognitions, is put into the mouth of Simon conveys
The work was not Ebionite, for it condemned equally both false methods of worship-
ping God : Kara tous "EAATj^as and Kara rovs 'lovSaiovs (Clem. Alex, uhi supra). It is
now generally acknowledged (see Grabe, Spicil. i. 66, Fabricius, Cod., Ap. N.T. vol. i.
800) that the book contained discourses of Paul, as well as of Peter, and that it is the
same work as that called by Pseudo-Cyprian [De Rehaptismate 17) the ' Preaching of
Paul', a book which represented the two Apostles as joined together on friendly
terms at Rome. Lactantius says {Inst. Div. iv. 21), 'quae Petrus et Paulus Romse
prsedicaverunt ; et ea prsedicatio in memoriam scripta permansit '. It seems to me
likely that this work was known to Justin Martyr, who twice {Apol. i. 20, 44) quotes
the prophecies of the Sibyl and of Hystaspes as to the destruction of the world by
fire. Now, Hystaspes and the Sibyl were thus coupled in a discourse ascribed to Paul
cited by Clement (Strom, vi. 5) in connexion with the Preaching of Peter, and by
Lactantius (Inst. Div. Vll. 15, 18).
* Hilgenfeld has lately written his recantation of this theory (Keizergescfiichte,
p. 164), and now owns the historical character of Simon.
366 APOCRYPHAL ACTS OF THE APOSTLES. [xix.
any reference to Paul. Indeed, the whole story of Simon,
which is found in both forms of the Clementines, attributes to
him characteristics with which Paul has nothing in common.
The magician is a Samaritan, he had been a disciple of John
the Baptist, he has a concubine named Helena, he works
miracles in no way resembling those ascribed to Paul, and he
arrogates to himself divine prerogatives.
It is plain that the use of a historical name as a nickname
implies some previous knowledge of the character whose
name is so employed. Whence, then, are we to suppose that
the Clementine writers obtained their knowledge of Simon ?
I answer : in the first instance from the Acts of the Apostles ;
for never, do I think, was there a more complete vanpov
wpoTepov than when the Clementines were used to explain the
genesis of the Book of the Acts. The * Recognitions' in
several places betray a use of the Acts. They mention, for
instance, Paul's journey to Damascus ; they know that Gama-
liel took the Apostles' part, telling the story in the curious
form, that Gamaliel was in truth a Christian, but had obtained
from the Apostles a dispensation to conceal his faith.* From
the Acts, then, I believe, that the Clementine writer drew his
knowledge of Simon as a Samaritan, as a magician, and, it
is important to add, as one who had been a disciple of Jesus.
As for the particulars which the Clementines add to what
is told of Simon in the Acts, I feel no doubt that they were
derived from Justin Martyr. Justin himself states in his
Apology that he was also the author of a work on heresies ;
and the best authorities are agreed that this lost work of
Justin's formed the basis of the treatise on heresy by Irenaeus
and Hippolytus. When we find the first two places in the list
of heretics assigned to the two Samaritan heretics, Simon and
Menander, we infer that the information was furnished by the
Samaritan Justin, who duly records the villages where each
was born ; and the coincidences between the account of Simon
* The 'Doctrine of Addai' I count to be later than the Clementine Recognitions,
and to be indebted to them for some particulars. For instance, it represents Christ
as lodging at the house of Gamaliel, and (p. i6) the Apostles as bound to send to
James periodically accounts of their mission.
XIX.] THE ACTS OF ST. PETER. 35y
given by Irenseus (i. 21) and in the Clementines, lead us to
believe that Justin was the source of the latter as well as of
the former. If the whole Clementine story of Simon be later
than Justin Martyr, we evidently can attribute no great anti-
quity to the identification of the Clementine Simon with Paul,
which must be later still.
The Acts of Peter and Paul, as printed by Tischendorf,
are much later than the Clementines. Simon appears in the
character of a magician, and performs many wonders in his
conflict with the Apostles before Nero. Thus he offers to
allow his head to be cut off, undertaking in three days to rise
again. But by his magical power he deceives the eyes of the
spectators ; and it is a ram which is made to assume his form
and is beheaded. So, to the Emperor's amazement, Simon
walks in at the appointed time, complaining, What a mess
you have got here ! Why they have never wiped up the blood
where they cut off my head. Finally Simon exhibits his
power by undertaking to fly up to heaven from the top of a
lofty tower. But on the Apostles' adjuration, the evil angels
who were bearing him are compelled to drop him, and he is
taken up dead. Yet the Emperor, instead of being convinced,
orders the execution of the two Apostles. But 1 may mention,
as showing the affinity of these Acts to those previously
described, that the cause of hostility to the Apostles is stated
to be the number of matrons whom they had persuaded to
leave the society of their husbands, among whom were the
wife of the Emperor's chief minister, Agrippa, and Nero's own
wife, Livia. You will notice how the framer of the story has
mixed up the personages of the reigns of Augustus and of
Nero. There were Gnostic Acts, which I regard as earlier
than those from which I quote, and which contain other
stories of Simon's conflict with the Apostles, and legends of
the Apostle's work at Rome, which it would be tedious to
detail. But perhaps I ought not to pass by in silence the
celebrated story of * Domine quo vadis .?' Peter had, by the
advice of the leading members of the Church, resolved on
withdrawing from the coming persecution ; but outside the
city he meets the Lord coming in ; and on asking Him
368 APOCRYPHAL ACTS OF THE APOSTLES. [xix.
whither He is going, is answered, To Rome to be again
crucified. Thereupon Peter, understanding the rebuke, returns
to fulfil the Lord's command,
I have said that the Acts, as published by Tischendorf,
are not very ancient. I will mention two proofs of this. One
is that Hippolytus, who wrote about A.D. 235, is ignorant of
the version of the death of Simon, which I have repeated to
you, and which eventually became the most widely received.
The story told by Hippolytus is, that Simon commanded
himself to be buried, promising to rise in three days again.
And buried he was, but buried he remained. The other proof
is drawn from the fact that in these Acts the martyrdom of
the two Apostles is made to take place on the 29th June, the
day on which it has been commemorated for centuries ; for it
came to be held that Peter and Paul, though not martyred in
the same year, suffered on the same day.*
We find that about the middle of the second century the
custom had begun of making a commemoration of a martyr-
dom on the first anniversary of its occurrence, and about the
middle of the third century of making, at least in the case of
very distinguished martyrs, commemorations on successive
anniversaries. For these purposes it was necessary to pre-
serve the memory of the exact day of the martyrdom. But I
find no evidence that either custom was earlier than the date
I have named ; and I do not believe that in the hurry and
panic of the Neronian persecutions any record was preserved
of the dates of the martyrdoms. But the 29th June does com-
memorate a real occurrence ; namely, a translation of the
bodies of the two Apostles, which an authentic Kalendar of
the Roman Churchf records as having taken place on that
day in the year 258. The earliest mention of the commemo-
ration of the two Apostles is by Caius, of whom I have already
spoken (p. 50), and dates from the beginning of the third
century. Apparently the Montanist antagonist of Caius, in
claiming authority for the Asiatic Churches, had cited the
* Prudentius, Peristeph. 12.
t See Mommsen's memoir on the Chronogiapher of the year 354, Ahhaiidlungen
der Konigl. Sachs. Gesellschaft, i. 585.
XIX.] THE ACTS OF ST. PETER. 36^
great names of their founders, or former rulers. Caius [ap.
Euseb. ii. 25) retorts by appealing to the authority of the
founders of the Roman Church — Peter and Paul — whose
* trophies ' might be seen, the one on the Vatican, the other
on the Ostian Way. These were the places where early tra-
dition, which I see no reason to reject, related that the Apostles
respectively suffered. They were probably buried, each near
the place of his martyrdom ; and there, in process of time,
tombs were erected, which became centres of Christian wor-
ship. But the year 258 witnessed a terrible persecution under
the Emperor Valerian, in the course of which the bishops
Sixtus perished at Rome and Cyprian at Carthage. The
Christians were forbidden to hold meetings or to enter their
places of sepulture. Then a hiding-place was found in the
Catacombs, to which, on June 29th, the two bodies were trans-
ferred, and there meetings could secretly be held. The
deposition of the bodies became a subject of annual com-
memoration ; and it is this, and not the martyrdom, which, as
I believe, the 2gth June really commemorates. A document,
therefore, which describes the Apostles as suffering on that
day, is pretty sure to be considerably later than the year
258.*
Before quitting the subject of the Petrine Acts, I ought to
mention that Lipsius holds that the tradition of Peter's
* I am indebted for this account of what took place in 258 to Ducliesne [Liber
Pontificalis, p. civ). In comparatively modern times a theory vifas put forward that
Peter's martyrdom took place, not on the Vatican, but on the slope of the Janiculum,
and in the year 1500, a church (S. Pieti^o in Montorio) was built to conseciate this
supposed site. But Aringhi [Roma Sotteranea, II. 5) has given what appear to be
conclusive reasons for holding fast to the old tradition, that the martyrdom took place
not far from the place on the Vatican where from early times it was believed Peter's
body was laid. Tradition preserved the fact that the Apostles' bodies were removed
from the original place of deposition to the Catacombs ; but the true explanation of
the removal being lost, legend busied itself in inventing another. Pope Gregory the
Great {Ep. iv. 30) tells a story more obscurely told in verses of Pope Damasus (De
Rossi, Inscr. Christ.^ ii. 32 ; see also Acta Pet. et Fault, ap. Tischendorf, ActaApoc.
p. 38), that certain Greeks attempted to steal the bodies, but were compelled by a
miraculous thunderstorm and earthquake to drop them near the place where they were
temporarily deposited in the Catacombs. How long they remained there is uncertain,
but it is probable that it was on Constantine's accession they were restored to their
ancient resting-places.
2 B *
370 APOCRYPHAL ACTS OF THE APOSTLES. [xix.
preaching and martyrdom at Rome is confronted by a rival
tradition, which makes the scene of his activity Pontus and
the East. But my opinion is that the latter tradition was
intended not to contradict but to supplement the earlier story,
which told of Peter's work at Rome. I have already quoted
a passage from Origen, which represents Peter as having first
laboured in those countries which are named in the salutation
with which the first Epistle begins. The Gnostic Acts of
Andrew appear to have made that Apostle take part with his
brother in joint work in Pontus. A history is given of the
successful labours of Andrew among the savage and cannibal
tribes which were believed to inhabit the shores of the Black
Sea. The legend which made Andrew labour in that part of
the world afterwards proved convenient. For when, through
the favour of Constantine, Byzantium was made to rank above
cities in which Apostles were known to have laboured, an
attempt was made to supply the deficiency of the new capital
in ecclesiastical associations by a claim that its first bishop
had been appointed by St. Andrew, whose body it soon took
pains to possess. No legend represented Peter as sharing his
brother's fate ; and we have every reason to think that the
same Acts which told of Peter's work in the East told also of
his return to other labours in the West.
V. The Acts of St. John* — Of all the Gnostic Acts those
which related the work of John seem to me to have left the
greatest traces on Church tradition ; and I am inclined to
think that it is with the Acts of John that the name of
Leucius ought specially to be connected ; for he seems to
have been represented as an attendant on that Apostle.
Several traditions concerning John, which are mentioned by
very early writers, agree so closely with what we know to
have been told in the Gnostic Acts as to favour the idea that
these Acts may have been the original source of these tra-
ditions. But this account cannot be given of all the stories
told about this Apostle. For instance, the beautiful story of
St. John and the robber, which I do not repeat, because it has
* Some additions were made to the previously edited remains of these Acts, in
Acta Johannis, pubUshed by Zahn, 1880.
XIX.] THE ACTS OF ST. JOHN. 3^1
been told so often that most of you are likely to know it
already, appears to have been derived by Clement of Alex-
andria [Quis div. salv. 42) from some different source. For
later Christian writers, who show independent knowledge of
other things contained in the Leucian Acts, appear to have
known for this story no other authority than Clement.
The Leucian Acts came under discussion at the second
Council of Nicsea. They had been appealed to by the Icono-
clasts ; for one of their stories was, that the Apostle John
rebuked a disciple for the cult he found him to be in the habit
of paying to a certain picture ; on which he was informed that
the picture was his own. John, who had never seen his own
face, refused to own the likeness, until a mirror was brought
him ; when he was convinced, but still said that his disciple
had done ill. In order to discredit this authority, passages
from these Acts were read at the Council to exhibit their
heretical character. The docetism of the Acts comes out very
plainly from this evidence. John is related as informing his
disciples that when he tried to lay hold on our Lord it had
sometimes happened to him to find solid substance, but not
so at other times ; that, though he could see Him walking,
he was never able to see that He left any footprint on the
ground ; and that when our Lord was invited to a feast He
used to divide the loaf that was given Him among His dis-
ciples, who found the portion thus handed them so satisfying,
that they needed not to touch the loaves given by the host to
themselves. Our Lord is related to have appeared to His dis-
ciples sometimes young, sometimes old; sometimes small,
sometimes so high as to touch the heavens with His head.
And there is a story how John, not bearing to witness the
Crucifixion, fled to the Mount of Olives ; and there, while the
mob believed they were crucifying our Lord, He conversed
with John and showed him a wonderful vision of a cross of
light, which I must not attempt to describe, for I should
wander away too far if I were to try to explain how some
leading Gnostic sects contrived, notwithstanding their doce-
tism, to rival the orthodox in the honour they paid to the
Cross.
2 B 2
^'j2 APOCRYPHAL ACTS OF THE APOSTLES. [xix.
Now, one of the reasons for thinking it possible that these
Acts may be as old as Clement of Alexandria is, that that
father states that he read * in the traditions ' that when John
handled the body of our Lord it offered no resistance, but
yielded place to the Apostle's hand.
The Encratite character of these Acts is very strongly
marked. For example, one of the Apostle's miracles is
performed on a lady who had submitted to die rather than
associate with her husband. And we have also the favourite
Gnostic type of miracle, the conferring intelligence on the
brute creation. It may amuse you to hear, by way of ex-
ample, what the narrator describes as a pleasant incident.
On their journey the party stopped at an uninhabited cara-
vanserai. They found there but one bare couch, and having
laid clothes on it they made the Apostle lie on it, while the
rest of the party laid themselves down to sleep on the floor.
But John was troubled by a great multitude of bugs, until
after having tossed sleepless for half the night he said to
them, in the hearing of all : I say unto you, O ye bugs, be ye
kindly considerate ; leave your home for this night, and go
to rest in a place which is far from the servants of God. At
this the disciples laughed, while the Apostle turned to sleep,
and they conversed gently, so as not to disturb him. In the
morning the first to awake went to the door, and there they
saw a great multitude of bugs standing. The rest collected
to view, and at last St. John awoke and saw likewise. Then
(mindful rather of his grateful obligation to the bugs than of
the comfort of the next succeeding traveller) he said : O ye
bugs, since ye have been kind and have observed my charge,
return to your place. No sooner had he said this and risen
from the couch, than the bugs all in a run (^po/ialo/) rushed
from the door to the couch, climbed up the legs, and disap-
peared into the joinings. And John said : See how these
creatures, having heard the voice of a man, have obeyed ;
but we, hearing the voice of God, neglect and disobey ; and
how long? (Zahn, p. 226.)
I will now mention some of the statements which were
contained in the Leucian Acts, and which were known in the
xix] THE ACTS OF ST. JOHN. 373
Church so early that, if we could believe it was from these
Acts the knowledge was obtained, we might assign them
very high antiquity : —
(i) These Acts tell (Zahn, p. 247) how John's virginity
had been preserved by a threefold interposition of our Lord,
breaking off the Apostle's designs each time that he at-
tempted to marry. In conformity with their Encratism,
these Acts dwelt much on the Apostle's virginity, describ-
ing this as the cause of our Lord's love to him, and as the
reason for his many privileges : in particular, as the reason
why to a virgin the care of the Virgin Mother was committed.
In a third century Gnostic work, Pistis Sophia^ the name
of the Apostle John ordinarily has the title 6 TrapBivog ap-
pended. Now the opinion of John's virginity, concerning
which the canonical Scriptures say nothing, is common to
many of the fathers. It is as early as Tertullian {De Monog.
17). We are not entitled to say positively that this opinion
must have been derived from the Acts of which I am speak-
ing, because a true tradition that John never married might
easily have been preserved in the Churches of Asia Minor ;
yet, when this is taken in connexion with other coincidences,
it gives some probability to the view that Acts of John ex-
isted as early as the second century, and were the source
whence subsequent writers drew their traditions.
(2) The story told in the Muratorian Fragment (see p. 53)
of John's composition of his Gospel having originated from a
request of the bishops of Asia, has great affinity with what
Clement of Alexandria tells [Euseb. VI. 14), that John, having
seen that the bodily things had been related in the pre-
vious Gospels, made a spiritual Gospel TrporpaTrli'ra vno rwv
yvwptjutDv, U.vtvfxaTi 6so(popr]9evTa. It is not conceivable that
one of these writers copied from the other ; but several later
writers (as for instance, Jerome in the preface to his Com-
mentary on St. Matthew) tell the same story, agreeing,
however, in some additional particulars, which show that
they did not derive their knowledge from either of the au-
thors whom I have named. Thus they tell that the request
that John should write was caused by the inroads of the
374 APOCRYPHAL ACTS OF THE APOSTLES. Ixix.
Ebionite heresy, which made it necessary that the Apostle
should add something- concerning the Divinity of our Lord to
what his predecessors had said about His humanity ; and they
tell how, in answer to their prayers, the Apostle, filled with
the Holy Ghost, burst into the prologue, ' In the beginning
was the Word ' [see note, p. 54). Other coincidences make it
likely that this story was found in Acts of John used by
Clement.
(3) Tertullian [Prcescrip. 36) refers to the story of John
having been cast into burning oil, and taken out unhurt.
Jerome, who tells the same story in his Commentary on
Matthew xx. 23, there speaks of the Apostle as an athlete,
the peculiar applicability of which term is not obvious, but
receives its explanation from Acts which are known to have
been derived from those of Leucius, where John is said to have
come out of the oil, * not burned, but anointed like an athlete '.
Hence it is concluded that Jerome, who is otherwise known to
have used the Leucian Acts, found in them this story ; and
then arises the question whether these Acts may not have
been early enough for Tertullian to have used them too. On
the other hand, it must be mentioned that Origen, when com-
menting on our Lord's words to the sons of Zebedee, and
reconciling them with the fact that John did not suffer mar-
tyrdom, makes no mention of the story of the baptism in oil.
A later story makes John miraculously drink a cup of poison
with impunity.*
On the whole, we have clear evidence that Acts or tradi-
tions about John were in circulation before the time of
Clement and Tertullian. When we combine the docetic
character of the traditions which reached Clement with the
fact that the Acts of Thecla, a work known to Tertullian, had
clearly an Encratite stamp, it seems to me highly probable
that these second century Acts of John had the same charac-
ter, and that they were either those afterwards known under
* This miracle is very rare in ancient hagiology. The only other case I remember
is that Papias tells that Justus Barsabas drank poison, and, through the Lord's grace
received no hurt. I cannot but think that Papias told the story in illustration of
Mark xvi. 18.
XIX.] THE ACTS OF ST. JOHN. 375
the name of Leucius, or at least, that they contained the
materials on which the Leucian writer worked.*
It would be wearisome if I were to discuss all the legends
about John. It will be enough if I mention that Leucius con-
cludes by relating the Apostle's painless death. He gives
what purports to be John's sermon and Eucharistic prayer on
the last Sunday of his life. Then, after breaking of bread —
there is no mention of wine — he commands Byrrhus (the
name occurs in the Ignatian epistles as that of an Ephesian
deacon) to follow him with two companions, bringing spades
with them. They go to a friend's burying-place outside the
city, and there dig a grave, in which the Apostle lays himself
down, and with joyful prayer blesses his disciples, and resigns
his soul to God.f Later versions improve the miraculous cha-
racter of the story : in particular that of which Augustine
makes mention (/?z Johanji. xxi., Tradat. 124); that the
Apostle lay in the grave not dead but sleeping, as might be
seen by the motions of the dust over his grave, which played
as if stirred by the Apostle's breathing.^ Zahn has conjec-
tured that the story of two tombs of John at Ephesus may
have arisen from the traditional veneration paid to two spots
sacred to the memory of John : one the place within the city
where he had been wont to preach ; the other the place out-
side the city where he was buried.
» Zahn dates the Leucian Acts of John as early as 130 ; Lipsius places them
about 160 ; I am myself inclined to date them 10 or 20 years later.
t This story is accepted as true by Epiphanius [Haer. Ixxix. 5).
X The form in which the Gnostic stories about John were circulated among the
orthodox is illustrated by a very ancient prologue to St. John's Gospel, found, with
slight variations, in many MSS., in particular the Codex Aureus and the Codex
Amiatinus. It runs as follows : — Johannes Evangelista unus ex discipulis domini,
qui virgo electus a domino est, quern de nuptiis volentem nubere revocavit dominus,
cujus virginitatis in hoc duplex testimonium in Evangelio datur, quod et prae ceteris
dilectus domini dicitur, et huic matrem suam de cruce commendavit ut virginem virgo
sei-varet. Denique manifestans in evangelio quod erat ipse incorruptibilis, [incorrup-
tibilis] verbi opus inchoans solus, verbum camera factum esse, nee lumen a tenebris
fuisse comprehensum testatur, primus signum ponens quod in nuptiis fecit dominus,
ut ostendens quod erat ipse legentibus demonstraret, quod ubi dominus invitatur,
deficere nuptiarum vinum debeat, ut veteribus immutatis nova omnia qux> a Chnsto
instituuntur appareant. Hie evangeUum scripsit in Asia postea quam in Pathmos
376 APOCRYPHAL ACTS OF THE APOSTLES. [xix.
But I must not conclude this account of legends of the
Apostolic age without saying something about one of them,
which, though one of the latest in birth, has been the most
fortunate in its reception— I mean the story of the Assump-
tion of the Blessed Virgin. It is, as you know, received as
true in the Roman Catholic section of the Church. Some
indeed have held [see Tillemont, i. 476) that the word means
no more than the name Kot^rjatc, under which the same feast
is kept in the Greek Church ; and the prayers appointed for
the feast in the Roman Church make no distinct mention of
a corporal assumption. But this is certainly in that Church
a matter almost universally believed. And before the meet-
ing of the Vatican Council, those entitled to speak with
authority declared that at that Council the wish of Pius IX.
would be carried out, and the fact of the Assumption erected
into an article of faith, to deny which would forfeit salvation.
The dispersion of the Council disappointed these anticipations,
at least for the time. It were much to be desired that the
story, if true, should receive some such infallible attestation,
because on the ordinary grounds of historical evidence its
pretensions are of the slenderest. Not that it had not wide
extent of circulation, for it is handed down in Greek, Latin,
Syriac,* Arabic, Ethiopic, and Sahidic. But none of the
existing forms is earlier than the end of the fourth, or begin-
ning of the fifth century; and the absence of any early authori-
tative version of the story is evidenced by the great variety
with which it is told, which is such as to embarrass me a little
insula apocalypsin scripserat, ut cui in principio canonis incorruptibile principium in
genesi et incorniptibilis finis per virginem in apocalypsi redderetur, dicente Christo,
ego sum A et XI. Et hie est Johannes, qui sciens supervenisse diem recessus sui con-
vocatis discipuHs suis in Epheso per multa signorum experimenta promens Christum,
descendens in defossum sepulturse suae locum facta oratione positus est ad patres
suos, tam extraneus a dolore mortis quam a corruptione carnis invenitur alienus.
Tamen post omnes evangelium scripsit et hoc virgini debebatur. Quorum tamen vel
scripturai"um tempore dispositio vel Ubrorum ordinatio ideo per singula a nobis non
exponitur, ut sciendi desiderio collocato et qujerentibus fructus laboris et domino
magisterii doctrina servetur.
* The Greek and Latin versions are included in Tischendorf's Apocalypses apo-
cryphcE ; and Syriac versions have been published by Wright, Coiitributions to the
Apocryphal Literature, N. T., za.d jfoumal of Sacred Literature, 1865.
XIX.] THE ASSUMPTION OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN. 377
in what form I shall present it to you. According to the
oldest authorities, the time is the second year after the Ascen-
sion, though later authorities give the Virgin a score more
years of life. The Virgin prays the Lord for her release, and
for the protection of her body and soul from earthly and
spiritual enemies. Then the angel Gabriel is sent to her to
announce her departure in three days, and gives her a palm-
branch as a token. At her request the Apostles are all
brought to Bethlehem to witness her departure, each being
miraculously wafted on clouds from the quarter of the world
whither he had gone — John from Ephesus, Peter from Rome,
Thomas from India, &c. Three or four of the Apostles who
had already died are raised to life and brought like the rest ;
the angel who summons them warning them that they are
not to suppose the general resurrection has yet come, as they
are only brought to life in order to take part in the obsequies
of the Virgin. By the fifth century the belief was entertained
in Ephesus that the mother of our Lord had accompanied St.
John to Ephesus; but the earlier story makes her die at
Jerusalem. For the Jews having made an attack on the house
at Bethlehem, which had become notorious by the multitude
of the miracles wrought there, the Apostles smite the assail-
ants with blindness, and transport the couch to Jerusalem.
Then on the third day the Lord descends from heaven with
his angels, and takes to himself the Virgin's soul. But the
Jews are resolved to burn her body with fire ; and this they
would do, but that they are smitten with blindness ; and so
wander fruitlessly, while the Apostles bear her body to the
Valley of Jehoshaphat, to bury her in a new tomb prepared by
Joseph of Arimathea. Peter on the right hand bears the bier;
but the honour of carrying the palm-branch before her is
yielded to the virgin John. One of the chiefs of the Jews
having laid hold of the bier, an angel with a fiery sword cuts
off his hands ; but, on his repentance and conversion, the
hands are, by the Apostles' intercession, joined on to his body
again. Then, according to one account, the angels are heard
for two days singing at the tomb; but on the third day the
songs cease, and so the Apostles know that the body has
378 APOCRYPHAL ACTS OF THE APOSTLES. [xix.
been transferred to Paradise. According to another account,
Thomas had not been with the Apostles when they took leave
of the Virgin ; but he sees her body being taken up to heaven,
and at his prayer she drops him her girdle as a token. When
he afterwards joins the other Apostles, and declares that she
is not in the tomb, they suppose that it is only his habitual
incredulity which makes him doubt their word that they had
placed her there ; but he shows the girdle, and on opening
the tomb they find the body is not there.
The Greek version of this story, published by Tischendorf,
in which the story purports to be told by the Apostle John,
has all the marks of lateness, and is clearly not earlier than
the fifth century. The Latin version bears a somewhat
earlier aspect. Melito of Sardis, who, with some little dis-
regard of chronology, is made a disciple of the Apostle John,
is the narrator; and a preface states that his object is to give
an authentic account of what Leucius had related with here-
tical additions. This suggests that the existing versions
may possibly be an orthodox recasting of an earlier Gnostic
story ; and Lipsius holds that this is the case, but as it seems
to me on no sufficient grounds, for I can find no evidence
that the story had currency, even in heretical circles, so early
as the third century.
I have detained you a long time in the region of the
fabulous, but the time is not altogether wasted that is spent
on a study which gives one a keener sense of the difference
between the legendary and the historical; and I never feel
so strongly that the book of the Acts of the Apostles is a
record of real history, as when I take it up after having laid
down the not very cunningly devised fables in which men
have exhibited the sort of Apostolic Acts pure invention
would furnish us with.
XX.
THE PAULINE EPISTLES.
IT is a satisfaction to me to escape from the quaking sands
of apocryphal legends, and step on the firm ground of
the Pauline Epistles. Of these there are four which, as you
know, Baur does not question ; and later critics, who have
no bigoted attachment to received opinion, find themselves
obliged to make further acknowledgments. Hilgenfeld and
Davidson agree in owning i Thessalonians, Philemon, and
Philippians : Renan positively rejects none but the Pastoral
Epistles, but has doubts besides concerning the Epistle to
the Ephesians. But Baur is far from marking the lowest
point of negative criticism. He found disciples who bettered
his instruction, until it became as hard for a young Professor,
anxious to gain a reputation for ingenuity, to make a new
assault on a New Testament book, as it is now for an Alpine
club man to find in Switzerland a virgin peak to climb. The
consequence has been that in Holland, Scholten and others,
who had been counted as leaders in the school of destructive
criticism, have been obliged to come out in the character of
Conservatives, striving to prove, in opposition to Loman,
that there really did live such a person as Jesus of Nazareth,
and that it is not true that every one of the Epistles ascribed
to Paul is a forgery. And certainly it is not only to the ortho-
dox that the doctrine that we have no genuine remains of
Paul is inconvenient; it must also embarrass those who look
38o THE PAULINE EPISTLES. [xx.
for arguments to prove an Epistle to be un-Pauline. I leave
these last to fight the battle with their more advanced bre-
thren. I have constantly felt some hesitation in deciding
what objections it was worth while to report to you. On the
one hand, it is waste of energy to try to kill what, if let alone,
will be sure to die of itself: on the other hand, there is the
danger that you might afterwards find notions, which I had
passed by as too contemptible for refutation, circulating among
half-learned people as the 'latest results' which 'eminent
critics' had arrived at in Germany. But in the present case, I
think I am safe in deciding that it is practically unnecessary
for me to trouble myself about the opinions of those who
carry their scepticism to a further point than Baur.
Let me say this, however, that I think young critics have
been seduced into false tracks by the reputation which has
been wrongly gained by the display of ingenuity in finding
some new reason for doubting received opinions. A man is
just as bad a critic who rejects what is genuine, as who
accepts what is spurious. * Be ye good money-changers ' is
a maxim which I have already told you (p. 2;^) was early
applied to this subject. But if a bank clerk would be unfit
for his work who allowed himself easily to be imposed on by
forged paper, he would be equally useless to his employers if
he habitually pronounced every note that was tendered him
to be a forgery, every sovereign to be base metal. I quite
disbelieve that the early Christian Church was so taken pos-
session of by forgers that almost all its genuine remains were
corrupted or lost, while the spurious formed the great bulk of
what was thought worth preserving. The suspicions that
have been expressed seem to me to pass the bounds of literary
sanity. There are rogues in this world, and you do well to
guard against them ; but if you allow your mind to be poi-
soned by suspicion, and take every man for a rogue, why, the
rogues will conspire against you, and lock you up in a lunatic
asylum.
In this lecture I must confine myself to speaking of the
genuineness of Epistles, and I am glad that I can assume your
acquaintance with Paley's admirable Horcs Paulince. How
XX.] THE PAULINE EPISTLES. 381
very wide a field the general subject of the life and work of
Paul would present, if I attempted to enter it, is evidenced by
the mass of literature which of late years has been occupied
with it. A beginning was made by Conybeare and Howson's
St. Paul ; since then we have had works on St. Paul by Mr.
Lewin and by Archdeacon Farrar, each in two large volumes.
Renan, approaching the subject from another point of view,
expressly devotes one volume to St. Paul, and finds him-
self obliged to give also to that Apostle's work a consider-
able portion both of the previous and of the subsequent
volumes of his history. Then there are very interesting small
volumes published by the Christian Knowledge Society on
separate parts of the Apostle's labours — ' St. Paul in Greece,'
' St. Paul in Asia', &c. Much additional information is to be
found in the Introductions to the Epistles in the Speaker's
Commentary, and in Bishop Ellicott's. But chief among re-
cent aids to knowledge of St. Paul may be reckoned Bishop
Lightfoot's three volumes of Commentaries — a work, the dis-
continuance of which we have seen with regret, perhaps not
quite selfish. For it may be doubted whether the gain which
the present generation in England receives from his episcopal
labours compensates the loss which the Church at large has
suffered in the interruption of the production of work which
would have been of permanent value. Postponing the con-
sideration of the Epistle to the Hebrews, I deal now with
the letters which bear Paul's name. These divide themselves
into four groups, separated by intervals of time of somewhere
about five years: (i) the two Epistles to the Thessalonians,
(2) the four acknowledged by Baur, (3) the Epistles written
during the Roman imprisonment, (4) the Pastoral Epistles.
With regard to the Pauline Epistles generally, it may be
remarked that the very early and general recognition which
they obtained throws fatal obstacles in the way of the theory
that the party which rejected Paul's apostleship had any very
long or wide possession of the Church. It is with reserve that
I can appeal to Peter's second Epistle in proof of the authority
of the Pauline letters, because the genuineness of that Epistle
is denied ; but, whether written by Peter or not, it is unques-
382 THE PAULINE EPISTLES. [xx.
tionably an early document ; and it is clear that at the time of
its composition, a collection of Pauline letters had been made
and was regarded as of high authority. Before the end of
the first century the First Epistle to the Corinthians is for-
mally quoted by Clement of Rome, who clearly shows ac-
quaintance with other of the Epistles. Early in the second
century Polycarp formally quotes the Epistle to the Philip-
pians, and makes constant use of the other letters. The use
of the Pauline letters by Ignatius may be probably, though
not demonstratively, inferred from a great multitude of pas-
sages ; but there are a few where his reproduction of Paul's
language is so complete as to afford decisive proof. Marcion,
who promulgated his heresy in the first half of the second
century {see p. 17), is notorious for his exaggerated Paulinism ;
but, though more than one answer to Marcion is extant, there
is no indication that any of his orthodox opponents met him
by questioning that Apostle's authority, reverence for which
is common to both parties. When we come to the end of the
second century, when first Christian literature becomes abun-
dant, we find Irenseus, Clement, and Tertullian, not only
owning the authority of the thirteen Pauline epistles, but
apparently unconscious that there could be two opinions
on the subject. If, therefore, I think it worth while to give
a proof of the reverence in which Paul's authority was
held in the time of Justin Martyr, it is not that there is
any real necessity for showing that that father was no dissen-
tient from the general opinion of the Church, but because the
piece of evidence seems to me interesting in itself, and has
only recently been brought clearly to light.* Only two works
of Justin have come down to us with tolerable completeness,
and are universally recognized as genuine, the Apology and
the Dialogue with Trypho. The subject of the one being the
controversy with heathenism, and the other that with Judaism,
both works were intended to influence readers external to the
Church ; and, accordingly, although in countless passages
* I am indebted for my knowledge of it to a paper by Zahn {Zeitschrift f. Kirchen-
geschichte, viii. I, Dec. 1885.)
XX.] METHODIUS. 383
Justin's use of the New Testament writings is evident to one
already acquainted with them, he never formally quotes any
of them except (as already mentioned, p. 225) in one case, the
Apocalypse. These two works, however, offer abundant evi-
dence of Justin's acquaintance with the writings of St, Paul,
whose ideas, and even whose language, he repeatedly repro-
duces. Proofs will be found in Westcott's iV. T. Canon,
p. 168, and also in a paper by Thoma in Hilgenfeld's Zett-
schrtft, which I have already had occasion to quote for another
purpose (p. 71). Indeed, as Justin tells us that he wrote a
treatise in answer to Marcion, he could not possibly have
engaged in that controversy without a knowledge of the
Pauline writings. Thoma, however, imagines that the fact that
Justin does not quote Paul by name implies that he did not
attribute to him Apostolic authority. But this inference is
inconsistent with the influence that Paul's writings evidently
exercised over Justin's thoughts ; and is certainly not justified
when we remember that it is not Justin's habit to quote any
Christian writer by name, seeing that he wrote for persons
who recognized Apostolic authority neither in Paul nor in
anyone else. It is not superfluous, however, to produce
another testimony.
Methodius, who was bishop of Olympus,* in Lycia, in the
very beginning of the fourth century, was an admirer of Jus-
tin, whom he quotes more than once. The quotation with
which we are now concerned occurs in a work by Methodius
on the Resurrection, an extract from which has been pre-
served by Photius [see p. 355). But here we have occasion to
see the convenience of the modern device of inverted commas,
which enables us to see at a glance how far a quotation is
meant to extend. The want of some such mark left it uncer-
tain how much belonged to Justin and what to Methodius.
* This is the account of the earliest writers who cite him ; later authorities quote
him as bishop of Patara, also in Lycia, and Jerome stands alone in making him
bishop of Tyre. It is almost certain that in this Jerome made a mistake, of the origin
of which Zahn gives an ingenious explanation. Zahn thinks that the idea that
Methodius was bishop of Patara is also a mistake originating in the fact that the
scene of one of his dialogues is laid in that place.
384 THE PAULINE EPISTLES. [xx.
Otto, in his edition of Justin, only prints one sentence as Jus-
tin's : the next sentence is introduced with a (prjal ; but it is
free to the reader to take this as a word used by Photius in
continuing his extract from Methodius, or as itself part of the
extract, and as used by Methodius in continuing his extract
from Justin. The doubt has been set at rest by the recovery
of the passage of Methodius through a source independent of
Photius,* It has thus become apparent that the second sen-
tence, which contains a formal quotation from Paul, belongs
to Justin as well as the first ; and internal evidence confirms
this conclusion. Both Methodius and Justin assert the doc-
trine of a literal resurrection of the body ; and both have ta
answer the objection that Paul has said that 'flesh and blood
cannot inherit the kingdom of God' (i Cor. xv. 50). Metho-
dius first gives his own answer, namely, that what Paul here
means by ' flesh ' is not literal flesh, . but only the irrational
impulse to fleshly lusts. But he goes on then to cite Justin's
way of dealing with the same objection, in which quite a diffe-
rent answer is given. True, says Justin, the body does not
inherit the kingdom of God; it is inherited by the kingdom of
God. That which lives inherits ; that which is mortal is in-
herited. If the kingdom of God, which is life, were inherited
by the body, life would be swallowed up by corruption. But
now life inherits that which had died, that so death may be
swallowed up by life unto victory, and that the corruptible
should become possessed by incorruption. The complete diffe-
rence of this reply from that which Methodius himself had
given is evidence enough that he is here quoting the words of
another. We could easily believe without confirmation, that
a work which Methodius — writing soon after A. D. 300 — as-
cribed to Justin really belonged to him. But some confirma-
tion is found in the fact that an earlier writer, Irenaeus, who
also used Justin, has got hold of the same maxim d 8a raXriOlg
tiTTiXv, ov KXijjOOvOjua aXXa kXyj povo/nHT a i ri crap^ (Iren. v. 9). Now
what we are concerned with here is not the goodness of this
solution of Justin's, but the fact that in the middle of the
second century the authority of Paul's Epistles w^as owned
* See Pitra, Analecta Sacra, iii. p. 614; iv. p. 201.
XX. I THE EPISTLES TO THE THESSALONIANS.
385
alike by heretics and orthodox. Heretics thought that they
had gained a palmary argument if they could produce a say-
ing in these letters which seemed to make in their favour ;
and the orthodox felt it to be a matter of necessity that they
should in some way reconcile their teaching with the sentence
so produced.
I. The Epistles to the Thessalonians. — The foundation of the
Church at Thessalonica is recorded, Acts xvii. It took place
in the year 52, on Paul's second missionary journey. The
first Epistle professes (iii. 6) to have been written on the re-
turn of Timothy, whom Paul had sent from Athens on a
mission to the Thessalonian Church. This would be at
Corinth (Acts xviii. 5) at the end of 52, or beginning of 53.
I am inclined to dismiss, as absolutely frivolous, the objec-
tions which Baur and his followers have made to the accept-
ance of this date. For there is one passage in the Epistle —
a passage which Baur has been so uncritical as to reject as
un-Pauline — which carries on the face of it the stamp of early
date. I mean the paragraph (iv. 13-18) which treats of the
future happiness of those Christians who had died before the
time when the Apostle wrote. The passage manifestly belongs
to the time when it was thought likely to be an exceptional
thing for a Christian to die before the second coming of our
Lord, and when those who themselves expected to meet their
Master on his coming needed to be consoled lest those dear
friends whom death had carried off should lose somewhat of
the felicity destined for the rest. Evidently it was only at the
very beginning of Christianity, when the second coming of
our Lord was yearly expected, and when deaths as yet had
been but few, that the destinies of those who departed before
the Second Advent could trouble the minds of surviving
friends, or that they could be supposed in danger of losing
something which the mass of Christians would enjoy. Add
to this, that if the Epistle had been, as has been imagined,
fabricated after Paul's death, the forger would never have
attributed to the Apostle the words 'we which remain' —
words implying a belief on his part that it was possible he
might live to witness our Lord's coming.
2 C
386 THE PAULINE EPISTLES. [xx.
Looking on these considerations as absolutely decisive, I
care little to discuss petty objections.* It is a little incon-
sistent that critics who condemn the book of the Acts as un-
historical, constantly, when they come to discuss Paul's
Epistles, make disagreement with the history in the Acts a
ground of rejection. In the present case the Epistle corrects
an erroneous impression which the reader of the Acts might
easily receive — I mean the impression that Paul only spent
some three weeks in Thessalonica. The foundation of so
flourishing a Church as the Epistle describes must have taken
longer time ; and we learn from Phil. iv. i6 that his stay was
long enough to allow time for his Philippian friends twice to
send him a gift of money. He gained at Thessalonica two of
his most attached friends — Jason, whom we find afterwards
in Paul's company at Corinth (Rom. xvi. 21), and Aristarchus,
who had been charged with conveying the Thessalonian con-
tributions of money to Jerusalem (Acts xx. 4), and whom we
find afterwards sharing Paul's journey to Rome and his im-
prisonment (Acts xxvii. 2, Col. iv. 10, Philem. 24). Thus we
perceive that the preaching on three Sabbath days, which
Luke records, only represents that part of the Apostle's work
which was done in the synagogue. After that he must, as on
a previous occasion at Antioch in Pisidia, have turned to the
Gentiles; for the Gentile element predominated in the Thes-
salonian Church (i Thess. i. 9, ii. 14). But we find from
Luke's narrative of what occurred in several cities, that
nothing was more resented by the Jews than that one of their
own nation should, instead of acquiescing in the decision
passed on his doctrine by the religious heads of their com-
munity, disdainfully separate himself from his countrymen,
and gather round him a schismatical society of Gentiles. We
• One of those petty objections is worth repeating, because it turns on a curious
coincidence, the discoverer of which, Holsten [Jahrbiicher f. Prot. Theol. 1877),
regarded it as proof demonstrative that our Epistle is later than the Apocalypse.
In Rev. ii. 2, we read, ' I know thy works, and thy labour, and thy patience ' : in
I Thess. i. 3, 'Your work of faith, and labour of love, and patience of hope.' Here
Holsten contends we have the work of a later Paulinist, who has married the three
Johannine words, works, labour, and patience, to the three Pauline, faith, hope,
and charity.
XX.] THE EPISTLES TO THE THESSALONIANS. 387
find, in the Acts, that on account of this conduct, which was
regarded by the Jews as little less than apostasy, Paul was
hunted by persecution from city to city. Five times, you will
remember, he received from the Jews the forty stripes save
one (2 Cor. xi. 24). If Baur had borne these facts in mind,
he would scarcely have found a stumbling-block in the lan-
guage in which Paul (ii. 14-16) expresses his indignation
against ' the Jews ' who * forbade him to speak to the Gentiles,
that they might be saved '. There is no warrant for asserting
that the words ' the wrath is come upon them to the utter-
most' (ii. 16), must have been written after the destruction of
Jerusalem. The 'wrath' is the 'indignation' of Dan. viii.
19, xi. 36; and hq riXog is a common Old Testament phrase
(Josh. X. 20 ; 2 Chron. xii. 12. xxxi. i).
Again, it ought not to be thought strange that in this
Epistle we should only read of the opposition Paul met with
from unbelieving Jews, and that nothing should be said of
his controversies with Jewish Christians. The letter was
addressed to a Church which, as far as we know, had not yet
been visited by any Christian preacher but Paul and his
company. Baur notes several coincidences between this and
other Pauline Epistles,* but strange to say he uses these to
disprove the Pauline authorship. He holds that a letter, to
be genuine, must be Pauline, but not too Pauline. If it con-
tain phrases or thoughts for which we cannot find a parallel
in Paul's acknowledged letters, Paul did not write it ; but if
the flavour of Paulinism be too strong for Baur's delicate
susceptibilities, he detects a forger who betrays himself by a
clumsy imitation of his master. By such methods of criticism
it would be easy to prove any document spurious.
Tke Second Epistle to the Thessalomans. — I said (p. 34) that
I had at one time thought of treating the books of the New
Testament in chronological order, beginning accordingly with
St. Paul's Epistles. If I had not found other reasons for
choosing a different course, I should have been warned by
* i. 5, I Cor. ii. 4 ; i. 6, i Cor. xi. i ; i. 8, Rom. i. 8 ; ii. 4, i Cor. ii. 4, 2 Cor
i. 17 ; ii. 5, 2 Cor. vii. 2; ii. 6, 9, 2 Cor. xi. 9; ii. 7, i Cor. iii. 2.
2 C 2
388 THE PAULINE EPISTLES. [xx.
Davidson's example to see how much there is arbitrary and
uncertain in the chronological arrangement. Adopting that
plan, he began the first edition of his new Introduction with
this Second Epistle to the Thessalonians ; for he had ac-
cepted an idea of Grotius, which has been received with
approval by some subsequent critics, that the letter which we,
in conformity with universal Christian tradition, call the
Second Epistle, came in order of time before that which we
count the first. The arguments in support of this opinion do
not seem to me strong enough to induce me to spend time in
discussing them with you. In Davidson's second edition, the
first epistle heads the list of New Testament books ; we have
to look a long way down before we come to the second ; for it
is now pronounced to be not genuine, but a later book than
the Apocalypse of St. John. On the greater part of the argu-
ments used for rejecting the book I hardly think that David-
son himself can place much reliance. Thus, on comparing
the opening of the two Epistles, he pronounces the second
un-Pauline, because, whereas Paul in the first Epistle had
said ' we give thanks ', the second Epistle says * we are bound
to thank God always as is meet': whereas Paul had con-
tented himself with speaking of his converts' faith and love,
this writer exaggerates, and says that their faith groweth
exceedingly and their love aboundeth. There is a great deal
more of what I count * childish ' criticism, that is to say,
criticism such as might proceed from a child who insists that
a story shall be always told him in precisely the same way.
For instance, the commencement of ii. 1 1 with the words 'And
for this cause ', is pronounced to be un-Pauline. Paul, we are
gravely told, would have said, 'For this cause', without the
' and '. When the list of un-Pauline phrases is exhausted,
Davidson, following Baur's lead, goes on to condemn the
Epistle for its too great likeness to Paul. The ideas are often
borrowed or repeated from the first Epistle, and it is depen-
dent on other Pauline Epistles.*
* 2 Thess. iii. 8 repeats i Thess. ii. 9; and iii. 10, 12 expands i Thess. iv. 11, 12.
2 Thess. iv. 14, follows i Cor. v. 9, 11, and i Cor. iv. 14. The Lordof peace (iii. 16)
XX.] THE EPISTLES TO THE THESSALONIANS. 389
I hardly think it can be any of these arguments which
induced Davidson to alter the opinion he expressed in his
first edition, where he says (p. 27), 'The opinion of those
critics who defend the authenticity of the first Epistle, but
reject that of the second, seems most improbable, and is a
mediatizing view that cannot stand. Both must go together
either in adoption or rejection. Baur is consistent in reject-
ing them ; Hilgenfeld will have few followers in maintaining
the Pauline origin of the one, and disputing that of the
other.' How is it, then, that the prophet should so soon do
his best to falsify his own prediction by becoming a follower
of Hilgenfeld himself?
The reason for rejecting the Epistle can scarcely have
been drawn from any of the small cavils of which I have
given you specimens. The stumbling-block is found in the
prophecy of the Man of Sin (ii. 1-12). It is not necessary for
me to entangle you in any of the controversies which spring
out of questions of interpretation of prophecy. We are here
only concerned with the question of authorship —whether
there is anything improbable in the supposition that such a
prophecy should have been delivered at the date it must have
had, if this Epistle was really written by St. Paul. Now con-
sidering the paucity of documents from which our knowledge
is derived of the growth of opinion in the apostolic age, and
for half a century after the death of the last Apostle, I cannot
sufficiently admire the courage of critics who, from their own
sense of the fitness of things, assign dates for the first appear-
ance of each phase of ritual or doctrine, and then condemn
any document that refuses to fall in with their theory. It is
true that apocalyptic prediction is in our minds chiefly asso-
ciated with the book of the Revelation of St. John ; but I
know no reason whatever for imagining that it was only
about the year 70 that the minds of Christians began to
occupy themselves with the thoughts of the second coming of
our Lord, and the circumstances that should attend it. Those
is taken from i Cor. xiv. 33, 2 Cor. xiii. 11 ; 2 Thess. ii. 2, iii. 4, iii. 13, are derived
from Gal. i. 6, v. 10, vi. 9, respectively. The reader must decide whether he will
take these coincidences as arguments for or against the Tauline authorship.
390 THE PAULINE EPISTLES. [xx.
who own the first Epistle must allow that at the time when
that was written the second coming of our Lord had a
prominent place in the Apostle's teaching. There are traces
also that the prophecies of Daniel were studied in connexion
with that event ; and in this Christians seem to have had the
sanction of their Master. Taking the very lowest view of the
authenticity of the Gospels, it still seems to me unreasonable to
doubt that the 24th Matthew and the parallel chapters of the
other Gospels record in substance a real discourse of our Lord.
The description (Matt. xxiv. 30, 3 1) of our Lord coming in the
clouds of heaven, and sending his angels with a * great sound
of a trumpet', seems to me to have prompted both St. Paul's
phrase, * the last trumpet ', in i Cor. xv. 52, and the descrip-
tion in I Thess. iv. of our Lord descending with the voice of
the archangel and the trump of God, when his people should
be caught up to him in the clouds. It is undeniable then
that, long before the year 70, eschatological speculation was
a subject of Christian thought. We have not materials to
write its history, and I marvel at the assurance of the man
who pretends that he so knows all about the progress of
Christian ideas on the subject in the fifteen years between 54
and 69, that while he feels it to be quite credible that such n
forecast of the end of the dispensation as is contained in
2 Thess. ii. might have been written at the latter of these two
dates, he is quite sure it could not have been written at the
former. There would, indeed, be some foundation for such
an assertion, if it could be said that the view presented in the
second Epistle contradicts that taken in the first ; but this is
not so. The one Epistle presents our Lord's second coming
as possibly soon, the other as not immediate — as needing
that certain prophetic preliminary signs should first be ful-
filled. It is quite conceivable that the teaching of the same
man should present these two aspects. If no argument for
late date can be founded on the passage in 2 Thess. which
I have been discussing, I know of no other worth atten-
tion.
In respect of external attestation, no New Testament book
stands higher than these Epistles. They are repeatedly used
xx.j THE EPISTLES TO THE THESSALONIANS. 391
without suspicion by Irenaaus, Clement, and TertuUian.*
They are included in the list of Pauline Epistles given in the
Muratorian Fragment which I have quoted (p. 48). They
were included in the Apostolicon of Marcion in the first half
of the second century. There are what I count traces of their
uses by Clement of Rome [c. 38), while their employment by
Ignatius and Polycarp is so distinct that the argument can
only be evaded by denying the authenticity of these remains. f
The passage about the 'Man of Sin' is plainly referred to by
Justin Martyr {Trypho^ no).
I must not omit to notice the token of genuineness given
at the end of the Epistle, namely, that the salutation was
written with the Apostle's own hand. All Paul's Epistles
end with the salutation in an expanded or abridged form,
*The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with you all.' And it
appears that even though the rest of the Epistle was written
by an amanuensis (as was that to the Romans by Tertius),
the salutation was written by the Apostle's own hand. It is
remarkable that precautions against forgery should have been
so early found necessary. The Apostle also shows his fears
of it in cautioning the Thessalonians not to be misled by any
Epistle as from him. It is remarkable also that this expres-
sion, 'In every Epistle so I write' (iii. 17), should be found in
only the second of Paul's Epistles which have reached us.
The inference seems plain that Paul must have written other
letters that have not come down to us. And this is a con-
clusion intrinsically not improbable, and which I see no
reason for rejecting. For I suppose there is no greater reason
for thinking that every letter of an inspired Apostle must
necessarily be extant, than there is for thinking that we must
have an account preserved of every sermon he preached. We
know from the end of John's Gospel, what our own reason
would have otherwise told us, that the portion of our Blessed
Lord's own words and deeds which His Spirit has preserved
to us, bears no proportion to that which has been allowed to
* For example : Ircn. v. 6; Clem. Al. Strom, iv. 12 ; Tert. De Res. Cam. 24.
t Ignat. ad Polycarp. I, ad Ephes. lO ; Polycarp, cc. 2, 4, 11.
392 THE PAULINE EPISTLES. [xx.
remain unrecorded. In the case of apostolic letters we can
conceive that the earlier, before the Apostle's authority was
fully recognized, would be less carefully preserved. If one
whom we dearly love is removed from us by death, we treasure
up the relics of his writings, and often regret our own care-
lessness in having allowed papers to be destroyed which,
because the writer was still with us, we valued lightly, but
now would give much to recover. There is no improbability,
then, in the loss of apostolic letters, unless God worked a
miracle to preserve them. We may believe that if the loss
would have deprived us of knowledge necessary for our sal-
vation, He would have interfered miraculously; but otherwise
we have no ground for asserting that God would supernatu-
rally prevent the loss of any of the written words of the
Apostles, when He has permitted the loss of so many of the
spoken words not only of them but of our Blessed Lord.
Another passage which implies a letter of Paul, not included
in our Canon, is i Cor. v. g, * I wrote to you in my Epistle not
to keep company with fornicators', which though it has been
interpreted to mean in the Epistle he was then writing, is, I
think, better understood as referring to a lost previous letter.
Colossians iv. i6, speaks of a letter from Laodicea. On this
Laodicean letter I refer you to Lightfoot's note* [Colossians y
p. 340), merely saying here that I believe the letter has been
rightly identified with that which we know as the Epistle to
the Ephesians.
IL The second group of Paul's letters is, in some points
of view, the most important of all ; but inasmuch as their
* The reader will find in Lightfoot the forged Epistle to the Laodiceans, which
was clearly intended to pass for the Epistle referred to in the Colossians. It is only
extant in Latin ; but Lightfoot gives good reasons for believing the original language
to be Greek. It is short, and is a mere cento of passages from the genuine letters,
containing scarcely a single original word. It was in circulation in St. Jerome's time
{pe Vir. lllust. 5), and had previously been mentioned by Theodore of Mopsuestia
{in Coloss. iv. 16, i. 314, Swete). It is doubtful whether it is this Epistle which is
referred to in the Muratorian Fragment (see p. 49) ; for we should not otherwise
take this forgery to be so early. Marcion had in his Canon an Epistle to the Laodi-
ceans, but this was only what we know as the Epistle to the Ephesians (Tert. adv.
Marc. V. 17).
XX.] THE SECOND GROUP. 393
authenticity is universally acknowledged, it does not come
within my plan to speak of them. I only mention some
doubts that have been raised as to the concluding chapter of
the Epistle to the Romans. The Epistle, previously to this,
closes with a benediction at the end of chap. xv. Let me say,
in passing, that we have one concluding benediction too many
in the Authorized Version. Both at xvi. 20, and 24, we have
* The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you. Amen.'
The oldest authorities differ as to which place this benediction
ought to occupy ; but there is no good AIS. authority for
putting it in both places. In some MSS. the concluding
doxology (xvi. 25-27) is put at the end of ch. xiv. In addition
to the fact that the Epistle seems to finish without chap, xvi.,
it has been remarked as strange that Paul should have known
so many at Rome, which he had never visited, while he sends
no salutation to individuals in his Epistle to the Church of
Ephesus, where he had lived three years. On these grounds
some reject this chapter. Renan imagines that the Epistle
was a circular addressed to different Churches, with a different
conclusion for each, and with his usual courage he picks out
their several portions. He assigns the list of names to whom
salutations were sent, as the conclusion of the Epistle sent to
one Church, that of Ephesus ; the list of names from whom
salutations are sent as the conclusion of that to another, and
the doxology as of that to a third. Strange not to see that
these three fit together, and make an harmonious whole.
I cannot seriously discuss what is asserted with so little
evidence. It is no uncommon thing with ourselves to add a
postscript to a letter, and there is nothing to call for explana-
tion if Paul, even though he had brought his letter to a close
in the 15th chapter, should add a postscript. Considering
how people pressed to Rome from all parts of the Empire, we
have nothing to wonder at if Paul had many friends at Rome,
even though he had not visited it. When he did eventually
visit Rome, there were friends there who came to meet him,
some as far as Appii Forum, a distance of forty-three miles.
It is, I own, a little surprising that the Epistle to the Ephe-
sians does not contain a corresponding list of salutations.
394 THE PAULINE EPISTLES. [xx.
However, what has been ingeniously urged on the other side
is worth mentioning. It is said that a man writing to a large
circle of friends, because it would be invidious to mention
some names and omit others, naturally might prefer to men-
tion none : and that accordingly in Paul's Epistles to the
Churches where he had personally laboured, those of Corinth
and Thessalonica, no names are mentioned ; while several
names occur in the conclusion of the Epistle to the Church of
Colossee, a place where the Apostle apparently had never
been.
I should not think it impossible that the Epistle to the
Ephesians, as originally written, may have contained a post-
script chapter of private salutations like that which ends the
Epistle to the Romans, and that this postscript was not
copied when the Epistle was transcribed for the use of other
Churches. But another, and more common explanation is,
that the Epistle to the Ephesians was a circular not written
to that Church exclusively. Certain it is, some of the most
ancient copies omitted the words Iv 'E^to-fi) in the inscription.
Origen, for instance, read the saints ' that are', and explained
ToiQ ovatv as the saints which are really so ; and in this he is
followed by St. Basil. And the omission of Ephesus is found
in some very ancient MSS. at this day (J^, B). But since this
rendering is extremely improbable, Archbishop Ussher con-
jectured that the original letter was a circular, containing
after the words * the saints that are ' a blank for the name of
the Church addressed. Marcion filled it up with the name
Laodicea, and called this the Epistle to the Laodiceans.
Lightfoot has rvo\.Q,& [Journal of Philology, li. 264) certain
peculiarities in some MSS. which make it probable that an
edition of the Epistle to the Romans also had some circula-
tion in which both the name Rome in the address and the
last two chapters were omitted. On these peculiarities he
founds the hypothesis that the Apostle, at a later period of his
life, wished to give a wider circulation to the Epistle he had
written to the Church of Rome : that, in order to adapt it to
this end, he omitted the mention of Rome in the beginning,
as also the last two chapters containing personal matters ;
XX.] TIIK EPISTLES OF THE IMPRISONMENT. 393
and lluit he then, for the tiist time, added as a termination
the doxology xvi. 25-27. This hypothesis was combated by
Dr. Hort in the same journal (iii. 51), and again defended by
its author (iii. 193). The discussion will well repay study;
but the true solution of the problem belongs to a period
earlier than any extant Christian history — the period, namely,
when the Epistles first passed out of the exclusive possession
of the Churches to which they were addressed, and became
the common property of all Christians.
III. The Epistles of the Imprisonmejit. — Among these, I
think it necessary to say little concerning the Epistle to the
Philippians, Baur's objections to its genuineness having been
pronounced futile by critics not disposed to think lightly of
his authority — Hilgenfeld, Pfleiderer, Schenkel, Reuss, David-
son, Renan,* and others. Baur has pronounced this Epistle to
be dull, uninteresting, monotonous, characterized by poverty of
thought, and want of originality. But one only loses respect
for the taste and skill of the critic who can pass such a sen-
tence on one of the most touching and interesting of Paul's
letters. So far is it from showing signs of having been manu-
factured by imitation of the other Epistles, that it reveals
* A Frenchman cannot construct a drama without a love story, and Renan, by the
help of this Epistle, with some countenance from Clem. Alex. {Strom, iii. 6), has
contrived to find one in the life of St. Paul. He translates [Saint Paul, p. 148)
yvfjcne av^vye (Phil. iv. 3) ' ma chere epouse ' ; and when afterwards he has occasion to
speak of Lydia, does so with the addition, ' sa vraie epouse' [U Antechrist, pp. 18,
22). Hilgenfeld, who will not be suspected of any undue bias in favour of Episcopacy,
interprets the passage of the president of the Philippian Church : 'Anstatt mit Renan
in yv-fiffte <Tvv(vye die Purpurhandlerin Lydia von Paulus als "meine liebe Gemahlin"
angeredet werden zu lassen, denkt man besser an den eigentlichen Vorsteher der
philippischen Gemeinde ' [Einleitung, p. 345). If this president were Epaphroditus,
the bearer of the letter, then the address to him, without mention of his name,
would be quite intelligible (see Dr. Gwynn's note in the Speaker's Commentary).
Paul's earliest Epistle (i Thess. v. 12) attests the existence of an organized
Christian ministry (see the bishop of Derry's Introduction in the Speaker''s Com-
mentary) ; the present Epistle (i. i) informs us that there were Church officers called
iiriffKoirot and SidKouot. Both titles are found again in the Pastoral Epistles. The
former, as the name of a Church officer, only appears once elsewhere in N. T., in Paul's
speech at Miletus (Acts xx. 28). The inference from Phil. iv. 3, that one of the Church
officers had some pre-eminence over the others, does not seem to me to be negatived by
the fact that no notice of such pre-eminence appears in Polycarp's Epistle to the
Philippians.
396 THE PAULINE EPISTLES. [xx.
aspects of Paul's character which the other letters had not
presented. In 2 Cor. we see how the Apostle could write
when wounded by ingratitude and suspicion from children in
the faith who failed to return his affection ; in this Epistle how
he could address loving disciples for whom he had not a word
of rebuke. Elsewhere we are told (Acts xx. 34 ; i Cor. ix.
15; 2 Cor. xi. 10; I Thess. ii. 9 ; 2 Thess. iii. 3) how the
Apostle laboured with his own hands for his support, and de-
clared that he would rather die than let the disinterestedness
of his preaching be suspected; here we find (ii. 10-19) that
there was no false pride in his independence, and that when
there was no likelihood of misrepresentation, he could grace-
fully accept the ungrudged gifts of affectionate converts.
Elsewhere we read only of his reprobation of Christian teach-
ers who corrupted the simplicity of the Gospel ; here we are
told (i. 18) of his satisfaction that, by the efforts even of those
whose motives were not pure, the Gospel of Christ should be
more widely published.
The Epistle to Philemon being now generally accepted by
all critics whose opinion deserves respect, I need say nothing
about its genuineness, and have no time for other comments
which that charming letter suggests.
The Epistle to the Colossians. — The external attestation to
this letter is all that can be desired. It is only within the last
fifty years that anyone has doubted it. It is used without sus-
picion by Irenseus, Clement, and Tertullian, and was included
in Marcion's Canon. The description of our Lord (Col. i. 15)
as TTjOwroroKoc 7ra(7»}c kticthoq is copied by Justin Martyr twice
verbally (7>'jy//z^ 85, 138), and twice in substance (84, lOo)-
The same expression is used by Theophilus of Antioch (ii. 22).
Davidson owns (11. 177) that, 'as far as external evidence
goes, the epistle is unanimously attested in ancient times '.
We turn then to the internal evidence ; and the most
trying test is to examine the personal references at the end of
the Epistle. On the face of these there appears a close con-
nexion with the letter to Philemon.* The same names occur
* On this connexion Davidson, in his discussion of the Epistle to the Colossians,
does not say a single word; Hilgenfeld touches on it very lightly. Renan's literary
XX.] THE EPISTLE TO THE COLOSSIANS. t^^j
in both : Epaphras, Marcus, Aristarchus, Demas, Lucas, as
names of Paul's companions, Onesimus as a bearer of both
letters, Archippus as one of those addressed. Yet there are
differences which preclude the idea that the Epistle to the
Colossians was manufactured out of the shorter Epistle. The
longer Epistle names Jesus, surnamed Justus, in addition to
those mentioned in the shorter ; while it says nothing about
Philemon, the principal personage in the latter. Tychicus is
named as the principal bearer of the longer Epistle ; but from
the nature of the case, Onesimus alone would be entrusted
with the shorter. Again, the title fellow-prisoner* is given to
Aristarchus in the Epistle to the Colossians ; but in that to
Philemon, it is given not to him, but to Epaphras. Combin-
ing the Epistles, we obtain a clear and consistent account of
the occasion of both. The fugitive slave Onesimus, formerly
a resident at Colossae, is converted at Rome by Paul, who
desires to send him back to his master. There is also with
Paul at the time another Colossian, Epaphras, apparently the
evangelist of the Churches on the Lycus (i. 7), through whose
affectionate remembrance of these Churches the Apostle has
heard much of their prosperous spiritual state (iv. 12, 13).
He therefore joins Onesimus with Tychicus, whom he was
sending on a mission to the Churches of Asia, and while
giving the former a private letter to his master, entrusts them
jointly with a public letter to the Church. Archippus, who is
addressed in the salutation of the shorter letter, is commonly
supposed to have been a son of Philemon : if not that, he
could only have been the chief minister of the Church to which
instinct often keeps him straight where German critics had gone astray. He had
not been without difficulties as to the larger Epistle, but he finds it impossible to get
over the fact of the connexion of the two. He says of the Epistle to the Colossians
[Saint Paul, p. xi): 'Elle presente meme beaucoup de traits qui repoussent I'hypo-
these d'un faux. De ce nombre est surement sa connexite avec le billet a Philemon.
Si I'epitre est apocryphe, le billet est apocryphe aussi; or, peu de pages ont un
accent de sincerite aussi prononce ; Paul seul, autant qu'il semble, a pu ecrire ce
petit chef-d'oeuvre.'
* The most probable meaning of the title is that these disciples shared St Paul's
lodgings, and thereby voluntarily subjected themselves to some restrictions of liberty
from the surveillance of the soldier in charge of him .
398 TIJE PAULINE EPISTLES. [xx.
he belonged. It would seem from the order in which he is
mentioned that the scene of his labours was not Colossse, but
Laodicea. Possibly at the time of writing Philemon might
also have gone to reside there. If this were so, it would be
natural that there should also be a public letter to the Church
over which Archippus presided ; and we find from iv. i6, that
in point of fact there was a companion letter to be found at
Laodicea. I feel little doubt that this is the letter, a duplicate
of which was taken by Tychicus to Ephesus, where Paul had
resided so long, and which we know as the Epistle to the
Ephesians. But we have not yet come to discuss that letter,
suffice it, then, to say now that on the supposition of the
genuineness of the Epistle to the Colossians, all the details of
Paul's history which are indicated come out with perfect clear-
ness ; while, if you want to convince yourselves of the un-
reasonableness of the opposite supposition, you have only to
take the Epistle to Philemon — acknowledged to be genuine —
and try to conceive how a forger would be likely to utilize its
contents for the manufacture of a letter intended to pass as
contemporaneous. I am sure no forger could devise anything
which has such a ring of truth as the Epistle to the Colossians.
What, then, are the reasons why we are to reject a docu-
ment coming to us with the best possible credentials, and
presenting several characteristics which seem to exclude the
hypothesis of fraud ? Three reasons are alleged. The first I
shall not delay to discuss at length : I mean the argument
founded on the occurrence of certain words in this Epistle
which are not found in Paul's previous letters. I cannot sub-
scribe to the doctrine that a man writing a new composition
must not, on pain of losing his identity, employ any word
that he has not used in a former one. Even Baur, who
acknowledged only four Epistles, could hardly employ this
argument consistently — for there are great dissimilarities
between the first and second Epistles to the Corinthians — but
when the Pauline authorship of the Epistles to the Thes-
salonians and to the Philippians is acknowledged, as it now
is, by all the best critics, it is admitted that we may disregard
the objections made by Baur to these Epistles on the ground
XX.] THE EPISTLE TO THE COLOSSIANS. 3^9
of differences of phraseology, and it is recognized that it is
not unnatural that certain differences of language should show
themselves in letters written by Paul at some distance of
time from each other. In the course of a few years the
vocabulary of any man is liable to be modified, but more
especially is this likely to happen to one who, as Paul did,
goes about a good deal, and converses with many new peo-
ple.* Critics strangely forget the probable influence on Paul's
language of his two years' residence in Rome. In the next
century Rome was a hotbed of heresy, all the leading Gnostic
teachers having established schools there. We cannot but
think it likely that in the first century also religious specu-
lators of various kinds should find their way to Rome, and
strive to gain disciples. What more natural than that some
of them should visit the Apostle in his lodgings, and compare
doctrines with him ? And might it not be accounted a note
of spuriousness if letters alleged to be written after a long
residence in Rome exhibited acquaintance with no phases
of thought but those which are dealt with in the earlier
letters ?
The second objection is drawn from the Christology of the
Epistle, the view of our Lord's Person and work which it
presents, being in close resemblance to the Logos doctrine of
St. John. But is it so impossible that the doctrine of two
Christian teachers should resemble each other ? We have
* What I have said above was suggested by a remark of Mr. jNIahaffy, which he
has been good enough to put in writing for me: —
' The works of Xenophon show a remarkable variation in their vocabulary. Thus,
I. and II. of the Hellenica, which are his earliest writings, before he travelled, con-
tain very few lonisms, Dorisms, &c., and are written in very pure Attic. His later
tracts are fuU of un- Attic words, picked up from his changing surroundings; and
what is more curious, in each of them there are many words only used by him once;
so that, on the ground of variation in diction, each single book might be, and indeed
has been, rejected as non-Xenophontic. This variation not only applies to words
which might not be required again, but to such terms as evapSpia (Comm. 3, 3, 12),
varied to ev\!/vxia {Vejz. 10, 21), evToKfxia (quoted by Stobaeus), aySpet6Tris {Anab. 6, 5,
14), all used only once. Every page in Sauppe's Lexilogus Xen. bristles with words
only used once in this way. Now, of classical writers, Xenophon is perhaps (except
; ^rodotus) the only man whose life corresponded to St. Paul's in its roving habits,
OrVch would bring him into contact with the spoken Greek of varying societies.'
400
THE PAULINE EPISTLES. [xx.
evidently here to do with an objection in which one brought
up in the faith of the Church can feel no force before he has
unlearned a good deal. But without assuming anything as
to the unlikelihood of Apostles disagreeing on a fundamental
doctrine, when once it is acknowledged that the Johannine
writings, instead of only originating late in the second cen-
tury, were the work of a contemporary of St. Paul, then the
interval in time between the composition of the Epistle to the
Colossians and of the Gospel of St. John is reduced so much,
that it becomes very rash to declare that what was accepted
as sound doctrine at the later of the two periods could not
have been believed in at the earlier. Add that when we
acknowledge the Epistle to the Philippians, the celebrated
Christological passage (ii. 5-1 1) forces us to attribute to Paul
such high doctrine as to our Lord's pre-existence and as to
the pre-eminent dignity which he enjoyed before his humilia-
tion, that I cannot understand how it should be pronounced
inconceivable that one, whose conception of Christ was that
expressed in the Philippians, should use concerning him the
language we find in the Colossians,
The third objection is the Gnostic complexion of the false
teaching combated in the Colossian Epistle, which, we are
told, could not have characterized any heresy existing in the
time of St. Paul. But how is it known that it could not ?
What are the authorities which fix for us the date of the rise
of Gnosticism with such precision that we are entitled to
reject a document bearing all the marks of authenticity, if it
exhibit too early traces of Gnostic controversies ? The simple
fact is, that we have no certain knowledge whatever about
the beginnings of Gnosticism. We know that it was in full
blow in the middle of the second century. The Church writers
to whom we owe our best knovidedge of it wrote at the end of
that century, or the beginning of the next, and were much
more busy in refuting the forms of heresy then prevalent than
in exploring their antiquities. But if we desire to describe
the first appearance of Gnostic tendencies, we have, outside
the New Testament books, no materials; and if we assign dfje
date from our own sense of the fitness of things, we are bouidwh,
XX.] THE EPISTLE TO THE COLOSSIANS. 401
to do so with all possible modesty. * Bishop Lightfoot,' says
Davidson, * following Neander, thinks that the Judaic Gnos-
ticism combated in the Epistle to the Colossians was a heresy
expressing " the simplest and most elementary conceptions "
of the tendency of thought so called ; one whose speculations
were so "vague and fluctuating", as to agree with St. Paul's
time.' From this view Davidson dissents, regarding the
heretical tenets of the Colossian teachers as more definite
than Lightfoot represents. I myself fully believe the bishop
to be in the right ; but for the purposes of the present argu-
ment I count it absolutely immaterial whether he is or not.
When we have got a well-authenticated first century docu-
ment, that document is evidence as to the state of opinion at
the time when it was written ; and whether the amount of
Gnostic opinion which it reveals be much or little, we have
no reason for rejecting its testimony, unless we have equally
good countervailing testimony. But countervailing testi-
mony deserving of regard, in this case there is none. David-
son says : ' Lightfoot labours without effect to date the opinions
of the Colossian errorists before A. D. 70, for in doing so he is
refuted not only by Hegesippus, who puts the first exhibitions
of heretical Gnosis under Trajan, but by Clement of Alexan-
dria, who dates them under Hadrian, and by Firmilian of
Caesarea, who dates them long after the Apostles.' Firmilian
of Caesarea ! he might as well have said Theophylact. I
think he misunderstands Firmilian ; but it is useless to dis-
cuss the point : for what possible value can attach to the
opinion which a writer of the middle of the third century held
as to the extent to which Gnosticism had prevailed two hun-
dred years before his own time ?
There is no surer test of the merit of an historian than to
observe what are the authorities on which he builds his story.
If you find him relying on such as are worthless, you may know
that he does not understand his business. It would be unjust
to Davidson if the present example were offered as a fair
specimen of his sense of the value of authorities ; and if he
has not produced better, it is because there were no better to
produce. If he appealed to the early haeresiologists his cause
2 D
402 THE PAULINE EPISTLES. [xx.
would be lost ; for, following the lead of Justin Martyr,
they commonly count Simon Magus as the parent of Gnos-
ticism,* so that if their authority is to be regarded, the heresy
existed in Apostolic times. Hegesippus, the earliest of the
authorities on whom Davidson relies, wrote in the Episcopate
of Eleutherus, that is to say, some time between 175 and 189.
He is therefore more than a century later than the times
concerning which he is appealed to as a witness ; and he is
later than Justin Martyr, whose testimony I have just quoted
on the other side.f But, strange to say, Davidson himself
thinks (ii. 38) that Hegesippus was acquainted with i Tim.
vi. 20, and thence derived the expression 'Gnosis falsely so
called'. Hegesippus, therefore, must have believed that Gnosis
existed in the Apostle's days. Thus it will be seen that the
authorities that can be used to fix the date of the first appear-
ance of Gnosticism are conflicting and untrustworthy ; nor do
I believe that, even if we had fuller information, it would be
possible to name a definite date for its beginning. For I
take the true history to be, that there came a wave of thought
from without, in consequence of which certain ideas foreign
to Christianity floated vaguely about, meeting in different
quarters more or less acceptance, for some time before any-
one formed these ideas into a system. With respect to the
* See Irenseus, i. xxiii. 4.
t The work of Hegesippus is lost ; and in this case we have not even an extract
from it, but only the report which Eusebius gives (iii. 32), in his own words, of the
substance of what Hegesippus had said. For want of the context we cannot make a
positive affirmation ; but it appears to me that when Hegesippus says that ' down to
the times of Trajan the Church remained a. pure and incorrupt virgin,' he had specially
in view the Church of Jerusalem (compare Euseb. iv. 22). The Elkesaites were the
heretics with whom Hegesippus, as a Christian of Palestine, would have most to deal,
and the reign of Trajan was the very date they claimed for the revelation of their
peculiar doctrines. They held a kind of doctrine of development, believing that the
latest growth of time was the best, and that the full truth was not to come until error
had preceded it. Until Paul had promulgated his erroneous doctrines, the revelations
of Elkesai were not to be made. Hegesippus gave a different account of the matter.
While the Apostles were alive heresies were obliged to burrow in secret ; but when
their sacred choir had departed, and the generation had passed away which had
been vouchsafed the hearing of their inspired wisdom, then the preachers of know-
ledge, falsely so called, ventured to invade the Church, as if now bare and un-
protected.
XX.] THE EPISTLE TO THE EPHESIANS. 403
history of this undeveloped stage of Gnosticism, I hold the
Epistle to the Colossians to be one of our best sources of
information ; and those who reject it because it does not
agree with their notions of what the state of speculation in
the first century ought to be are guilty of the unscientific
fault of forming a theory on an insufficient induction of
facts, and then rejecting a fact which they had not taken
into account, because it does not agree with their theory.
TJie Epistle to the Ephesians. — ' Among the letters which \
bear the name of Paul,' says Renan [Saint Paul, xxiii), * the
Epistle to the Ephesians is perhaps the one of which there
are most early quotations, as the composition of the Apostle
of the Gentiles.' On internal grounds Renan has serious
doubts as to the Pauline origin of this Epistle, and he throws
out the idea that it may have been written under the Apostle's
directions by Timothy, or some other of his companions ; but
he owns that the external evidence in its favour is of the
highest character. It is a matter of course to say that it is
recognized by Irenseus, Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, ,
and in the Muratorian Fragment. The fact that it was among
the Pauline Epistles owned by Marcion makes it unnecessary
to cite authorities later than 140. There is what seems to me
a distinct use of the Epistle by Clement of Rome ; for when
he exhorts to unity by the plea, * Have we not one God, and
one Christ, and one Spirit of grace poured out upon us, and
one calling in Christ' ? [c. 46), I cannot think the resemblance
merely accidental to * one Spirit', ' one hope of your calling'
(Eph. iv. 4). There can be no doubt of the use of the Ephesians
in what is called the Second Epistle of Clement : but though
I think this is certainly older than the age of Irenaeus, I do
not know whether it is older than that of Marcion. The
recognition of the Ephesians in the letter of Ignatius to the
same Church is beyond doubt. He addresses the Ephesians
[c. 12) as UavXov (jvjXfxvaTm, a phrase recalling Eph. iii. 3, 4, 9,
and goes on to say how Paul makes mention of them iv
iraa^j siriaToXij, a puzzling expression, which obliges us to put
some force on the grammar if we translate ' in all his Epistle ',
or on the facts, if we translate ' in every Epistle '. The
2D2
404 THE PAULINE EPISTLES. [xx.
recognition of our Epistle is express in the one case, prob-
able in the other. There are other phrases in the Ignatian
letters which remind us of the Epistle to the Ephesians^
of which I only mention his direction to Polycarp [c. 5) to
exhort the brethren to love their wives, even as the Lord
the Church (Eph. v. 25, 29). Polycarp's own letter refers
{c. 12) to words of Scripture, * Be ye angry, and sin not', and
* Let not the sun go down on your wrath', the former sentence
being no doubt ultimately derived from Ps, iv. 5, but only
found in connexion with the latter in Eph. iv. 26. Hermas
more than once shows his knowledge of the text, ' Grieve not
the holy Spirit of God' (iv. 30), (see Mandat. x. i, 2). There
is another topic of evidence, the full discussion of which will
come later on ; I refer to the fact that the first Epistle of Peter
shows traces of acquaintance with the Pauline Epistles, and
in particular with those to the Romans and Ephesians. This
fact is recognized by Renan, who is much impressed with the
evidence it offers of the early acceptance of the Epistle to the
Ephesians as Paul's, and as a document of authority {Saint
^Paul, p. xxii). Renan, being disposed to accept Peter's
Epistle, but having doubts about that to the Ephesians, is
rather perplexed by this fact, which proves the priority of the
latter ; and he suggests that it may have been Peter's secre-
tary who turned to account his knowledge of the Epistle
ascribed to Paul [U Afitechrtst, p. vii) ; but this very gratuitous
suggestion does not affect the inference as to the relative date
of the two Epistles. Several critics, who do not accept either
Epistle, agree as to the fact of a connexion between them.
If, as has been already suggested, the Epistle to the Ephesians
had the character of an encyclical, it would be natural that a
copy should be preserved for the use of the Church of Rome ;
and we should then have a simple explanation of the fact that
Peter, writing at Rome, should find there in constant use these
two letters of Paul in particular — that to the Romans and to
the Ephesians.
What, then, are the reasons why it is sought to reject so
weighty a mass of external evidence ? You will, perhaps, be
\ surprised to hear that one of the chief is the great likeness of
this Epistle to the Epistle to the Colossians. The fact of the
XX.] THE EPISTLE TO THE EPHESIANS. 405
close affinity of the two letters is indisputable,* but the expla-'X
nation which Paley gave of it is perfectly satisfactory, namely,
that in two letters, written about the same time on the same
subject by one person to different people, it is to be expected
that the same thoughts will be expressed in nearly the same /
words. Now the Epistle to the Ephesians is specially tied to
that to the Colossians by the fact that both letters purport to
have been carried by the same messenger, Tychicus, the para-
graph concerning whom is nearly the same in both (Eph. vi.
21, 22 ;t Col. iv. 7, 8). That the letters which the Apostle
wrote to be sent off by the same messenger to different
Churches should be full of the same thoughts, and those
thoughts frequently expressed in the same phrases, is so very
natural, that instead of the mutual similarity deserving to
count as an objection to the genuineness of either, this
correspondence of the character of the letters, with the tra-
ditional account of the circumstances of their origin, ought to
reckon as a strong confirmation of the correctness of that
account.
Yet this explanation of the similarity of the two Epistles
is commonly dismissed by sceptical writers with small con-
sideration. DeWette, for instance, condemns the Epistle to
the Ephesians as but a * verbose amplification ' of the Epistle
to the Colossians. He says, ' Such a transcription of himself
is unworthy of an Apostle, and must therefore be the work of
an imitator.'^ The idea that it is unworthy of an Apostle to
repeat himself, springs from the tacit assumption that the first
of the two Epistles was a work published for general circu-
lation (though indeed it is not uncommon to find authors
repeating themselves even in such published works); but I\
am at a loss to see why an Apostle might not say the same
* ' Out of the 155 verses contained in the Epistle to the Ephesians, 78 contain ex-
pressions identical with those in the Colossian letter' (Davidson, ii. 200).
t From the word ' also ' in Eph. vi. 21, Baur inferred the priority of the Colos-
sian letter.
X In like manner Renan (Samt Paul, xvii.), Comment Paul a-t-il pu passer son
temps a contrefaire un de ses ouvrages, a se repeter, a faire une lettre banale avec une
lettre topique et particuliere .''
4o6 THE PAULINE EPISTLES. [xx.
j things when writing to different people. No one finds any
difficulty in the supposition that an Apostle might write a
circular letter — that is to say, that he might send to different
Churches letters couched in identical words. What greater
impropriety would there be if, instead of directing a scribe to
make a copy of his first letter, he dictated a second of like
tenor for the use of a different Church ? Nor is the case much
altered if, after the second letter had been written, he found
that it added so much to what had been said in the first, as
to make him wish that his disciples should read both (Col.
A iv. i6).
I Those who ascribe the two Epistles to different authors
are not agreed which was the original, which the imitator.
Mayerhoff, the first assailant of the Epistle' to the Colossians,
made the Ephesian letter the earlier, and he has found some
followers. But the more general, and as I think the more
plausible, opinion reverses the order. Indeed, the personal
details in the Epistle to the Colossians, and its connexion
with the Epistle to Philemon, have caused it to be accepted
as Pauline by some who reject the Ephesian letter. But what
I regard as a complete refutation of the hypothesis of imi-
tation on either side, has been made by one of the most
/"recent ot German speculators on the subject — Holtzmann.*
He has made a critical comparison of the parallel passages
in the two Epistles, and his result is that the contest as to
their relative priority ends in a drawn battle. He gives as
examples seven passages in which he pronounces that the
Ephesians is the original, and the Colossians the imitation ;
and seven others in which he comes to the opposite con-
l elusion. t
* Holtzmann, Professor of Theology, formerly at Heidelberg, now at Strassburg.
His most important work is on the Synoptic Gospels. That here cited is Kritik der
Epheser- und Kolosserbriefe, Leipzig, 1872. He has lately pubhshed an Introduc-
tion to the New Testament.
t These are: Priority of Ephesians — Eph. i. 4 = Col. i. 22; Eph. i. 6, 7 = Col. i.
13, 14; Eph. iii. 3, 5, 9 = Col. i. 26, ii. 2; Eph. iii. 17, 18, iv. 16, ii. 20 = Col. i. 23, ii.
2, 7; Eph. iv. 16 = Col. ii. 19; Eph. iv. 22-24 = Col. i"- 9) 1°; Eph. v. 19= Col. iii.
16. Priority of Colossians — Col. i. i, 2 = Eph. i. i, 2; Col. i. 3-9 = Eph. i. 15-18;
Col. i. 5= Eph. i, 3, 12, 13; Col. i. 25, 29 = Eph. iii. 2, 7; Col. ii. 4-8 = Eph. iv.
17-21I; Col. iv. 5 = Eph. v. 15, 16; Col. iv. 6 = Eph. iv. 29.
xx.j THE EPISTLE TO THE EPHESIANS. 407
The natural conclusion from these facts would be that the
similarity between the Epistles is not to be explained by
conscious imitation on either side, but by identity of author-
ship.* The explanation, however, which Holtzmann offers is
that only a certain nucleus of the Epistle to the Colossians is
genuine — that a forger taking this for his guide, manufactured
by its means the Epistle to the Ephesians ; and then, pleased
with his handiwork, proceeded to interpolate the Epistle to the
Colossians with pieces taken from his own composition. And
such was the success of this attempt, that not only was the
forged Ephesian Epistle universally accepted as St. Paul's,
but no one cared to preserve the unimproved Colossian
Epistle. Holtzmann, expurgating our present Epistle to the
Colossians by removing this adventitious matter, publishes
what he offers as the real original Epistle. The engineer
Brindley declared that the reason rivers were made, was to
feed navigable canals. Some German writers seem to think
that in the ancient Church Apostolic documents were only
valued as the possible basis of some ingenious forgery. I
might seriously discuss this theory of Holtzmann's if I could
find that even in his own school he had made a single convert
to it.f If you study the Epistle in Lightfoot's commentary,
you will find that each of those proposed expurgations is a
real mutilation of the argument ; and the chief merit of
Holtzmann's work is his success in showing that the theory
that the Ephesian Epistle is the work of an imitator of the
Colossians gives no adequate explanation of the facts.
I have said enough to show that no good reason for reject-
ing the Epistle to the Ephesians can be drawn from its like-
ness to the sister Epistle to the Colossians. But I think that
* The anacoluthca of the Epistle to the Ephesians (compare, for instance, iii. I, iv.
i) afford another proof that we have here, not the calm work of an imitator of another
man's production, but the fervid utterances of an original writer, whom a rush of
fresh thoughts occasionally carries away from what he had been about to say.
t Hilgenfeld, in his Journal for 1873, reviewing Holtzmann's book, expresses his
complete dissent from his conclusions ; and having complimented the author on the
ability of his performance, winds up with, Aber soUen wir in der Wissenschaft wirk-
lich weiter kommen, so haben wir, meine ich, objectiver zu verlahrcn.
4o8 THE PAULINE EPISTLES. [xx.
the real cause of hostility to this letter is not this, but rather
the contradiction which it offers to modern theories of early
Church history. According to these, the feud between Paul-
inists and Anti-Paulinists continued long into the second
century, and it was only at this comparatively late period that
there arose the conception of the 'Catholic Church' embracing
Jew and Gentile on equal terms, and giving to Paul and Peter
equal honour. Men have refused to believe that the book of
the Acts could have been written by a companion of Paul,
even ten or twenty years after that Apostle's death, because
they could not think that the conciliatory school, to which
this book clearly belongs, could have arisen so early. But if
we accept the Epistle to the Ephesians, we must own that Paul
was himself no Paulinist, as Baur understands the word. He
clearly belongs to the era of the ' Catholic Church ', concern-
ing which he has so much to say ; and he even speaks of the
'holy Apostles' (iii. 5) as might one who had no cause of
quarrel with the Twelve.
And certain it is that in this Epistle we read nothing of
St. Paul's controversy with those who ' forbade him to speak
to the Gentiles, that they might be saved', nothing of his con-
troversy with those who wished to impose on Gentile converts
the yoke of circumcision. All such controversies are clearly
over at the time of writing. Those whom he addressed,
though Gentiles (iii. i), have won the position of recognition
as ' fellow-citizens with the saints, an J of the household of
God' (ii. 19). But is there anything incredible in the sup-
position that Paul himself lived to see the dying out of the
controversy that had once raged so violently ? Controversies
soon die out in the face of accomplished facts. I have myself
seen many hot political controversies — about the first Reform
Bill ; about the Abolition of the Corn Laws ; about the Dis-
establishment of the Irish Church. As long as any practical
end could be obtained the battle raged fiercely ; but when a
decision was made, which there was no hope of overturning,
all parties acquiesced in the inevitable, and took no interest in
wrangling over the old dispute. So it was with the dispute
as to the obligation of Mosaism. When emissaries came
XX.] THE EPISTLE TO THE EPHESIANS. 409
down from Jerusalem, assuring Paul's Gentile converts that
unless they were circumcised Christ should profit them noth-
ing, and when many of them appeared ready to give ear to
such teaching, it was natural that the Apostle should protest
loudly against a doctrine which subverted the whole Gospel
he had taught. But he counteracted it in even a more effec-
tual way than direct opposition. He and his disciples went
on making new converts, and founding new Churches among
the Gentiles, on whom no obligation of Judaic observance
was laid, until it became hopeless for the zealots for the
Mosaic Law in Palestine to dream of excommunicating so
large and powerful a body. Nine or ten years of Paul's
preaching were enough to put the position of the Gentile
Churches beyond danger of assault. No one can doubt that
at the time of Paul's Roman imprisonment there were Chris-
tian Churches in Ephesus and other cities of Asia, in Greece,
in Syria, in Rome itself, containing a multitude of Gentile
converts, who did not observe the law of Moses, and who,
nevertheless, did not doubt that they were entitled to every
privilege which union with Christ conferred. Gentile Chris-
tianity was by this time an accomplished fact, and it shows
inability to grasp the historic situation if a man expects
Paul's letters at this date to exhibit him still employed in
controversial defence of the position of his Gentile converts,
or if he is surprised to find Paul taking for granted that the
barrier between Jew and Gentile had been thrown down.* It
is as great an anachronism to expect to find Paul, at the time
of his imprisonment, maintaining the right of a Gentile to be
admitted into the Christian Church without circumcision, as it
would be to expect to find a statesman of the present day
* Davidson objects (ii. 213) that Paul's language in this Epistle ' suits an author
who knew the widespread fruit of the Gospel among Gentiles, and witnessed its
mighty effects long after Paul had departed, but is scarcely consonant with the per-
petual struggle carried on by the Apostle against a Judaizing Christianity upheld by
Peter, James, and John.' But there is evidence that Paul himself knew the wide-
spread fruit of the Gospel among the Gentiles, and witnessed its mighty effects ; and
there is no evidence that his struggle against Judaizing Christians was perpetual, or
that Peter, James, and John, were his opponents : unless we take Baur's word rather
than the Apostle's own.
4IO THE PAULINE EPISTLES. [xx.
dilating on the right of a Jew to be admitted into Parliament
without swearing 'on the true faith of a Christian '.
But though we can see that, at the time the Epistle to the
Ephesians was written, there was no need of a struggle to
claim for Gentiles admission on equal terms to all the privi-
leges of the Gospel, we can see also that this struggle was
then not long over. We take it now as a matter of course
that we have a full right to every Christian privilege, and we
should be amazed if anyone denied our title on the ground
that we are not children of Abraham, or do not observe the
Mosaic Law. The writer of this Epistle asserts it as a truth
that in Christ the distinction between Jew and Gentile has
been done away, and that the Jew has no longer any exclusive
position of pre-eminence ; but to him this truth is no matter
of course, but an amazing paradox. He is astonished as he
contemplates this ' mystery of Christ ' which in other ages
was not made known unto the sons of men, * that the Gentiles
should be fellow-heirs and of the same body, and partakers of
his promise in Christ by the Gospel ' (iii. 4). He is thankful
that to himself the revelation of this mystery had been made,
and that by the grace of God he had been employed to pub-
lish it to the world. Cavils have been raised both against
the exaggerated humility of ' less than the least of all saints'
(iii. 8), which has been taken for a mere imitation of i Cor.
XV. 9, and against the boastfulness of iii. 4, where the
language, it is said, is that of a disciple of Paul, who had
witnessed the victory of his principles in the general recog-
nition of Gentile Christianity. But let it be acknowledged
that Paul lived to witness that victory himself, and that at
the time he wrote his Gentile disciples were affected by no
stigma of inferiority, and is it possible that he could be
exempt from some human feelings of triumph at the great-
ness of the revolution which, through his means, had been
brought about ? That revolution he looked on as indicating
no change in the Divine plans. It had been God's eternal
purpose thus through Christ to adopt the Gentiles ' into his
kingdom ' ; and it was Paul's great glory that God should
have vouchsafed to choose him, unworthy though he was, to
XX.] THE EPISTLE TO THE EPHESIANS. 411
receive the revelation of a mystery unknown to former ages»
and to be made God's instrument for publishing it to the
world. I am persuaded that anyone who studies the freshness
and novelty with which the doctrine of the non-exclusive
character of Christianity is regarded in the Epistle to the
Ephesians, will feel that this is a document which cannot be
pushed down to the second century.*
It has been objected that Paul could never have directed
the Colossian Church to procure what was but a diffuse and
vapid copy of the letter addressed to themselves. Let me
point out that though the two letters deal with the same
themes, one who had read either would find in the other a
varied presentation of doctrine. In the Colossian Epistle the
dignity of the Head of the Church is set forth with a fulness
greater than in any other Pauline Epistle ; in this Epistle the
dignity of the Church itself has been exhibited. We are so
familiar with the idea of the Catholic Church, that we cannot
easily conceive how great an impression must have been
made by the wonderful unlikeness of the Christian organiza-
tion to anything the world had previously witnessed. In
every great town throughout the empire there was now a
community in which equality was the rule, and all the dis-
tinctions which had kept men apart counted for nothing.
Jew and Gentile, Greek and Barbarian, were united in mutual
love ; the slave and the freeman had like privileges, male and
female were on equal terms. There was no exclusiveness ;
any who desired to join was welcome. And all these several
communities were but parts of one wider organization. Dis-
tance of place counted as little as difference of social condition.
All were brethren in a common faith : eager to do good offices
to each other because bound by love to a common Lord, whose
glorious reappearing was the common hope of all. The Chris-
tian Church impressed the imaginations of men, whose own
claim to belong to it was not admitted. According to Valen-
tinus, the Church on earth was but the visible presentation of
* I have noted (p. 31) the Pauline trait that the writer (ii. 11) feels it an affront
that the name ' uncircumcised ' should be applied to his Gentile disciples.
412 THE PAULINE EPISTLES. [xx.
a heavenly Aeon which had existed before all time. And in
this Valentinus agreed with what I count to be older heresies
(Iren, i. xxx. i, Hippol. v. 6). Let no one say that it needed
a century before such a phenomenon as this could arrest the
attention or impress the imagination of men. The phenome-
non existed in Paul's time. The unity of the Church was
manifested when so many congregations of his converts made
collections for the poor saints at Jerusalem ; when his dis-
ciples sent money for his own support to distant cities ; when
as he drew near to Rome brethren came as far as Appii
Forum to meet him. His remaining letters (and he probably
wrote many more) testify how many different communities
claimed his care. Paul's earlier Epistles, especially those to
the Corinthians, show that his mind had dwelt on the fact that
Christians formed an organized body, which he describes as
the temple of the living God ; as a body of which each par-
ticular saint was a member, Christ the head. These figures
are repeated in the Epistle to the Ephesians (i. 2;^, ii. 20, iii. 6,
iv. 16, 25), but he adds a new one.* The closest tie of earthly
love is used to illustrate the love of Christ for His Church ;
and then by a wonderful reflection of the illustration, the love
of Christ for His Church is made to sanctify and glorify Chris-
tian marriage, husbands being exhorted to love their wives,
even as Christ the Church.
You will find some critics using very disparaging terms as
to the literary excellence of the Epistle to the Ephesians.
Questions of taste cannot be settled by disputation, but a
critic may well distrust his own judgment if he can see no
merit in a book which has had a great success ; and I do not
think that there is any N. T. book which we can prove to have
been earlier circulated than this, or more widely esteemed.
At the present day there is no more popular hymn than thatf
which but turns into verse the words of this Epistle ; and
holding the opinion I have already expressed as to the proba-
bility of the Apostle John's having visited Rome, I cannot but
* Yet see 2 Cor. xi. 2 ; and Is. liv. 5. Ixi. 10; Jer. iii. 14.
t ' The Church's one foundation.'
XX.] THE PASTORAL EPISTLES.
413
think that when he beheld in apocalyptic vision the 'new
Jerusalem coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as
a bride adorned for her husband ' (Rev. xxi. 2 ; see also xix. 7 ;
xxi. 9 ; xxii. 17), he only saw the embodiment of a conception
familiar to him from his knowledge of an Epistle highly
valued by the Roman Church.* I very strongly believe that
it was the language (Eph. i. 4) about the election of the Church
before the foundation of the world which was the source not
only of the Ophite and Valentinian conceptions to which I
have just referred, but also of the language employed by early
orthodox writers. Hermas (Vz's. ii. 4) speaks of the Church
as created before all things, and of the world as formed for
her sake; and the so-called second Epistle of Clement of
Rome {c. 14) speaks of the spiritual Church as created before
the sun and moon, as pre-existent like Christ Himself, and like
Him manifested in the last days for man's salvation. It is idle
to discuss the literary excellence of the Epistle to the Ephe-
sians, if I am right in thinking that it has had so great influence
on Christian thought.
IV. T/ie Pastoral Epistles. — I come now to the group of
Pauline Epistles against which the charge of spuriousness
has been made most confidently. Renan, who does not
venture positively to condemn any of the others, and who has
only serious doubts about the Epistle to the Ephesians, seems
to have thought that his reputation for orthodoxy in his own
school would be seriously compromised if he showed any
hesitation in rejecting the Pastoral Epistles; and, accordingly,
* According to modem sceptical writers the author of the Apocalypse was an
enemy and a libeller of St. Paul ; but the real St. John read and valued St. Paul's
writings. For if the Epistle to the Colossians be really Paul's, it scarcely needs the
quotation of particular phrases to show that the Christology of that Epistle is repro-
duced in the Apocalypse ; but we have the very phrases irpwrdroKos e'/c twv ueKpwv
(Col. i. 18) in Rev. i. 5, and the apx'fl of the same verse, with Trpa)T6roKos irdaris
Krlfffus (Col. i. 15), in f) apxh t^s /cricrecos rov deov (Rev. iii. 14). The writing of the
names of the Apostles on the foundations of the heavenly city (Rev. xxi. 14) had
been anticipated in Eph. iii. 20 ; and there is a close resemblance between Eph. iii. 5,
and Rev. x. 7. There are very many other verbal coincidences which quite fall in
with the supposition of St, John's acquaintance with the Epistle to the Ephesians,
though they would not suffice to prove it.
414
THE PAULINE EPISTLES. [xx.
apocryphal, fabricated, forged, are the epithets which he com-
monly applies to them. Yet, not very consistently, he con-
stantly uses them as authorities for his narrative.* Yet it is
certainly for no deficiency of external attestation that these
Epistles are to be rejected. Irenaeus, Clement, Tertullian,
the Muratorian Fragment, Theophilus of Antioch, the Epistle
of the Churches of Vienne and Lyons, unquestionably re-
cognize them. Polycarp, at the very beginning of the second
century, uses them largely, and there are what I count distinct
echoes of these letters in Clement of Rome,t and in Justin
]\Tartyr. I must speak in a little more detail about Hegesippus.
Baur has given students of early Church History so many
new ideas, that they would have great cause to be grateful
to him, if it were not that these ideas are for the most part
wrong. I admire the ingenuity of Baur, as I admire the
genius of Victor Hugo. But I think L' Homme qui rit
gives as accurate a representation of English History in
the reign of James II. as Baur does of the early Christian
Church. I do not know any of Baur's suggestions wilder
than that about Hegesippus and the Pastoral Epistles. I
have already (5^^ p. 402) referred to a place in which Eusebius
in his own words gives the sense of a passage in Hegesippus,
employing there the words, * knowledge falsely so called'.
Baur thinks that Eusebius found these words in Hegesippus;
and though this cannot be proved, I think it very likely ; for
we constantly find that where Eusebius, instead of transcrib-
ing a passage, gives a summary of it, he is apt, as is very
natural, to incorporate many of his author's words. It seems
likely, then, that Hegesippus is to be added to the number of
those who use the Pastoral Epistles. But instead of drawing
this conclusion, Baur infers that the Pastoral Epistles use
* See Saint Paul, 124, 132, 419, 439, but especially ZM«/^c-^r2J^, pp. 100, loi,
which are altogether founded on these Epistles. At p. 103 he feels the necessity of
malting an apology, and says, 'Nous usons de cette epitre comme d'une sorte de
roman historique, fait avec un sentiment tres-juste de la situation de Paul en ses
derniers temps.' There could not be clearer testimony from an unwilling witness to
the internal marks of truth presented by the Epistle which he cites.
t In addition to several in the previously known portions, see the newly recovered
chapter Ixi., in particular the phrase b fiaaiKetis tUv aliivuv (i Tim. i. 17).
XX.] THE PASTORAL EPISTLES.
415
Hegesippus : a frightful anachronism, in which few of his
disciples at the present day venture to follow him ; because,
whether the Pastoral Epistles be Paul's or not, both external
and internal evidence forbid our ascribing to them so late a
date as the end of the second century. Baur has no better
reason for his opinion than that Hegesippus, being an Anti-
Pauline Ebionite, could not quote St. Paul. But for so describ-
ing Hegesippus there is no evidence. He was a native of
Palestine, no doubt ; but Eusebius, who was certainly no
Ebionite, has no suspicion of his orthodoxy. Hegesippus
approved of the Epistle of the Roman Clement, which has a
strong Pauline colouring, and he was in full communion both
with the Church of Rome and with other leading Churches of
his time.
The only set-oil to be made against the proof of the univer-
sal reception of the Pastoral Epistles by orthodox Christians,
is the fact of their rejection by some heretics. For the other
Pauline Epistles we have the testimony of Marcion, but these
three were not included in his Canon. We hear also of Basi-
lides having rejected them. Clement of Alexandria [Strom.
ii. 11) attributes this rejection solely to doctrinal dislike,
naming in particular the verse about xpev^Mvvjuiog jvCjaig, just
referred to, as the cause of offence. St. Jerome, in the preface
to his commentary on Titus, also complains of the arbitrary
conduct of these heretics in rejecting Epistles which they did
not like, without being able to produce good reasons to justify
their rejection ; and he says that Tatian, though he rejected
some of Paul's Epistles, yet accepted that to Titus with par-
ticular cordiality. From this it has been commonly imagined
that the Epistles which Tatian rejected were those to Timothy.
There is no evidence to prove this, but the thing is likely
enough. At least, the first Epistle to Timothy contains
matter offensive to an Encratite, in its condemnation of those
who forbade to marry and commanded to abstain from meat,
and in its advice to Timothy to drink a little wine for his
stomach's sake. Yet the first Epistle to Timothy and that to
Titus so clearly stand or fall together, that to accept the one
and reject the other is a decision which commands no respect.
4i6 THE PAULINE EPISTLES. [xx.
The same traits which would make an Epistle disliked by
Tatian would make it also disliked by Marcion, who shared
his Encratite principles ; and Marcion was so very arbitrary
in his dealings with the Gospels, that his rejection of Epistles
does not count for much, especially when these Epistles have
the earlier attestation of Polycarp.
If, therefore, the battle had to be fought solely on the
ground of external evidence, the Pastoral Epistles would
obtain a complete victory. The objections to these Epistles
on 'the grounds of internal evidence may be classed under
three heads ; and the facts on which these objections are
founded must be conceded, though we dispute the inferences
drawn from them.*
(i) There are peculiarities of diction which unite these
epistles to each other, and separate them from the other
Pauline letters. For instance, all three open with the saluta-
tion, 'Grace, mercy, and peace'; in the other Pauline letters
it is ' Grace and peace'. The phrase 'sound doctrine' BiEacT-
KaX'ia vyiaivov(Ta, and Other derivatives from vyir}q in this
metaphorical sense, are to be found repeatedly in the Pastoral
Epistles, and not elsewhere. So likewise, the word ev(T'i(5tia
and the phrase, ' this is a faithful saying'. The master of a
slave is called S«a7rort}c in these epistles, Kvpiog in the others.
The appearance of our Lord at His second coming is £7rt0av£«a,
not Trapovaia, as in the earlier epistles. Several other exam-
ples of the same kind might be given, but these are enough
to illustrate the nature of the argument. The inference which
sceptical writers draw from it is, that these three epistles
have a common author, and that author not St. Paul.
(2) The second topic is, that the nature of the controver-
sies with which the writer has to deal, and the opponents
whom he has to encounter, are different from those dealt with
in Paul's other epistles. The writer does not insist on the
worthlessness of circumcision and other Mosaic rites, on the
importance of faith, or on the docrine of justification without
* In what follows I repeat several things which I said in an article on the Pas-
toral Epistles in the Christian Observer for 1877.
XX.] THE PASTORAL EPISTLES. 4iy
the deeds of the law. On the other hand, he insists more
sharply than in the other epistles on the necessity of good
works. P'or the false teachers whom he had in view appear
to have prided themselves on their knowledge, and the word
Gnosis seems to have then already acquired a technical sense.
But this boasted knowledge consisted merely in acquaintance
with unprofitable speculations about endless genealogies,
which only ministered questions; and they who possessed
it neglected the practical side of religion, confessing God
with their mouths, but in works denying him, ' being abomin-
able and disobedient, and unto every good work reprobate.'
In opposition to such teaching, the writer insists sharply on
the necessity that those who have believed in God should be
careful to maintain good works, should avoid foolish and
unlearned questions and genealogies and contentions and
strivings about the law, inasmuch as these are unprofitable
and vain. The false teaching combated seems to differ a
good deal in complexion from that opposed in the Epistle to
the Colossians, and to have a more Jewish cast (Titus i. 14).
It has also been contended that the directions to Christian
ministers in i Tim, and Titus imply a more developed hier-
archical system than do Paul's acknowledged letters. These
common characteristics of the Pastoral Epistles lead us to
believe that they were written at a later time than Paul's
other epistles, and when the perils of the Church were dif-
ferent. The use, concerning the false teachers, of the word
heretic (Titus iii. 10), has also been noted]as a sign of lateness ;
but it must be remembered that ' heresies ' are enumerated
among the ' works of the flesh' (Gal. v. 20).
(3) There is great difficulty in harmonizing these Epistles
with the history in the Acts. The Epistle to Titus implies a
voyage of Paul to Crete, the first Epistle to Timothy implies
other travels of Paul, for which we cannot easily find room in
Luke's history. Take in particular the^Second Epistle. This
was written from an imprisonment in Rome ; for we are told
(i. 17) how Onesiphorus, when in Rome, searched diligently
for the Apostle, and found him. And on his way to Rome
we are told (iv. 20) that the Apostle left Trophimus at Miletus,
2 E
4i8 THE PAULINE EPISTLES. [xx.
sick. Now, when Paul was last at Miletus, on his way to
Jerusalem, he did not leave Trophimus there ; for we find
that Trophimus accompanied Paul to Jerusalem, and that
one of the causes why the Jews of Asia set on Paul in the
Temple was that they had seen this Trophimus with him in
the city, and supposed that the Apostle had brought him into
the Temple (Acts xxi. 29). St. Paul's voyage from Csesarea
to Rome is carefully traced by St. Luke, and we find that he
did not touch at Miletus on his way. I will not trouble you
with some far-fetched attempts to reconcile this statement
about Trophimus with the supposition that the imprisonment
from which the Second Epistle to Timothy was written is the
same as that recorded by St. Luke. In my judgment these
explanations utterly fail. Further, we are told in the verse
just referred to that * Erastus abode in Corinth'; and the
most natural explanation of this is that Paul had left him
there ; but we find from the Acts that the Apostle had not
been in Corinth for some years before his Roman imprison-
ment, and Timothy had been with Paul since his last visit to
Corinth, so that there was no occasion to inform him by letter
about it. Once more, the verse about the cloak, or, as some
translate it, the case for books, that Paul left at Troas (a
verse, I may say in passing, which no forger would ever
dream of inserting), would imply that Paul had been at Troas
within some moderate time of the epoch when the Apostle
was writing, for it is hardly likely he would have left articles
on which he seems to have set much value to lie uncalled for
at Troas for many years. But the last visit to Troas recorded
in the Acts is distant some seven or eight years from the
date of the Roman imprisonment. Other proofs of the same
kind could be multiplied.
Now, of these three difficulties, the first, arising from
peculiarities of diction, is one which we have already learned
to disregard. The Epistles which I have previously exa-
mined exhibit in Paul's writings very great varieties of ex-
pression, showing him to be a man of considerable mental
pliability, and not one whose stock of phrases would be likely
to be stereotyped when he came to write these letters. But I
XX.] THE PASTORAL EPISTLES. ^ig
willingly concede that the argument from the diction makes
it likely that the Pastoral Epistles were written at no great
distance of time from each other, and probably at some dis-
tance of time from the other Epistles. For in Paul's Epistles
we find great likeness of expression between Epistles written
at nearly the same time, as, for instance, between the Romans
and Galatians, between the Ephesians and Colossians, while
the different groups of Epistles differ considerably in words
and topics from each other. This is what we find on examin-
ing the different works of any author who has written much,
viz. considerable resemblance in style between works of the
same period ; but often modifications of style as he advances
in life. Now, though each group of Paul's Epistles has its
peculiarities of diction, there are links of connexion between
the phraseology of each group and that of the next in order
of time ; and there are such links between that of the Pastoral
Epistles and of the letters of the imprisonment. Thus the
Pastoral Epistles are said to be un-Pauline because they call
the enemy of mankind *the devil', and not 'Satan', as Paul
does. But the name 'the devil' occurs twice in Ephesians
(iv. 27, vi. 11). The name fTrt^dvcta, applied to our Lord's
second coming, is said to be un-Pauline; but is found in
2 Thess. ii. 8 {see also the <l>avepovv of Col. iii. 4). The oiKovofiia
of the Ephesian Epistle (i. 10, ii. 2, 9) reappears in the most
approved reading of i Tim. i. 4. The co-ordination of love
and faith in Eph. vi. 2^, is said by Davidson (11. 214) to be
un-Pauline, but to be found also in i Timothy. And so it
certainly is (i. 14, iv. 12, vi. 11 ; 2 Tim. i. 13, ii. 22) ; but I
should not have dreamed of building an argument on what
seems to me one of the most common of Pauline combina-
tions ; for instance, ' the breastplate of faith and love '
(i Thess. v. 8). The stress laid in the Pastoral Epistles on
coming to * the knowledge of the truth' dg iiriyvwaiv aXrideiag
(i Tim. ii. 4 ; 2 Tim. ii. 25, iii. 7 ; Tit. i. i) has been imagined
to indicate a time after Gnostic ideas as to the importance of
knowledge had become prevalent ; but the term iTriyvojatg is
frequent in Paul's Epistles [see in particular Eph. iv. 13 ; Col.
i. 9, 10, ii. 2, iii. 10}. Dr. Gwynn [Speaker's Commentary on
2 E 2
420
THE PAULINE EPISTLES. [xx.
Philippians, p. 588) has noted several coincidences between
2 Tim. iv. 6-8, and Philippians ; in particular the use of the
three words airiv^o/xai, avaXvaig, aywv, the first two words being
peculiar to these two Epistles, and the third being also a rare
and exclusively Pauline word. On the whole, there is no-
thing in the diction of these Epistles which is not explained
by the supposition that these three are the latest of St. Paul's
Epistles, and that they were written at no great distance of
time from each other.
We are led to the same conclusion on trying to harmonize
these epistles with the Acts. I have already mentioned the
difficulties attending the supposition that the second to
Timothy was written from the imprisonment recorded in the
Acts. The other two epistles present equal difficulties. The
first to Timothy intimates that Paul had been in Ephesus not
long before ; for it begins by saying, * As I besought thee to
abide still at Ephesus, when I went into Macedonia.' But on
Paul's first visit to Ephesus mentioned in the Acts, he left it,
not for Macedonia but for Jerusalem. On his second visit he
did leave it for Macedonia ; but instead of leaving Timothy be-
hind, he sent him on before. It has been said that Paul's three
years spent at Ephesus did not exclude occasional absences,
and that in one of these he had gone to Macedonia — a journey
imagined for the sake of this epistle. Yet the whole tone of
the epistle implies that it was not written during a temporary
absence, but that Timothy had been left in charge of the
Church at Ephesus for a considerable time. When further it
is proposed to take out of Paul's three years at Ephesus time
for a journey to Crete, in which to leave Titus there, and a
winter at Nicopolis spoken of in that epistle, so large a gap
is made in the three years at Ephesus that Luke's silence
becomes inexplicable. Renan spends some twenty pages in
proving satisfactorily enough the failure of all existing
attempts to find a place for these epistles in the period of
Paul's life embraced by the Acts; but he passes over almost
in silence the solution which removes every difficulty, that Paul
was released from his Roman imprisonment, that he afterwards
made other journeys, and wrote the Epistle to Titus and the
XX.] THE PASTORAL EPISTLES. 421
first to Timothy, and was then imprisoned a second time, and
wrote the second Epistle to Timothy. The distance of time
which, according to this solution, separates these Epistles
from the rest, at once accounts for the peculiarities on which
I have already commented.
What is said in answer to this is, that Paul's release from
his Roman imprisonment is unhistorical — that it is a mere
hypothesis invented to get rid of a difficulty. But this answer
exhibits a complete misconception of the logical position ; for
it is really those^who refuse to entertain the idea of Paul's
release who make an unwarrantable hypothesis. Paul's
release from his Roman imprisonment, we are told, is unhis-
torical : so is his non-release. In other words, Luke's history
of the life of Paul breaks off without telling us whether he
was released or not. Under these circumstances a scientific
inquirer ought to hold his mind unbiassed towards either sup-
position. If new evidence presents itself, no good reason
either for accepting or rejecting it can be furnished by any
preconceived opinion as to the issue of Paul's imprisonment.
Now the Pastoral Epistles are a new source of evidence.
They come to us with the best possible external attestation ;
and our opponents will not dispute that if we accept them as
Pauline, they lead us to the conclusion that Paul lived to
make other journeys than those recorded by St. Luke. We
accept this conclusion, not because of any preconceived hypo-
thesis, but because on other grounds we hold the Epistles to
be genuine. But it is those who say, * we cannot believe these
Epistles to be Paul's, because they indicate a release from his
imprisonment which we know did not take place ', who really
make an unwarrantable assumption.
I am compelled to elaborate a point which seems to me
too plain to need much argument, by the confidence with
which a whole host of Rationalist critics assume that the
Pastoral Epistles can only be received on condition of our
being able to find a place for them within the limits of the
history recorded in the Acts. Reuss, for instance, who gives
a candid reception to the claims of the second Epistle to
Timothy, for which he thinks he can find a place within these
422 THE PAULINE EPISTLES. [xx.
limits, rejects the first Epistle and that to Titus, because he
cannot force them in. Let us take, then, the argument about
the Epistle to Titus, and it will be seen whether it is the
accepters or the rejecters of that Epistle who make an un-
proved hypothesis. We accept the Epistle because of the
good external evidence on which it comes ; and we then draw
the inference, Paul at some time visited Crete. Not that we
had had any previous theory on the subject, but solely because
this Epistle — which we consider we have good reason to regard
as Paul's — states that he did. Nay, reply our opponents, the
Epistle cannot be Paul's, because he never visited Crete. * How
do you know he did not r ' ' Because we have in the Acts of the
Apostles a full history of the Apostle's life, which leaves no
room for such a visit.' ' Well, we are pleased to see you
attribute such value to the Acts of the Apostles, as a record
of Paul's life not only accurate but complete. But the history
of the Acts breaks off at the year 63. May not Paul have
visited Crete later r' ' No ; he could not have done so, for he
never was released from his Roman imprisonment.' ' But
how do you know he was not ?' Which of us now is making
an unproved assumption r
If we were arguing against a disciple of Darwin, and if we
contended that the Darwinian theory could not be true because
the six thousand years for which the world has lasted does not
afford room for the changes of species which that theory
asserts, would he not have a right to call on us for proof that the
world has only lasted so long ? Might he not smile at us if we
declared that it was he who was making an unproved assump-
tion, in asserting the possibility that the world might be older ?
So, in like manner, those who assert that the Pastoral Epistles
cannot be Paul's, because there is no room for them in that
part of his life which is recorded by St. Luke, are bound to
give proof that this is the whole of his active life.
If the Pastoral Epistles did not exist, and if we were left
to independent speculation as to the issue of the Apostle's
imprisonment, we should conclude that the supposition of his
release was more probable than the contrary. We learn from
the conclusion of the Acts that the Jews at Rome had not
XX.] THE PASTORAL EPISTLES. 423
been commissioned to oppose his appeal ; and since, until the
burning of Rome in 64, the Imperial authorities had no
motive for persecuting Christians as such, we should expect
that the case against Paul, stated in such a letter as the
procurator was likely to send (Acts xxv. 25, xxvi. 32), would
end in such a dismissal as that given by Gallio. And this
was Paul's own expectation both when he wrote to the Phi-
lippians (Phil. i. 25, 26, ii. 24), and to Philemon [v. 22). Pos-
sibly we have the Apostle's own assertion of his release as an
actual fact. At least, when later he is looking forward to a
trial, with no sanguine anticipations as to its issue, he calls
to mind (2 Tim. iv. 16) a former hearing, when, though
earthly friends deserted him, the Lord stood by him, and he
was delivered out of the mouth of the lion. St. Chrysostom
{m loc.) understands ' the lion ' here of Nero, and the verse as
intimating that Paul's trial ended in an acquittal.
However this may be, certain it is that there was in the
early Church a tradition of St. Paul's release, quite indepen-
dent of the Pastoral Epistles. I have quoted (p. 48) the
passage in the Muratorian Fragment which speaks of Paul's
journey to Spain, a statement which assumes his release from
imprisonment ; and it is at least probable that Clement of
Rome also recognizes the journey to Spain, when he speaks
[c. 5) of Paul's having gone to the extremity of the West. On
this evidence Renan accepts the fact of Paul's release [L'Ante-
chrtst, p. 106) ; only he will not let it count anything in favour
of the Pastoral Epistles, believing that the Apostle on his
release went, according to the evidence just cited, to the
West, and not, as these Epistles imply, to Asia Minor. For
myself, I should think it less probable that the Apostle
carried out the earlier intention expressed in the Epistle to
the Romans than the later one expressed in the Epistles to
the Philippians and to Philemon. But it is not impossible
that he might have done both. The evidence is too slender to
warrant any positive assertion as to the Apostle's movements;
and we appreciate more highly the obligations we owe to the
Acts of the Apostles when we find how much in the dark we
are as to St. Paul's history as soon as that book no longer
424 THE PAULINE EPISTLES. [xx.
guides us. My object has been merely to show that those
who assert that St. Paul was not released from his Roman
imprisonment assert not only what they cannot prove, but
what is less probable than the contrary. And when once the
possibility is admitted of apostolic labours of St. Paul later
than those recorded in the Acts, all the objections that have
been urged against the acceptance of the Pastoral Epistles
immediately lose their weight.
Two objections to the late date which I have assigned to
these Epistles deserve to be noticed. One is that Paul,
writing to Timothy, says, * Let no man despise thy youth'
(i Tim. iv. 12); whereas many years must have elapsed be-
tween the time at which we first hear of Timothy in the Acts,
and the date which I have assigned to these Epistles. But
when we consider the office in which Timothy was placed
over Elders, with power to ordain them and rebuke ; and
when we reflect that the name of Elder must, in its first
application, have been given to men advanced in age (certainly
I suppose not younger than forty-three, the legal age for a
consulship at Rome), we shall see that even if Timothy were
at the time as old as thirty or thirty-five, there would still be
reason to fear lest those placed under his government should
despise his youth. The other objection is that the first Epistle
to Timothy was evidently written after a recent visit of Paul
to Ephesus ; and if we suppose this visit to have taken place
after the Roman imprisonment, we appear to contradict what
Paul said at Miletus to the Ephesian Elders, * I know that ye
all among whom I have gone preaching the kingdom of God
shall see my face no more' (Acts xx. 25). Our first impres-
sion certainly is that these words imply prophetic assurance ;
yet when we look at the rest of this speech we find the Apostle
disclaiming any detailed knowledge of the future. ' I go unto
Jerusalem, not knowing the things that shall befall me there,'
save that he had this general knowledge that the Holy Ghost
witnessed in every city, saying, bonds and afflictions abide
him. If we are entitled thus to press the force of olSa, we
might assert confidently that the Apostle was released from
his Roman imprisonment, for he writes to the Philippians
XX.] THE SECOND EPISTLES TO TIMOTHY. 425
(i. 25), ^ I know that I shall abide and continue with you all
for your furtherance and joy of faith, that your rejoicing may
be more abundant in Jesus Christ for me by my coming to you
again.' A little before, however, in the same chapter, * I
know' in one verse (19) is modified by 'according to my
earnest expectation and my hope ' in the next : and when
Paul says to Agrippa, * Believest thou the prophets ? I know
that thou believest ', I suppose he is not speaking of super-
natural certain knowledge of Agrippa's heart, but merely of
the strong persuasion which he entertained concerning the
king's belief Thus, we see that, whatever our first impres-
sion might have been, the Apostle's mode of speaking else-
where quite permits us to understand that, in Acts xx. he is
not speaking prophetically, but only expressing a strong
belief, founded on grounds of human probability, viz. his
knowledge of the persecutions which certainly awaited him,
and his intended journeys to Rome and Spain, which were
likely to take him far away from Ephesus.
Renan, as you may believe, makes no difiiculty in con-
ceding that Paul when [he spoke at Miletus had no infallible
knowledge of the future. But that, he says, is not the question.
* It is no matter to us whether or not Paul pronounced these
words. But the author of the Acts knew well the sequel of
the life of Paul, though unhappily he has not thought proper
to tell us of it. And it is impossible that he should have put
into the mouth of his master a prediction which he well knew
was not verified.' I so far agree with Renan that I think it
likely that if the author of the Acts had known of a subsequent
return of Paul to Ephesus, he would have given some intima-
tion of it in this place. But this only yields another argument
in favour of the position in defence of which I have already
contended, viz. that the'book of the Acts was written not long
after the date to which it brings the history, viz. the end of
Paul's two years' residence in Rome.
It were, perhaps, enough to show that the objections break
down which have been made to receiving the external testi-
mony in favour of the Pastoral Epistles ; but in the case of
one at least of these Epistles, the second to Timothy, the
426 THE PAULINE EPISTLES. [xx.
internal marks of Pauline origin are so strong, that I do not
think any Epistle can with more confidence be asserted to be
the Apostle's work. To the truth of this the assailants of the
Epistle bear unwilling testimony. There are passages in the
Epistle which cling so closely to Paul that it is only by tear-
ing the letter to pieces that any part can be dissociated from
that Apostle. Thus, of those who reject the Epistle, Weisse,
Hausrath, Pfleiderer, and Ewald, recognize the section iv.
Q-2 2, or the greater part of it, as a fragment of a genuine
Pauline letter ; and to this view Davidson gives some kind of
hesitating assent. Hausrath, Pfleiderer, and Ewald further
own the section i. 15-18,
To my mind there cannot be a more improbable hypo-
thesis than that of genuine letters of Paul being used only for
the purpose of cutting patches out of them to sew on to
forged Epistles, while the fragments left behind are thrown
away and never heard of again. You will observe, too, that
in this case the parts of the Second Epistle to Timothy which
are owned as genuine are just those filled with names and
personal details, in which a forger would have been most
likely to make a slip. It is tantamount to a confession of
defeat to surrender as indefensible all that part of the case
which admits of being tested, and maintain that part only
with respect to which prejudices and subjective fancies do not
admit of being checked. Just imagine that the case had
been the other way. If we were forced to own that the pas-
sages which dealt with personal details were spurious, with
what face could we maintain the rest of the Epistle to be
genuine ?
If we test the remaining part of the Epistle we shall find
the genuine Pauline ring all through. Let us note first the
exordium of the Epistle, The writer commences by thanking
God for the unfeigned faith which is in Timothy, and tells
him that without ceasing he has remembrance of him in his
prayers night and day. Now, take Paul's ten other letters,
and eight of them commence with thanking God for what he
has heard or knows of the religious progress of those whom
he addresses. The Second Epistle to the Corinthians is
XX.] THE SECOND EPISTLE TO TIMOTHY. 427
scarcely an exception, for that too begins with thanksgiving.
The only clear exception is the Epistle to the Galatians,
which is a letter of sharp reproof. None of the other New
Testament Epistles resembles Paul's in this peculiarity. Of
the eight Epistles which begin with thanksgiving, seven also
have in the same connexion the mention of Paul's continual
prayer for his converts. It is characteristic of St. Paul, that
even when writing to Churches with which he has in many
respects occasion to find fault, he always begins by fixing his
thoughts on what there was in those persons deserving of
praise, and by calling to mind his constant prayer to God on
their behalf. Yet this characteristic of St. Paul is by no
means obtrusive in his writings ; very few have noticed it.
You can answer each for yourselves, whether, if you had been
desired to write an Epistle in St. Paul's style, it would have
occurred to you in what way you must begin. Strange that
this characteristic should have been observed by an imitator
so careless as to be unable to copy accurately the salutation,
'Grace and peace', with which Paul's Epistles begin ! The
most plausible argument I can think of putting into the
mouth of anyone who still maintains this Epistle to be non-
Pauline, is that the forger has taken for his model the Epistle
to the Romans, which begins in precisely the same way.
Nay, there is a further coincidence, for the next topic is also
in both Epistles the same, namely, that there was no reason
for being ashamed of the Gospel of Christ before the face of
the hostile or unbelieving world. But the hypothesis of con-
scious imitation is in various ways excluded. In the first
place, the mode of commencement is different in the other
Epistle to Timothy and in that to Titus ; so that the forger,
if forger there was, must have stumbled on this note of
genuineness by accident, and without himself knowing the
value of it. And, secondly, so far from there being the close
imitation of the Epistle to the Romans which the hypothesis
assumes, the writer completely abandons that Epistle and its
leading ideas, the controversy concerning faith and justifica-
tion being wholly absent from the Pastoral Epistles, And
more generally, there is a freeness of handling utterly unlike
428 THE PAULINE EPISTLES. [xx.
the slavishness of an imitator ; while the ideas introduced
seem naturally to rise from the circumstances of the writer,
and not to have been borrowed from anyone else.
I would in the next place call your attention to the abun-
dance of details concerning individuals given in these Epistles.
A forger would take refuge in generalities, and put into the
mouth of the Apostle the doctrinal teaching for which he
desired to claim his sanction, without running the risk of
exposing himself to detection by undertaking to give the
history of Paul's companions, of which he must be supposed
to know little or nothing. On the contrary, with the excep-
tion of the last chapter of the Epistle to the Romans, there is
no part of the New Testament so rich in personal details as
these Epistles. Twenty-three members of the Apostolic
Church are mentioned in the second Epistle to Timothy.
And these are neither exclusively names to be found else-
where, in which case it might have been said that they had
been derived from the genuine writings ; nor all new names,
in which case it might be said that the forger had guarded
himself by avoiding the names of real persons, and only
speaking of persons invented by himself; but, just as might
have been expected in a real letter, some ten persons are
mentioned of whom we read in the other scanty records of the
same time which have descended to us, the remaining names
being new to us.
In the case of the old names new details are confidently
supplied. Thus we have in the Epistle to the Colossians,
' Luke, the beloved physician, and Demas, greet you ' ; in
that to Philemon, * There salute thee Marcus, Aristarchus,
Demas, Lucas, my fellow-labourers.' Now note the treat-
ment of these four names in the second Epistle to Timothy.
There we read, 'Demas hath forsaken me, having loved this
present world. Only Luke is with me.' If this was forgery,
what a wonderful man the forger must have been so to realize
the personality of Paul's attendants, as to undertake to give
their history subsequent to the time covered by the authentic
records, and to put a note of disgrace on one who, as far as
the genuine Epistles went, had been honourably recognized
XX.] THE SECOND EPISTLE TO TIMOTHY. 429
as Paul's fellow-labourer. The second Epistle to Timothy
has also to tell of Marcus. He is supposed not to have been
at the time with Paul, but is commended as useful to him in
the ministry. If a forger had wished to represent one of
Paul's companions as failing- him in his hour of trial, he
would surely have selected not Demas but Marcus, who is
probably the same as he whose previous desertion of Paul
caused the rupture between him and Barnabas. Lastly, of
Aristarchus the Pastoral Epistles have not a word to tell,
although his name ought to have come in in that enumeration
of his attendants which the Apostle makes in accounting for
his being left alone. The true explanation probably is that
Aristarchus was dead at the time. But if it was a forgery,
how is it that the forger, who can so courageously give the
history of Paul's other attendants, fails in his heart when he
comes to speak of Aristarchus ? We may also comment on
the clause ' Titus to Dalmatia'. Surely, if it were forgery, the
forger would have been consistent, and sent Titus to Crete.
It is a note of genuineness when a document contains an
apparent contradiction which is not real ; for forgers do not
needlessly throw stumbling-blocks in their readers' way.
Now the statement, 'Only Luke is with me' (iv. 11), seems
inconsistent with the list of salutations {v. 21). But we see in
a moment that the former verse does not mean that, save for
Luke, the Apostle was friendless at Rome, but only that the
company of personal attendants who travelled about with him
had all been scattered, leaving only Luke behind. Now if we
had been left to form our own conjectures we should have
imagined that Paul, brought a prisoner to Rome, would have
been completely dependent on the society and support of the
Christians of the Church which he might find there. We
should hardly have thought of him as this Epistle exhibits
him, as if he had made this missionary journey of his own
choice, surrounded by his little band of deacons, sending them
on his missions, and feeling himself almost deserted when he
has but one of his retinue in attendance on him. This state
of things, not consciously disclosed in the Epistle but revealed
in the most incidental way, could never have been taken for
430
THE PAULINE EPISTLES. [xx.
granted in this manner except by one who lived so close to
the Apostle's time as to have perfect cognizance of the con-
ditions in which he lived at Rome.
Of the members of the Roman Church whom he mentions,
one is certainly a real person, Linus, whom very early tradition
asserts to have been the first bishop of the Church of Rome.
The Roman Church to this day, and we have reason to think
that the practice is at least as old as the second century, com-
memorates in her Eucharistic service the names of Linus,
Cletus, Clemens. These are commonly supposed to have
been, after the Apostles, the first bishops of Rome {see Ire-
nseus, iii. 3), and, by the confession of everyone, were leading
men in that Church in the latter part of the first century.
Clement, in particular, became the hero of a number of
legends, and was believed to have been an immediate disciple
of the Apostles. Yet neither the name of Cletus nor of
Clement appears in this list which, if the work were a forgery,
we must therefore suppose to have been anterior to their
acquiring celebrity. Linus does appear, but in quite a sub-
ordinate position — 'Eubulus, and Pudens, and Linus, and
Claudia, and all the brethren.' If the letter is genuine, it is
quite intelligible that Linus, who at the time the Epistle was
written was a leading disciple, though not then the principal
one, might have held the chief place in the government of the
Church after the Apostle's death ; but if the letter was com-
posed after he had held that place, we may be sure there
would have been some stronger intimation of his prominence
here. Two other persons mentioned in the same connexion
are possibly persons of whom we read elsewhere. One of
Martial's epigrams relates to a marriage between Pudens and
Claudia, and a very ingenious case has been made by putting
together the notices in Martial and Tacitus to show that this
Claudia was a British maiden and a Christian. The close
contact of the two names in the Epistle is striking, but I can-
not pronounce it more than a curious coincidence. One more
personal reference I will direct your attention to— the twice-
repeated mention of the household of Onesiphorus, You
know, or will know, the controversial use that has been made
XX.] THE PASTORAL EPISTLES. 43 1
of this passage. But from the salutation being to the house
of Onesiphorus, not to Onesiphorus himself, we may reasonably
conclude that Onesiphorus was either dead, or at least known
to the Apostle not to be with his household at the time this
letter is written. There is no difficulty about this if all be real
history. But that a forger should have invented such a refine-
ment, yet in no way have called attention to it, is utterly
incredible.
I could add many more arguments; but the impression left
on my mind is that there is no Epistle which we can with
more confidence assert to be Paul's than the second to
Timothy. When this is established, the judgment we form
of the other two Pastoral Epistles is greatly influenced. If
these two had come by themselves, the way in which both
begin would excite suspicion. They do not open as do Paul's
other Epistles, but commence by telling that Paul had left
Timothy at Ephesus, Titus in Crete. This is information
which his correspondents would not require ; and we are
reminded of the ordinary commencement of a Greek play in
which information is given, not for the benefit of any person-
age on the stage, but for that of the audience. Yet as we
proceed, our suspicions are not confirmed ; and we must own
that there is no reason why St, Paul should not begin a letter
to a disciple by reminding him of the commission he had
entrusted him with. Critics of all schools agree that the three
Pastoral Epistles have such marks of common authorship that
all must stand or fall together. The three topics of objection
which I have mentioned as urged against the Pastoral
Epistles turn, when any one of the Epistles is acknowledged,
into arguments in favour of the other two. We cannot say,
for instance, that the diction is un-Pauline, when there is the
.strongest possible resemblance to the diction of an Epistle
which we own to be Paul's. The admission of the second
Epistle forces us to believe that Paul was released from his
Roman imprisonment, and then all the marks of time in the
other two Epistles fit in with the late date which we are thus
able to assign to them. I see nothing in the development
indicated of Church organization which is inconsistent with
432 THE PAULINE EPISTLES. [xx.
the period we assign to these letters. That Paul, who addressed
the bishops and deacons of the Philippian Church (Phil. i. i ;
see also Acts xx. 28), should give directions for the choice of
such officers is only natural. If it were true that these Epistles
intimated that there was only one tiriaKOTrog in each Church, I
should have no difficulty in believing it on their evidence.
But in my opinion this is more than we are warranted in
inferring from the use of the singular number in i Tim. iii. 2 ;
Tit. i. 7. The omission to say anything about deacons in the
latter Epistle is more like what would occur in a real letter
than in the work of a forger. It is not easy to see when the
forger could have lived, or with what object he could have
written ; or why, after having succeeded in gaining acceptance
for one of the Epistles, he should hazard detection by writing
a second, which seems to add very little.
As for the general Pauline character of these letters, there
cannot be a better witness than Renan, who, while still con-
tinuing to assert them not to be genuine, every now and then
seems staggered by the proofs of authenticity that strike him.
He says, in one place, * Some passages of these letters are so-
beautiful that we cannot help asking if the forger had not in
his hands some authentic notes of Paul, which he has incor-
porated in his apocryphal composition' [L' Eglise Chretienney
p. 95). And he sums up (p. 104): 'What runs through the
whole is admirable practical good sense. The ardent pietist
who composed these letters never wanders for a moment in
the dangerous paths of quietism. He repeats that the woman
must not devote herself to the spiritual life if she has family
duties to fulfil : that the principal duty of woman is to bring
up children : that it is an error for anyone to pretend to serve
the Church if he has not all duly ordered in his own house-
hold. The piety our author inculcates is altogether spiritual.
Bodily practices, such as abstinence, count with him for little.
You can feel the influence of St. Paul : a sort of sobriety in
mysticism : and amid the strangest excesses of faith in the
supernatural, a great bottom of rectitude and sincerity.'
XXI.] THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 433
xxr.
THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS.
In the controversies concerning the books which I have
already discussed, we had usually the deniers of the super-
natural ranged on one side, and those who acknowledge a
Divine revelation on the other. There is no such division of
parties in the controversies concerning the Epistle to the
Hebrews, which may be described as being more important
from a literary than from an evidential point of view. On the
main point in dispute, whether or not St. Paul was the
author, there was, as we shall presently see, difference of
opinion in the early Church. At the time of the Reforma-
tion, Erasmus, Luther, and Calvin, agreed in holding that
St. Paul was not the author ; and at the present day this is
the opinion of a number of divines whose orthodoxy cannot
be impeached. On the other hand, critics of the sceptical
school do not dispute the antiquity of this Epistle, nor the
consideration it has always enjoyed in the Church. The
general opinion is that it was written while the Temple was
still standing, that is to say, before the destruction of Jeru-
salem. In Hilgenfeld's hitrodudion it is placed immediately
after the Epistle to the Philippians, and before any of the
Gospels, or the Acts, before the Apocalypse, and before
2 Thess., Colossians, and Ephesians, which he does not own
as Paul's, as also before the first Epistle of Peter. Davidson
agrees with him in this arrangement. We have indisputable
evidence to the antiquity of the Epistle in the fact that it is
quoted copiously — perhaps more frequently than any other
New Testament book — in one of the earliest of uninspired
Christian writings, the Epistle of Clement of Rome. Euse-
bius (iii. 37) takes notice of the attestation thus given by
Clement to the Epistle to the Hebrews. Clement's quota-
tions indeed are, as usual with him, without any formal
2 F
434 '^^^^' EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. [xxi.
marks of citation, so that we are not in a position to say
whether or not he believed the Epistle to have been written
by St. Paul ; but we can at least see that he knew and valued
it. One specimen out of many is enough to exhibit the un-
mistakeable use he makes of it : ' Who being the brightness
of his majesty, is so much greater than the angels, as he has
by inheritance obtained a more excellent name than they.
For it is written. Who maketh his angels spirits, and his
ministers a flame of fire. But of his Son thus saith the Lord,
Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee. Ask of me
and I will give thee the heathen for thine inheritance, and the
utmost parts of the earth for thy possession. And again he
saith to him. Sit on my right hand until I make thine enemies
thy footstool' (Clement, c. 36 ; Heb. i. 3, 4, 7, 13). Of other
early traces of the use of the Epistle, I only mention that
Polycarp, both in his Epistle {c. 12) and in his last prayer at
his martyrdom (Euseb. iv. 15), gives our Lord the title of
Eternal high priest, which I look on as derived from this
Epistle, wherein so much is said of our Lord's priesthood ;
and that Justin Martyr [Apol. i. 63), besides other coincidences,
gives our Lord the name of ' our Apostle ', an expression
peculiar to the Epistle to the Hebrews (iii. i).
The Epistle to the Hebrews was accepted as canonical by
the whole Eastern Church, with no exception that I know of;
and that it was St. Paul's was also the received tradition and
popular belief of the East. Clement of Alexandria unhesi-
tatingly quotes the Epistle as Paul's : ' Paul writing to the
Hebrews, says so and so ; writing to the Colossians, says so
and so', [Strom, vi. 8 ; see also Strom, ii. 22). Elsewhere in a
passage referred to by Eusebius (vi. 14) he accounts for the
absence of Paul's name from the commencement, by the sug-
gestion that Paul designedly suppressed his name on account
of the prejudice and suspicion which the Hebrews entertained
towards him. He quotes another reason given by the 'blessed
presbyter ', by whom there is no doubt is meant Pantaenus,
Clement's predecessor as head of the Alexandrian Cateche-
tical School, viz. that since our Lord had been sent as Apostle
to the Hebrews, Paul, whose mission was to the Gentiles,
XXI.] ACCEPTED AS PAUL'S AT ALEXANDRIA. 435
through modesty suppressed his name when doing this work
of supererogation in writing to the Hebrews. Clement also
gives his opinion that Paul wrote the Epistle in Hebrew, and
that it had been translated by Luke, from which has resulted
a similarity of style between this Epistle and the Acts. We
need not scruple to reject the notion that a document is a
translation from the Hebrew, which has the strongest pos-
sible marks of being an original Greek composition ; and we
cannot attribute much value to the reasons suggested for the
omission of Paul's name ; but it is plain that it occurred
neither to Pantsenus nor Clement to doubt that Paul was the
author of the Epistle.
In the next generation the traditional belief of Pauline
authorship was still the popular one at Alexandria. Origen
repeatedly cites the Epistle as Paul's [De Orat. § 27, where
it is coupled with the Epistle to the Ephesians ; in Joann.
t. 2 three times, citing as Paul's the passages Heb. i. 2, ii. g,
§ 6, and vi. 16, § 11; in Numer., Horn. iii. 3 ; in Ep. ad Rom.
vii. § I, ix, § 36). In one place he refers to the fact that some
denied the Epistle to be Paul's, and promises to give else-
where a confutation of their opinion [Epist. ad Africanum^
9). But in his homilies on the Epistle, of which extracts
have been preserved by Eusebius, he shows himself to have
become deeply impressed by the difference of style between
this and the Pauline Epistles ; and he starts a theory that
though the thoughts were Paul's, he might have employed
someone else to put them into words. Who that person was
he does not know : possibly Clement, possibly Luke. He
says, *The style of the Epistle has not that rudeness of
speech which belongs to the Apostle, who confesses himself
rude in speech. But the Epistle is purer Greek in the texture
of its style, as everyone will allow who is able to discern
difference of style. But the ideas of the Epistle are admi-
rable, and not inferior to the acknowledged writings of the
Apostle. Everyone will confess the truth of this who atten-
tively reads the Apostle's writings,' Ag"ain he says, ' I
should say that the sentiments are the Apostle's, but the
language and composition belong to someone who recorded
2 F 2 *
436 THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. [xxi.
what the Apostle said, and, as it were, took notes of the things
spoken by his master. If then any Church receives this
Epistle as Paul's, let it be commended for this ; for it is not
without reason that the ancients have handed it down as
Paul's. Who wrote the Epistle God only knows certainly.
But the account that has come down to us is various, some
saying that Clement, who was bishop of Rome, wrote it;
others that it was Luke, who wrote the Gospel and the
Acts.* Notwithstanding this criticism of Origen's, the belief
in the Pauline authorship was little affected. Dionysius
of Alexandria refers to the Epistle as Paul's without any
expression of doubt (Euseb. vi. 41), and at a later period
Athanasius counts fourteen Epistles as Paul's {^Festal Epistle^
39)-
The Epistle is included in the Peshitto Syriac translation ;
but placed as in our Bible ; and it has been doubted, I do
not know whether or not with good reason, if this part is of
the same antiquity as the rest.
Such was the Eastern opinion ; but in the West quite a
different one prevailed. I have already given proof that at
the end of the first century Clement of Rome valued the
Epistle. It would be natural to guess that he accepted it as
Paul's ; but on that point we have no evidence, and doubts
are suggested by the subsequent history of Western opinion.
There are no authorities whom we can cite until the end of
the second century, or the beginning of the third ; but at that
time none of the Western writers whose opinion we know
regarded the Epistle as Paul's. I have already mentioned
(p. 50) that Eusebius was struck by the fact that in a list of
canonical books given by the Roman presbyter Caius, at the
very beginning of the third century, only thirteen Epistles of
Paul were counted, and that to the Hebrews was left out.
And I mentioned in the same place that the Muratorian
Fragment agrees in not counting this among Paul's Epistles.
It does not mention it either among canonical books ; and
there is a question whether it does not even put on it a note
of censure. For (see the passage quoted, p. 49) it rejects an
Epistle to the Alexandrians, feigned under the name of Paul,
XXI.] EARLY WESTERN OPINION ADVERSE. 437
and favouring the heresy of Marcion ; and many critics have
thought that under this description we are to recognize the
Epistle to the Hebrews. But this seems to me more than
doubtful. We have no other evidence that this was ever
known as an Epistle to the Alexandrians ; it is not under the
name of Paul, and it does not favour the heresy of Marcion.
That heretic did not include the Epistle in his canon. If I
were to indulge in conjecture, I should say that the Epistle
which goes under the name of Barnabas better answers the
description ; but it is quite possible that forged documents,
now lost, may have been put forward in heretical circles at
Rome. We have other evidence that at the epoch of which
I speak the Epistle was not recognized as Paul's. Photius
(see p. 421) has preserved a statement of Stephen Gobar, a
writer of the sixth century, that Irenseus and Hippolytus
asserted that the Epistle was not Paul's. In point of fact we
find very little use of the Epistle made in the great work of
Irenaeus against heresies. There are a few coincidences, but
we cannot positively pronounce them to be quotations, and
certainly the Epistle is never referred to as Paul's. Eusebius,
however, tells us (v. 26) that in a book now lost Irenseus does
quote the Epistle ; but this still leaves the statement uncon-
tradicted that he did not regard it as Paul's. The same
thing may be said about Hippolytus, in the remaining
fragments of whose works there are distinct echoes of this
Epistle; but there is no proof that he regarded it as Paul's.
But we have in Tertullian a decisive witness to Western
opinion. The controversy as to the possibility of forgiveness
of post-baptismal sin was one which much disturbed the
Roman Church at the beginning of the third century. The
suspicion then arises that opposition to this Epistle may have
been prompted solely by the support afforded to the rigorist
side on this question by the well-known passage in the sixth
chapter, which seems to deny, in some cases, the possibility
of repentance and forgiveness. But what is remarkable is
that Tertullian quotes this passage in support of his Mon-
tanist views ; yet though his interest would be to set the
authority of the Epistle as high as possible, he seems never
438 THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. [xxi.
to have heard of the Epistle as Paul's, and quotes it as Bar-
nabas's ; and not as canonical, but as only above the level of
the Shepherd of Hermas. ' There is extant,' he says, ' an
Epistle of Barnabas addressed to the Hebrews, written by a
man of such authority that Paul has ranked him with him-
self : *' I only and Barnabas, have not we power to forbear
working?" And certainly this Epistle of Barnabas is more
received than that apocryphal Shepherd of the adulterers '
{De Pudic. 20). This is the language of a man to whom the
idea that the Epistle was Paul's does not seem to have occur-
red ; and the proof appears to be conclusive that in Tertul-
lian's time the Pauline authorship was not acknowledged in
the Western Church.
St. Jerome and St. Augustine, at the end of the fourth
century, seem to have been the main agents in effecting a
revolution of Western opinion. Jerome, though a Western,
resided for a long time in the East, and was well versed in
Greek Christian literature. He therefore could not be in-
sensible to the fact of the general acceptance of this Epistle
in the Eastern Church. He quotes it repeatedly, and more
often than not without any note of doubt; but sometimes
with some such phrase as 'Paul, or whoever wrote the Epistle
to the Hebrews ', ' Paul, if anyone admits the Epistle to the
Hebrews '. But his most distinct utterance on the subject is
in his Epistle to Dardanus [Ep. xic), vol. i. p. 965). There he
says that this Epistle is received as Paul's, not only by the
Churches of the East, but by all previous Church writers in
the Greek language, though many think it to be the work of
Barnabas or Clement ; and that it is no matter who wrote it,
since it is the work of an orthodox member of the Church,
and is daily commended by public reading in the Churches.
The Latins certainly do not receive it among Canonical
Scriptures ; but then neither do the Greeks receive the Apoca-
lypse of St. John ; and in both cases Jerome thinks that he
is bound, instead of following the usage of his own time, to
regard the authority of ancient writers who frequently quote
both books ; and that not in the way that they cite apocry-
phal books (for heathen books they hardly cite at all), but as
ITS LATE RECOGNITION AS PAUL'S IN THE WEST.
439
canonical. Augustine also was influenced by the authority
of Eastern opinion to accept the book ; and it was accepted
in Synods in which he took part — Hippo (393); Carthag-e,
iv- (397) ;* Carthage, v. (419) ; yet it is remarkable how often
he cites the Epistle merely as that to the Hebrews, apparently
studiously avoiding to call it Paul's.
The place of the Epistle in our Bible testifies to the late-
ness of the recognition of the Epistle as Paul's in the West.
First we have Paul's Epistles to Churches, arranged chiefly
in respect of their length, the longer ones coming first. Then
we have Paul's letters to individuals. Then comes this Epis-
tle to the Hebrews ; and this order, after Paul's acknowledged
letters, is that which prevails in later, and especially in
Western MSS. But the earliest order of all concerning which
we have information is that of the archetype from which the
Vatican MS. was copied. In the Vatican MS. itself, and in
other Eastern MSS. this Epistle comes after that to the Thes-
salonians, and before the letters to individuals; but the
numbering of the sections shows that the Vatican MS. was
copied from one in which the Hebrews stood still higher in
the rank of Pauline Epistles, and came next after that to the
Galatians. The Thebaic version placed it even a step higher,
viz, immediately before the Epistle to the Galatians.
In this conflict between early Eastern and Western opinion,
if the question be only one as to the canonical authority of the
Epistle, we need not doubt that the West did right in ulti-
mately deferring to Eastern authority. It is only natural
that an anonymous Epistle should be received with hesitation
in places where the author's name was not known ; but since
the oldest and most venerable of the Western witnesses,
Clement of Rome, agrees with the Easterns in accepting the
Epistle, and since dissent is not heard of in the West till the
end of the second century, we have good grounds for acknow-
ledging its canonical authority. But the tradition of Pauline
authorship is not so decisively affirmed as to preclude us from
* But the Epistle is not classed with those long recognized as Pauline in the
West. The list runs : ' Epistolce Pauli Apostoli xiii., ejusdem ad Hebrx-as una.'
440 THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. [xxi.
reopening the question, and comparing this tradition with
internal evidence.
I have already said, that Clement of Alexandria took notice
of one point in which this differs from all St. Paul's letters,
namely, the suppression of his name ; and Clement's mode of
accounting for this peculiarity is not satisfactory. In fact,
through all the early part of the work, we should think that
we were reading a treatise, not a letter. It is only when we
come to the end that we find a personal reference — that to
Timothy, and a salutation.
That salutation, however, ' They of Italy salute you '
suggests a remark. This vague greeting is only intelligible
on the supposition that the letter was written either from or
to Italy. Either the writer is sending home salutations to
Italians from their fellow-countrymen in a foreign land, or he
is sending his correspondents a friendly message from the
natives of the country in which he writes. In either case
some connexion is established between Italy and the Epistle;
and therefore we are disposed to consider the Italian tradition
as to the authorship with more respect than we should do if
the Epistle had been despatched from one Eastern city to
another.
There is another passage which very much weighed with
Luther and Calvin in leading them to reject the Pauline
authorship, viz. ' How shall we escape if we neglect so great
salvation, which at the first began to be spoken by the Lord,
and was confirmed unto us by them that heard him ? ' (ii. 3).
This sounds like the language of one of the second generation
of Christians, who made no pretensions to have been himself
an original witness of Christ ; and it contrasts strongly with
the language in which St. Paul in the Epistle to the Galatians
disclaims having learned his Gospel from men. I will not
say that the argument is absolutely decisive, because I believe
that, during the interval between the two Epistles, opposition
to Paul had so died out that there was no longer the same
need for self-assertion ; and it was no doubt true that he had
not been a personal attendant of our Lord during his earthly
ministry. It has been said, moreover, that when the writer
XXI.] ITS DOCTRINE PAULINE. 441
says * us ' he is thinking rather of his readers than of himself.
We may grant, therefore, that this verse is not by itself suffi-
cient to disprove Pauline authorship ; but it must be counted
among the considerations which are unfavourable to that sup-
position.
On the other hand, there is one passage which used to be
quoted in confirmation of the Pauline authorship : * Ye had
compassion on me in my bonds ' (x. 34), words which agree
with references made by Paul to his imprisonment in uncon-
tested epistles. But the best critics now are agreed that the
reading Secrfio'tg juou probably owes its origin to the persuasion
of scribes that this was a Pauline epistle, and that the true
reading is ^ea/jiioig, which has been adopted by the revisers of
the received version. This reading makes better sense with
the context. The writer is referring to a time of persecution,
not extending to taking of life (for he says ' they had not yet
resisted unto blood, striving against sin'), but reaching to
fines and imprisonment. And he notes how cheerfully in this
persecution the Christians bore pecuniary loss and other suf-
ferings, and how those that were free exhibited their sym-
pathy with the prisoners. * Ye endured a great fight of
affliction, partly whilst ye were made a gazing stock both by
reproaches and afflictions, and partly whilst ye became com-
panions of those that were so used.' In every subsequent
history of early Christian martyrdoms, a striking feature is
the interest shown in the confessors during their imprison-
ment by their brethren still free — interest shown both by gifts
to them and to their jailers while they were confined, and by
support and countenance given to cheer them at the hearing
before the magistrates. St. Paul (2 Tim. iv. 16) notes it as
one of the discouraging incidents of his first defence before
the Roman tribunal, that no man had stood with him. A
century later Lucian, in his tale about Peregrin us, scoffs at
the contributions levied on their brethren by those under im-
prisonment.
One other passage remains to be noticed : ' Know ye that
our brother Timothy has been set at liberty ' — or, as some
translate the words, * has been sent away from us ' — ' with
442 THE EPISTLE TO THE HEUREWS. [xxi.
whom if he come shortly, I will see you.' The passage shows
that the writer was not in bondage at the time the letter was
written ; and also that he was either Paul or one of his circle.
It does not prove that he was necessarily Paul himself; but
neither does it disprove it, even though we cannot fix any
time in Paul's history for this imprisonment of Timothy.
On a comparison of the substance and lang^uage of the
Epistle with those of Paul's acknowledged writings, it ap-
pears, I think, with certainty that the doctrine of the Epistle
is altogether Pauline, Some critics, who have surrendered
themselves to Baur's theories, have referred the document to
the conciliatory school of which they take Luke to be a repre-
sentative ; and some have even asserted for it a more pro-
nounced Judaic character ; but as I quite disbelieve that at
the date of the Epistle the Christian Church was divided into
two parties of rancorously hostile Paulinists and anti-Paulin-
ists, I see nothing in the letter which Paul or a disciple of his
might not have written ; and it certainly has strong traces of
Paul's influence. In fact this very letter may be looked on as
furnishing one of the very numerous proofs how little truth
there is in Baur's theory of a persistent schism in the early
Church. We have here a document earlier than the destruc-
tion of Jerusalem ; and, for the writer, the controversy between
Paulinists and anti-Paulinists absolutely does not exist. The
great distinction for him is between unconverted Jews and
Christian Jews ; but that there were two classes of Christian
Jews he seems not to have the slightest knowledge. He is
himself a Paulinist : the only person he mentions by name is
Paul's favourite disciple ; yet he addresses Jews in a tone of
authority and rebuke without any apparent fear that his inter-
ference will be resented, or that he will be an object of dislike
or suspicion to them.
As for the language, a number of parallelisms are adduced
between the Epistle to the Hebrews and the Pauline letters.
Thus, to give one specimen, Jesus is described in the 2nd
Epistle to Timothy (i. 10) as ' having abolished death ' [Karap-
yiiaavTOQ jutv tov Oavarov), the use of Karapyiu) in this sense
being peculiar to Paul ; and again, in i Cor. xv. 26, 'the last
XXI.] PAULINE CHARACTERISTICS. 443
enemy that shall be destroyed is death' {KaTapyuTm 6 OavaTog).
Now we have in Hebrews (ii. 14), 'that through death he
might destroy (KaTapyiiay) him that had the power of death.'
So again Paley has noticed it as a habit of Paul's style to
ring changes on a word, or to use in the same sentence
several times the same word or different forms of it.
An example will make plain what I mean. It is that in
I Cor. XV. 27, in which the Apostle argues from the words,
' He hath put all things under his feet ', and the changes are
rung on the word vTroraaaw. HavTa virira^iv viro tovq ttoSoq
avTOv. "Otuv ds eiirri on Trdvra viroTeTaKTai, SriXov uti sktoc too
virora^avTOg avTc^ ra iravTa. ' Orav St VTroTa-yi^ uvti^ to. Travra, roTt
Koi avTog 6 vlog VTroTajiirrerai rt^ VTrora^avTi axird^ to. Travra. Here
we have vTraraaah) six times in five lines. Now compare with
this the commentary in Hebrews ii. 8, on the same verse of
Psalm viii., in which changes are rung on the same word.
ViavTa vTrira^ag viroKCtTU) tCiv ttoSwv uvtov. ' EiV yap t^o virora^ai
avTio TO. Travra, oi/otv a(f)riKtv ai/ro) avvTTOTuicTov. Nuv o£ outtw
opwjuev avT(^ ra iravra inroTBTayiuieva. Further, examples are
adduced of similarity of construction with that used by St.
Paul. Thus, the change of construction from the third person
singular to the first nominative plural in the sentence (He-
brews xiii. 5), ' Let your conversation be without covetousness :
being content with such things as ye have ' [acpiXapyvpog 6
rpoTTog- apKovfxevoi ro'ig irapovaiv), is noted by Bishop Words-
worth as exactly paralleled by a verse in Romans xii., 'Let
love be without dissimulation, abhorring that which is evil'
(}} aydwrj avviroKpiTog' cnrocTTvyovvTeg to irovi^pov). Lastly, the
quotation ' Vengeance is mine, I will repay, saith the Lord,'
does not agree with the Septuagint, but is in verbal agree-
ment with the citation of the same verse in Romans xii. 19.
These, and other coincidences with Paul, are more than
can be attributed to accident : if the writer is not Paul, he
must have read some of Paul's Epistles — in particular those
to the Romans and Corinthians.* On the other hand, all the
* Other parallels are Heb. xi. 12, veviKpwfievos, Rom. iv. 19; Heb. xii. 14,
ilp-i]vt)v SidoKere, Rom. xiv. 19 ; fj.eTa irdyrouv, Rom. xii. 18 ; Heb. i. 6, ttpoitStokos,
Rom. viii. 29; Heb. xiii. i. 2 ; <pi\aSeK(p'ia, Rom. xii. 10; pi\n^euia, Rom. xii. 13;
444 THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. [xxi.
other O. T. citations are from the Septuagint, even where it
differs from the Hebrew, which is contrary to St. Paul's
usage. The writer seems habitually to have used a Greek
not a Hebrew Bible. A notable case is his adoption of the
LXX. version, ' A body hast thou prepared me ' (x. 5),
instead of the Hebrew, * Mine ears hast thou opened ' (see
also i. 6). His formulae of Old Testament citation are also
different from those generally used by Paul. He has Xtytt,
fiapTVi)iL or 0rja/, sometimes alone, sometimes with deog or to
TTviVfxa TO ayiov, while St. Paul commonly has yiypaTTTai, or 17
ypa(pri Xiyei ; but there are exceptions which prevent us from
pressing this argument confidently (Eph. iv. 8, v. 14; Rom.
XV. 10; 2 Cor. vi. 2; Gal. iii. 16).
This letter is said to have a much stronger Alexandrian
colouring than have the writings of Paul. Several parallels,
both as regards the thoughts and the language, have been
pointed out in the writings of Philo ; and there is a larger
use of the apocryphal books of the Old Testament than in St.
Paul's Epistles. With the book of Wisdom, in particular,
there are so many coincidences that Dean Plumptre has
defended a theory that the two books have the same author,
€. g: TToXvfxEpwg i. I, Wisdom vii. 22; airavjaapa i. 2, Wisdom
vii. 26; VTTOaraaiQ i. 3, Wisdom xvi. 21; totto^ paTavolag xii. 17,
Wisdom xii. 10; eK[5aatQ xiii. 7, Wisdom ii. 17. Further, it
is urged that this letter could not have been written by one
who had resided long in Jerusalem, its descriptions of the
Temple ritual not being founded on observation, but being
entirely drawn from what the Old Testament tells about the
Tabernacle.
But the strongest argument against the Pauline author-
ship is founded on the dissimilarity of style which, as I have
already told you, was taken notice of by Origen. There is
here none of the ruggedness of St. Paul, who never seems to
Heb. X. 38 = Rom. i. 17 ; Heb. xiii. 20, d Oehs rfjs eip-fivrjs, Rom. xv. 33; Heb. v.
12. 14=1 Cor. iii. 2, ii. 6; Heb. vi. 3=^1 Cor. xvi. 7; Heb. vi. 10 = 2 Cor. viii. 24;
Heb. viii. 10 = 2 Cor. vi. 16; Heb. x. 28 = 2 Cor. xiii. i. There are coincidences,
but not so numerous or so clear, with other Pauline letters ; for instance, Heb. ii.
2 = Gal. iii. 19.
XXI.] CONJECTURES AS TO AUTHORSHIP. 445
be solicitous about forms of expression, and whose thoughts
come pouring out so fast as to jostle one another in the
struggle for utterance. This is a calm composition, exhibit-
ing sonorous words and well-balanced sentences. In expla-
nation of the difference it may be urged that this is a treatise,
rather than a letter, and that therefore greater polish of style
is natural ; but the Epistle to the Romans has as much the
air of a treatise as that to the Hebrews. This argument from
the style is that which makes the strongest impression on my
own mind. I have already shown that I do not ascribe to
Paul any rigid uniformity of utterance, and that I am not
tempted to deny a letter to be his merely because it contains
a number of words or phrases which are not found in his
other compositions ; but in this case I find myself unable to
assert the Pauline authorship in the face of so much unlike-
ness, in the structure of the sentences, in the general tone of
the Epistle, in the way of presenting doctrine, and in other
points that I will not delay to enumerate.
But if the letter be not Paul's, whose then can it be ?
There are but two names which seem to me worthy of discus-
sion. Luther guessed Apollos ; and if we are to trust to con-
jecture solely, no conjecture could be more happy, for it seems
to fulfil every condition. Apollos belonged to the circle of
Paul, whose influence on this Epistle is strongly marked ; and
he would of course also be intimate with Timothy; he was an
eloquent man, and mighty in the Scriptures (Acts xviii. 24),
a description which admirably suits the writer of this letter ;
and he was a native of Alexandria, whereby the Alexandrian
colouring of the Epistle is at once accounted for. There is
only one thing against this conjecture, and that is that Luther
should have been the first to make it. I will not urge this
objection over strongly, because if one sentence of TertuUian's
had not been preserved we should have no external evidence
deserving of consideration for any authorship but Paul's.
We may dismiss as a mere guess the suggestion thrown out
in the Alexandrian schools that Paul might have employed
the pen of Luke or of Clement ; and the guess is not even a
probable one. If dissimilarity of style is a good reason for
446 THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. [xxi.
believing the Epistle not to be Paul's, the same argument
proves it not to be Luke's or Clement's, each of whom has
left writings very different in style from the Epistle to the
Hebrews.
But what Tertullian says cannot be passed by without
serious examination. When he speaks of Barnabas as the
author he is plainly not making a private guess, but express-
ing the received opinion of the circle in which he moved.
And since Tertullian was not only a leading teacher in the
Church of Africa, but had resided for some time at Rome, I
do not see how to avoid the conclusion that at the beginning
of the third century the received opinion in the Roman and
African Church was that Barnabas was the author of the
Epistle.
I freely own that if I had been set to conjecture the author,
I should never have guessed Barnabas ; but it is no reason
for rejecting a statement, apparently coming on good autho-
rity, that it is not like what conjecture would have prompted.
AVhat we must really inquire is, whether there is anything
about the statement so improbable as to make us unable to
receive it. The Epistle to the Hebrews seems to have been
written after Paul's death ; and we should not expect Bar-
nabas to have survived Paul as an active worker ; for he was
not only the older Christian (Acts ix. 27), but apparently the
older man ; seeming to be of some standing (Acts ix. 35)
when Paul is described as a young man (Acts viii. 58J. I may
tidd that Barnabas was taken for Jupiter when Paul was taken
for Mercurius (Acts xiv. 12) ; but this point cannot be pressed,
since the cause of the latter designation was Paul's powers of
speech, and not his personal appearance. In any case, if
Barnabas were the older, he might still have survived Paul,
who did not die of old age but by martyrdom. Again, the
missionary work of Barnabas has been so overshadowed by
that of his companion Paul, that it is natural to us to think
of Barnabas as, though a very good man, not so able a man
as the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews must have been.
If this be our impression, we ought to bear in mind how very
little we really know of the grounds of the prominent position
XXI.] WAS BARNABAS THE AUTHOR? 447
which Barnabas unquestionably held in the early Churcli.
He probably was inferior to Paul as a speaker ; but we have
no such knowledge as would justify an assertion that he was
incapable of writing the letter which has been attributed to
him. The reason why we know so little of the missionary
work of Barnabas after his separation from Paul is simply
that no Luke has recorded it for us. Further, it is pointed out
that this Epistle is very unlike that which goes by the name
•of Barnabas. But if it be admitted that only one of the two
Epistles can be the work of Barnabas, we have a better right
to claim for him that which Tertullian ascribes to him, than
that which almost all critics reject as spurious. Once more,
it is said that the Levite Barnabas would be sure to have a
first-hand knowledge of the Temple worship, and would not
speak, as this writer does, like one who had derived his know-
ledge from books ; he would have been familiar with Hebrew,
and not have used the Septuagint as his Bible ; nor can we
think of him as so subject to Alexandrian influences as the
author of our Epistle appears to have been.
When Barnabas is described as a Levite, all I think that
we are entitled to infer is that he had preserved his genealogy,
and knew that the tribe of Levi was that to which he belonged.
I do not think we are bound to suppose that he was a Levite
ministering in the Temple service. I3ut the important ques-
tion is. Was he a Hellenist, or did he reside habitually at
Jerusalem ? The early part of the Acts would dispose us to
form the latter opinion. It is certain that he early gained
consideration in the Church at Jerusalem by the gift of the
price of his estate ; but it is not stated that Jerusalem had
been his ordinary dwelling-place. He certainly had a near
relation, Mary, the mother of Mark, resident at Jerusalem
(Acts xii. 12, Col. iv. 10). But he himself is described as a
native of Cyprus, and as keeping up his relations with that
island; for it is Cyprus which he first visits when starting with
Paul on a missionary journey, and again Cyprus to which he
turns when separated from Paul and travelling with Mark.
When men of Cyprus made converts among the Hellenists*
* See Dr. Hoit's note on the various reading of Acts xi. 20.
448 THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. [xxi.
of Antioch, Barnabas was judged by the Apostles the most
suitable person to take charge of the newly-formed Church.
How long he had previously been residing at Jerusalem we
cannot tell, but from that time forth we never hear of him as
resident in Jerusalem again. And it must be remembered
that even if it were proved that Barnabas had resided for a
long time in Jerusalem, it would not follow that he was not a
Hellenist, since we know from Acts vi. that there were Hel-
lenists who lived at Jerusalem, and died leaving widows be-
hind them there.
That Barnabas was acquainted with Alexandrian specula-
tion is a thing which we should not have been justified in
asserting without evidence ; but we have as little ground for
contradicting good evidence that he was. And that Alexan-
drian philosophy should be taught in the schools of Cyprus is
in itself probable. I may mention, though without myself
attaching much importance to the point, that the Clementine
Homilies* represent Barnabas as teaching in Alexandria
immediately after the Ascension ; and in this they have been
followed in several later legends. On the whole, feeling that
the Western tradition in favour of the authorship of Barnabas
deserves to be regarded as having some historical value, I do
not find myself at liberty to reject it merely because, if I had
been dependent on conjecture alone, I should have been
tempted to give a different account of the matter. This view
is taken also by Renan [U Antechrist, p. xvii.).
To what Church are we to suppose the Epistle to have
been addressed ? The inscription, which is of immemorial
antiquity, says, * to the Hebrews ',t by which we must under-
stand the Christians of Jerusalem, or at least of Palestine.
* The Recognitions, which I count as the eariier document, make Rome the
scene of the preaching of Barnabas. I take the view of Lipsius and Harnack, that
the desire of the Church at Rome to claim Peter as their first founder, made a story
unpopular which represented his preaching at Rome as preceded by that of another
Evangelist. Hence, the later version of the legend transferred Barnabas to Alex-
andria : afterwards, when the labours of Barnabas in Italy were acknowledged, he
was handed over to the Church of Milan.
t The passages N. T. where the word ' Hebrews' occurs are Acts vi. i, 2 Cor.
xi. 22, Phil. iii. 5.
XXI.] TO WHAT CHURCH ADDRESSED? 449
For the promise (xiii. 23) that the writer would come and see
those whom he addresses makes it impossible to suppose that
this is a letter to Jewish Christians scattered all over the
world, and not to a particular Church. The certain antiquity
of the inscription is a strong reason for not lightly rejecting
its statement; and there are two considerations which confirm
it. One is, that throughout the Epistle no mention is made
of Gentile Christians — the writer assumes that all whom he
addresses are of the seed of Abraham. But no one dates the
Epistle much earlier than the year 64 ; and where, except in
Palestine, could we find at that date a Church of which Gen-
tiles did not form a part, and probably the largest and most
influential part ? The second consideration is, that no other
Church claims the Epistle. If it were sent to Jerusalem, the
destruction of that city, a very few years afterwards, and the
dispersion of its Christian inhabitants, would explain the
absence of a more distinct tradition. But there is no reason
why any other Church to which the letter had been addressed
should not have preserved the tradition, and taken pride in
claiming this Epistle as its own. Those who suppose Apollos
to have been the author very commonly suppose also that it
was addressed to the Church at Alexandria. But if so, how is
it that the members of that Church kept no memory of their
own connexion with the letter ? How is it that they knew
less than did Christians in the West of the true account of the
authorship ? How is it that the general popular belief at
Alexandria was that Paul was the author ; while their most
learned men, who found difficulties in that supposition, were
reduced to guess-work in order to get over them ? The same
argument may be used as concerns Ephesus and other sup-
posed destinations. There were for many years afterwards
flourishing Churches in the places in question, none of which
was likely to have forgotten so important an event in its his-
tory as the receipt of this letter. And the same thing may be
said as to Renan's theory that the letter was addressed 10
Rome. If so, why did not the Church of Rome claim it ?
But there is a still graver objection. For Renan supposes
the letter to have been written after the Neroniaii persecution,
2 G
450 THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. [xxi.
of which the imprisonment of Timothy may have been one of
the incidents. How could a Church which had just gone
through so fiery a trial be addressed in the words (xii. 4), * Ye
have not yet resisted unto blood, striving against sin ' ?
Against the claims of Jerusalem it has been objected that
the writer's praise of his correspondents' beneficence (vi. 10)
is not applicable to the Church at Jerusalem, which w^as rather
the object of the beneficence of foreign Churches. But on the
other hand, there was no Church to which the charge, ' Be
not forgetful to entertain strangers' (xiii. 2), could be more
fitly addressed than that Church which was the object of
periodical visits from Christians of Jewish birth throughout
the world. And the alacrity with which this duty was fulfilled
might well have earned the commendations of ch. vi. even
without taking into account the ordinary exercise of liberality
from richer to poorer brethren. But the chief reason why
some have rejected the claims of Jerusalem is the imagined
hostility between the Christians of Palestine and the Pauline
party, which is thought to make it inconceivable that a Paul-
ine Christian should write to native Jews, addressing them in
a tone of great authority, and expecting to get a friendly and
respectful hearing. But I must set aside this objection as
arising from a mere prejudice. The last act of Paul before
he lost his liberty was to go up to attend a feast at Jerusalem ;
and for the unprosperous issue of that visit, unbelieving, and
not Christian, Jews were responsible. Have we any reason
to suppose that those of Paul's company who were 'of the
circumcision ' were so disgusted by the misfortune of their
leader, that they thenceforward ceased to attend the feasts ?
And in particular have we any reason to suppose that Bar-
nabas discontinued this practice ? or have we any reason to
think that he ceased to enjoy that consideration among the
heads of the Church at Jerusalem, which the earlier story
exhibits him as possessing ?
It seem.s to me a probable account of the origin of the
Epistle, that Barnabas — if anyone prefer to say Apollos I
shall not object, though Barnabas seems to me the more pro-
bable— going up to keep at Jerusalem a feast, subsequent to
XXI.] TO WHAT CHURCH ADDRESSED ? 4^1
those recorded in the Acts of the Apostles, found the Church
suffering from the pressure put on its members by their un-
converted brethren, in consequence of which many of them
had fallen away from the faith, and returned to Judaism.
The visiter might then have spoken strongly of the disgrace
and danger incurred by those who gave up the better for the
worse. He might have spoken of the superiority of Jesus,
the mediator of the new covenant, over the highest of those
intermediaries, whether human or angelic, through whom the
Jews boasted that they had received their Law ; and of the
High Priesthood of Christ as making an atonement for sin
better than any that the Jewish sacrifices could have accom-
plished. If any such teaching were delivered in the Church
of Jerusalem as that expounded in the Epistle to the Hebrews,
I can well imagine the heads of that Church expressing a wish
to their trusted friend that his doctrine should be embodied in
a permanent form. It has been objected. How could one who
did not profess to be an original disciple of our Lord (ii. 3)
presume on such a tone of rebuke as in v. 12? But if the
writer were Barnabas, although he was probably not an
original disciple, yet he was a man of such standing and
consideration, that he could well take upon him to reproach
the members of this, the oldest of the Churches, that they,
who ought to be the teachers of others, should themselves
need elementary instruction. In fact if it be once conceded
that the letter was addressed to the Church of Jerusalem, the
case for the authorship of Barnabas becomes very strong.
Though I have refused to accept the Tiibingen theory as to
the amount of hostility between Pauline and Palestinian
Christians, we know from Acts xxi. that there were many
in Jerusalem who regarded Paul with prejudice and suspi-
cion, and therefore that an ordinary member of his company
would not be counted in Jerusalem a grata persona, whose
instructions would be gladly received, and whose rebukes
would be deferentially submitted to. Further, the Epistle to
the Hebrews is a letter in which one who thought and wrote
in Greek, and who seems only to have used a Greek Bible,
presumes to instruct Hebrew-speaking Christians. We
2 G 2
452 THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. [xxi.
could understand that such an act might be ventured on
by Barnabas, whose early munificence to the Church at
Jerusalem, and long acquaintance with its rulers, gave him
consideration. But I find it hard to believe that Apollos, or
any other of Paul's company, could use the same freedom.
When we regard the letter as not written to Italy, xiii. 24
leads us to think that it was written from Italy : and we have
then an explanation why the salutation should be in general
terms.* If the greeting were from definite persons, known to
his correspondents, why should not their names be mentioned ?
But I take this to be merely a general intimation that the
Hebrew Christians were held in kindly remembrance by the
disciples of the place whence the letter was written.
Concerning the date of the Epistle, it is generally agreed
that it was written before the destruction of Jerusalem. We
cannot rely absolutely on the use of the present tense in
speaking of the Temple services — this way of speaking being
employed by Clement of Rome and others who lived after the
destruction of Jerusalem. But the whole argument of ^^. x.,
which asserts the superiority of Christ's unique and final sa-
crifice over those Jewish sacrifices, which betrayed their insuf-
ficiency by their need of constant repetition, can hardly be
reconciled with the supposition that the Jewish sacrifices had
come to an end before the time of writing, and were then no
longer constantly repeated. And, besides, if we are to sup-
pose the letter written after the destruction of Jerusalem, we
could not account for the absence of all reference to an event
so terrible to every Jewish mind, unless we were able to push
down the date of the Epistle so late that the impression made
by the fate of their city might be supposed to have died away.
As the destruction of Jerusalem furnishes a lower limit to
the date of the Epistle, so the Neronian persecution has been
held to give a superior limit ; so that the date would come
between 64 and 69, say 66 or 67. I feel by no means sure
that the letter may not have been earlier than the time here
assigned. If we compare this book with the Apocalypse, its
* There is some kind of parallel to the vagueness of this salutation in that from
the 'Churches of Asia ' (i Cor. xvi. 19).
XXI.] ITS DATE. 453
calmness contrasts forcibly with the indignant description in
the latter book of the woman ' drunken with the blood of the
saints, and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus' (xvii. 6).
Renan finds a clear reference to the Neronian persecution in
Heb. X. ^5, and especially in the word 0£arjOt^OjU£vot. But
much stress cannot be laid on this word, which has its
parallel in i Cor. iv. 9 ; and when the writer speaks of the
' former days ' of the Church, he can hardly be supposed to
refer to what had taken place only a couple of years before.
I look on the reference in the passage just cited to be to the
persecution that followed the death of Stephen. The verse
implies that the persecution under which the Church addressed
was actually suffering was not so severe as that earlier trial.
In any case it did not extend to the taking of life. The ex-
hortation at the beginning of c/i. xii., and the verse xiii. 3,
would lead us to think that the disciples were then liable to
suffer from legal penalties of a lesser kind. But their con-
stancy would be severely tried if they had to bear no other
penalties than those which, without the sentence of any
magistrate, a bigoted people are wont to inflict on a minority
who live among them professing an unpopular creed. We
can see that some of the disciples were unable to bear the
pressure thus put on them, their faith having failed through
impatience at the delay of the second coming of their Lord
(x. 36, 37). It is quite possible that Jewish Christians in
Palestine might have been subjected to the trials here
described, before the breaking out of Nero's persecution ;
and the verse xii. 4 seems to me to oblige us to date the
Epistle before A, D, 63, which was probably the year of the
martyrdom of James the Just. But since we can in no case
assign a very early date to the letter, differences of opinion
as to its date are not wide enough to make it worth while to
spend more time on the discussion.
Note. — As a further proof of what was stated (p. 439) concerning the late recogni-
tion of this Epistle in the West, it may be mentioned that the Codex Claromontanus,
written in the sixth century, the oldest Gra3co-Latin MS. of the Pauhne Epistles, was
copied from one which did not contain the Epistle to the Hebrews. At the end of
each book mention is made of that which next succeeds. For example, at the end
454
THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. rxxi.
of Titus, ' ad Titum explicit, incipit ad Filemona ' ; but at the end of Philemon we
have merely ' ad Filemona explicit '. Then follows a stichometrical catalogue of the
books both of Old and New Testament, after which comes the Epistle to the
Hebrews. The catalogue in question is carelessly written. It does not contain
either Philippians or Thessalonians — probably from the eye of the scribe having
caught Philemon when he ought to have written Philippians. Nor does it include
Hebrews; but after Jude, and before the Apocalypse and the Acts, comes the
'Epistle of Barnabas', for which are set down 'Vers. 850', this being about the
length ascribed to the Hebrews in other catalogues. In this catalogue i Cor. is set
down as having 1060 verses, a number bearing to 850 a proportion fairly correspond-
ing to that between the actual lengths of i Cor. and Hebrews : whereas the so-called
Epistle of Barnabas is nearly half as long again as Hebrews. Hence it has been
conjectured that it is the Epistle to the Hebrews which here goes by the name of
Barnabas; and the place in which it comes may strengthen this inference. After the
Epistle of Jude comes the Epistle of Barnabas (verses, 850), the Revelation of John
(raoo), the Acts of the Apostles (2600), the Shepherd (4000), the Acts of Paul (3560),
the Revelation of Peter (270). If what we know as the Epistle of Barnabas had been
intended, we should expect it to come, not before the Acts of the Apostles, but in
company with the last three books, with which it is associated in the v6da of Eusebius
(seep. 456).
Cod. Augiensis, an inter-columnar Grseco-Latin MS. of the 9th century, does not
contain the Epistle in Greek, but gives a Latin version occupying both columns ;
whence we may infer that the Greek of this MS. was derived from an archetype
which did not contain this Epistle.
XXII.
THE FIRST EPISTLE OF ST. PETER.
NEXT after the Pauline Epistles I take St. Peter's First
Epistle, the only document among those ranked in
the early Church as ' uncontroverted ', which I have not yet
discussed. At the end of the second century there was such
general agreement between Christians all over the world
as to the bulk of the books which they venerated as sacred,
that in the preceding lectures I have had very little occasion
to cite authorities later than the very beginning of the third
century. On this account I have not hitherto quoted the
passage in which Eusebius (iii. 25) sums up his views as to
the New Testament books ; but though it is somewhat later
than most of the other testimonies with which we have to
deal, the opinion of one of the most influential critics at the
beginning of the fourth century is too important to be passed
over in silence. You will find the passage translated and
discussed in Westcott's TV. T. Canojt, p. 414. Suffice it here
to say that Eusebius makes three classes of Ecclesiastical
books: (i) T/ie generally accepted Books {ofioXoyoviJiva), of which
he enumerates, the four Gospels, the Acts, the Epistles of
Paul (and it appears from another passage [iii. 3] that he
counts the Hebrews in the number), the former Epistle of
John and that of Peter. To these is to be added, if at least it
should so appear {dye ^avtir]), the Apocalypse; (2) T/ie Dis-
puted Books {avTi\£y6fitvu)y which, however, are well known
456 THE FIRST EPISTLE OF ST. PETER. [xxn.
and recognized by most {yvuipifiMv ofxwg ro'ig iToXXolg), viz.
that which is called James's, that of Jude, the Second
Epistle of Peter, and that called the Second and Third of
John, whether they belong to the Evangelist himself or to a
namesake of his; (3) T/ie Spurious or Rejected Books [voOa),
viz. the Acts of Paul, the Shepherd, the Revelation of Peter,
the Epistle of Barnabas, the so-called Teachings of the
Apostles, and if it should so appear (a (paveit^), the Revela-
tion of John, which some reject, others count among the
ofjioXojoviiieva. Some also count with these the Gospel accord-
ing to the Hebrews. Both these last two classes Eusebius
includes under the general title of Disputed Books. He is
clearly speaking only of books in use among orthodox
Churchmen ; for he goes on to speak of such works as the
Gospels of Peter, Thomas, and Matthias, the Acts of Andrew,
John, and the other Apostles, which he condemns as heretical
forgeries, and as not deserving to count even among the voda.
The odd thing in this classification is, that he mentions
difference of opinion as to the Revelation of St. John ; but
instead of then, as we should expect, classifying this among
the disputed books, he gives his readers the choice whether
to place it among the * accepted ' or the * spurious ', himself
showing a leaning to the latter verdict. I imagine that the
first class includes the books which were generally accepted
in Churches without any feeling of doubt ; the second class
those concerning which doubts were entertained ; and the
third class those which generally were not admitted to have
pretensions to Apostolic authority. I take it that the Apo-
calypse was received without hesitation by so many Churches
that Eusebius felt himself bound to report its claims to the
first rank; but that he himself, following the opinion of
Dionysius of Alexandria and other divines whom he respected,
was disposed to place it in the third class. We are a little
surprised to find no mention made of Clement's Epistle, since
we know (Euseb. iii. 16) that it was included in the public
reading of many Churches, as its place in the Alexandrian
MS. testifies. There is no very apparent reason why it did
not deserve to be mentioned as well as the Shepherd of
XXII.] EUSEBIUS'S LIST OF N. T. BOOKS. 457
Hermas or the Epistle of Barnabas; so that I feel by no
means sure that the omission was not mere inadvertence.
If not, the best explanation we can give is that Clement's
Epistle did not claim to proceed from an Apostle, like one
of the two books I have named, or to contain a prophetic
revelation like the other.
I have found it convenient to speak here about this list
of Eusebius; but we are not immediately concerned with
the questions I have touched on concerning his principles
of classification ; for Peter's Epistle is placed by him
unequivocally in the first rank. And certainly the testi-
mony in its favour is of the highest character ; indeed,
I do not know that any New Testament book is better
attested. The latest witnesses with whom I have usually
begun, Irenaeus, Clement, and TertuUian,* all employ it.
It is quoted also in the Epistle of the Churches of Vienne
and Lyons. It was included in the Syriac and in the old
Latin Versions. Eusebius (iv. 14) has taken notice of the
use made of this letter in the Epistle of Polycarp ; and this
Epistle being extant enables us to verify the accuracy of the
report, the quotations from Peter being extremely numerous;
and his Epistle being more frequently employed by Polycarp
than any other New Testament book. Clem. Alex. [Strom.
iv. 12) quotes a passage from the heretic Basilides, in which
the influence of Peter's Epistle is distinctly marked. I have
already (p. 92) spoken of the use made of the Epistle by
Papias, and shall presently have a few words more to say on
the same subject. There are several resemblances to i Peter
both in Clement of Rome and in Hermas, and at least in the
former case I think they deserve to be regarded as quotations.
I myself believe that the stories concerning the Redeemer's
liberation of souls from Hades which early acquired so great
currencyt were suggested by i Peter iii. 19; but no doubt
this is only matter of opinion. However, the earliest attesta-
* lien. IV. ix. 2, xvi. 5; Clem. Alex. Strom. IV. 7; Paed. i. 6; Hypotyp. p.
1006, Potter; see also Euseb. vi. 14. Tert. Scorp. 12, 14; De Orat. 20; Adv.
jfud. 10.
t See note, p. 347. In some of the Gnostic systems this liberation of souls from
458 THE FIRST EPISTLE OF ST. PETER. [xxii.
tion to Peter's First Epistle is that given in the Second
(iii. i) ; for those who deny this Second Epistle to be the work
of Peter acknowledge that it is a very early document ; and
if it be a forgery, it is nevertheless clear that there was, at
the time when it was written, an Epistle already in circula-
tion, which the author believed to be Peter's, on the level
of which he aspired to place the second letter.
The external attestation to the Epistle being so strong, I
attribute no importance to the only point in which it is defec-
tive, viz. that the Muratorian Fragment mentions neither
Epistle of Peter. I myself believe that fragment to be later
than Irenaeus ; but grant it the greatest antiquity that has
been claimed for it, and we have older testimony that the
First Epistle of Peter was then in circulation. I cannot but
think, therefore, that anyone professing to give a list of New
Testament books would have been sure to name this Epistle,
if not for approval, at least for rejection. Now, Westcott
[N. T. Canon, Appendix C.) has pointed out that other work
done by the scribe to whom we owe the preservation of this
fragment is disfigured by hasty errors of omission. It seems
to me therefore probable that a sentence has been accidentally
left out, in which the Petrine Epistles were spoken of. The
omission is to be regretted, not as regards the First Epistle
concerning which we have other abundant evidence, but as
Hades is made to be the great object of the Redeemer's death. Hades is deceived
into regarding the Redeemer as one of the ordinary dead, and so admitting the
Spoiler who was to depopulate his kingdom. This was the theory of the Marcionites,
described by Eznig {see Smith's Diet, of Christ. Biog., iii. 822), and of the Sethites
of Hippolytus (v. 19, p. 142 Miller). Several orthodox fathers adopted the theory of
a deception suffered by the devil in consequence of our Lord's humiliation ; whereby
he was tempted into a conflict in which he was sure to be worsted. The theory,
perhaps, presents itself in its most curious form in Macarius Magnes (see p. 164), who
says that our Lord ensnared the devil by baiting the hook of his divinity with the
worm of his humanity ; and thus expounds the text (Ps. xxii. 6), ' I am a worm and
no man'. But in this exposition Macarius is not original; for on comparing
what he says, with Origen's Commentary on the same text, it becomes apparent
that Macarius is drawing from Origen, who no doubt served as an authority to other
succeeding fathers.
On the other hand, it is fair to mention the curious fact, which illustrates the pre-
carious character of the argument from silence (see p. loo'l, that Irenceus, who else-
INTERNAL DIFFICULTIES ALLEGED AGAINST IT.
459
depriving us of some important guidance in our judgment
about the Second. For the omission of mention of it in that
fragment is a fact which has no weight, when the First Epistle
also is not noticed.
I come now to the internal difficulties which have been
alleged to warrant the rejection of so much external evidence.
And first we must notice the indication of advanced date
afforded by the fact that, when this Epistle was written, the
Christians as such were subject to legal penalties. When
Paul wrote to the Romans, he could tell them (xiii. 3) that
rulers were ' not a terror to good works but to the evil ' ; that
they need not be afraid of the power ; for if they did that
which was good they should have praise of the same, * for
he is the minister of God to thee for good'. Paul's own
experience, when brought before Gallio (Acts xviii. 14), had
taught him that a man against whom no charge of ' wrong or
wicked villainy' could be laid, would be protected by the
Roman magistrate against an attempt to punish him merely
on account of his religious opinions. But Peter's Epistle
contemplates a state of things when innocence was no pro-
tection, when a man might do well and suffer for it (ii. 20).
The name Christian had become a title of accusation (iv. 16) ;
and a main object with the writer is to animate his disciples'
courage to endure a * fiery trial ' coming on them solely on
where shows that he was acquainted with Peter's Epistle, does not quote it in
connexion with the doctrine of our Lord's descent to hell. His chief proof of that
doctrine is founded on a supposed Old Testament passage, which he cites four times
(III. XX. 3 ; IV. xxxiii. i, 12 ; V. xxxi. i), 'The Lord God the Holy One of Israel
hath remembered his dead which lay in the earth of the grave, and he descended to
them that he might proclaim to them his salvation.' This passage had also been
cited by Justin Martyr [Trypho 72), who attributes it to Jeremiah, and accuses the
Jews of having cut it out of their copies. This interpolation has close affinity with 2
Esdras ii. 31. The other passages which Irenaeus (V. xxxi.) cites in proof of the
doctrine are Matt. xii. 40, Eph. iv. 9, Pss. Ixxxvi. 13, xxiii. 4. Tertullian also [De
Anima 55) omits to cite i Peter ; but it is easy to see that in this place he is follow-
ing Irenaeus. The passage of Peter is used by Clement Alex. {Strom, vi. 6). Hermas
{Sim. ix. 16) has a notion peculiar to himself, that the Apostles descending to Hades
not only preached to those who had died before them, but there baptized those so
evangelized. On this subject may further be consulted Lightfoot's note (p. 131) on
Ignat. ad Magn. 9.
46o THE FIRST EPISTLE OF ST. PETER. [xxii.
account of their religion. It has been assumed that it was
the Emperor Trajan's rescript in answer to Pliny which first
made the profession of Christianity illegal, and so, that Peter's
Epistle cannot be dated earlier than that emperor's reign.
But Trajan did no more than sanction the line of action Pliny
had taken before he consulted him ; and it is plain from
Pliny's letter that the state of things he found existing when
he entered upon oifice was that Christians as such were liable
to be punished. Pliny states that he had never been present
at trials of Christians, and consequently was puzzled how to
conduct them. He was himself desirous to take a merciful
view ; and as he could find no evidence that Christians had
been guilty of any immorality, he wished that men should not
be punished for the past offence of having belonged to the
prohibited sect, provided they were willing to withdraw from
connexion with it in the future. But he had no doubt of the
propriety of punishing those who contumaciously refused to
abandon their Christian profession. It is therefore quite clear
that, if we wish to name the time when Christianity became
a prohibited religion, we must assign an earlier date than
Trajan's reign. To me it seems that the most probable date
is 64, the year of Nero's persecution ; and therefore, though I
see nothing inconsistent with Petrine authorship in the fact
that when the Epistle was written Christians were liable to
be punished as such, I think that this fact forbids us to date
the letter earlier in Peter's life than the year of the burning
of Rome.*
I have already more than once had occasion to mention
the chief cause of opposition to Peter's Epistle. Those who,
with Baur, accept the Clementine Homilies as revealing the
true history of the early Church, learn to think of Peter as an
Ebionite in doctrine, and as permanently in antagonism to
Paul. But the Peter of this Epistle teaches doctrine which
* Lightfoot remarks (^««;'. r. 11) that it was not necessary that any formal edict
against the Christians should have been issued. The mere negative fact that their
religion had not been recognized as lawful would have been ample justification for
proceeding against them as soon as it was recognized that Christianity was something
distinct from Judaism.
XXII.] ITS PAULINISM. 461
has the closest affinity with that of Paul, and even adopts a
good deal of that Apostle's language. I will not repeat the
arguments I have already used to show the Clementines to be
wholly undeserving of the credence Baur has given to their
representations, and it is the less needful to do so because
there are manifest indications that Baur's theory is dying out.
In Germany, scholars who would think it an affront to be
classed as apologists, such as Pfleiderer, Weizsacker, Keim,
retreat from his extreme positions. Renan accepts Peter's
Epistle, refusing to count its conciliatory tendencies as a
decisive objection, and says [L' Afilechrtsly p. ix.), * If the
hatred between the two parties of primitive Christianity had
been as profound as the school of Baur believes, the recon-
ciliation could never have been made.'
One who, as Renan does, accepts the tradition that the
letter was written from Rome, cannot reasonably be surprised
at its Paulinism. Peter was not one of those rugged charac-
ters whom it costs nothing to be out of harmony with their
surroundings; who, living much in their own thoughts, arrive
at conclusions which they hold so strongly as to have power
to force them on unwilling ears. Peter, on the contrary, pos-
sessed an eminently sympathetic nature. He was one who
received impressions easily, and could not, without an effort,
avoid reflecting the tone of the company in which he lived.
I need only remind you of what the Epistle to the Galatians
tells of Peter's conduct at Antioch; how readily he conformed
to the usage of the Pauline Christians of that city, but, on the
arrival of visitors from Palestine, fell back into the Jewish
practice. What business should Peter have at Rome if in
his mind Christianity were still but a reformed sect of
Judaism, and if he had not risen to the conception of a
universal Church ? And how could he live in a Church,
so many of whose members owed their knowledge of the
Gospel to Paul's preaching, without sympathizing with the
honour in which the work of the Apostle of the Gentiles was
held ? Was the man who did not hold aloof from Paul's
company at Antioch, when the idea of the admission of
Gentiles to equal privileges was still a novelty offensive to
462 THE FIRST EPISTLE OF ST. PETER. [xxii.
Jewish minds, likely to play the part of a separatist at Rome,
after Gentile Christianity had established its full rights not
only there but in so many cities of the Empire ?
There has, indeed, been a good deal of controversy as to
the place of composition of the Epistle. I need hardly
remind you that at the close (v. 13) a salutation is sent from
* the Church that is at Babylon elected together with you '.
The early Church generally understood that Babylon here
was a mystical name for Rome ; but many moderns take the
word in its literal and obvious sense as denoting Babylon on
the Euphrates, a place which was the centre of a considerable
Jewish population, as Josephus and Philo bear witness.* I
will not trouble myself to discuss a third theory which finds
an Egyptian Babylon. The connexion of Peter with Rome
has been so much insisted on by Roman Catholics, that Pro-
testants have thought it a duty to deny it ; and thus there is
a certain number of commentators whose views have been so
biassed, one way or other, by the effect their decision may
have on modern controversies, that their opinion deserves to
go for nothing. For my part, I so utterly disbelieve in any
connexion between Peter and Leo XIIL, that I count a man
as only half a Protestant if he troubles his head about the
Romish controversy when he is discussing the personal
history of Peter. One might expect to find unprejudiced
judges in men so advanced in their opinions that they ought
to be sublimely indifferent to controversies between one sect
of Christians and another. Yet it is curious how the scent of
the roses will cling to the fragments of the shattered vase.
Thus, Comte's Positive Religion, though not Christian, or
even theistic, retains a strong Roman Catholic complexion.
Accordingly on the present question Renan adheres to the
view in which he had been brought up, and takes Bab3rlon to
mean Rome ; while Lipsius, and other German divines, who
hold the opposite opinion, appear to me not free from anti-
Romish bias. I think that any critic who puts the Epistle
down to the reign of Trajan ought to feel no difficulty in
* Joseph Antt. xv. 3, i ; Philo Delegat. ad Cainvt, p. 1023.
XXII.] ITS PLACE OF COMPOSITION. 463
taking Babylon to mean Rome : for by the time of that
Emperor's reign the Apocalypse must have had large circu-
lation, and might well have influenced Christian phraseology;
and in that book Babylon unquestionably denotes Rome.
But for us who maintain an earlier date for the Epistle, the
question is not so easy of decision. For then we must hold
that it was St. Peter who set the first example of this way of
speaking ; and as his letter is not a mystical book like the
Apocalypse, it is natural for us to ask, If the Apostle meant
Rome, why did he not say Rome ? On the other hand, the
evidence that Babylon was the centre of a large Jewish popu-
lation relates to a date somewhat earlier than the time of this
Epistle. For Josephus relates [Antt. xviii. 9) that in the reign
of Caligula the Jews, partly on account of persecutions from
their neighbours, partly on account of a pestilence, removed
in great numbers from Babylon to the new and rising city of
Seleucia, about forty miles distant. And there new quarrels
arose, in which the greater part of the Jews, to the number of
50,000, were slain. Thus it would appear that at the date of
the Epistle there was no Jewish colony in Babylon ; and so
Peter's journey to that city, which in any case would be a
little surprising, becomes quite unaccountable.
The most trustworthy tradition makes the West, not the
East, the scene of Peter's labours. The passage in which
Eusebius speaks (ii. 15) of the verse about Babylon is worth
attention on account of the two earlier writers whom he cites.
Eusebius tells that Peter's hearers had begged his disciple
Mark to give them a written record of the Apostle's teaching,
and that in compliance with this request the Gospel according
to St. Mark was composed. And he goes on, ' It is said (^octij
that when the Apostle knew what had been done (for the
Spirit revealed it to him), he was pleased by the eager zeal of
the men, and gave his sanction to the writing for use in the
Churches (Clement has recorded the story in the 6th book of
his Hypotyposeis, and Papias, bishop of Hierapolis, gives like
testimony) ; and that Peter makes mention of Mark in his
first Epistle, which it is also said that he composed in Rome,
and that he himself intimates this, by giving the city the
464 THE FIRST EPISTLE OF ST. PETER. [xxii.
metaphorical name of Babylon.' Now, Eusebius elsewhere
fvi. 14) quotes the passage from the Hypotyposeis^ telling the
same story as to the origin of St. Mark's Gospel ; but with
this difference, that when Peter heard what had been done,
he neither approved nor disapproved. It is natural to suspect
that the parts in the passage I have just cited which do not
appear to rest on Clement's authority were derived by Eusebius
from the other writer whom he cites, Papias, Now the words,
*as I said', in the passage of Papias cited, p. 92, show that
there was a previous passage in which he had spoken of the
relations between Peter and Mark. And as Eusebius further
states that Papias quoted the first Epistle of Peter, the proba-
bility rises very high that the passage quoted was the verse
(v. 13) which in the above extract Eusebius brings into such
close connexion with the name of Papias. If this be so, we
could not have higher authority for interpreting ' Babylon' in
that verse to mean Rome ; both because Papias lived before
the invention of the Clementine legend, and because his au-
thority, John the Elder, was one likely to be well informed.
It must be added, that if the scene of Peter's activity were
on the Euphrates at so late a period as that which I have
assigned to his Epistle, it is unlikely that he should be found
so soon afterwards suffering martyrdom at Rome. But the
Roman martyrdom of Peter is very well attested. We gather
from John (xxi. 12) that Peter did suffer martyrdom ; and no
other city claims to have been the place. At the beginning
of the third century, Tertullian [De Praescrip. 36, Scorp. 15)
and Caius (Euseb. ii. 25) have no doubt that it was at Rome
he suffered. And Caius [see p. 369) states further that there
were 'trophies', by which, I suppose, we are to understand
tombs or memorial churches, marking the spots sacred to the
memory of the Apostles. Now it is reasonable to think that
these could not have been of very recent erection when Caius
wrote. The testimony of Dionysius of Corinth, also quoted
by Eusebius in the chapter just cited, gives us reason to
believe that some time before the end of the second century
the Christian world generally acknowledged the Roman
martyrdom.
XXII.] FOR WHAT READERS INTENDED ? 465
If we are to understand that Peter gave to Rome the name
of Babylon, we have an additional reason for assigning to the
Epistle a late date in Peter's life. Such a name would not be
given until Rome had, by its persecution of the Church, come
to be regarded by Christians as the true successor of the
tyrant city which oppressed the Church of the elder dispen-
sation.
The question next comes under consideration, For what
readers was the Epistle intended? The opening address
recalls the Epistle of James, a document which I shall
presently give reasons to think was known to Peter. The
letter of James is addressed *to the twelve tribes which are of
the Dispersion' (rate tv ri^ diaaTropq)^ a phrase by which we
readily understand Jews living outside the limits of the Holy
Land. St. Peter's Epistle is addressed to the elect who are
sojourners of the Dispersion in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia,
Asia, and Bithynia [ticXeKToXg irapeiriSijij.oic: SiaaTropag) ; but on
examination we find that in this case the 'Dispersion' does
not consist exclusively, or even principally, of Jews. The
persons addressed had been ' called out of darkness into God's
marvellous light' : in times past they 'had not been a people,
but were now the people of God' (ii. 9, 10). In this verse a
passage of Hosea is made use of which Paul had employed
(Rom. ix. 25) with reference to the calling of the Gentiles.
The unconverted days of those addressed had been days of
* ignorance ' (i. 14), days when they had ' wrought the will of
the Gentiles ' (iv. 3J. It may be inferred from these expres-
sions that the persons addressed are not Jews ; and yet are
not permanent residents in the countries addressed, but for
some reason 'dispersed' among them. I do not lay stress
upon the word 7ra/o£7rtSrjjuotc as proving that those addressed
were but temporary sojourners where they dwelt ; for the
thought was constantly present to the minds of Christians
that they were but 'strangers and pilgrims' upon earth {^ivnt
Kol TrapiTTiSrinoi, Heb. xi. 13 : see also Lightfoot's note on the
address of the Epistle of Clement of Rome). It is possible
that the word diaaTropa may also be here used in a metaphori-
cal sense, the Christians scattered among the world of heathen
2 H
466 THE FIRST EPISTLE OF ST. PETER. [xxir.
being regarded as a spiritual Israel dispersed among the Gen-
tiles. But I feel much inclined to take the word literally, and
to believe that Peter's letter was written to members of the
Roman Church whom Nero's persecution had dispersed to
seek safety in the provinces, Asia Minor being by no means
an unlikely place for them to flee to.*
I have already had occasion to express my opinion that
the Paulinism of Peter's Epistle proceeds beyond identity of
doctrine, and is such as to show that Peter had read some of
Paul's letters. In particular the proofs of his acquaintance
with the Epistle to the Romans are so numerous and striking
as to leave no doubt on my mind. I have just referred to the
use in both Epistles of the same verse from Hosea; so, in like
manner, both combine in the same way the verses, Isaiah viii.
14, and xxviii. 16, 'Behold I lay in Sion a stumbling stone
and rock of offence, and whosoever believeth on him shall not
be ashamed' (Rom. ix. 33, i Pet. ii. 6-8). There are many
passages where there are distinct verbal coincidences, and
especially in the directions to obedience to the civil rulers.f
There are isolated coincidences with other Pauline Epistles
(compare, for instance, ii. 16, with Gal. v. 13; v. 8, with i
Thess. V. 6; v. 14, with i Cor. xvi. 20). But it is with the
Epistle to the Ephesians that the affinity is closest. A great
many critics — Holtzmann, Seufert, Renan — have convinced
themselves that it is such as to prove that Peter must have
* An interesting paper, taking this view, was published by Dr. Quarry in the
Journal of Sacred Literature, Jan. 1861. The use made by Peter of the Epistle to
the Romans is dwelt on in the same paper.
+ u7roTa77jT€ )8a(r»A.ei diy uTrepexovrt (l Pet. ii. 13) \
"Kaaa. "i/MXh i^ovffiais virepexovffats inroTaffffeaQcD (Rom. xill. l).
€»s e/f5t/c7j<ru' KaKOTroiuf (I Pet. ii. 14) ;
tKdiKos els opyijy Tip rh Kanhy irpdffffoyri (Rom. xiii. 4).
tiraivov Se a-yaQoiroiuv (l Pet. ii. 14) ;
rb ayad))v noift Kol e^fis tiraivov (Rom. xiii. 3)-
I Peter iii. 8, 9, is an abridgment of Rom. xii. 10, 13-16.
irduTes 6fj.6<ppovts, Taneiv6<ppoves, (piXdSf\(pot, fj.i) airo^iSSurfs kukIv avrl kokov,
TohvavTiov 5e evKoyovvres (l Pet.) ;
rh ahrb fls aWriKovs (ppovovvrts, /UtJ Tck uiJ/7>A.a (ppovovurts dwi rois Ta'ireivo7s avva-
iraySfifVOi ttj <biKa5i\<pia els aWriKovs <pi\6ffropyot, /UijSevl KaKhv avrl KaKOv airoSiSSuTfs,
e!j\oye7re nut juJ) KaTapacrde (Rom.).^
XXII.] ITS COINCIDENCES WITH EPHESIANS. 467
used that Epistle, and I had myself accepted that conclusion.
I still hold it : though now that I come to lay the proofs
before you, I have to own that they are by no means so
demonstrative as I count them to be in the case of the
Epistle to the Romans. There are several passages in
Peter's Epistle which so strongly remind us of passages
in the Epistle to the Ephesians, that the simplest explana-
tion of their origin is that they were suggested to the
writer by his knowledge of Paul's Epistle. But the resem-
blance is often merely in the thoughts, or in the general
plan, without any exact reproduction of the words. We
might conjecturally explain this difference by supposing the
Epistle to the Romans to have been so long known to St.
Peter that he had had time to become familiar with its
language, while his acquaintance with the Ephesian Epistle
was more recent.
Comparing, then, Peter's Epistle with that to the Ephesians,
we find that after the address, both begin with ' Blessed be
the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ ' ; but the fact
that this is also the commencement of 2 Cor. weakens the
force of this coincidence, and the continuation in Eph. and
I Pet. is quite different— 6 evXoyricrag ninag in the one case, 6
<ivayevv{](Tat; n/nag in the Other. Again, in the opening of
Peter's Epistle we have eKX^KTolg . . . . Kara Trpoyvwrnv deov
Trarpbg Iv aytacr/utjJ irvtiifxarog ilg . . . . pavTidfiov aifiaTog I. X.
Compare also Rom. xii. 6, 7, with i Pet. iv. 10, II. Observe how the avvaxv-
fxari^effde of Rom. xii. 2 is reproduced in i Pet. i. 14 (the word not occurring else-
wliere N. T.) ; and note the similarity of the thoughts, Rom. xii. i, i Pet. ii. 5.
d irad^v iv ffapKi nf-rravTai afxapTias (l Pet. iv. I) ;
d yap a.Tro6av(iov SeSiKalairai airh rrjs afiaprias (Rom. vi. 7)-
Kadb KoiviDVfiTe roh rov xp^<^'''Ov irad'fj/j.aa'iv, x"'/'^'''* ^''" ''*' ^'' '''V airoKaKvxpei rrjs
■5o|i7s avTov xopTjre (l Pet. iv. 13);
XpKTTov, ehfp (Tv/x'iTdcrxofiev'lva. Kal ffvvSo^acrdoifxeu (Rom. viii. 17).
iLidprvs Tuv rov xptfJ^ToC TradrtfidTaiy, 6 koI rrjs fieWovcrris airoKaXvirreffdai 5({|i7s
■Koivwv6$ (I Pet. V. I) ;
Tok iraflTj/iiOTa rov vvv Katpov nphs rrjv fifWovffav S6^av aTTOKaXvcpdrjvat th ri/j.a,s
(liom. viii. 18).
These are only a few of the more striking coincidences, but the list might be
greatly enlarged if we included several where the same thoughts are expressed with
variations of language. See Seufert in Hilgenfeld's Zeitschrift, 1874, p. 360.
2 H 2
468 THE FIRST EPISTLE OF ST. PETER. [xxii.
In that of Ephesians Ka6(og l^tXi^aro i7juac .... tlvat rtfxag
ayiovg . . . . Iv i^ ixofxtv t^v cnroXvTpuxriv Sia tov a'ifiarog
avTov. There is here considerable resemblance in the
thoughts ; but when the passages are compared in full
there is found to be a good deal of diversity in the lan-
guage. The style of the opening of the two Epistles is
much alike. Each begins with a very long sentence, Eph.
i. 3-14, I Pet. i. 3-12, the clauses being connected alternately
by participles and relative pronouns.
If we compare i Pet. i. 20, 10-12, with Eph. i. 4, iii. 9-1 1»
we have the same doctrine of a mystery ordained of God irpb
KarajSoX^c Koffjuou, kept secret from former generations but now
fully revealed, and exciting the interest even of the angelic
host. Christ's exaltation above the angels is spoken of i Pet.
iii. 22, Eph. i. 20-22. Both Epistles contain practical ad-
monitions to Christians as to their duties in the several
relations of life; but except in the directions to wives to
be subject to their husbands, and slaves to their masters,
there is very little similarity between those parts of the two
Epistles. In both i Pet. ii. 4-7 and Eph. ii. 20-22, we have
the comparison of the Christian society to a building of which
each individual member is a living stone and Christ the chief
corner-stone : but St. Peter is citing Ps. cxviii. 22, and Isaiah
xxviii. 16; and the former passage may have suggested to
Paul also the comparison of the corner-stone. It is to be
noted that this passage from the Psalms had been applied by
our Lord to himself (Matt. xxi. 42), and is similarly cited by
St. Peter (Acts iv. 11). Other coincidences are the KpvnTog rrig
Kap^iag avSpwirog (l Pet. iii. 4) with the eaw avQpwirog (Eph. iii.
16); "iva rjfJLag TrpOGayayy t^ ved^ (l Pet. iii. 1 8) with Si avTov
£YOU£v Trjv Trpoaaywyijv irpog tov iraripa (Eph. ii. 18) ; and the
passage about Christ's descent to hell (i Pet. iii. iq, 20) with
Eph. iv. 8-10. The coincidences I have described have been
accepted by many critics as proofs that the one Epistle was
used by the writer of the other ; Hilgenfeld, however, main"
taining that it is Ephesians which is indebted to i Peter.
Numerous and striking as these coincidences are, still when
they are compared with those between i Peter and the
XXII.] ITS COINCIDENCES WITH EPHESIANS. 469
Epistle to the Romans, the verbal agreement in the latter
case is found to be so much closer that a good deal of doubt
is cast upon the assertion that the former case is one of
literary obligation. Lately Seufert (Hilgenfeld's Zeitschrift^
1 88 1, p. 179) has offered a new and rather startling explana-
tion. He accounts for the similarity between i Peter and
Ephesians as we account for that between Ephesians and
Colossians, viz. that one document was not copied from the
other, but that both had the same author ; and of course in
this case that author could be neither Peter nor Paul. I
could point out a very formidable array of difficulties in the
way of this hypothesis ; but I will not spend time in refuting
a theory which has not as yet gained adherents, and probably
will never do so. The resemblances between i Peter and
Ephesians are very much less numerous and less striking
than those between Ephesians and Colossians ; but in order
to establish Seufert's theory they ought to be very much
stronger : for we clearly can more readily recognize resem-
blances as tokens of common authorship in the case of two
documents which purport to come from the same author, and
which from the very earliest times have been accepted as so
coming, than when the case is just the reverse. So Seufert
chiefly aims at establishing his theory by showing that the
resemblances between the two Epistles cannot be accounted
for either by accident, or by the hypothesis that one writer
borrowed from the other. But there is a third explanation
which in my opinion ought not to be left wholly out of
account. Peter may have arrived at Rome before Paul
quitted it, in which case there would be a good deal of
viva voce intercourse between the Apostles, as there had
been in former times. The doctrines taught by Paul in his
Epistle to the Ephesians would also naturally be the subject
of his discourses to the Christians at Rome; and these dis-
courses may have been heard by Peter. Having this explana-
tion to fall back upon, if Peter's direct use of the Epistle to
the Ephesians were disproved, I find little to tempt me in
Seufert's hypothesis.
I have still to mention another fact establishing how
470 THE FIRST EPISTLE OF ST. PETER. [xxii.
completely this Epistle ignores all dissensions between Paul-
ine and Jewish Christianity. This writer, who shows such
strong tokens of the influence of Paul, equally exhibits traces
of the influence of the Epistle of James. This phenomenon
presents no difficulty to one who has accepted the Church
tradition that Peter was the writer ; and that Peter was on
terms of close intimacy and friendship both with the head
of the Church of Jerusalem and with the Apostle of the
Gentiles. But on Baur's theory it is difficult to believe that
a Roman Paulinist of the age of Trajan would have been a
diligent student and admirer of the specially Jewish Epistle.
The proofs of the use by Peter of the Epistle of James are
sufficiently decisive. The phrases Trttjoao-juoic iroiKiXoig and
TO ^oKifiiov vfiCjv Trig triaTiwq (James i. 3, 4) are repeated in
I Pet. i. 7. The phrase l^r\pavBr\ 6 -^opTog Koi to avOog t^iTreae
(i Pet. i. 24) is in verbal agreement with James i. 11. The
quotation from Prov. iii. 34, ' God resisteth the proud, but
giveth grace to the humble ', is made in James iv. 6 and
I Pet. V. 5 with the same variation from the text of the LXX.
[dtog instead of Kvpiog), and is followed in both places by the
same exhortation, * Humble yourselves, therefore, that God
may exalt you'. Another citation from Prov. x. 12, 'shall
cover a multitude of sins', is also common to the two
Epistles. I have already said that the address of Peter's
Epistle seems to have been suggested by that of James.
It has been asserted that Peter also made use of the
Epistle to the Hebrews ; but this appears to me more than
doubtful. One of the closest of the coincidences, viz. the use
of uTTttL, with respect to the offering of Christ (Heb. ix. 28,
I Pet. iii. 18), is accounted for by the ecpdira^ of Rom. vi. 10.
I have already (see p. 338) said something about the coinci-
dences between Peter's Epistle and Peter's speeches recorded
in the Acts.*
* In addition to the examples given (p. 338), there have been cited the use of rb
^v\ov for the cross (i Pet. ii. 24, Acts v. 30, x. 39), but see Deut. xxi. 23, and Gal.
iii. 13 ; the claim to be a 'witness' to Christ (Acts ii. 32, iii. 15, i Pet. v. i) ; the
appeal to the O. T. prophets (Acts iii. 18, x. 43, i Pet. i. 10) ; and the phrase
' to judge the quick and the dead ' (Acts x. 42, i Pet. iv. 5, elsewhere only 2 Tim.
ir. i).
XXII.] ITS ORIGINALITY AND INDIVIDUALITY. 471
However much Peter may have availed himself of the
writings of other members of the Apostolic company, he had
so incorporated with his own mind whatever he had imbibed
from them, that his letter, notwithstanding its borrowings,
bears a distinct stamp of originality and individuality. We
cannot read it without feeling that this is not the work of a
literary artist, whose only aim is to make a clever imitation
of the previously known Apostolic Epistles ; but that, on
the contrary, the writer's object is entirely practical. His
mind is full of the condition of disciples who had already
had to endure much suffering on behalf of their faith, and on
whom he sees coming a still more fiery trial of persecution.
His great object is to bring before their minds such thoughts
as shall keep them steadfast under temptation, and give them
patience and even cheerfulness amid their tribulations. In
particular he dwells on the thoughts (i. 6) that their trials
are only 'if need be', and only 'for a season'. In other
words, he tells them that their sufferings will be found to
constitute a salutary discipline, out of which their faith will
come purified like gold from the furnace, and that after a
while their brief period of trial will be succeeded by eternal
glory. He dwells so much on this promise of future glory,
that he has been called by some critics the Apostle of
Hope.
I have already remarked that, if we compare passages in
this Epistle with passages in former Epistles which may seem to
have suggested them — for example, the exhortation to wives in
this Epistle with St. Paul's instructions to wives in the Epistle
to the Ephesians — we find here so completely new a choice of
topics as fully to justify our assertion of the writer's originality.
Other points peculiar to this Epistle are the prominence given
to baptism (iii. 21) and the new birth (i. 3, 23); the doctrine
of Christ's preaching to the spirits in prison (iii. 19) ; the inte-
rest taken by the angelic host in the Christian scheme (i. 12) ;
the designation of Christ as the Chief Shepherd ; and a whole
series of topics calculated to raise the courage of sufferers for
the faith (ii. 20, &c., iv. 12, v. 9). It may be added that a
forger would have been likely to give to Peter some less
472 THE FIRST EPISTLE OF ST. PETER. lxxii.
modest title than (Tviunrpea(5vTtpog, and that we have an indi-
cation of early date, if not in the use of the word tn-to-KOTrouvri e
(v. 2) to describe the work of the presbyters (the reading here
being doubtful, and the argument in any case not cogent), at
least in the use (v. 3) with respect to their flocks of the phrase
TU)v KXr}pu)v, a term which came in very early times to be ap-
propriated to the clergy.
XXIII.
THE EPISTLE OF ST. JAMES.
I HAVE already stated (p. 456) that Eusebius in his list ot
Canonical books (iii. 25) places the Epistle of James in
his second class, viz. books controverted, but recognized by
most. Elsewhere (ii. 2^] having told the story of the martyr-
dom of James the Just, he adds : ' This is the account given of
James, who is said to have been the author of the first of what
are called the Catholic Epistles. But it must be observed that
this is held to be spurious [vodtviTai] : at least not many of the
ancients have made mention of it, nor yet of the Epistle of
Jude, which is likewise one of the seven called Catholic.
Nevertheless, we know that these have been publicly used
with the rest in most Churches.' The suspicions expressed
by Eusebius are more strongly stated by St. Jerome [De Vi'r.
lllust. 3), 'James wrote only one Epistle, which is one of the
seven Catholic. It is asserted that this was published by
some other person under his name, though as time went on it
by degrees obtained authority.' We learn from what Eusebius
says that there was current in his time a collection of seven
* Catholic Epistles ', which, notwithstanding the doubts of
learned men, were widely acknowledged as authoritative.
The complete subsidence of doubt about these Epistles in the
fifth century is in itself evidence that they must have been very
widely received in the fourth.
474 THE EPISTLE OF ST. JAMES. [xxiii.
Eusebius himself, in his Commentary on the Psalms,
quotes the Epistle of James as the work of a holy Apostle*
and as Scripture ;t and in the passages cited above he clearly
gives us to understand that the cause of his hesitation about
recognizing the Epistle was not any deficiency of acceptance
in the Church of his own time, but infrequency of quotation
by earlier Ecclesiastical writers. And it is true that Origen
is the earliest writer whom we can produce as quoting this
Epistle by name. He uses, too, a formula of citation, * the
Epistle current as that of James' [ev rg (ptpo/xivy 'laicwjSoi/
ETTtoToA^, In Joann. xix. 6), which suggests that he entertained
doubts as to the authorship. Elsewhere, however, he calls
the writer James, without expression of doubt {in Ps. 30).
There are several quotations in the writings of Origen which
have been preserved in the Latin translation of Rufinus,
whose faithfulness as a translator, however, was not such as
to enable us to use his authority with perfect confidence. We
seem to have an earlier authority in Clement of Alexandria.
Eusebius (vi. 14) says that, 'to state the matter shortly, Cle-
ment in his Hypotyposeis gave concise expositions of all the
Canonical Scriptures, not omitting the controverted books — I
mean the Epistle of Jude and the other Catholic Epistles, the
Epistle of Barnabas, and what is called the Revelation of
Peter.' Photius also {Cod. 109) adds his testimony that the
Hypotyposeis included comments on the Catholic Epistles. On
this evidence several have thought themselves warranted in
asserting that Clement commented on all seven Catholic
Epistles. But we are led to doubt this by the testimony of
Cassiodorus {De histit. Div. Litt. c. viii.).:}: He says that
Clement made comments on the Canonical Epistles, that is
to say, on the first Epistle of St. Peter, the first and second of
St. John, and the Epistle of James; and that he himself had
* A€76j -yoxiv b lephs a,7r6(rTo\os' KaKOTradel tis k. t. A. (James v. 13) ; in Ps. 56,
p. 504, Migne.
t /«. /'j'. 100, p. 1244.
X Cassiodorus, who had been minister to King Theodoric, in his old age (about
A.D. 540) retired into a monastery, where he gave a great impulse to literary pur-
suits among monks, and himself became the author of several treatises.
WHETHER KNOWN TO CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA ?
475
had these comments translated into Latin, omitting a few
things incautiously said, which might give offence. Now, we
have every reason to believe that the Latin fragments of the
Hypotyposeis printed in the editions of Clement are these very
translations of which Cassiodorus speaks. But the comments
are on i Pet., i and 2 John, and Jude; not James. And since
Eusebius has made express mention of Jude, we are led to
correct James into Jude in the passage of Cassiodorus just
referred to ; and can feel no confidence in saying that the
Hypotyposeis contained comments either on James or on 2
Peter. There are in other works of Clement coincidences
with the Epistle of James, but all can be accounted for with-
out assuming that he knew the Epistle. What seems most
like a real quotation is, that in Siro?n. vi. 18, commenting on
Matt. V. 20, he teaches that it is not enough for us to abstain
from evil, as did the Scribes and Pharisees, but that unless
we love our neighbour and do him good, we shall not be
* royal ' {^aaiXiKo'i). There might seem to be a plain reference
here to the ' royal' law of James ii. 8 ; but on turning back to
Strom, ii. 4, p. 438, we find Clement insisting on the claim of
Christians to the title (iacriXiKoi, having in view chiefly the
Stoic ascription of kingly dignity to the wise man ; and we
therefore can build nothing on his later use of the same
title.
Eusebius was not likely to overlook any express quotation
of disputed books by early writers. But he might easily fail
to pay attention to less direct proofs of their antiquity. Now,
in the case of the Epistle of James, such evidence is forth-
coming. I refer, in particular, to the Shepherd of Hermas.
This is a book in which Scripture quotations, either from Old
or New Testament, are scarce ; but we are perpetually re-
minded of James's Epistle, the great number of the coinci-
dences serving as proof that they are not accidental. The
topics dwelt on by James are those to which Hermas most
frequently recurs. Thus the doctrine of the opening verses of
James is several times echoed by Hermas — that we must ask
God for wisdom [Sim. v. 4, ix. 2), ask in faith without doubt
or hesitation ; for he who doubts must not expect to receive
476 THE EPISTLE OF ST. JAMES. [xxiii.
anything (James i. 7, Aland, ix.). He who so doubts is called a
double-minded man (James i. 8), and the phrase ^i^vxia in this
sense is of constant occurrence in Hermas. Again, there are
exhortations to the rich, warning them that the groanings of
the neglected poor will go up before the Lord (compare Jam. ii.
6, V. 1-6, Vis. iii. 9). All through Mand. xi. there runs a
reference to the contrast which St. James draws (iii. 15, 17)
between the wisdom which cometh from above (avcuOtv), and
that which is earthly, tTrtyiioc. As examples of how the
vocabulary of James is reproduced in Hermas, I mention
flicaTa<TTaCTta, aKaraaTaroq (James iii. 16, i. 8, Stm. vi. 3, Mand.
ii. 3); KoBapa KoX afiiavTOQ (James i. 27, Mand. ii. 7); KapTcoq
SiKaio<Tvvr)g (James iii. 18, Stm. ix. 19) ; avvayojyri for the place
of Christian worship (James ii. 2, Mand. xi. 9) ; tTpvtprjaare koL
iairaToXriaaTe (James v. 5, Stm. vi. 1) ; x^^ivay ojy ito (James i. 26,
iii. 2, Mand. xii. i) ; TrokvairXayyyoq (James v. 11, Sim. v. 4);
6 ^vva[x.ivoq (Tu)aai Koi cnroXtaai (James iv. 12, Mand. xii. 6);
KoTaXaXiu) (James iv. 11, Mand. ii. 2, Sim. ix. 2;^]. In con-
clusion I mention two striking parallels : * the worthy name
by which ye are called ',* James ii. 7 [to kqXov ovofxa to
iTriKXrtdkv £^' v/naq), to ovoiua Kvpiov to £7riKXr}dh> Iw avTovg {Sim.
viii. 6) ; and the exhortation [Mand. xii. 5), ' The devil may
wrestle against you, but cannot overthrow you : for if ye
resist him he will flee from you in confusion' (compare James
iv. 7).
In the Epistle of the Roman Clement there are several
coincidences which, in my opinion, are best explained as
indicating that he used the Epistle of James, though I do not
venture to say that any of them quite amounts to a positive
proof. Thus, the quotation [c. 30) ' God resisteth the proud ',
&c., may have been suggested not by James but by i Peter ;
and Clement's independent study of the Old Testament may
have led him [c. 10) to call Abraham the ' friend of God'. But
though this title is twice found in our English version (2 Chron.
XX. 7, Isai. xii. 8), the corresponding Hebrew word is not
literally translated by ' friend ' ; and the LXX. render it not
by tpiXoq, but in the first place tu^ i^yaTrr]fxi\ni^ aov, in the second
ov r\yaTTr\aa. It appears, however, from Field's Hexapla, that
KNOWN TO IRENiEUS.
477
some copies of the LXX. have the rendering * friend' in the
first passage, and that Symmachus had it in the second.
There seems also to have been a various reading ^iXou for
TTotSoc in Gen. xvii. 17, and Philo so cites the verse {De resipis.
Noe^ c. 11) ; there is also an apparent allusion to it in Wisdom
vii. 27. We therefore cannot argue as if it were only from
James Clement could have learned to use the term. Still
Clement's acquaintance with our Epistle must be pronounced
highly probable, when we note how he dwells on the obedience
as well as the faith of Abraham ; when we observe other coin-
cidences, as for example, between l-yKavyj^ixivoiq \v aXa(^ovtia
(Clem. 21), and Kovxaadi evraXg aXatiovtiaig vjjlCjv (James iv. 16);
and when we bear in mind that James was certainly used by
Clement's contemporary, Hermas.
In any case we are forced to ascribe to the influence of
James ii. 2},, the manner in which two Old Testament passages
are combined by Irenaeus (IV. xvi.), 'Abraham believed God,
and it was imputed unto him for righteousness, and he was
called the Friend of God' : see also his use of the phrase *law
of liberty' (IV. xxxiv. 4), a phrase which seems to have sug-
gested some of the preceding arguments in the same book.
Hippolytus has been quoted as using the Epistle, the words
(James ii. 13) 'he shall have judgment without mercy, that
showed no mercy ', being found in the treatise Concerning the
End of the World [c. 47) ; but this treatise is not genuine. The
resemblances that have been pointed out in the writings of
Tertullian appear to me to furnish no proof that he knew
St. James's Epistle; and no mention of it is found in the Mura-
torian Fragment. On the other hand, the Epistle was early
acknowledged by the Syrian Church,* and is found in the
Peshitto.
It is curious that, as far as I am aware, no clear proof of
the use of the Epistle is found in the pseudo-Clementines,
although in the sect from which these writings emanated,
James, the head of the Church at Jerusalem, was accounted
the highest personage in the Church.
* See Ephraem Syr. 0pp. Grace . iii. 51
478 THE EPISTLE OF ST. JAMES. [xxiii.
From this review of the external evidence it appears that,
although the antiquity of the Epistle is sufficiently established
by the use made of it by Hermas, it must in early times have
had a very limited circulation, and been little known either
in Alexandria or in the West. But, on the other hand, in-
ternal evidence is altogether favourable to the claims of the
Epistle.
Very early tradition asserted that the Church of Jerusalem
was first presided over by James, 'the Lord's brother'. Tho
pseudo-Clementine writings so far magnify the office of this
James as to make him not only head of the local Church, but
supreme ruler of the Christian society. We find no warrant
elsewhere for this extension of the claims of James; but with
regard to the Jerusalem Episcopate, early authorities are
unanimous. Hegesippus (Euseb. ii. 23, iii. 32, iv. 21) not
only relates that James was the first bishop of Jerusalem, but
also states that on his death Symeon, another relative of our
Lord after the flesh, was made the second bishop ; and it was
probably from Hegesippus that Eusebius derived the list
which he gives of successors to Symeon. Clement of Alex-
andria also, in his Hypotyposets, cited by Eusebius (ii. i), says
that Peter, James, and John, after our Lord's ascension, were
not ambitious of dignity, honoured though they had been by
the preference of their Master, but chose James the Just as
bishop of Jerusalem. With this early tradition the Scripture
notices completely agree. It is James to whom Peter sends
the news of his release from prison (Acts xii. 17) ; James who
presides over the meeting at Jerusalem (Acts xv.), and whose
decision is adopted ; James whom Paul visits, and whose
counsel he follows on a later visit to Jerusalem (Acts xxi. 18).
The inferences drawn from these passages in the Acts are
confirmed by the Epistle to the Galatians (i. 19, ii. 9, 12). I
count it the more probable opinion that this James was not
one of the Twelve. Possibly he had not been a believer in
our Lord at the time the Twelve were chosen.
Critics are so generally agreed that our Epistle purports
to have been written by this James who presided over the
Church of Jerusalem, that I do not think it worth while to
XXIII.] WRITTEN BY A JEW TO JEWS. 479
discuss the claims of any other James. Now the letter itself
completely harmonizes with this traditional account of its
authorship, for it appears plainly to have been written by a
Jew for Jewish readers, and in the very earliest age of the
Church. Hug [Introductio7iy vol. ii, sec. 148) has carefully
noted several indications which, though they do not amount
to a proof, at least point to Palestine as the place of composi-
tion. The writer appears to have lived not far from the sea.
He takes his illustrations from the wave of the sea driven by
the wind and tossed ; from the ships which, though they be so
great and are driven by fierce winds, are turned about with a
very small helm whithersoever the steersman desireth (i. 6,
iii. 4). His land is the same as that of which it is written in
Deut. xi. 14 : * I will give you the rain of your land in his due
season, the first rain and the latter rain, that thou mayest
gather in thy corn, and thy wine, and thine oil ' ; for he illus-
trates patience by the example of the husbandman waiting
for the precious fruit of the earth, and having long patience
until he receive the early and the latter rain (v. 7). And that
wine and oil, as well as corn, were among the natural produce
of his land is shown by his question, ' Can the fig-tree bear
olive-berries, or a vine figs ' ? (iii. 12). The hot burning wind
{Kavainv) which, when it swept the land, withered up the grass
(i. it), is the same as that of which, according to the Septua-
gint translation, Ezekiel speaks, when he asks, 'Shall not the
plant utterly wither when the east wind toucheth it ? it shall
wither in the furrows where it grew' (xvii. 10). It is the same
wind which burned up the gourd of Jonah ; the same probably
whose approach our Lord (St. Luke xii. 54-57) represents his
countrymen as exerting their weather-wisdom to forecast ; the
same which caused the burden and heat of the day spoken of
in the parable of the labourers of the vineyard. Salt and
bitter springs are known to the writer (iii. 1 1), and his country
was exposed to suffer from droughts (v. 17).
The writer was not only a Jew, but he wrote for Jews.
The address explicitly declares for whom it was intended —
the Jews of the Dispersion,* the twelve tribes that were scat-
* The term seems to have its original in Deut. xxviii. 25, fo-j; Ziaaitoph. eV iratracx
48o THE EPISTLE OF ST. JAMES. [xxiii.
tered abroad ; that is to say, the letter was written by a Jew
residing in his own land to his countrymen whom commercial
enterprise had scattered over the empire ; with whom migra-
tion from one city to another was an ordinary occurrence, as
they said, * To-day or to-morrow we will go into such a city,
and continue there a year, and buy and sell, and get gain *
(iv. 13): a migration which may be illustrated from the New
Testament references to Aquila and Priscilla, whom, though
originally from Pontus, we find successively at Rome, at
Corinth, and Ephesus, at Rome again, and at Ephesus again
(Acts xviii. I, 19, Rom. xvi. 3, 2 Tim. iv. 19). But to return
to the proofs that the letter is from a Jew to Jews, the writer
speaks of Abraham as 'our father' (ii. 21); he gives their
place of meeting the Jewish name of synagogue (ii. 2) ; he
assumes the Old Testament to be familiarly known by his
readers, referring to Rahab, Job, Elias, and the prophets (ii. 25,
V. 10, V. 17): God is designated by the Old Testament name
the Lord of Sabaoth (v. 4) ; and the Mosaic law is assumed to
be an authority from which there is no appeal.
The Jews, however, who are addressed are all Christian
Jews. The writer describes himself as the servant of our
Lord Jesus Christ, and addresses his readers as his brethren.
He speaks of the worthy name by which they are called (ii. 7) ;
and, in short, the whole letter assumes a community of faith
between the writer and his readers. The history of the Acts
relates a dispersion of Christian Jews resulting from the per-
secution that followed the death of Stephen ; so that we are at
no loss to seek for Christian Jews of the Dispersion to whom,
at an early date, the letter might have been addressed. Syria
in particular was full of them, and it is not improbable that
this was the country to which the letter was in the first instance
sent. I have already said the Epistle is found in the ancient
Syriac Peshitto translation.
PaatAflais T7JS yTJs, It occurs often O. T., e.g. Deut. xxx. 4, quoted Neh. i. 9;
Ps. cxlvi. 2 ; 2 Mace. i. 27 ; Judith v. 19 ; but not in the technical sense in which
it is here employed. And though Josephus {Bell. Jud. vii. 35), and Philo {Legat.
ad Caium, 1023) speak of the dispersion of the Jewish nation, they do not use this
word. We have real parallels in John vii, 35, and Justin Martyr {Trypho ii. 7).
xxiii.] THE WRITER HAD HEARD OUR LORD. 48 1
Further, there is every appearance that the writer of this
Epistle had been a personal follower of our Lord. We infer
this from the number of passages where we have an echo of
our Lord's discourses. In the Epistles of Paul, who was not
a hearer of our Lord during His earthly ministry, though refe-
rences to the person and to the work of Christ are of constant
occurrence, there is but little trace of the influence of our
Lord's discourses.* It is otherwise here. There is nothing
indeed that we are entitled to say is directly copied from the
Synoptic Gospels ; but there are very many resemblances to
the discourses of our Lord which those Gospels record, such
as find their most natural explanation in the supposition that
a hearer of those discourses, on whom they had made a deep
impression, is perhaps unconsciously reproducing the lessons
he had learned from them. The most striking example will
probably have occurred to you : * My brethren, swear not,
neither by heaven, neither by the earth, neither by any other
oath ; but let your yea be yea, and your nay nay, lest ye fall
into condemnation' (James v. 12, Matt. v. 37). But there is a
number of cases where, though the resemblance is not so
complete, it is sufficient to leave little doubt that it is more
than accidental. St. James says, *Be ye doers of the word,
and not hearers only' (i. 22): our Lord had said, 'Everyone
that heareth these sayings of mine and doeth them not, shall
be likened unto a foolish man which built his house upon the
sand' (Matt. vii. 26). St. James, 'The doer of the work shrill
be blessed in his doing' (i. 25) : our Lord, 'If ye know these
things, happy are ye if ye do them ' (John xiii. 17). St. James
speaks of the poor of this world as heirs of the kingdom (ii. 5) :
our Lord had said, ' Blessed are ye poor, for yours is the
kingdom of God' (Luke vi. 20). St. James, 'Humble your-
selves in the sight of the Lord, and he shall exalt you' (iv. 10) :
our Lord had said, ' He that shall humble himself shall be
exalted' (Matt, xxiii. 12). 'Who art thou that judgtst
* One of the few examples of such influence is the saying (i Thess. v. 2), that the
day of the Lord cometh 'as a thief in th.' night.' Our Lord's discourse here re-
ferred to seems to have dejply impressed His hearers {see 2 Pet. iii. 10, Rev. iii. 3,
and xvi. 15).
2 I
482 THE EPISTLE OF ST. JAMES. [xxiii.
another?' cries St. James (iv. 12) : our Lord had said, 'Judge
not, that ye be not judged' (Matt. vii. i). St. James says, *If
any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, and it shall be
given him ' (i. 5) ; echoing our Lord's words, ' Ask, and it shall
be given you' (Matt. vii. 7). St. James goes on to say, * But
let him ask in faith, nothing wavering' (jurjSlv SiaKpivofievog) :
our Lord's promise (Mark xi. 23) had been : 'Whosoever shall
not doubt in his heart {fxrj diuKpidy), but shall believe, shall
have whatsoever he saith.' Again, our Lord's words, * Be ye
perfect, as your Father in heaven is perfect' (Matt. v. 48),
appear in James in the form, ' Let patience have her perfect
work that ye may be perfect ' (i. 4). St. James's denunciations
of the rich {c. v.) reproduce our Lord's, 'Woe unto you rich,
for ye have received your consolation' (Luke vi. 24). St.
James's, 'Let your laughter be turned to mourning, and your
joy to heaviness ' (iv. 9), answers to our Lord's, ' Woe unto
you that laugh now, for ye shall mourn and weep' (Luke vi.
25). Other instances might be added, and in some of them,
no doubt, the likeness may be only accidental ; but the cases
are too numerous to allow us to think that they are all chance
resemblances. They are, as I say, not cases of quotation
from the Synoptic Gospels, but have all the air of being inde-
pendent testimony to our Lord's teaching given by one who
draws his lessons from his own memory of what he had learned
from his Master. I have already (p. 222) thrown out the con-
jecture that a great deal more of James's Epistle may be
founded on sayings of our Lord than we have now the means
of identifying; and, in particular, that what is said (i. 12) of
our Lord's promise of a * crown of life ' may refer to an unre-
corded saying of the Saviour.
Turning now to examine the date of the composition, we
can infer that it was written before the destruction of Jerusa-
lem, from the entire aspect which it presents of the relations
between the Christian Jews and their unconverted brethren.
The Apostle represents the religious difference as in a great
degree coincident with a difference in social condition. It is
the poor of this world who have been chosen, rich in faith,
and heirs of the kingdom which God has promised to them
WRITTEN BEFORE DESTRUCTION OF JERUSALEM. 483
that love Him, The rich, on the other hand, oppress the dis-
ciples, draw them before the tribunals, and blaspheme the
worthy name by which they are called. And again, towards
the end of the letter, the Apostle, in tones of one of the old
prophets, denounces the luxury and wantonness, the grasping
oppression and tyranny, of the rich, and lifts up his voice in
warning of the misery that was to come on them.
Now the picture here exhibited well corresponds with that
which is presented by Josephus and other Jewish authorities,
of the condition of Palestine in the time following the death
of our Lord. The pride and luxury of the rich Sadducean
party were at their height. They filled the high offices of the
priesthood, which they had simoniacally purchased [with
money. They tyrannized over the poor. Josephus tells how
the high priests sent their servants to the threshing-floors to
take away the tithes that by right belonged to the poorer
priests, beating those who refused to give them ; and that
some of the poorer priests, thus defrauded of their main-
tenance, actually died of want {AntL XX. viii. 8, ix. 2).* It
can easily be imagined that the religiously-minded of the
Jews revolted against such practices, and 'that poverty and
piety came to be naturally associated. It was most natural,
too, that it should be among those who revolted against the
worldliness and ungodliness of the men of high condition,
that minds should be found best prepared for the reception
of the Gospel. In fact, the poverty of the Jewish Church is
proved by many indications. The Gentile Churches were, as
a whole, not very rich. St Paul says that not many mighty,
not many noble, had been called ; but yet the Gentile Churches,
were rich in comparison with the native Jewish Church ; and
in the Acts and in Paul's Epistles we read more than once of
the contributions which the Apostle of the Gentiles collected
among his converts, that he might bring them as alms to his
nation and offerings. In somewhat later times, Ebionite, a
name derived from poverty, was that by which the Jewish
Christians were known. We see, then, how completely
* See Derenbourg's Palestine, c. 15.
2 I 2
484 'i'HE EPISTLE OF ST. JAMES. [xxiii.
historical is the picture which St. James's Epistle presents of
the social line of separation which, as a general rule, divided
the Christians from their unconverted brethren. But this
picture belongs to a time before the destruction of Jerusalem.
The rich classes courted the favour of the Romans, and by
purchasing their support were able to maintain the tyranny
which they exercised over their poorer brethren. Thus they
arrayed against themselves not only the religious but the
patriotic feelings of the nation. At length this patriotism
burst forth in wild fury, which drew down destruction on the
city. And then the Sadducean power came to an end ; so
that it would be a complete anachronism to put any later that
representation of the heartless, God-forgetting prosperity of
the upper classes which we find in St. James's Epistle. The
argument which I have here used convinces Renan, who
accepts this Epistle as written before the destruction of Jeru-
salem.*
We find other evidence of early date in the indistinctness
of the line of separation between the converted and the un-
converted Jew. The Christian Jew, as we know from the
Acts, frequented the temple worship, and observed the
national rites. James himself bore among his countrymen
a reputation for the greatest sanctity.f But the Christians
had besides of necessity synagogues of their own, private
conventicles for their own worship. These were open to any
unconverted brethren whom curiosity might lead to visit
them. In the very natural picture drawn [ch. ii.) of the well-
dressed stranger coming into the synagogue, received with
high respect, and shown into the best seat, the poor visiter
allowed to stand or pushed into the least-honoured place, it
is plain that the visiters are men who have no recognized
right to a place of their own ; that is to say, that they are
strangers to the community. Further evidence may be drawn
* Des tableaux evidemment relatifs aux luttes interieures des classes diverses de la
societe hierosolymitaine, comme celui que nous presente I'epitre de Jacques (v. i et
suiv.) ne se con9oivent pas apres la revoke de I'an 66 qui mit fin au regne des Sad-
duceens [U Antechrist, p. xii.)
t See the account of James given by Hegesippus (Euseb. ii. 23).
xxiii.] INTENDED FOR JEWISH READERS. 485
from the statement that the rich oppressors harassed the
Christians by bringing them before the tribunals. This can-
not refer to Gentile tribunals. Down to a date later than
any suggested for this letter, a charge brought against Chris-
tians solely on the ground of their religion would be received
by a heathen magistrate as Gallio received the accusation
brought against St. Paul. But the Roman policy allowed to
the Jewish authorities considerable power ©ver their own
countrymen ; and that not only in the Holy Land itself, but
in the countries to which the Jews were dispersed. With
respect to Syria in particular, we have evidence in the mission
of Saul to Damascus, where the power and authority given
him by the chief priests at Jerusalem would have sufficed
him for the imprisonment and further punishment of those
who called on the name of Jesus. It is plain, then, that when
the Epistle was written the Christians were in the eyes of
their Roman masters but a sect of Jews, and were as such
subject to their national tribunals.
But we may go still further back, and argue from the total
absence of all reference in the Epistle to the non-Jewish
world. There is not a word of allusion to the existence in the
Church of men of Gentile birth ; not the slightest notice of
the controversies to which their^admission led as to the obliga-
tion of such persons to observe the Mosaic law. It is often
one of the surest criteria of the date of a document to notice
what were the controversial interests of the writer. In the
present instance there is no notice whatever of that great
dispute on which the assembly, whose proceedings are re-
corded in the 15th of Acts, was called on to pronounce, and
of which the Epistles to the Galatians, Romans, and Corin-
thians are full, namely, the terms of justification of the Gen-
tile believer, and the extent to which he was obliged to
observe the Mosaic law. In this Epistle all its readers are
assumed to be under the obligations of that law.
What I have stated would not be correct if the views could
be maintained of those who look upon the latter half of the
second chapter as an anti-Pauline polemic ; some even main-
taining that the Apostle Paul is the * vain man ', who needed
486 THE EPISTLE OF ST. JAMES. [xxiii.
to be taught that faith without works is dead ; though such
language is so little fitted to the character of the historical
James, that the theory that this chapter is anti-Pauline com-
monly leads to the theory that the Epistle is not genuine,
but is the late work of some Jewish Christian opponent of
Paulinism who dignified his performance with the name of
the ' pillar Apostle ' James. In fact, to a disciple of Baur
there is no more disappointing document than this Epistle of
James. Here, if anywhere in the New Testament, he might
expect to find some evidence of anti-Pauline rancour. There
is what looks like flat contradiction between this Epistle and
the teaching of St. Paul. St. Paul says (Rom. iii. 28), 'There-
fore we conclude that a man is justified by faith without the
deeds of the law.' St. James says (ii. 24), 'Ye see then how
that by works a man is justified, and not by faith only.' Our
first impression certainly is that not only is the teaching of
the two Apostles different, but that the one wrote with the
express purpose of controverting what the other had said.
But that opposition to Paul which, on a superficial glance, we
are disposed to ascribe to the Epistle of James, disappears on
a closer examination.
I postpone for the moment the question whether we can
suppose that James intended to contradict Paul ; but whether
he intended it or not, he has not really done so; he has denied
nothing that Paul has asserted, and asserted nothing that a
disciple of Paul would care to deny. On comparing the lan-
guage of James with that of Paul, all the distinctive expres-
sions of the latter are found to be absent from the former.
St. Paul's thesis is that a man is justified not by the works of
the law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ, James speaks only
of works without any mention of the law, and of faith without
any mention of Jesus Christ ; the example of faith which he
considers being merely the belief that there is one God. In
other words, James is writing not in the interests of Judaism,
but of morality. Paul had taught that faith in Jesus Christ
was able to justify a man uncircumcised, and unobservant of
the Mosaic ordinances. He taught, and St. Peter also is re-
presented in the Acts (xv. 11) as teaching, that it was only
XXIII.] SILENT AS TO DISPUTES OF PAUL'S TIME. 487
through the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ that Jew or Gentile
could be saved, and that it was therefore wrong to put on the
necks of the brethren the yoke of other conditions asserted to
be necessary to salvation. For this Pauline teaching James
not only has no word of contradiction, but he gives no sign of
ever having heard of the controversy which, according to
Baur, formed the most striking feature in the early history of
the Church,
On the other hand, no disciple of Paul would wish to con-
tradict what James does say as to the worthlessness of specu-
lative belief that bears no fruit in action. Paul himself had
said the same things in other words, ' Thou art called a Jew,
and restest in the law, and makest thy boast of God, and
knowest his will, and approvest the things that are more
excellent, being instructed out of the law ; and art confident
that thou thyself art a guide of the blind, a light of them
which are in darkness, an instructor of the foolish, a teacher
of babes, which hast the form of knowledge, and of the truth
in the law. Thou, therefore which teachest another, teachest
thou not thyself? thou that preachest a man should not steal,
dost thou steal ? thou that sayest a man should not commit
adultery, dost thou commit adultery ? thou that abhorrest
idols, dost thou commit sacrilege ? thou that makest thy
boast in the law, through breaking the law dishonourest thou
God ?' (Rom. ii. 17-23).
I need not remind you what controversies there have been
in the Christian Church on the subject of justification. Luther,
you know, at one time regarded the difference between the
two Apostles as irreconcilable, and applied a disparaging
epithet to the Epistle of James. But whatever embarrass-
ment the apparent disagreement between the Apostles has
caused to orthodox theologians is as nothing in comparison
with the embarrassment caused to a disciple of Baur by their
fundamental agreement. For the disputes on the subject of
justification all lie in the region of speculative theology, but
about practical duties all are now agreed. Those who say that a
man is justified by faith without works are careful to say also
that a faith which does not bear fruit in good works is not a
488 THE EPISTLE OF ST. JAMES. [xxiii.
genuine faith. Taking their doctrine from what they conceive
to be the teaching of Paul, they do not dream of controverting
his instructions to Titus (iii. 8), 'These things I will that thou
affirm constantly, that they which have believed in God might
be careful to maintain good works.' But when Paul asserted
that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law,
he was not dealing merely with the question what relation to
justification was borne by the works which all allowed ought
to be performed. There was also the urgent practical ques-
tion whether certain works of the law needed to be performed
or not. One party said (Acts xv. i), 'Except ye be circum-
cised after the manner of Moses, ye cannot be saved.' Paul
himself said (Gal. v. 2), ' Behold, I Paul say unto you, that if
ye be circumcised, Christ shall profit you nothing.' This was
no speculative question, but one that affected the practice of
every Gentile convert. As long as controversy on this subject
was raging, it is inconceivable that anyone should discuss the
subject of justification, and be absolutely silent on this great
practical question. And therefore the fact that when James
speaks of works, he seems to have only in his mind such
works as men in all ages have accounted to be good, and
makes no mention of the specially Mosaic ordinances, is con-
vincing proof that he wrote either before the controversy con-
cerning the universal obligation of these ordinances had
arisen, or else after it had died out.
Critics of the sceptical school generally choose the alter-
native of assigning a late date to the Epistle, but they can
hardly find one late enough to bring the Epistle into accord-
ance with Baur's history of the early Christian Church. For,
according to Baur, at the time the Epistles to the Seven
Churches were written, that is to say, some time after the
death of the historical James, the heads of Jewish Christianity
regarded Paul as an enemy ; and hostility to Paul survived
down to the time of publication of the pseudo-Clementines.
But as long as the conflict about the universal obligation of
Mosaism was raging, how was it possible that a Jewish Chris-
tian should so completely ignore it as the writer of this
Epistle does — a writer who seems to have no thought of
XXIII.] DATE OF THE EPISTLE. 489
ceremonial observance, and whose sole interest is to maintain
that speculative belief is worthless, if it do not bear fruit in
holiness of life ? I could imagine an opponent of Paul affect-
ing to believe that that Apostle's denial of the obligation of
the Mosaic law included a denial of the obligation of the pre-
cepts of the Decalogue, and insisting on these precepts with
the controversial object of making it believed that his adver-
sary was opposed to them. But no one can read the Epistle
of James without feeling that the writer has no arriere pensee
in his assertion of the claims of practical morality ; for he
never makes the smallest attempt, under cover of establishing
the obligation of the moral precepts of the law, to insinuate
the duty of compliance with ceremonial ordinances.
I consider that the proofs that the Epistle was written be-
fore the destruction of Jerusalem, by one who had personally
been a hearer of our Lord, and who lived while His second
coming was still regarded as likely to be of immediate occur-
rence (v. 8), are so strong as to force us to reject the hypothesis
that it was written by someone later than the James to whom
it has been traditionally ascribed. An objection to his author-
ship has been raised on account of the goodness of the Greek
in which the letter is written. But this argument is of no
force. For though we should not beforehand have expected
James to write in such good Greek, we see plainly that the
letter was written by a Jew; and we can give no reason why
James might not know as much Greek as another Jew. The
only question, then, that seems to me worth discussing is,
whether it was written late or early in that Apostle's life. As
I hold that the controversy concerning the obligation of cir-
cumcision on Gentiles was one of very short duration, I could
admit the Epistle to be later than that controversy, and yet to
have been written by James.
The date we assign the Epistle depends very much on our
determination of the question whether or not James had read
St. Paul's Epistles. Several critics have held that the writer
of the Epistle we are considering lived so late as to have
become acquainted with an entire collection of Pauline
Epistles, and with the Epistle to the Hebrews besides. I
490 THE EPISTLE OF ST. JAMES. [xxiik
have already said that it seemed to me probable that this last
Epistle was written in the lifetime of James, so that his
acquaintance with it involves no impossibility. But the main
proof of that acquaintance consists in the fact that in both
letters Rahab the harlot is cited as an example of faith ; and
though the coincidence is certainly remarkable, it is scarcely
enough to establish obligation on either side, ignorant as we
are of the examples in common use in the theological discus-
sions of the time. In fact it seems to me that one who had
read Hebrews xi. would have found in that chapter other
examples of faith more tempting for discussion than the case
of Rahab. I think also that if James had read the Epistle to
the Hebrews, there would have been some reference to the
high priesthood of Christ, which is so copiously dwelt on in
that letter. And in every respect the Epistle to the Hebrews
shows signs of being the later document of the two. All
through the writer shows his anxiety lest his readers should
be tempted to apostasy, of which there evidently had been
examples even in men who had been partakers of the miracu-
lous gifts of the Holy Ghost (vi. 4); but the persecution suffered
by those whom James addressed appears to have been both less
severe and less formal.
The coincidences* alleged to prove that James had read the
Pauline letters seem to me undeserving of attention, except
in the case of the Epistle to the Romans. And even in this
case there are considerations which make us hesitate before
regarding these coincidences as proofs of obligation. If James
had read the Epistle to the Romans, I think he would have
* Thus we may dismiss the case for i Thess., which rests on the common use of
one word, d\6K\r]pos (i Thess. v. 23, James i. 4) ; for Colossians, also depending on
one word, TrapaAoyi^ta-Oai (Col. ii. 4, James i. 22) ; and for Philippians, with which
again there is but a single coincidence, Kapirhs SiKaioa-vvrjs (Phil. i. 11, James iii. 18),
the resemblance here being much closer between James and Heb. xii. 11. I do not
think any stress can be laid on the formulae apparently in common use, viz. /iff
trXauaffde (I Cor. vi. 9, xv. 33, Gal. vi. 7, James i. 16), and dA.A' ipeT t»$ (i Cor. xv. 35,
James ii. 18). With Romans again the following coincidences deserve little atten-
tion, irapa&ar-rjs v6fjLov (Rom. ii. 25, James ii. 11), v6ixov reXeXv (Rom. ii. 27,
James ii. 8), the phrases being such as independent writers might naturally employ.
The question of justification had probably been discussed in the Jewish schtols ; and
xxiii.J AGREEMENT OF DOCTRINE WITH PAUL'S. 491
avoided the appearance of verbal contradiction to a letter
with the doctrine of which he is in such substantial agree-
ment. It is not merely that he is silent as to the bearing on
Gentile obligation of the question of justification ; but on the
general theological question he is quite in unison with St.
Paul.
The representations of James are as unfavourable as those
of Paul to the idea of a man being able to claim salvation as
earned by the merit of his good works. ' What hast thou that
thou didst not receive ?' asks Paul (i Cor. iv. 7) : 'Every good
gift and every perfect gift is from above ' is the doctrine of
James (i. 17). The latter Apostle teaches also that if a man
offend in one point, he can claim no merit even though he
have fulfilled all the other commandments of the law ; the
breach of that one precept makes him guilty of all (ii. 10). It
is not merely the sinful act which brings condemnation ; the
sinful desire begins a course which ends in death (i. 15). And
he gives the name of sin not only to the unlawful act, not only to
the desire from which that act sprang, but even to the omission
to use an opportunity presented for doing good (iv. 17). When
James describes the law whose claims he enforces, by the title
' law of liberty ' (ii. 12), he shows himself to be not at variance
with Paul. There is then such a real identity of teaching
between Paul and James that I am disposed to believe that if
James had known the Epistles to the Romans and Galatians,
he would have guarded against the semblance of opposition
even in words. Yet I do not deny that he probably had an
indirect knowledge of the doctrines taught by Paul, and of
the example of Abraham was one likely to have been brought forward. So the three
following are the only cases which suggest to me that the verbal similarity is more
than accidental : — ■
T] 6\7^is tnrofj,oi'7]v Karepyd^eTai, t] 5e inrofiov^ SoKifiriv (Rom. v. 3) I
rb SoKi/xiov u/xuiy rrjs TricTTecos KaT€pya.^erai virofiov7\v (James i. 3) i
v6fiov 4y ro7s fieXecrl fiov, ai'Ti(TTpaTev6fievov (Rom. vii. 23) ;
Twv T]Sovci)v vixixiv Tuv (XTpaTevo/j.fvciJi' iv Tois /ueAeo'ij' vi^Siv (James iv. l).
OX) yhp ol aKpoaral u6fx.ov SiKatoi aA.A.' ot irotrjral udfiov (Rom. ii. 13)
yiufffde iroiTjTal K6yov Ka\ /u^; /xovov uKpoarai (James i. 22).
492 THE EPISTLE OF ST. JAMES. [xxiii.
the arguments by which he was wont to support them. For
the doctrine which James refutes has a certain likeness to the
doctrine taught by Paul, though it is but a distortion and
misrepresentation of it. We know, from the Acts of the
Apostles (xv. i), that St. Paul, in the course of his pastoral
labours, met with certain who came down from James, and
who professed to speak by his authority, and who yet taught,
concerning the absolute necessity of circumcision and other
legal rites, doctrines which St. James subsequently denied
ever to have emanated from him [tb. ig). Were the men who
at Antioch misrepresented the teaching of James likely to
give a fair report of the teaching of Paul when they returned
to Jerusalem ? And very possibly it may have been true that
there were some who professed to speak as they had been
taught by Paul, and who yet used language implying that a
barren historical belief was sufficient for justification ; and
that good works not merely were to be excluded from the
office of justifying, but might without injury be absent in him
who is justified. We might expect that such teaching would
be strenuously opposed by James, who shows that he had so
carefully treasured up his Master's words, and who probably
had heard him declare, * 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.' But we
need not doubt that such teaching would have been equally
disowned by St. Paul.
If I am right in thinking that the Epistle of James is to be
regarded as a document belonging to a very early age of the
Christian Church, we can understand why specially Christian
doctrine appears here in a less developed form than in later
inspired writings, and why its teaching has more affinity with
that of the Old Testament prophets,* and with the teaching of
our Blessed Lord Himself, than with that of the letters of St.
* There are coincidences, also, with the book of Ecclesiasticus, but they seem to
me not enough to furnish a decisive proof that that book has been used. One of the
most striking is Ecclus. xv. II, 12 : Mt; eX-rngs '6ti 810 Kvpiov airfffrriv, & yap ifiia-rifffv
ov voi-fians. Mr) e'livps Sti avT6s fxe fTr\dvri<rev, oh yap XP*'*"' ^X^' avSphs a/uapruXov.
(Compare James i. 13.)
XXIII.] ITS TEACHING NOT MERELY JUDAIC. 493
Paul, or even of St. Peter and St. John. Our Lord did not,
during His personal ministry, reveal all the mysteries of His
kingdom, but He left them to be taught to His Church by the
Apostles whom His Spirit was to guide into all the truth.
Paul was a chosen instrument for the revelation of Christ's
Gospel ; and it might well be that there was a portion of the
truth, the need for dwelling on which was not so much felt
by the elder Apostles until brought home to them by Paul's
teaching, though they readily owned it when proclaimed by
him.
But before we disparage the amount of specially Christian
teaching which St. James's Epistle contains, it is well to look
into the matter a little more closely. There was a time in
the Apostle's life when he was but a pious Jew. It appears
from St. John's Gospel that in our Lord's lifetime his brethren
did not believe in him. No prophet has honour in his own
country, and the members of our Lord's family would natu-
rally be the slowest to own in him a being of different nature
from themselves. But St. Paul tells us (i Cor. xv. 7) that our
Lord, after His resurrection, appeared to James ; and it is not
unnatural to ascribe to that appearance the great change
which ranged James among those who owned the risen
Saviour as the great object of their faith. In the inscription
of his Epistle he claims no honour from his human relation-
ship with his Master, but describes himself as the servant of
God and of our Lord Jesus Christ. What a change is it that
where once he might have been entitled to bear the name of
brother, now he only dares to call himself the slave ; and in
his form of expression puts this new master whom he owned
on the level of God, ' James, of God and of the Lord Jesus
Christ the slave.' Christ's is the worthy name which he is
proud to bear (ii. 7) ; Christ the great object of the faith
common to him with those to whom he writes, which is de-
scribed as the 'faith of our Lord Jesus Christ' (ii. i). He is
the * Lord of glory,' and his second coming the longing hope
of His Church. They must be exhorted to wait patiently for
it as the husbandman waits patiently for the precious fruit of
the earth (v. 7). The purpose of that coming, as expected by
494 THE EPISTLE OF ST. JAMES. [xxiii.
James and his readers alike, was that which we express in the
words, *We believe that thou shalt come to be our judge.'
'* The judge standeth before the door,' cries St. James. ' Stab-
lish your hearts : for the coming of the Lord draweth nigh '
(v. 8, g). And while yet separated from His Church, Christ is
still its Ruler and the source of its supernatural power.
Miracles of healing were looked for, but it was in His name
that the sick were to be anointed ; it was He who should raise
them up, and through whom they were to obtain the forgive-
ness of their sins (v. 14, 15). The man whose faith we have
here described was clearly no mere Jew, but one whose whole
religious life had Jesus for its centre and foundation.
But although St. James was very much more than a pious
Jew, it is not uninteresting to study him in that character.
There have been those of late years, both unbelievers and
Christians, who have written lives of our Lord, and have
striven to form a conception of that earthly life which, if
Jesus be looked on only as an historical character, is still one
of the most important in all its results for the human race.
Well, if we wish to know the influences under which Jesus of
Nazareth was brought up, what better evidence can we have
than that which can be drawn from the character of another
member of the same family, brought up with the same sur-
roundings, a character which we know, not only from the
report of others, but as it reveals itself in his own writings ?
The very fact that there is less of distinctively Christian doc-
trine in St. James than in the other Epistles makes it possible
for us to see in him, who seems to have been least changed
by his Christianity, a type of what those pious men were
among the Jews who, before our Lord's coming, waited for
the consolation of Israel.
We see, then, in James a man of few words, slow to speak,
deeply alive to the guilt of sins of the tongue, counting the
religion vain of the man who cannot bridle his tongue, meek,
slow to wrath, humble, a hater of worldliness, whose sympa-
thies are with the poor of this world, and whose indignation
is excited when they are scorned in the house of God, a man
of prayer, full of faith in the efficacy of a righteous man's
xxiii.] MORAL EFFECTS OF CHRISTIANITY. 4^5
fervent prayer, zealous for the law, yet not for mere ceremonial
observance, imbued with the spirit of the prophet's maxim
that God will have mercy and not sacrifice, and holding that the
true 6prf(TKeia is to visit the fatherless and widows in their afflic-
tion, and to keep oneself unspotted from the world. Before
we disparage the teaching of such a man, let us beware lest
we disparage the teaching of our Lord Himself, with whom
his character has much in common, and the topics of whose
ordinary discourses seem not to have been very different.
If any are inclined to think that too much of the Epistle
of James is occupied with moral precepts, and that by taking
these for granted the space they fill might have been gained
for doctrinal instruction, such persons ought to be reminded
how needful this moral teaching was at the time when the
Epistle was written, and how much of the success of Christi-
anity was due to the pains which its teachers took in incul-
cating lessons which seem to us commonplace. Some Chris-
tian apologists have perhaps stated too strongly the contrast
between Christian and heathen morality; not giving due
credit to the excellence of some virtuous heathen, and too
literally taking the representations of satirists as fair pictures
of the general condition of society. Yet the historical student
must own that since the publication of the Gospel the general
standard of morality has been raised. For in heathen times
a man would have been regarded as of exceptional goodness
if he practised those homely duties which an ordinary Chris-
tian gentleman would now count himself disgraced if he failed
in. When Plinyfset himself to inquire what was the * sacra-
mentum' administered to Christians at their meetings before
daylight, the information given him no doubt truly told him
the nature of the instructions given on these occasions. And
what we learn that the disciples then pledged themselves to
was what seems to us very elementary morality, viz. that
they were not to rob or steal, not to commit adultery, not to
break their word, and if the money of others were entrusted
to them, not to appropriate it to themselves. It was, no
doubt, a pleasant exaggeration of Juvenal to represent {Sa^.
XIII.) the faithful return of a friend's deposit as in his time
4g6 THE EPISTLE OF ST. JAMES. [xxiii.
such a rarity, that its occurrence might be regarded as a por-
tentous event, demanding the offering of an expiatory sacri-
fice. Yet we need not doubt that by the Christian discipline
the honesty of the disciples was raised to a marked superio-
rity over the ordinary heathen level, and that a Christian
came to be known as one whose word was as good as another
man's oath — who would not lie, nor cheat, nor take an unfair
advantage. We are warranted in thinking this, because
Justin Martyr [Apol. i. 16) enumerates among the common
causes of conversions to Christianity the impression which
the honesty of Christians made on those who did business
with them.
We have further evidence of the low state of heathen
morality in another class of precepts, which we find much
dwelt on in documents later than the Epistle we are consider-
ing. In the Teaching of the Twelve Apostles (II. 2), for instance^
the disciple is instructed that he must neither destroy the life
of his unborn child nor kill it after birth ; and that he must
not practise abominations which in those days were confessed
without shame, but which we now loathe to speak of. I think
that the nearly complete absence of warnings against sins of
the flesh in the Epistle of James is evidence both that this
Epistle was addressed to Jews, and that in such matters Jew-
ish morality was higher than that of the heathen world. St.
Paul, in his letters addressed to Churches in which Gentiles
predominated, finds it impossible to be silent on such topics.
How much the moral standard of society was raised by these
instructions, and by the Christian rule of expelling as a dis-
grace to their community those who transgressed them, we
have evidence in the fact that three centuries later the
Emperor Julian is scandalized by the revelation as to the
previous character of Paul's converts, made in the confession
(i Cor. vi. 11) 'such were some of you' [see Cyril. Alex. adv.
Jul. VII.).
In our times, as well as in his own, sayings of St. Paul
have been caught up and distorted. It has been thought as
needless to dwell on those fruits of faith on which he was
always so careful to enlarge, as if experience never showed
PRACTICAL EXHORTATION NOT SUPERFLUOUS.
497
us the possibility that there might be what St. James called
a *dead faith'. Men have read with impatience St. James's
inculcation of holiness, purity, unworldliness, meekness, as if
these lessons obscured the teaching of that which was really
important. But no true disciple of Paul can be offended at
the proportion which practical exhortation occupies in the
Epistle of James. For Paul himself put the production of
holy living in the place of pre-eminence, as the end for which
the whole system was devised : * Christ gave himself for us
that he might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto
himself a peculiar people zealous of good works' (Tit. ii. 14).
Christianity gave men new motives and new powers for attain-
ing holiness. But if they did not attain it, they had learned
their religion in vain.*
* I add a remark on the fact that the Epistle of James is everywhere found first
in the collection of Catholic Epistles. The explanation of this given by the Vener-
able Bede in his prologue to the Catholic Epistles, printed by Cave {Hist. Lit. i.
614), is as follows : ' In quibus ideo prima Epistola Jacobi ponitur, quia ipse leroso-
lymorum regendam suscepit ecclesiam. In catalogo enim apostolorum priores solent
nominari Petrus et Johannes. Verum fons et origo evangelica: prsedicationis incipiens
[ab Hierosolyma] per orbem diffusa est universum. Cujus cathedrae dignitatem etiam
Paulus apostolus in eo nominando venerans ait, Jacobus, Cephas et Johannes, qui
videbantur columnse ecclesise ; vel certe quia ipse duodecim tribubus Israelis quae
primse crediderunt suam epistolam misit, merito prima poni debuit.' It is curious
that the Claromontane list places the Epistles of Peter before that of James ; and
this is the order we should expect to have found if the collection of Catholic Epistles
had been formed in the West. It is possible that the circulation of Peter's Epistle
may have begun in the place to which it was addressed, not in that where it was
written ; and thus that it came from Asia Minor to Rome. It may be added, that in
Syriac copies, which only contain three Catholic Epistles, a heading to the following
effect is commonly found : ' The three Epistles of James, Peter, and Jolin, those who
witnessed the Revelation of our Lord when He was transfigured before their eyes on
Mount Tabor, and they saw Moses and EHas talking with Him.' The James of the
Epistle is thus identified with James the{feon of Zebedee.
2 K
XXIV.
THE EPISTLE OF ST. JUDE.
IN my first Lecture I said (p. 12) that I intended my inves-
tigation to be purely historical, and that I meant to
discuss the evidence as to the authorship of the books of the
New Testament in the same way that I should do if the sub-
ject of inquiry were any profane histories. By this course I
gained the advantage of being able to set aside objections to
the reception of our books drawn from the miraculous charac-
ter of their contents ; but I debarred myself from using the
authority of the Church in fixing the Canon. This is not the
time for discussing some very important questions of prin-
ciple, such as whether the authority of Scripture depends on
that of the Church, whether the Church has made any deter-
mination on the subject, and if so, when and how ; and
whether it is possible for her to err in such determination. I
have been able to postpone such questions, because, plainly,
if the decisions of the Church be correct, they will not be
opposed to the results obtained by honest historical investi-
gation. But I wish to point out that there is an important
difference with regard to the assent we give when we adopt a
Canon of Scripture merely on the authority of the Church,
and when we do so as the result of historical inquiry. In the
former case all the books of the Canon have equal claims on
our acceptance ; if the Church have decided in favour of Bel
XXIV.] THE CANON IN THE FOURTH CENTURY. 4gg
and the Dragon, that must be received ex animo as much as
the book of Genesis ; if the verse of the Three heavenly Wit-
nesses be part of the text adopted by the Church, it has the
same authority as the verse * In the beginning was the Word*.
On the other hand, historical inquiry ordinarily leads to results
which we hold with unequal confidence. For some things
the evidence is so convincing as to draw from us that un-
doubting assent to which we commonly give the name of
certainty; other results may be pronounced highly probable,
others probable in a less degree ; in some cases our verdict
may not reach beyond a • Non liquet.'
Now there are some who in theory reject the principle that
the authority of Scripture depends on that of the Church, but
who show that they have in practice adopted it, by their reluc-
tance to recognize the possibility that there maybe inequality
in the claims of different books which we have been accus-
tomed to recognize alike as Scripture. In laying before you
the evidence for our books, I cannot but feel that to some of
you it will be a disappointment to learn that in the two or
three last cases we have to examine, the testimony is much
less copious than in those which previously came before us ;
and a shock to discover that in any case it can be such as to
leave room for doubt. I can only repeat that the ordinary
condition of historical inquiry is to arrive at results which
must be accepted with unequal confidence. The Church of
the nineteenth century has no reason to complain, if she is not
better off in this respect than the Church of the fourth century.
Although in that age the great bulk of the books of our New
Testament Canon were received with universal assent, there
were a few about which the most learned men then hesitated.
I have already told you of the two classes into which Eusebius
divided our New Testament books. Whatever doubts Euse-
bius entertained with regard to his ' antilegomena ' are re-
peated fifty years later by St. Jerome ; and at the beginning
of the fifth century St. Augustine still puts books received
only by some Churches into a different category from those
received by all. For he says, * In judging of the canonical
Scriptures the student will hold this course, that he prefer
2 K 2
^oo THE EPISTLE OF ST. JUDE. [xxiv.
those which are received by all Catholic Churches to those
which some do not receive; of those again which are not
received by all, he will prefer those which, more and more
influential, Churches receive to those which are held by
Churches fewer in number or inferior in authority ' {De Doctr.
Chr. ii. 12).
Now I will frankly tell you my own opinion, that since the
end of the fourth century no new revelation has been made to
enlighten the Church on the subject of the Canon ; and
therefore that we can have no infallible certainty on matters
about which learned men of that age thought they had not
evidence to warrant a confident assertion. On the other
hand, when, after long discussion, one opinion gains the
victory, and establishes itself so as to become a universally
accepted belief, that itself is a fact which is entitled to have
some weight. And in some cases we can clearly see good
reason for the recognition of documents questioned in the
fourth century. Thus, the authority of the great majority of
the books of our Canon, resting, as it does, on a general con-
sensus of historical testimony, stands on a much firmer basis
than if it depended on any early formal decision of a council,
concerning which we might be in doubt as to the grounds on
which the decision was made, as to the competence of the
men who made it, and as to possible opposing testimony
which that interference of conciliar authority might have pre-
vented from reaching us.
In the case of the two Palestinian documents which have
come before us in the last and in this Lecture, we find it easy
to explain why there should be some inferiority of testimony.
If it had not been for the calamities which befell the Jewish
people, it is quite conceivable that Christianity might have
developed itself in some form similar to that in which the
pseudo-Clementines present its early history, and that the
head of the parent Church of Jerusalem might have been
generally recognized as the ruler and lawgiver of Christen-
dom. But there came first the Jewish rebellion, ending in
the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus. After that, there still
were Jews who clung to the site of the ancient glories of their
XXIV.] EXTERNAL EVIDENCE ABUNDANT. 501
nation, and Christianity had its representatives among them
in a line of Jewish successors to James. But then came the
terrible insurrection under Barcochba in the reign of Hadrian,
on the suppression of which the very name of Jerusalem was
abolished, and Jews were forbidden to approach the spot ;
and though Christians were to be found in the new city, Aelia
Capitolina, which then replaced Jerusalem, they were of
necessity governed by Gentile rulers (Euseb. iv. 6). We learn
from Justin Martyr [Apol. i. 31) that Barcochba during his
possession of power fanatically persecuted the Christians, and
it is to be believed that after his death there remained great
exasperation of feeling, indisposing men of Jewish birth to
embrace Christianity. Meanwhile the Gentile Churches
flourished and multiplied, and naturally were thenceforward
little influenced by Jewish Christianity and its traditions. So
we have no cause for surprise that the circulation enjoyed by
the two Palestinian letters, the Epistles of James and Jude,
was so limited as it appears to have been.
But what is really surprising is, that of these two, it is the
letter of the less celebrated man which seems to have been
the better known, and to have obtained the wider circulation.
The external testimony to the Epistle of James is compara-
tively weak, and it is only the excellence of the internal
evidence which removes all hesitation. Now the case is just
the reverse with regard to Jude's Epistle. There is very little
in the letter itself to enable us to pronounce a confident
opinion as to the date of composition ; but it is recognized by
writers who are silent with respect to the Epistle of James. I
have given (p. 475) evidence that Clement of Alexandria,
whose knowledge of the Epistle of James is disputable, used
that of Jude. Besides what is there quoted from the Hypoty-
posets, Clement cites the Epistle elsewhere [Paed. iii. 8, p. 280,
Potter: Strom, iii. 2, p. 515). The Muratorian Fragment re-
cognizes it, and Tertullian [De cult. fern. 3), labouring to estab-
lish the authority of the book of Enoch, adds as a crowning
argument that it is quoted by 'the Apostle Jude'. We may
infer, therefore, that Jude's Epistle was an unquestioned part
of Tertullian's canon. Origen repeatedly quotes the Epistle,
though on one occasion he implies that it was not universally
502 THE EPISTLE OF ST. JUDE. [xxiv.
received.* I have quoted (pp. 456, 473) what is said by Euse-
bius, in which he seems scarcely to do justice to the use of
this Epistle by his predecessors. Of these, in addition to
Clement and Origen, may be named Malchion, who, in a
passage preserved by Eusebius himself (vii. 30), clearly
employs the Epistle. It is included in the list of Athanasius
[Fest. Ep. 39). Lucifer of Cagliari (about 357), quoting it,
describes Jude as ' gloriosus apostolus frater Jacobi apostoli '
(see in/ray p. 508) ; and it, as well as the other Catholic Epistles,
was commented on by Didymus of Alexandria, who died
towards the end of the fourth century. Didymus mentions,
but with disapproval, opposition made to the Epistle on
account of the verse about the body of Moses (Galland vi.
294). Jerome says, ' Jude, the brother of James, has left a
short Epistle, which is one of the seven Catholic. And, be-
cause in it he draws a testimony from the apocryphal Book
of Enoch, it is rejected by very many. However, it has now
gained authority by antiquity and use, and is counted among
the sacred Scriptures' [De Vir. Illust. 4).
It is plain from the evidence adduced that Jude's Epistle
early obtained a currency in the West, which was not gained
until a later period by the Epistle of James. On the other
hand, Jude's Epistle is wanting in the Peshitto. Several
quotations of it are indeed found in the works of Ephraem
Syrus, but only in those which have |been translated into
Greek (II. pp. 154, 161 ; III. p. 61), and there is room for
doubt whether this use of Jude was made by Ephraem him-
self, or introduced by the translator.f
* In Matt. torn. x. 17 ; xiii. 27 ; xv. 27; xvii. 30. In the first of these passages
he calls the Epistle one of few lines, but full of powerful words of heavenly grace.
In the second he interprets the reTTiprj/^euois in v. i, of thej work of guardian angels.
It is only in the last of them that he uses the formula ' if any receive the Epistle of
Jude'.
t The Peshitto list only containing three Catholic Epistles is referred to in the
Iambic of Amphilochius of Iconium, who died about 395 (Galland vi. 495): —
KadoMKas kwiffToAas
rives fX€V Itttci (paaiv, ol Se rpels /j.6vas
XP^j/ai Sex^crOai, ryjv 'laKwjiov /u.iav,
fjiiav 5e OeTpoii, Ti]v r' 'icodvvov fxiav.
rives 5e ras rpels, Kal Trphs aurais ras Bvo
Tlerpov SexovTai, ryjv 'lovZa 5' e^Z6jxy)V.
ITS AUTHOR ONE OF 'THE LORD'S BRETHREN'.
503
Notwithstanding the wide circulation of Jude's Epistle in
early times, I find no reason to think that our earliest authori-
ties knew more either about its author or the occasion of its
composition than they could learn from the document itself.
We need not doubt that it is a real relic of the first age of the
Church, both because there is no trace of any motive such as
might inspire a forgery, and also because a forger would
certainly have inscribed his production with some more dis-
tinguished name. The letter professes to come from ' Jude, a
servant of Jesus Christ, and brother of James.' We may
regard it as certain that the James here intended is the well-
known James who presided over the Church of Jerusalem,
and thus that the Epistle clearly belongs to the Palestinian
section of the Church. This James is no doubt also he who is
called the Lord's brother (Gal. i. 19). Now the names of our
Lord's brethren are given (Matt. xiii. 55) as James, Joseph,
Simon, and Judas, and in the parallel passage of Mark (vi. 3)
as James, Joses, Judas, and Simon. We may take for granted
that the Judas here named is the author of our Epistle. We
may also believe that it is the same Jude who is mentioned in
a tradition preserved by Hegesippus (Euseb. iii. 20), that
informers attempted to excite the jealousy of Domitian against
two of our Lord's family, ' grandsons of Jude, who is said to
have been his brother after the flesh'. On being questioned
by the Emperor as to their property, they told him that they
had no money, and possessed only a small farm which they
owned in common and cultivated with their own hands, its
value not being more than 9000 denarii. Then they showed
him their hands, and when he saw them horny with continual
toil he was convinced of the truth of their story. As for the
kingdom which they were accused of expecting, they assured
him that it was no earthly kingdom, but a heavenly one ;
when Christ should come at the end of the world to judge the
quick and dead. On this the Emperor, regarding them as
beneath his jealousy, dismissed them ; and they survived to
the reign of Trajan, held in honour in the Churches, both on
account of this their confession and of their kindred to our
Lord.
504 THE EPISTLE OF ST. JUDE. [xxiv.
There is a Judas, who may or may not be another, in the
list of the Apostles as given by St. Luke (vi. i6, Acts i. 13),
and recognized by St. John (xiv. 22). This Judas occupies
the place of one who in the lists of Matthew (x. 3) and
Mark (iii. 18), is called Lebbeus, or Thaddeus.* I may re-
mind you in passing that in the Abgar legend (see p. 347)
Thaddeus is represented not as an Apostle, but as one of the
seventy, and that he is not called Judas — a name which is
treated as belonging to Thomas. St. Luke describes the
Apostle Judas as 'lowSac 'laKw(5ov, and though the natural
translation of the words is *Jude the son of James', the
Authorized Version renders Jude the brother of James, no
doubt because the Apostle was identified with the author of
our Epistle. But it is very doubtful whether this identifica-
tion can be maintained. The author of the Epistle not only
does not call himself an Apostle in his inscription, but seems
to distinguish himself from the Apostles {v. 17).
On the question, what we are to understand by * the
brethren of our Lord', you ought to consult Bishop Light-
foot's Dissertation II., appended to his Commentary on
Galatians. We have, I think, to choose between the hypo-
theses, that these ' brethren ' were sons of Joseph by a former
wife, or that they were near kinsmen who, according to
Hebrew usage, might be called brethren. It is always best
to confess ignorance when we have not the means of certain
knowledge, and it does not seem to me that we have it in this
instance. I believe that Epiphanius, Jerome, and most others,
who are appealed to as authorities, had no more means of real
knowledge than ourselves. The arguments on both sides
which seem to me really deserving of attention are the fol-
lowing : (i) The manner in which the four brothers are men-
tioned in Matt. xiii. 55, would scarcely be natural if they were
* There is a question of reading here which I will not delay to discuss ; but it is
important to mention that in Matt. x. 3, there is a well-attested old Latin reading,
'Judas Zelotes ', instead of Thaddseus, and that our Epistle is described as ' Judse
Zelotis ' in the catalogue of canonical books commonly ascribed to Gelasius, but
which, according to Thiel {Epp. Rom. Pont. p. 58), is rather to be referred to Pope
Damasus. But concerning this list, see Westcott's Bible in the Church, p. 195.
XXIV.] THE BRETHREN OF OUR LORD. 505
not members of the same household as our Lord. (2) The
Protevangelium, and the Gospel according to St. Peter (as
we know from Origen's Commentary on Matt. xiii. 55), repre-
sent these brethren as sons of Joseph by a former wife. (3)
Hegesippus describing Simeon, the second bishop of Jerusa-
lem, as our Lord's cousin, never calls him brother of our
Lord, as he does James and Jude. These, being second-
century authorities, may be supposed likely to speak from
knowledge. But it is possible that all three may be too late
for such knowledge ; and a difficulty arises from the fact of
Simeon's election as second bishop of Jerusalem. For Jude's
Epistle exhibits much greater corruption of morals among
professing Christians than that of James, so that it is
natural to think that Jude survived James ; and since his
kinship to our Lord appears to have been a main reason
for the choice of Simeon, the question arises. If Jude
were known as a * brother of our Lord ', and Simeon not,
would not the choice have fallen on Jude, whose Epistle
shows him to have had, besides the claims of birth, those
also of piety and ability ? On the other hand, the choice of
Simeon would be intelligible if he were Jude's elder brother;
and we know (Matt. xiii. 55) that Jude had a brother called
Simon.
Again, we find (Matt, xxvii. 56) that there were a James
and Joses who were not the sons of a deceased wife of Joseph,
but who had a mother living at the time of the Crucifixion.
It is, no doubt, possible that the three 'brethren of our Lord',
James, Joses, and Simon, had three cousins — brothers also —
named James, Joses, and Simon ; but the more natural sup-
position is that the same James and Joses are spoken of in
both places.
Weighing the arguments on both sides, I think the pre-
ponderance is on the side of those for the adoption of the
theory that these ' brethren' were sons of Joseph. This is, as
far as we know, the older opinion ; for Lightfoot has been
successful in showing that the 'cousin' theory cannot be
traced higher than St. Jerome, At the same time the matter
appears to me by no means free from doubt. I agree with
5o6 THE EPISTLE OF ST. JUDE. [xxiv.
Lightfoot in thinking that neither James nor Jude was among
the Twelve.
Concerning the date of the Epistle, our determination is
materially affected by the view we take of the persons whose
immorality and contempt of dignities the apostle censures. I
have already mentioned (p. 27) that Renan imagines that
Jude wished his readers to understand the Apostle Paul.
Renan can thus date the letter as early as 54. But he
stands alone in this childish criticism. Clement of Alex-
andria, in a passage already cited, supposes that Jude spoke
prophetically of the immoral teaching of Carpocrates ; and
some modern critics, sharing the view that the Epistle is
directed against this form of Gnosticism, consider that it can-
not be earlier than the second century. 1 have already had
occasion to mention (p. 353) that on the doctrine, common to
the Gnostic sects, of the essential impurity of matter, two
opposite rules of life were founded. The earliest seems to
have been a rigorously ascetic rule, men hoping that by mor-
tifying the body they could make the soul more pure and
more vigorous. But before long there were others who held
that by knowledge the soul could be so elevated as to suffer
no detriment from the deeds of the body, however gross they
might be. Nay, there were some who, accepting the doctrine
of the Old Testament, that the precepts of the Decalogue
came from him who made the world, but believing also that
the creation of matter had been a bad work, inculcated the
violation of these precepts as a duty, in order to exhibit hos-
tility to the evil Being or Beings who had created the world.
To this immoral type of Gnosticism the teaching of Carpo-
crates belonged ; but I see no warrant for asserting that any
such systematic justification of immorality had been developed
when our Epistle was written. I find nothing in this Epistle
to prevent our assigning it to the apostolic age; for other
Apostles had had cause to complain of impurity, which had
already crept into the Church (2 Cor. xii. 21; Phil. iii. 19;
Rev. ii. 20-22). Some critics [e.g. Schenkel, in his Bihle
Lexicon] have discovered Gnostic theories in v. 4, inferring
from it that those whom Jude opposed did not believe in the
AGAINST WHOM WERE ITS CENSURES AIMED ?
507
unity of God, and defended their evil practices by maintaining
the duty of antagonism to the Creator. But I consider that
Jude's words, * denying our only Master and Lord, Jesus
Christ', no more of necessity imply doctrinal error than do
Paul's words, in the passage of Philippians just cited, 'enemies
of the Cross of Christ', And those whom Jude in the same
verse describes as * turning the grace of our God into las-
civiousness' seem to me not different from those who, having
been called unto liberty, used liberty for an occasion to the
flesh (Gal. v. 13). St, Paul in the beginning of i Cor, x.. had
used the same example which St, Jude employs in warning
those men of corrupt hearts who, having slipped into the
Church, presumed on the grace they had received. Both
Apostles remind them of the fate of those Israelites of old
who, though they had escaped out of the land of Egypt, yet
suffered in the wilderness the penalty of their unbelief and
disobedience. And Jude adds the further example that even
angels fell. On the whole, I conclude that the evils under
which Jude's Epistles reveals the Church to be suffering are
not essentially different from those the existence of which we
learn from Paul's Epistles ; and therefore that we are not forced
to bring the authorship down to the second century. Nothing
forbids us to give it the date it must have had if really written
by Jude the brother of James, namely, before the reign of
Domitian, by which time Hegesippus gives us to understand
that Jude had died.
I will add, that there does not seem to me to be sufficient
evidence that those whom Jude condemns were teachers of
false doctrine, or even teachers at all. I think his language
is fully satisfied if we suppose them to be private members
of the Church, who lived ungodly lives, and who were in-
subordinate and contumelious when rebuked by their spiritual
.superiors,*
* The Revised Version translates acpofiojs eavrovs iroiixaivovres {v. 12), 'shepherds
that without fear feed themselves ', looking on the passage as containing a reference
to Ezek. xxxiv. 2, 'Woe be to the shepherds of Israel that do feed themselves'.
But the words in the LXX. there are ^6(iKov(nv kavrovs, and Jude's words convey to
me a different idea ; not that of self-seeking clergy, but of schismatical laity who
tioS THE EPISTLE OF ST. JUDE. [xxiv.
It remains to say something about what Jerome states to
have been a bar to the reception of Jude's Epistle, namely, its
use of Jewish apocryphal literature. Two passages in parti-
cular demand attention. In the first place, Origen states [De
Princip. III. 2) that the mention [v. 9) of the contest for the
body of Moses, between Michael the Archangel and the
Devil, is derived from an apocryphal book called the As-
sumption of Moses. The same thing is intimated in a
passage of Didymus, already referred to, and in a pas-
sage of ApoUinaris of Laodicea preserved in a catena.
This book of the Assumption of Moses appears to have
obtained some circulation in the Christian Church. It is
cited by Clement of Alexandria [Strom, vi. 15, p. 806); by
Origen [in Lib. Jesu Nov. Horn. Ii. i) ; by Evodius, a corres-
pondent of Augustine's (Augustine, Epist. 158, opp. 11. 561) ;
and by Gelasius of Cyzicus {Acta Syn. Nic. Mansi. Concil. II.
844, 858). It is enumerated among Old Testament apocrypha
in the synopsis of the pseudo-Athanasius ; and it is included
in the stichometry of Nicephorus, who assigns it the same
length (1400 oTiyoC) as the Apocalypse of St. John. Never-
theless it had almost entirely perished, when in 1861 a large
fragment of a Latin version of it was recovered and published
by Ceriani, from a palimpsest in the Ambrosian Library of
Milan. From what we learn from Nicephorus as to the length
of the original, we know that the recovered portion is not
more than one-third of it ; and it is in a very imperfect state,
many words or letters being obliterated.* The recovered
fragment has been edited by Hilgenfeld in his Nov. Test,
extra Cano7i. recept. ; and he has attempted to restore the
separate themselves from the flock of Christ, and are not afraid to be their own
shepherds. Lucifer {De non conven. cum haret. p. 794, Migne) renders 'semetipsos
regentes.' Many of the phrases packed together in Jude's Epistle might each be the
text of a discourse ; so that I could easily believe that we had in this Epistle heads of
topics enlarged on, either in a longer document, or by the Apostle himself in viva
voce addresses.
* The recovered fragment wants the title ; but this citation of Gelasius enables
us to be certain in identifying it. The passage cited describes Moses as t^s SioA^ktjj
ouToO /jLecrirris, a phrase which it is interesting to compare with Gal. iii. 19, Heb.
viii. 6.
XXIV.] THE BOOK OF ENOCH. 509
Greek in his Messias JudcBoruni. You can also very con-
veniently find it in Fritzsche's edition of the Old Testament
apocryphal books. Critics have drawn from the fragment
different theories as to the date of the book ; but it appears
to me that the data are altogether insufficient to warrant any
certain conclusion. The fragment, unfortunately, breaks off
before the death of Moses, so that we have not the means of
verifying that the work related a dispute between the Devil
and the Archangel Michael. But I do not think we are
warranted in rejecting the early testimony that this book
was the authority used by Jude, since what he refers to is
certainly not found in the canonical scriptures of the Old
Testament.
The second passage is the quotation {v. 14) of the words
of Enoch. I have already said that Tertullian mentions a
Book of Enoch, which in his opinion ought to be received,
notwithstanding that it had not been admitted into the canon
of the Jews, who reject this, as they usually do what speaks of
Christ. Among Christian writers Tertullian stands alone in
this acceptance. Origen [Horn, tn Numer. xxvill. 2) and
Augustine [De Civ. Dei xvili. 38, a passage which deserves
to be consulted) mention without disapproval the rejection of
it by the Jews. The book was known to Irenseus (iv. xvi. 2),
Clement of Alexandria {Eclog. II. p. 990), Anatolius (Euseb.
VII. 32), Origen {De Princip. IV. 35, Adv. Cels. v. 55), see also
Constt. A post. VI. 30. Several extracts from the book were
preserved by Georgius Syncellus, a monk of Constantinople
towards the end of the eighth century. In these passages
the story is told, founded on Gen. vi. i, of a descent of angels
to this lower world, where they became the parents of the
giants. The same story appears in Justin Martyr {Apol.
II. 5), and in both forms of the pseudo-Clementines, possibly
derived from this source ; and it may also be referred to in
Jude 6.
Beyond the extracts just mentioned the book had been
completely lost, until, in 1773, the traveller Bruce brought
back from Abyssinia copies of an Ethiopic version of the
Book of Enoch. Laurence, archbishop of Cashel, published
^lO THE EPISTLE OF ST. JUDE. [xxiv.
an English translation of this in 1821 (republished, London,
1883), followed by the Ethiopia text in 1838, and this text has
"been re-edited with a German translation by Dillmann in 1853.
It would be out of place here if I were to give a description of
the book, or to enter into discussions concerning its date or
its unity of authorship. Suffice it to say that there is no
reason for doubting that the book is quite old enough to have
been used by the Apostle Jude ;* and that it contains, with
very trifling variations, the words quoted by Jude. Some
respectable divines have maintained, notwithstanding, that
Jude did not derive hence his knowledge of Enoch's prophecy,
but that it had been preserved traditionally, and afterwards
incorporated in the Book of Enoch. And it has been sug-
gested that the words now found in the Ethiopia version were
introduced from Jude by the translator, or had previously
been interpolated by a Christian into the Greek. I do not
feel that I can with candour take this line.f We can feel no
surprise that an Apostle should be acquainted with the Jewish
literature current in his age ; but it is, no doubt, natural to us
to think that God would supernaturally enlighten him so as
* I believe this to be the opinion of all critics but Volkmar, who assigns a late
date to the Epistle of Jude, and with this object strives to push down both the
Assumption of Moses and the Book of Enoch to the reign of Hadrian.
t In the first place, observe the close agreement of the passage formally quoted :
' Behold he comes with ten thousand of his saints, to execute judgment upon them,
and destroy the wicked, and reprove all the carnal for everything which the sinful and
ungodly have done and committed against him ' (Enoch, ch. 2, Laurence's transla-
tion). But there are, besides, between the two books, other coincidences to
which my attention has been called by Mr. Garrett. Thus, Jude's 'reserved in
everlasting chains under darkness unto the judgment of the great day ' clearly has its
origin in Enoch x. 6-9 (see also v. 16), 'Bind Azazel hand and foot, . . . covering
him with darkness ; there shall he remain for ever, covering his face that he see not
the light ; and in the great day of Judgment let him be cast into the fire.' The
'wandering stars' of Jude 13 may be compared with what Enoch tells, xviii. 15, of
the ' prison of stars ' ; and xxi. 3, of ' stars which have transgressed the command-
ment of the Most High '. And the words of Enoch xxvi. 2, 3, ' Here shall be col-
lected all who utter with their mouths unbecoming language against God, and
speak harsh things of his glory. In the latter days an example shall be made of
them in righteousness before the saints', seem to have suggested the Sety/ua of
Jude 7, as well as the Kvpidrrira adtTovffiv S6^as 5e fi\a<np7]nov<Tiy of v. 8. See also
z>. lb.
XXIV.] THE BOOK OF ENOCH. ^U
to prevent his being deceived by a falsely ascribed book ; and
that if he referred to such a book at all, he would take care to
make it plain to his readers that he attributed to it no autho-
rity. Yet we follow a very unsafe method if we begin by
deciding in what way it seems to us most fitting that God
should guide His Church, and then try to wrest facts into
conformity with our pre-conceptions.*
• It has been already stated that the old Syriac translation only included three
Catholic Epistles. The remaining four, viz., Jude, 2 Peter, 2 and 3 John, were first
printed by Pococke, in 1630, and were afterwards included in the Paris Polyglott,
from a modem MS. now in the Bodleian, followed by most subsequent editions. But
the evidence, both external and internal, forbids us to assign to this version an earlier
date than the sixth century. They are probably part of the translation made about
A.D. 508 by the authority of Philoxenus, bishop of Mabug.
XXV.
THE SECOND EPISTLE OF ST. PETER.
WHEN I pointed out, at the beginning of the last Lecture,,
that we had no right to be surprised if it should
appear that, in respect of historical attestation, all the| books
of our Canon do not stand on the same level, I had chiefly in
my mind the book on the discussion of which we are now
about to enter — the Second Epistle of Peter. The framers of
the Sixth Article of our Church use language which, if strictly
understood, implies that there never had been any doubt in
the Church concerning the authority of any of the books of
Old or New Testament which they admitted into their Canon.
Their language would have been more accurate if they had
said that they rejected those books concerning whose autho-
rity there always had been doubt in the Church. They had,
no doubt, principally in view the apocryphal books of the Old
Testament ; and these books, not included in the Jewish
Canon, were not only rejected by many learned men in the
earliest ages of the Church, but the doubts concerning them
were never permitted to be forgotten ; for Jerome's prefaces,
which stated their inferiority of authority, constantly continued
to circulate side by side with the books themselves. At the
time when our articles were drawn up there was no serious
controversy concerning the books of the New Testament, nor
had there been any for some centuries before. But you will
have seen that it would not be true to assert that there never
XXV.] ONE OF THE ' ANTILEGOMENA'. 513
had been controversy. Unfavourable opinions with respect
to 2 Peter are expressed by Eusebius and Jerome.* There
were four of the Catholic Epistles which the early Syrian
Church did not receive into its Canon, and a fifth which was
not universally received elsewhere. Traces of this diversity
of opinion are to be found for some time, and especially where
Syrian influence prevailed. Chrysostom, the great preacher
of Antioch, never uses any of the four Epistles not included
in the Peshitto ; f and I believe that the same may be said of
Theodoret. Just towards the close of the first half of the sixth
century, Junilius, a high legal official in the court of Justinian,
turned into Latin, for the benefit of some African bishops :[:
who were his friends, a tract on the Scriptures by Paulus, a
distinguished teacher of Nisibis, at that time a centre of
Eastern theological education. In this tract books are divided
into three classes, ' perfectae ', ' mediae ', and ' nullius auctori-
tatis ' : the first being those which he sets down absolutely as
canonical, the second those which he states ' adjungi a pluri-
bus'. In the first class he has fourteen Epistles of St. Paul
(the Hebrews being last mentioned), ' beati Petri ad gentes
prima, et beati Johannis prima'. Then in the second class,
' adjungunt quam plurimi quinque alias, id est Jacobi, secun-
dam Petri', &c. Kihn shows that the exclusion of James, as
well as of the other four, was derived from Theodore of
Mopsuestia. Junilius himself (ii. 17) quotes 2 Pet. ii. 4 as
* Tr]v Se <pepoiJ.iur)V TleTpov SevTfpuv ovk ivSiddriKov fiev elvat irapii\rj<panev o/jlcos
Se iroWo7s xp'^c^f^os <(>avf7ffa, /jLera T<av aWwv ecrirovSdcrdri y p acp a> u (Kuseh. HI. 3).
Simon Petrus . . . scripsit duas Epistolas quae canonic^ [Catholicse] nominantur ;
quarum secunda a plerisque ejus esse negatur, propter styli cum priore dissonantiam
(Hieron. De. Vir. Illust. i).
t T.he solitary instance adduced to prove his acquaintance with 2 Pet. ii. 22,
eoiKev ToJ Kvv\ wphi rhv tSiov efierov iTravi6vri {in Joanii. Horn. XXXIV. 3), is really
derived from Prov. xxvi. 11, the word in 2 Pet. being i^epaixa, not ifxerov. The same
proverb, also with e/neroy, is the only apparent sign of acquaintance with the four
Epistles I find in the index to Theodoret {In Dan. iii. i). But Chrysostom's friend
Basil uses 2 Pet. {adv. Eimom. v. i) ; and we are bound to remember that the ab-
sence of quotations may be explained by the fact that, of the four Epistles in question,
three are extremely short, and the fourth not very long.
X Consequently, Junilius has commonly passed for an African bishop himself, until
his true history was tracked out by Kihn {Theodorvon Mopmestia, 1880).
2 L
^14 THE SECOND EPISTLE OF ST. PETER. [xxv.
the words of blessed Peter without any sign of doubt. The tract
of Junilius became speedily known to Cassiodorus, and thence-
forward had considerable circulation in the West. So late as
the beginning of the fourteenth century, Ebed Jesu, a Nes-
torian metropolitan of Nisibis, has only three Catholic Epistles
in his New Testament Canon (Assemani, Bibl. Orterii. III. 9).
Notwithstanding isolated expressions of dissent, the general
voice of the Church accepted all seven Catholic Epistles ; and
this verdict remained undisturbed until the revival of learning.
Then Erasmus on the one hand, Calvin on the other, express
doubts as to 2 Peter. The latter, in the preface to his Com-
mentary, shows himself much impressed by what Jerome had
remarked as to difference of style from that of the First Epistle,
as well as by other considerations leading him to think Pet
not the author. But he says that, if the Epistle is cane-* '■'
at all, Petrine authorship in some sense must be a.c ^^^
ledged, since the Epistle plainly claims it. And * sine •^^*-*^^
majesty of the Spirit of Christ exhibits itself in every r^ ^^^
the Epistle,' he scruples to reject it, though not recoiP^^y ^^
in it the genuine language of Peter. He is therefore do"^^^"§l
to believe that it may have been written, at Peter's con^^P^^® ,
by one of his disciples. And this is almost precisely f^m^-^ci^
taken by Erasmus. Later critics have taken even a rr. ^® ^^^^-
favourable view of the Epistle; and at the present (iioreuii^
generally rejected even by the less extreme critics p^Y ^^ ^3
sceptical school, while its cause has been abandoned bl °* ^"e
within our own Church. J ^^"^
t
I am not prepared to condemn those who do not i 1
to have a stronger assurance of the genuineness of th<*.^^^
than had Eusebius and Jerome ; but I may point out tlr ^^^r,
authority can well stand notwithstanding the fact that v^ ^ ^
eminent critics entertained doubts of it. We have just ^^^^^ lo
that to have been subject to early doubts is a lot which 2 P( ^'^ "^'i
. . t ij^ \ prA
shares in common with four other of the Catholic EpistU ,s)Epf
and yet, as respects them, we have found reason to think, m " Ba/
that the case for these Epistles was bad, but that the scrutin'
to which they were subjected was very severe. With respect
to early attestation, the case for the Epistle of James is little
XXV.] EXTERNAL EVIDENCE. ^i^
stronger than that for 2 Peter, yet I count that its authority
cannot be reasonably impugned. I feel no doubt that the
two minor Epistles of St. John come from the same hand as
the First ; though if we referred the matter to the judgment of
early critics the decision might turn out the other way. The
evidence of early recognition of Peter's Second Epistle is
certainly weaker than in the case of most other New Testa-
ment books. Yet it is by no means inconsiderable ; and at
the beginning of this course of lectures I remarked how many
classical books there are as to the genuineness ot which we
feel no doubt, notwithstanding the impossibility of giving
proof of early recognition.
By the fifth century, the authority of the seven Catholic
Epistles, including 2 Peter, was acknowledged throughout
the greater part of the Christian world ; and I believe this to
be true of the fourth century also ; for I think that Eusebius
and Jerome only express the closet doubts of learned men,
and not popular Church opinion. In Jerome's case, what we
know of his method of composition gives us reason to believe
that he is rather repeating what he had read than stating the
belief of his own time, or even his own deliberate opinion.
For he elsewhere speaks of the Epistle without any doubt of
its authorship {Ep. 53, «^ Paulin. de stud, script.) ;* and he
offers the suggestion that the difference of style between the
two Epistles might be accounted for by Peter's having used
different interpreters! [Eptst. 120, ad Hedibiam Qu(Bst. xi.)
Jerome's friend Epiphanius uses the Epistle without doubt+
{Haer. LXVI. 65). Didymus, the blind head of the catechetical
school of Alexandria, has left a commentary on the Catholic
Epistles, preserved in Latin by Cassiodorus, all through
* The prologue to the CathoHc Epistles, printed as Jerome's, is not genuine.
t It is natural to set down Mark as one of them, and it has been conjectured that
Glaucias may have been the other ; but this suggestion is derived from an authority
not entitled to much respect, namely, the heretic Basilides, who claimed to have
received traditions from an interpreter of Peter so called (Clem. Alex. Strom.
vu. 17).
X Quoting it with tlie formula HeVpos eV t^ liriaroKTi, which, wlien used by earlier
writers in a citation from the First Epistle, is commonly taken for an implied rejection
of the Second.
2 L 2
5i6 THE SECOND EPISTLE OF ST. PETER. [xxv.
which 2 Peter appears to be treated as possessing full canoni-
cal authority, until in the very last sentence we are surprised
to read, *Non est igitur ignorandum, praesentem epistolam
esse falsatam, quae licet publicetur, non tamen in canone est.'
Some doubt is cast on this clause by the fact that in the work
De Trinitatej which appears to be rightly ascribed to Didymus,
he ten times quotes our Epistle as Peter's, without note of
doubt {see l. xv. p. 303, Migne, and the passages referred to
in Mingarelli's note). But the clause has all the marks of
being a translation from the Greek. 'Non est ignorandum,
epistolam esse falsatam ', probably represents, Xariov cue voOeve-
Tai 17 iTTKjToXi] [see Eus. ii. 2^), and merely means that the
genuineness of the Epistle was disputed.
That the opinion of Eusebius was unfavourable cannot be
denied ; but I believe that he, too, is but echoing the doubts
of predecessors. We have every reason to think that in his
own time the current of opinion ran strongly in favour of the
Epistle. On the establishment of Christianity by Constantine,
an active multiplication of copies of the Scriptures became
necessary, both in order to repair the losses suffered under the
Diocletian persecution, and to provide for the wants of the
many new converts. And all the evidence we can draw,
whether from existing MSS.,* or from ancient catalogues of
the books of Scripture, goes to make it probable that, wher-
ever the production of a complete Bible was intended, it
included the collection of seven Catholic Epistles, the existence
of which Eusebius himself recognizes. These seven were
owned as canonical by Athanasius and by Cyril of Jerusalem,
both younger contemporaries of Eusebius.
Among the predecessors whose opinion had most weight
with Eusebius was Origen, who (in a passage cited p. 28 1}
* The two earliest existing MSS., which probably are as early as the reign of Con-
stantine, both include the seven Catholic Epistles. So does the Claromontane list,
the original of which Westcott believes to be as old as the third century. In Codex
B (where, as is customary, the Catholic Epistles follow the Acts) there is a twofold
division of sections, an older and a later. In 2 Peter alone the older division of sec-
tions is wanting ; from which it may be inferred that this Epistle was wanting in an
ancestor of the Vatican ms.
XXV.] EXTERNAL EVIDENCE. 517
attests both that the book was known in his time, and that
its genuineness was disputed. I have remarked that Origen's
immediate purpose in that passage would lead him to present
the least favourable view of the genuineness of disputed books.
In several places elsewhere Origen quotes 2 Peter without
expression of doubt. It is true these quotations are all found
in works only known to us through the Latin translation of
Rufinus, whose faithfulness cannot be depended on ; but, on
examination of the passages, it does not seem to me likely
that Rufinus could have invented them ; and I believe the
truth to be, that Origen in popular addresses did not think it
necessary to speak with scientific accuracy. It is implied in
this solution that Peter's authorship was the popular belief of
Origen's time ; and this is made probable to me by the fact
that Origen's contemporary, Firmilian of Cappadocia, writing
to Cyprian (Cyprian, Ep. 75), speaks of Peter as having
execrated heretics, and warned us to avoid them, words
which can only refer to the Second Epistle. We can produce
no evidence of knowledge of the Epistle from the writings of
Cyprian himself, nor from those of his predecessor Tertullian.
1 have mentioned (p. 458) that the Muratorian Fragment does
not notice the Second Epistle, but that its equal silence con-
cerning the First makes us unable to build an argument on
this omission. But that 2 Peter did not form part of the
earliest Canon of the Latin Church appears probable from the
fact that it was not translated by the same hand as other of
the Catholic Epistles. The same Greek words in i Peter and
2 Peter are rendered differently ; as also the same words in
the parallel places of 2 Peter and Jude.*
I must leave it undetermined whether or not Clement of
Alexandria used the Epistle. When we have the testimony
of Eusebius and of Photius (see p. 474) that Clement wrote
comments on the Catholic Epistles, we seem to have no war-
* The evidence will be found in Westcott [N. T. Caiimt, p. 261). We have no
Latin MSS. containing a pre-Hicionymian text of 2 Peter; nor indeed of any of the
Catholic Epistles except James, and a small fragment of 3 John. The remark above
a])pUes to the Vulgate, the text of which no doubt represents an earlier translation
merely revised by Jerome.
5i8 THE SECOND EPISTLE OF ST. PETER. [xxv.
rant for treating this as a loose way of stating that he com-
mented only on some of them. Accordingly, Hilgenfeld and
Davidson, although they both reject 2 Peter, yet believe that
Clement commented on it ; and Davidson suggests that Cas-
siodorus may have only been in possession of extracts from
Clement's Hypotyposeis. But since I find in Clement's other
writings no proofs of acquaintance with the two Epistles
which Cassiodorus leaves out, I do not venture to assert posi-
tively that Clement's comments included these two Epistles.
Irenaeus makes no express mention of 2 Peter, and he
seems to exclude it by the phrase ' in epistola sua ' (IV. ix. 2),
when he speaks of the first Epistle ; but he has one or two
coincidences with the second, which require examination.
And first we have twice ' The day of the Lord is as it were a
thousand years' (V. xxiii. 2, and xxviii. 3), words which
recall 2 Peter iii. 8. But whatever may have been the ulti-
mate source of this saying, it seems to me that in neither case
was Peter the immediate source from which Irenaeus took it.
In the first passage Irenaeus reproduces an explanation by
"which Justin Martyr [Trypho 81) reconciles the long life of
Adam with the threat, 'In the day that thou eatest thereof,
thou shalt surely die '. The words in Irenteus are exactly the
same as in Justin, y]}xipa Kvpiov wg x'^^^ ^'^''> ^^^ ^^ ^" Peter,
fi'ia r^ju'epa irapa Kvpuo djg x- 'i. ; and the use Irenaeus makes of
the words being the same as in Justin, and not as in Peter,
the former is clearly the immediate source of the quotation.
In the second passage Irenaeus expounds the statement in
Genesis that God completed His works in six days as not
merely a history of the past, but a prophecy of the future,
intimating that the world was to last 6000 years, the day of
the Lord being as 1000 years. The maxim is quoted in Jus-
tin's form, but the ex]3osition had already been given by
Barnabas {c. 15) ; and on comparing the passages it seems to
me probable that it was to Barnabas Irenaeus was indebted
for it. But though this maxim decides nothing as to
Irenaeus's knowledge of 2 Peter, it would be still more to
the point if it showed that two earlier writers were acquainted
with the Epistle. There is nothing to show whence Justin
XXV.] EXTERNAL EVIDENCE. 519
derived what he calls to elpt^juivov ;* but Barnabas enunciates
the principle, ' a day with him is a thousand years ', not as a
quotation, but as a maxim of his own. And in proof of it he
adduces avrbg 81 /uol fxapTvpu Xiycov' 'iSov (j{\ixipo\> i]i.iipa iarai loq
X. £. This is clearly meant for a quotation of Ps. xc. 4 ; so
that I fail to find evidence here of the antiquity of 2 Peter. f
The warnings drawn in succession from the history of Noah,
and from that of Lot in Iren. iv. xxxvi. 3, have been thought
to be an echo of 2 Peter ii. 5-8 ; but it seems to me that Irenaeus
does no more than comment on Luke xvii. 26-31. I am much
more struck by the coincidence that in speaking of the death
of Peter (iii. i), Irenaeus uses the word l^o'^oi; employed by
Peter himself (2 Peter i. 15). Some carry the argument
further, and contend that the author of 2 Peter is proved to be
the Apostle, because, when speaking of the Transfiguration,
he uses the word ' tabernacle ' in immediate connexion with
f^oSoc, which is found in the same context (Luke ix. 31, 33).
In this latter part of the argument I see no force, for it might
as well be adduced to prove that the author of 2 Peter derived
his knowledge of the Transfiguration from having read the
Gospel of St. Luke. It is not certain whether in the passage
of Irenaeus we are to render t'^oSoc ' decease ' or ' departure '
[from Rome] ; but undoubtedly the word t^o^og came very
early into the Christian vocabulary, expressing as it does the
doctrine that death is no more than removal to another scene.
We have, for instance, to. paprvpia Ti]q i^o^ov cwtCjv in the his-
tory of the martyrdoms at Vienne and Lyons (Euseb. v. i) ;
and further on ayaXAttOyUU'r/ £7ri r^ t^oSw, and lir LCKppaj i<sdi.uvog
avTMV Sta Trig l^oSov Trjv papTvpiav. The word t^oSog OCCurs in
the same sense in one of the best known passages of the book
of Wisdom (iii. 2) ; it is used in the same way both by Philo
* In favour of the Petrine origin may be noticed that in the next chapter Justin
has words which recall 2 Peter ii. i, oyirep Se TpS-n-ov Kal \l/evSoirpocpiiTai enl rcav Trap'
vfuv yefOfA.evcai' ayiwu irpocpriTui/ ■^crav, Kal Trap' ■ii/a'ii' vvv iroWoi el<Ti Kal xl/evSoSiSaffKaAoi.
t It must be borne in mind that Rabbinical writers (see Schottgen, Ilorcs. Heb. et
Talmud, i. 1052, ii. 497) have both the interpretations used by Barnabas and by
Justin. We have, therefore, to choose whether we shall hold that the Jews derived
these from the Christian Church, or shall admit that Barnabas may have derived his
principle from a source different from 2 Peter.
520 ^IHE SECOND EPISTLE OF ST. PETER. [xxv.
and Josephus, and you will find in Wetstein's notes on Luke
ix. 31 a host of illustrations of the use of the word * exitus '
for death, by Latin heathen writers. I feel, therefore, that it
is precarious to build any argument on the use of so common
a word; and, consequently, I cannot rely on any of the proofs
that have been supposed to show Irenaeus's acquaintance with
our Epistle.
On the other hand, there is a passage in the Clementine
Recognitions (v. 12) which I have not seen noticed. We have
only the Latin of the Recognitions; but ' unusquisque illius
fit servus cui se ipse subjecerit' looks very like the translation
of <I» TiQ i\TTr}Tai, TovTu) Koi Si^ovXwTui (2 Peter ii. 19).* Rufinus
is the translator, and in one of his translations from Origen
(In Exod. Horn. 12) we have 'unusquisque a quo vincitur,
huic et servus addicitur'. The difference of the Latin makes
it likely that in both cases Rufinus is translating, not inter-
polating.! Theophilus of Antioch, who died a little after 180,
has a coincidence [ad AutoL ii. 13) with Peter's ' light shining
in a dark place' (i. 19). The words in Theophilus are, 6 X070C
uvTOV (palviov ojairif) \v)^vog tv oIkijuuti avvi\OfxiV(ji> ; while Peter
describes the ' prophetic word ' as Xvxvog cpaiviov iv av-xjxr]p<^)
Toirtij) ; and these words in Peter may have been suggested by
2 Esdras xii. 42, ' sicut lucerna in loco obscuro', unless the
obligation is the other way. This passage by itself would
yield but doubtful evidence ; but I am led to believe that it
indicates a use of Peter by Theophilus, because close at hand
there is another coincidence, 01 Se tov Qeov avdpunrot Trvevjua-
TO(j)6pot TTitv/xaTog ayiov Koi Trpo(priTai yevoptvoi [ad A.utol. ii. 9);
VT70 irviv fiar oc; liyiov (ptpontvoi tXaXrjo-av cnro Qeov avOpwirot (2 Peter
i. 21). There is also a parallel to this last verse in Hip-
polytus [De Antechristo 2), but the resemblance is not close
enough to be decisive.
Before the end of the second century the doctrine of
the future destruction of the world by fire had become
* The words are much nearer to Peter than either to John viii. 34, or Rom. vi. 16.
t Dr. Quarry has pointed out to me that in the Clementine Homihes (xxi. 20)
Tovvavriov /xaKpodvue'i, eh /xerdvoiav Ka\t7 taken in connexion with the whole context,
there is very probably a us.e of 2 Peter iii. 9.
XXV.] EXTERNAL EVIDENCE. 521
an established and notorious point of Christian belief.
The heathen disputant in Minucius Felix {c. 10) says of
the Christians : ' toto orbi et ipsi mundo cum sideribus
suis minantur incendium '. Tatian {Or. ad. Gr. 25), de-
riving his doctrine from Justin [Apol. ii. 7), contrasts his
Christian belief with that of the Stoics ; he holding, in op-
position to them, that the world was to be dissolved, and that
the iKTTvpwaiQ was to take place — not Kara Kaigovq, but daaira^.
It is interesting to inquire whence, except from 2 Peter iii.
10-12, the Christians learned the doctrine. It is, indeed,
found in the Sibylline Oracles (iii. 83-87; see also ii. ig6,
vii. 118); but it was not a general article of Jewish belief;
for Philo, in his treatise ' De Incorruptibilitate Mufidt',
argues strongly against the notion, not as a Jewish but as
a Stoic one, that one element could swallow up the other
three. Many parts of the Canonical Scriptures speak of fire
as the future punishment of the wicked ; but I do not remem-
ber any other place where it is said that the whole world itself
shall be burned up. Now Dr. Gwynn has pointed out to me
what I believe to be a real coincidence wuth 2 Peter in 2 Cle-
ment 16 : tp^trat rjSrj 17 i)uipa Trig Kpiaawg cog KXij^avog Kaiofiivog,
Kca TaKi)(TOVTai riveg tCjv ovpavu)v, koi Traaa 1) 7JJ ojg /loXifSog etti
TTvpl TT^KOfxevog, Koi TOTS (pavyjatrai ra Kpixpia Koi (pavepa kpya twv
avOpwTTwv. The Old Testament passages here employed (Mai.
iv. I, Is. xxxiv. 4) would not suggest a burning up of the world
to one not familiar with the doctrine before. But it is the
last clause which seems to establish a use of 2 Peter. There,
after phrases nearly identical with irvpl tjjko/xevoc, we have,
according to the best attested reading, 77) koi ev avry ipya
evpsBiicTtTai. The last word has puzzled interpreters and
transcribers ; but it seems to me probable that 2 Clement
so read 2 Peter, and that he explains the clause by tots
(pavriasTai ra tpya riov avOpiLirujv.
There are phrases both in Clement of Rome and in Hermas
which recall 2 Peter (for instance, /x£7aAo7rp£7rr)c S6E,a, 2 Pet.
i. 17, Clem, ix.j ; but in neither case can we be sure that
the coincidence is m^ore than accidental. On a review of the
522 THE SECOND EPISTLE OF ST. PETER. Ixxv.
whole external evidence we find clear proof that 2 Peter was
in use early in the third century. With regard to second
century testimony, the maintainers and the opponents of the
genuineness of the Epistle make it a drawn battle. There is
no case of quotation so certain as to constrain the acknow-
ledgment of an opponent ; but there are probable instances
of the use of the Epistle in sufficient number to invalidate any
argument against the Epistle drawn from the silence of early
writers. But on comparing the evidence for the first and
second Epistles we have to own, however we are to account
for it, that for a considerable time the latter had a much
narrower circulation than the former, and was much slower
in obtaining general recognition.
Grotius suggested as an explanation of this difference that
our Epistle was written, not by Peter the Apostle, but by
Symeon who succeeded James as bishop of Jerusalem. It is
to be remarked that, whereas the first Epistle begins ' Peter',
the second begins 'Symeon [or Simon] Peter'. This has
been made an argument against the genuineness of the
Epistle ; but the opposite inference is more natural. For the
writer of the second Epistle knew of the first (iii. i) ; and if
he were a forger it is surprising that he should not conform
to the model he had in his hands ; and when professing to
write to the same people, should neither copy the address of
the former Epistle, nor even write the Apostle's name the
same way. This point deserves to be borne in mind when
coincidences between the two Epistles are explained as
arising from designed imitation on the part of the writer of
the second. For if this writer were a forger, he was certainly
a very careless one, who took little pains to give probability
to his work by imitation of the genuine work in his posses-
sion. But, to return to the conjecture of Grotius. This
cannot be upheld, unless we combine it with arbitrary and
unwarrantable changes in the text of the document we are
considering. For nothing can be plainer than that the docu-
ment, as it stands, professes to come from Peter the Apostle.
Not merely does the author call himself Peter in his saluta-
XXV.] THE AUTHOR CLAIMS TO BE PETER. 523
tion : he professes to have been a witness to the Transfigura-
tion (i. 18); he claims to be the author of the first Epistle
(iii. i) ; he sets himself on a level with Paul (iii. 15) ; and he
refers (i. 14) to his death as foretold by our Lord, this
being probably an allusion to His words recorded John
xxi. 18.
It has been made an objection to the genuineness of the
Epistle, that the writer should betray such anxiety to identify
himself with the Apostle. On the other hand, it has been re-
plied with perfect truth, that this Epistle puts nothing into
the mouth of Peter which the Apostle might not naturally
have said in a real letter. I am disposed to attribute this
much weight to the objection that, though it yields no argu-
ment against the genuineness, it deprives us of an argument
for it. In the case of most New Testament books, when we
test by internal evidence the traditional account of their
authorship, we find reason to conclude that the documents are
both like what might have been written by the reputed
authors, and very unlike the work of a forger. In the present
case we must own that a forger, no doubt, would be likely to
take pains to make the Petrine authorship plain ; but it would
be absurd to deny that Peter himself might also leave on his
work plain traces of his authorship. As for the reference to
Paul : since we have seen that Peter in his first Epistle
makes silent use of Pauline letters, there is nothing strange
in his mentioning them by name in the second.
It will seem to many that at the point at which we have
now arrived our inquiry may well close. For if we proceed
we are brought to a very painful alternative. In the case of
the Epistle to the Hebrews, we can treat its authorship as an
open question, notwithstanding that it has so long passed in
the Church as Paul's, and that the Liturgy of our own Church
recognizes the claim. For that Epistle itself does not profess
to be Paul's, so that we can believe those to be mistaken who
took the work for his, and yet impute no dishonesty to the
author. But here we have only the choice to regard the
Epistle as the work of Peter, or else as the production of a
forger, who hoped to gain credit for his work by dishonestly
524 THE SECOND EPISTLE OF ST. PETER. [xxv.
affixing to it the Apostle's name. Some who impugn the
Petrine authorship desire to let us down gently, and deprecate
the employment of the word 'forger', overtaxing the resources
of the English language to find some name, ' pseudepigra-
pher', or *falsarius', which shall soundless harshly. But I
must call a spade a spade. Macaulay is not to be called a
forger, though he gives the title ' The prophecy of Capys ' to
a prediction which Capys never delivered. But where there
is intention to deceive, forgery is the proper word. I do not
deny that a fault may be less deserving of censure if commit-
ted by one of lower moral culture. The man who thinks a
pious fraud permissible may deserve to be beaten with fewer
stripes than he who acts against his conscience in committing
it. Whoever the author of this Epistle was, he was clearly a
pious and orthodox mian ; and if he was a forger, we can dis-
cern no motive for the forgery but that of supporting the
disciples under the trial to their faith caused by the delay of
their Master's promised coming. In the case supposed, there-
fore, we can judge with all leniency of the author ; but I am
sure he would have been much ashamed if he had been found
out at the time, and would have fared no better than the
presbyter who was deposed for forging the Acts of Paul and
Thecla (see p. 349). The use of gentle language, then, will do
little to mitigate the pain we must feel, if what we have been
accustomed to regard as the utterances of an inspired Apostle
should turn out to be the work of one for whom our mer-
ciful consideration must be implored, on account of his
imperfect knowledge of the Christian duty of absolute truth-
fulness.
To many the question will seem to be settled by a reductio
ad ahsurdum, when it has been pointed out that the rejection
of the Petrine authorship obliges us to believe that the Church
has been for centuries deceived by a false pretence to inspira-
tion. But as I have undertaken to make a historical investi-
gation, in the same manner as if we were making a critical
inquiry into the authorship of any classical writings, my plan
precludes me from assuming that the Church could make no
mistake in such a matter. And indeed it would evidently
XXV.] ITS RELATION TO JUDE'S EPISTLE. 525
require longer discussions than can be here entered into before
we could establish the principle proposed to be assumed or
ascertain its necessary limitations. Anyone who uses the
Revised New Testament must reject a good deal of what has
been long accepted as inspired. To many pious men of old
it seemed a shocking thing when the divine inspiration was
denied of the Greek Old Testament, which the Apostles had
committed to the Church. We do not receive the decisions
on the Canon made at Carthage or at Trent, not believing
that the opinions as to the authority of Greek and Hebrew
books, expressed by men who had little or no knowledge of
the languages in which they were written, can become binding
on us by the fact that they have been accepted by men equally
unlearned. And our acceptance or rejection of the Apocalypse
does not depend on our ascertaining whether or not the book
was included in the Canon of Laodicea. If it seem to us that
God must have miraculously interfered in the fifth century, had
it been then necessary, in order to prevent an uninspired book
from being accepted as inspired, there seems an equal neces-
sity for miraculous interference in the two previous centuries
to prevent an inspired book from being rejected as spurious,
by men whose souls were as dear to God as those of their
posterity. I confess my inability to find out by the * high
priori road ' in what way God must deal with his Church ; and
I have faith to believe that the course by which He has actually
guided her will prove to be right, even though it do not agree
with our pre-c-onceptions. .
Proceeding, then, with the inquiry, we have to notice the
use made of Jude's Epistle. The coincidences between the
second chapter of 2 Peter and the Epistle of Jude are so
numerous, that it is beyond dispute that the one writer used
the work of the other. I have carefully read the very able
argument by which Professor Lumby, in the Speaker's Com-
mentary, maintains the priority of Peter's Epistle. But I am
unconvinced by it, and adhere to the opinion of the great
majority of critics, that the priority rests with Jude. To take
but one example : instead of regarding the verse in which
Jude speaks about the body of Moses to be, as Professor
526 THE SECOND EPISTLE OF ST. PETER. [xxv.
Lumby holds, an expansion of the corresponding verse in
Peter, I think the latter verse is scarcely intelligible if we had
not in Jude the explanation what was referred to. But is
there anything inadmissible in the supposition that one
Apostle should use the book of another } I have already
observed that Peter in his first Epistle certainly uses the
Epistle to the Romans, a work which we need not doubt was
in his readers' hands. Why should he not here make still
larger employment of Jude's Epistle, a work which (as we may
infer from the copiousness of his use) he judged to be not
likely to be known to his readers. In early times there was
far less scruple about unacknowledged borrowing than at the
]5resent day. At the present day, indeed, in addresses not
intended to go beyond the immediate audience, a speaker has
not much scruple in using words not his own if they best ex-
press his ideas, and if they are not likely to be familiar to his
hearers. Before the invention of printing, each writer must
have felt himself to be addressing a circle nearly as limited
as that addressed by a preacher of the present day, and could
not count that things he had read himself would be likely to
be known to his readers also. And since an Apostle's letters
were not prompted by vanity of authorship, but by anxiety to
impress certain lessons on his readers, I do not see why he
should have thought himself bound to abstain from using the
words of another, if they seemed to him most likely to make
the impression he desired.* But what strikes me as really
remarkable is the great freedom with which Peter uses the
work of his predecessor. In some places we might imagine
that the two writers were translating independently from the
same Aramaic, if the coincidences in the Greek of other places
did not exclude that supposition. The variations are at times
so considerable as to make us doubt whether Peter could have
had Jude's Epistle before him when he was writing. And the
idea even occurs whether it may not possibly be that Peter
was writing from recollection, not of what he had read, but of
what he had heard. I may mention one difference between
* The identity of certain portions of the prophecies of Isaiah and of Micah is a
fact of the same kind.
XXV.] COMPARED WITH THE FIRST EPISTLE. ^527
the parallel passages in Jude and in 2 Peter, that whereas
in the latter the censures are plainly directed against false
teachers, this is not clearly so in Jude, where, for all that
appears, the objects of censure may be only men of corrupt
heart who somehow had found their way into the Church, but
wliose immoral lives showed that they ought never to have
been admitted (see p. 507).
I come now to the objection noticed by Jerome, founded
on the difference of style between the two Petrine Epistles.
And it must be admitted that such a difference exists. It
does not count for much that the second Epistle contains
many unusual words, for it has not more than its fair propor-
tion of aira^ \iy6/.i£va. Lumsden* counts 1686 in the whole
N. T., or about one word in three ; for he computes the whole
vocabulary as limited to 4956 words. Of these tnra^ Aeyojusva,
there are fifty-eight in i Peter, and forty-eight in 2 Peter,
numbers which fairly correspond to the lengths of the two
Epistles. But the following points of dissimilarity have been
noted : {a) the second Epistle differs from the first in fondness
for repetitions of words and phrases: thus, Sojpioiuai, i. 3. 4;
oTTtoXaa, ii. I (bis), 3, iii. 7, 16; ^iKaiog, i. 13, ii. 7, 8 (bis);
<p9opa, (pOdpuv, i. 4, ii. 12 (ter), 19; irpoG^OKav, iii. 12, 13, 14;
(TTTOvSi), (TTTOvSa^eiv, i. 5> iO> ^5> iii- 145 iuktOoq adiKiag, ii. 13, 15.
[d] The particles connecting the sentences are different, par-
ticles such as 'Iva, on, ovv, fxev, which are common in the first
being rare in the second, in which we find instead sentences
introduced with tovto, or ravra : see i. 8, 10; iii. 11, 14. [c] A
use of wQ, which is common in the first Epistle (i. 14, 19, ii.
2, &c.), is rare in the second; where, on the other hand, we
have a common formation of a subordinate clause with the
preposition Iv and a substantive {e.g. rjjc ev tTriOvn'ia ^dopag, i. 4)
of which there is but one doubtful instance (i. 14) in the
first Epistle, {d] The first Epistle makes much more use of
the Old Testament language. In Westcott and Hort's table
(ii. 180) are enumerated thirty-one O. T. quotations in i Pet.,
but only five in 2 Pet., and these disputable. (^) Swrijp is
frequently used in 2 Pet. as a title of our Lord, irapovala, of
* ConiJemUum GrcECuin X. T. (Prefiice).
528 THE SECOND EPISTLE OF ST. PETER. [xxv.
his second coming, the word tTriyvojaiQ is common, &c., none
of which words occur in i Peter. But in these instances the
usage of 2 Pet. well agrees with that of the Pauline Epistles,
and we have seen that the use of Pauline diction is a charac-
teristic of the first Epistle. With respect to the paucity of
Old Testament quotations, it may be observed that there are
no such quotations in St. John's first Epistle, though it is
admittedly by the same hand as the Gospel, which quotes the
Old Testament largely.
On the other hand, Professor Lumby brings out with great
ability, in an argument which will not bear abridgment, the
features of resemblance between the two Epistles {Speaker's
Commentary, p. 228) ; see also Davidson ii, 462, from whose
list of coincidences I take the following : aotrx], of God. (i Pet.
ii. 9 ; 2 Pet. i. 3) ; cnroOeaiQ (i Pet. iii. 21 ; 2 Pet. i. 14) ; aairiXog
Koi afxwfiOQ (i Pet. i. 19 ; 2 Pet. iii. 14 : see also 2 Pet. ii. 13) ;
liroTTTcViiv, Ittotttx]q (i Pet. ii. 12, iii. 2 ; 2 Pet. i. 16); irsTravTai
afxapTiag (i Pet. iv. \ \ cf. 2 Pet. ii. 14). None of the above
words or combinations occur elsewhere in N. T.* When it is
proposed to account for these resemblances by the fact that
the author of the second Epistle was confessedly acquainted
with the first, we must bear in mind what has been already
said as to his little solicitude about designed imitation. It
is to be remarked also that these resemblances are not con-
spicuous, or associated with repetitions in 2 Peter of the ideas
of I Peter, as they would be if produced by design. And if it
is urged that the resemblances are few, there remains St.
Jerome's way of accounting for the absence of greater simila-
rity of style between the two letters, viz. that Peter might
have employed a different secretary on each occasion.
In this connexion I mention some of the coincidences
noted by Professor Lumby (p. 226) between 2 Pet. and Peter's
speeches in the Acts : Aa7xn>'w, for ' to obtain ' (Acts i. 17 ; 2
Pet. i. i) ; tvaijiEia, in a peculiar sense (Acts iii. 12 ; 2 Pet. i.
* In addition to the above, the salutation x^P's ii/juuKal elp7]vr) TcXridvvQe'n] is com-
mon to the two Petiine Epistles. Jude alone has ■K\t]QvvQil7) in the salutation; and,
if we were forced to choose between the explanations, that the author of i Peter used
Jude, or that Jude used 2 Peter, the latter explanation seems the more probable.
XXV.] ITS ALLEGED FAULTS OF STYLE. 529
7) ; ev(Tt(5iiQ (Acts X. 27 ; 2 Pet. ii. g) ; avofxa, of things (Acts ii.
2^ ; 2 Pet, ii. 8) ; ^Qt'yyo^at, ' to speak' (Acts iv. 18 ; 2 Pet. ii.
16, 18); r]ij.tpa KVfHov (Acts ii. 20; 2 Pet. iii, 10); niadog rfjc
aliKiuQ (Acts i. 18; 2 Pet. ii. 13, 15); lirayuv (Acts v. 28; 2
Pet. ii. I, 5); KoXal^toQaL (Acts iv. 21 ; 2 Pet. ii. g). None of
the above occurs elsewhere in N. T. I add as an indication
of early date another coincidence with the Acts — the frequent
metaphorical use of ?j oSoc (Acts xviii. 25, xix. g, &c. ; 2 Pet.
ii. 2, 15, 21).
Dr. Edwin Abbott has founded [Expositor, 1882, III. 204),
on the style of 2 Pet., a new argument against its Petrine
origin. He contends that the style is not only unlike that of
the first Epistle, but also in itself so ignoble as to be un-
worthy of an Apostle. Dr. Abbott prints from an Indian
newspaper some choice specimens of * Baboo ' English ; and
indeed it may be thought that the pleasure of giving greater
publicity to these had some share in the production of Dr.
Abbott's Paper. A few lines are enough to exhibit the
character of the English of the passages cited : ' The not un-
common hand of death has distilled with febrile wings from
amongst a debris of bereaved relatives, friends, and submis-
sive subjects, into the interminable azure of the past, an un-
exceptionably finished politician and philanthropist of the
highest specific gravity,' &c. Dr. Abbott's idea is that 2
Peter is written in ' Baboo ' Greek, the author aiming at the
use of very fine words, but making himself ridiculous in the
attempt by a constant violation of the usages of the language.
And to make his meaning plain. Dr. Abbott translates
portions of the Epistle into such English as in his opinion
fairly represents the style of the Greek. Again a few speci-
mens must suffice: * Setting baits to catch souls unconfirmed,
having a heart practised of greediness, and children of
curse, having left the straight way, they went astray, having
followed after the way of Balaam, the son of Bosor, who loved
the wages of iniquity, but had the refutation of his own law-
breaking ; a dumb beast of burden with the voice of a man
uttering a sound, hindered the maddishness of the prophet '
(ii. 14-15) : 'The dog having returned to his own evacuation,
2 M
530 THE SECOND EPISTLE OF ST. PETER. [xxv.
and the sow having bathed to her wallowance' (ii. 22) :
' The day of the Lord shall come as a thief, wherein the
heavens with a whirr shall pass away, and elements with
fever heat shall be dissolved, and earth and things wrought
thereon shall be burned up ' (iii. 10).
If Dr. Abbott intended to render 2 Peter into Baboo
English, what he has actually done is quite a different thing.
His real model is, what he must be well acquainted with, the
translation of a dull but diligent lower-school boy, who plods
doggedly on, setting down for each word the first meaning he
finds in his dictionary, regardless whether he makes sense or
nonsense of the passage. Mr. Raven, in his Diversions of a
Pedagogue (Macmillan's Magazine, Dec. 1875), has given many
amusing specimens of what he calls the ' stupid good ' style
of translation. Dr. Abbott's aTox\iia Kavaovfteva, 'elements in
fever heat', may very well pair off with Mr. Raven's (7a\TriyK,(v
avXovvTi^, 'playing the flute on trumpets'. It is quite true
that outside the N. T. the word Kav(Tovf.ieva is now only known
as used by medical writers. But it is manifest that fever is
not the primar}^ signification of the word, which is akin to the
Kav(T(A)v used of the sun's heat (Matt. xx. 12), and of a scorch-
ing wind (Luke xii. 55). It is ridiculous to fancy that when a
medical wTiter uses a word in a metaphorical sense, he thence-
forward acquires an exclusive property in it, and can oust the
original meaning. It might as well be contended that no one
can legitimately use the word 'inflame', except in a medical
sense. So again, in Kardpag rUva, ' children of curse', we re-
cognize the schoolboy's hand. There is no classical author
who could not be made ridiculous by a similar style of literal
translation. And, certainly, there are other N. T. writers who
are as open to Dr. Abbott's ridicule as 2 Peter. When he
translates ^tXealovrag, ' setting baits to catch ', he apparently
forgets that SfAta^w is used in the same way by St. James
(i. 14), who of all the N. T. writers least deserves to be accused
of Babooism, and whose letter we have already seen was
known to Peter. So likewise, Dr. Abbott's censure of the
way in which (pOtyyo/mi is used (ii. 16, 18) equally affects St.
Luke {see Acts iv. 18) ; and I find the word employed in the
XXV.] ITS ALLEGED FAULTS OF STYLE. 531
same way in a passage which I have just had occasion to refer
to for another purpose (Ps.-Clem. Horn. xvi. 20). Besides,
Peter might use the word of an ass speaking, with as much
propriety as Herodotus of doves speaking (ii. 15).
However, it is no business of mine to defend the propriety
of Peter's Greek. What I am concerned with is the allega-
tion that the Epistle displays such ' ignobility of thought ' as
to be unworthy an Apostle ; and this is sufficiently refuted by
the fact that, in order to make the Epistle contemptible, Dr.
Abbott finds it necessary to make a new version of it. We
thus see that its faults, if faults there are, lie in the language,
not in the thoughts. Done into such English as that of the
Authorized Version, we all feel its grandeur and power. But
no translation could confer these qualities on it if it were the
poor stuff Dr. Abbott thinks it.
But with regard to the epithet 'Baboo', I must remark
that the choice of an Indian example gives to the assailants
of our Epistle a rhetorical advantage to which, in my opinion,
they are not fairly entitled. Everyone writing a language
that is not his own is liable to make mistakes. When he has
attained so much proficiency as to be able to avoid offences
against grammar, a foreigner will still betray himself by a
wrong vocabulary, from time to time using words in a way
that a native would not employ them. If we were shown a
piece of queer English written by a German we might smile,
but we should feel no contempt. But I fear there is some little
national pride which is offended when one of a conquered race
puts himself on a level with his masters, and aims at a superior
style of English composition. So that we are not altogether
displeased when his vaulting ambition overleaps itself, and
he topples over from the sublime into the ridiculous. But we
are not justified in transferring to the present case any of the
scornful feelings which ' Baboo ' English excites in us ; and
we must simply regard Dr. Abbott's specimens as illustrating
that strange mistakes will be made by men who, as a literary
tour de force, attempt to write in a language which they have
only learned from books, and in which they have had no con-
versational intercourse with natives.
2 M 2
532 THE SECOND EPISTLE OF ST. PETER. [xxv.
And this suggests that, if Dr. Abbott has rightly charac-
terized the Greek of 2 Peter, the inference ought to be precisely
the opposite of that which he draws. In the Apostolic times
there were Jews scattered all over the world, and known to
their brethren in Palestine as Hellenists, from the fact that
Greek was the language in which they thought and conversed.
These people had little or no Aramaic ; and when they used
the sacred books of their nation, they did so through the
medium of a Greek translation. No doubt, the Greek they
spoke was not of what grammarians would count the purest
type ; but still to them it was not a foreign language, but the
language of their daily life. If, then, it be really the case that
the Greek of 2 Peter is not merely disfigured by what may be
called provincialisms, but is utterly unlike the composition
of one accustomed to think and speak the language, it follows
this can be the work of no Hellenist. It must have been
written by one imperfectly habituated to the literary use of
Greek ; who also shows the poverty of his vocabulary by his
constant repetitions of words, being anxious to get as much
service as he can out of the few phrases he has got hold of.*
If we are thus led to regard the writer as a Palestinian
Aramaic-speaking Jew, it is natural to think he must be Peter
himself, who may have employed the services of a secretary
in writing the first Epistle, but dispensed with any assistance
in writing the second.
I think, then, that our decision as to the character of the
Greek of 2 Peter need not be affected by the opinion we may
form as to its genuineness. Those who believe it not to be
Peter's may still inquire whether the forger were one to whom
Greek was quite a foreign language, or one who habitually
spoke Greek, though not of the purest kind. Those who
accept it as Peter's have no cause for offence if evidence
should be offered them showing that the Apostle's knowledge
* It may be doubted, however, whether this repetition of words is more than a
.trick of style ; for it must be noticed that if the author copies Jude, he constantly re-
fuses to avail himself of Jude's vocabulary, but substitutes words of his own. In-
stances of what Dr. Abbott calls 'inane ' repetition in 2 Pet. may be found even in
St. Paul, e.g. Eph. vi. ii, 13.
XXV.] ITS ALLEGED FAULTS OF STYLE. 533
of Greek was limited, and that he expressed himself ill when
he had not the help of a Hellenistic interpreter. But the
question we are called on to decide is by no means an easy-
one. It is comparatively simple to determine whether gram-
matical rules are violated in the Apocalypse; but here the
question is not merely concerning transgressions of more
subtle proprieties of language, but also as to the amount of
such transgressions. One may readily acknowledge that 2
Peter offends at times against the proprieties of Greek speech,*
without being convinced that his style is fairly represented in
the English of Dr. Abbott's translations. Now, in respect of
Greek, we are all more or less Baboos — I suspect there are
few of our prize copies of Greek prose or verse to which a
Greek of the age of Pericles would apply a more gentle
epithet — so that if 2 Peter be written in Baboo Greek, it is
odd that it should have been left for a Baboo to find it out.
Of the Greek fathers — whether of those who accepted the
Epistle like Athanasius, or those who rejected it like Eusebius
— none seems to have made the remark that its Greek is abso-
lutely grotesque and ridiculous.
I should not use an epithet which may seem to disparage
Dr. Abbott's judgment if the question concerned the Greek with
which he is presumably most familiar — that of the period four
or five centuries before Christ. But in the course of centuries
languages are liable to suffer change ; and judgments founded
on a thorough knowledge of one period may be quite inappli-
cable to another. A critic whose knowledge of English had
been derived from a study of Addison and Swift might, if he
met a page of Carlyle's, or a poem of Browning's, confidently
pronounce it to be the work of a foreigner. And the same
style of criticism which Dr. Abbott applies to the Greek of
2 Peter would equally prove that Tertullian had no vernacular
knowledge of Latin, and used a vocabulary consisting partly
of words of his own invention, partly of phrases pedantically
introduced from little-read authors.
* As, for example : 0\4fj.fj.aTi koX aKofj (ii. 8), irapacppovia (ii. i6), if that be the
iiL;lit reading, and not Trapa(ppjavvr], found in six manuscripts. A scribe may have
been misled by the adjacent irapauofj-ia.
534 THE SECOND EPISTLE OF ST. PETER. [xxv.
It is plain that the Greek of z Peter* can only be fairly-
judged of by comparison with that in use in his own period,
and among his own countrymen ; and of this later Greek Dr.
Abbott apparently does not claim to possess any special know-
ledge. At least I perceive that he generally contents himself
with referring to a dictionary, and if he find there no authority
for forms used by 2 Peter, passes sentence of condemnation^
But here the double doubt occurs, whether the dictionary
completely represents the extant remains of later Greek ; and
whether these remains present us with the whole vocabulary
of the time when they were written. Dr. Abbott seems con-
scious himself that it is possible that the authorities whom he
consults may not give him adequate information as to the
Greek of the period in question ; but he declares that, even if
authorities can be found in little-read authors for some of the
words he had imagined to have been used by 2 Peter without
any authority at all, it will still have been gross pedantry to
introduce so many out-of-the-way words into so short a letter ;
and that the writer betrays himself, * not as one of the Apostles
of Christ who had received from their Master the precept,
" Be not anxious beforehand what ye shall speak", but as a
collector and stitcher together of antiquarian word-scraps '
(p. 211).
I have already had occasion to remark (see p. 79) that Dr.
Abbott is ^singularly wanting in the faculty of historical
imagination, and seems unable to judge the men of former
days by any other standard than that of his own age. This
defect shows itself to a surprising degree in his whole criti-
cism of the Greek of our Epistle. Thus, a scholar of the
present day might, perhaps, lay himself open to the charge
of ' pedantry ' if he took pains to show that he was not only
familiar with the great writers whose works are the ordinary
subjects of study, but also was well read in the less known
authors who wrote since the birth of Christ. But, if Peter
* I find it convenient to use this abbreviation when I desire to speak of the writer
of the second Epistle, without making any assumption as to whether or not he was
identical with the writer of the first ; and whether he was St. Peter himself, or a
secretary, or some person Avho unlawfully used the Apostle's name.
XXV.] ITS ALLEGED FAULTS OF STYLE. 535
used the vocabulary of his own time instead of employing that
of the great writers who had lived four or five centuries before,
antiquarian research is the last fault that can be imputed to
him. Dr. Abbott's whole tone is amusingly like that of one
correcting a schoolboy's exercises ; and he constantly assumes
that his author could have got up his Greek in no other way
than that by which his own pupils acquire the language,
namely, the use of lexicons and the study of ancient authors.
Thus (p. 211), he censures 2 Peter for using a word not recog-
nized by Liddell and Scott ; though surely this writer's want
of acquaintance with that excellent book may be excused as
his misfortune, not his fault.* Again, when authorities are
produced for words imagined to have been coined by 2 Peter,
he seems to think it intended that Peter got the words by
consulting these authorities. Thus, when Dr. Abbott sup-
poses it to be urged that one of the words objected to is found
in DioscorideSjt he replies (p. 212) that Dioscorides flourished
about A. D. 60, and that his works would probably not have
been well known for some years after that date. Another of
the words censured is found in Theodotion ; on which Dr.
Abbott points out (p. 211) that Theodotion was too late to
have been read by St. Peter, but that the author of our
Epistle may have been late enough to make use of him. J I
must therefore explain, though I should really have thought
the explanation unnecessary, that, if we offer a citation to
justify Peter's use of a word, we do not mean that the
author cited was the source whence Peter got the word,
but only intend to offer proof that the word belonged to the
current Greek of later times, and therefore that it is not one
on which a charge of 'Babooism ' can be founded.
It must be borne in mind that we are only concerned with
the character of the Greek of the Epistle as far as it affects
* Perhaps the lexicon used by Peter was Rost and Palm, or the Paris Thesaurus,
both of which give the word in question.
t Wahl, however, refers to Dioscorides, not for the word in question, but for the
cognate verb.
X Dr. Abbott evidently did not refer to the passage in Theodotion, or he would
have seen that the word kuAkt/xos is used in so different a sense that borrowing
cannot be imagined.
536 THE SECOND EPISTLE OF ST. PETER. [xxv.
the question of authorship ; and that we are not entitled to
infer that St. Peter did not write the Epistle, even though we
find in it what a teacher might properly censure as faults, if
he were correcting it as a piece of Greek composition. Dr.
Abbott forgets this when he remarks : * The word 'i^io^,
private, ought not to be used where there is no antithesis
between what is one's own and another's ; but the author is so
fond of the abuse of this word that, even in quoting Prov.
xxvi. II, he substitutes "i^iov for the LXX. kavTov.' But this
very use or misuse of t'Stoc furnishes one of the arguments by
which Alford tries to prove the common authorship of the two
Petrine Epistles,* the word being used in the same way i Pet.
iii. I, 5; though, really, this is no Petrine peculiarity [see
Matt. xxii. 5, xxv. 14 ; John i. 42 ; Eph, v. 22 ; Tit. ii. g).
And I may add that St. Chrysostom, in a passage already
cited, also quotes Prov. xxvi. 1 1 with ''[Ziov instead of laurov,
although I believe him to be quoting Proverbs directly, and
not using 2 Peter.
Another of Dr. Abbott's censures is founded on the im-
proper use of Aowo-a^fin/ (2 Pet. ii. 22). He maybe quite right
to teach his pupils to use Xoveadai of the bathing of men, and
not of the washing of animals; but if he supposes that Greek
writers invariably conform to this rule he is mistaken. I
need not mention Homer's use of the word with respect to a
horse (//. vi. 508), because Wetstein furnishes two illustra-
tions exactly in point, one from Aristotle, the other from
^lian, the washing of swine being spoken of in both places.
The latter passage is, Tra-)(yvtaQai St tov avv clkovoj /ht} Xovofxtvov
fxaXiaTa, a\X iv tw j3opj36pi^ ^tarpi/3ovra re Koi (JTpetpOfXiVOv [Hist.
Var. 43).
Regarding, as I have said, the discussion of the Greek of
the Epistle to be in a great measure irrelevant to our inquiry,
I make no use of several illustrations with which my friend
Dr. Gwynn has furnished me, of the use in later Greek of words
objected to in 2 Peter by Dr. Abbott. I merely remark that
* Alford, in the same place, mentions omission of the article as a feature common
to the two Epistles.
XXV.] ITS ALLEGED FAULTS OF STYLE. 537
no authority is necessary to justify the use of a word formed
according to Greek analogy. Thus, whether anyone else has
used the word Taprapoio or not, the employment of such a verb
does not prove a man to be a foreigner, if he is acquainted
with the noun raprapog. If Dr. Abbott is right in translating
TapTapuxrag, 'helling', the next time he meets davartocrag he
ought to translate it ' deathing '. So again, E^tpa^ia is a noun
formed with perfect regularity from a sufficiently authenti-
cated verb, l^epau). Dr. Abbott's translation ' evacuation ' is
certainly not fair. It is true that ' evacuate ' and iE,ipa(o are
both general words, meaning no more than ' to empty ' ; but
usage limits the English word to evacuation by purge, and
the Greek one to evacuation by vomit. Hippocrates, de-
scribing a disease, mentions as two of the symptoms that the
patient t^tpa, and that his bowels are confined [De Morh. iv.
507). There was then no reason why 2 Peter should not
render the ^p of Prov. xxvi. 11, by £^f|0«^a, as Aquila does
the corresponding verb by l^ipdi,) in Lev. xviii. 28.
It is an interesting question, however, why 2 Peter de-
viates from the LXX. translation 'kiarov ; and I will not
venture to say which of the three following answers is the
right one: — (i) St. Peter did not use a Greek Bible at all,
but a Hebrew one, of which he made his own translation;
(2) he cited the LXX. from memory, and inadvertently
^substituted an equivalent word ; (3) he was not directly
quoting the book of Proverbs, but a Greek popular saying
possibly derived from it. Many have thought that they recog-
nized in iff KvXiapa (or KvXiapov) ftopfiopov, the end of a pair of
iambic lines ; and some have attempted to restore them. It
might merely have happened that the versifier found that
t'iipai.ia fitted better than tfxtTov into his metre.
I have noticed that in the verse of 2 Pet. under considera-
tion there is a various reading, KvXicrpa being read by ^, A,
K, L, and KuAtd/xoi/ by B and C. This is one of several
instances where, there being good MS. authority on both
sides. Dr. Abbott invariably refuses to give our author the
benefit of the doubt, and always attributes to him the reading
least creditable to his knowledge of the language. There is
538 THE SECOND EPISTLE OF ST. PETER. [xxv.
no N. T. book in which I think we can be less confident
about our readings than 2 Peter. On one difficult case
(iii. 10) M. Van Sittart [Journal of Philology^ iii. 356; see
also Westcott and Hort, ii. 279) founded an ingenious specu-
lation that our earliest authorities for the text of this Epistle,
which in early times had very limited circulation, may have
been ultimately derived from a single copy, of which some
letters had become illegible. However this may be, I am
disposed to be a good deal more timid than Dr. Abbott in
arguing as if we were quite certain of our text. In particular,
it is hard to believe that the man who uses the Greek article
so correctly in ch. i, should make the gross and unmeaning
mistakes charged against him in ch. 2 and ch. 3.* But
accepting the reading KvXiafxov^ I will not delay to inquire
whether it is not the better word of the two ; but suppose it
to be mistakenly used, and put the mistake at its worst, it is
matched by St. Paul's use of a pn ay fxog for aptrayfxa (Phil. ii. 6);
and if we are to translate the one word ' wallowance ', we
ought to translate the other ' seizance '.
I think I have said more than enough on the question
concerning the style of this Epistle. Some things would lead
me to look on the author as not a Hellenist, such as his limited
employment of connecting particles, and his small use of the
Greek Bible. On the other hand, he employs Greek words
with the boldness of one born to the use of the language,
preserving for us several words which but for him might have
been lost to us. I must reject as absolutely opposed to his-
toric probability Dr. Abbott's account of the matter, that we
have here innovations 'very natural for one who has acquired
a language in great measure by reading, and who is fond of
airing the varied treasures of his vocabulary'. The author
was not a Bengalee trying to write the language spoken in
an island some thousands of miles distant. No one supposes
that he wrote in Palestine. Whoever he was, he must have
lived where all about him, including his most intimate friends.
* I ought, perhaps, to have examined the question. Supposing the author not to
be Peter, might not his native language have been Latin ?
XXV.] ITS ALLEGED OBLIGATIONS TO JOSEPHUS. 539
were using Greek as the language of their daily life. It is
ludicrous to imagine that he shut himself up with Greek
books in his study, and there concocted a production in a
style meant to be very fine, but really so barbarous as to be
almost unintelligible.*
It remains to examine a much more serious assault by Dr.
Abbott on the Epistle. He undertook to prove [Expositor,
Jan. '82) that the writer borrowed from the Antiquities of
Josephus, a work only published A. D. 93 ; and, if so, it is
clear that the borrower could not be St. Peter. I can
honestly say that I am conscious of no prejudice such as
would preclude me from giving a candid consideration to
Dr. Abbott's proofs. I had no such stubborn belief in the
Petrine authorship of the Epistle as would render me inca-
pable of giving a fair hearing to opposing evidence. Though
each of the objections brought against the Petrine authorship
admitted of an answer, yet their combined effect produced a
sensible impression on me; and one difficulty in particular I
felt very much. If I am right in thinking that the first
Epistle was written after the breaking out of the Neronian
persecution, and if St. Peter died during the reign of the same
* Among the valuable materials given me by my friend Dr. Gwynn for my use
in this lecture is a list of rare words in the Epistle to the Philippians, of which he
made a special study when writing on it for the Speaker'' s Commentary. It will be
seen that anyone who chooses to assume, as Dr. Abbott does, that the resources of
the Greek language are represented in our dictionaries with absolute completeness,
would find it as easy to estabhsh a charge against St. Paul as against 2 Peter, of the
pedantic use of out-of-the-way words. 'A/caipe?(r0ai, nowhere else {uKatpelu, once in
Diod. Sic.) : ap-rrayfiSs, in no author B. c, and after Christ only in Plutarch, and in a
different sense: i^auaffracris in other Greek comes from i^aviffr-qiJii (act.), and means
the 'act of causing another to get up and go out' ; from i^aviaTaixoLi (neut.), except in
St. Paul only in Hippocrates, where it means 'getting out of bed to go to stool'.
We can imagine how this word would have appeared in Dr. Abbott's translation had
he found it in 2 Peter. 'EiriirdflrjTos, in no writer B. c. ; afterwards only in Appian :
Kararo/jiT}, not used in the sense of mutilation by any secular writer : Trapal3o\eveffdat,
not elsewhere ; only preserved by ^ and B, and by Hesych. (also Lat. Vet. 'parabo-
latus') — so strange a word that it was lost even to Greek fathers, and forgotten for
centuries : (tkoitSs, 'goal', everywhere else 'targe*;' or 'scout' : crvfx/ii/jLriTiii, <TviJifiop(p-
6(1), or -i^ca, <TviJiy\ivxos; none of these elsewhere: ffwadKelp, only in Diod. Sic, and
there in a different sense. I have not room to add to this list of words, gleaned from
one short Epistle, a list of other rare Pauline words.
540 THE SECOND EPISTLE OF ST. PETER. [xxv.
emperor, no very great interval of time could have separated
the two Epistles. How is it, then, that the second should not
only differ a good deal from the first in its style and in its
topics — the perils which threatened the Church at the time of
the first Epistle seeming to be mainly persecution from with-
out ; at that of the second, corruption from within — but, though
addressed to the same people, should differ also in the fate of
its reception ; the first becoming rapidly known all over the
Christian world, the second so little circulated as apparently
to run some risk of suppression ? We can give conjectural
answers to this question; but there remained enough of doubt
as to their correctness to make me willing to sympathize with
Olshausen, who says : * Sentio profecto certis argumentis nee
genuinam nee adulterinam originem epistolse posse demon-
strari. Rationibus autem subjectivis fultus authentiam epis-
tolae persuasum habeo'. But subjective reasons must give
way to proofs ; and Olshausen properly adds, ' nisi res novae
ex historia vel ex indole epistolse inveniantur ad litem diri-
mendam aptiores quam hucusque proponebantur '. Such
* res novae ' seemed to be offered by Dr. Abbott ; and if his
arguments forced me to give up a long-cherished belief, I
should at least have the satisfaction of seeing clear light cast
on a much disputed question. I therefore read Dr. Abbott's
Paper without having made up my mind beforehand that he
must be wrong ; and I was much impressed by the case he
seemed to make out of a borrowing from Josephus on the
part of the writer of our Epistle. It was not until I care-
fully examined the matter for myself that I arrived at the
conviction that Dr. Abbott's discovery was merely that of a
mare's nest.
Archdeacon Farrar, indeed, says [Expositor, III. 403) that
Dr. Abbott has proved 'beyond all shadow of doubt that Jose-
phus and the writer of the Epistle could not have written
independently of each other'; and that 'it would be impos-
sible for him to feel respect for the judgment of any critic who
a.sserted that the resemblances between the two writers were
purely fortuitous'; and that, 'were the question unconnected
with theology, no critic could set aside the facts adduced with-
XXV.] ITS ALLEGED OBLIGATIONS TO JOSEPHUS. c;4i
out being charged with a total absence of the critical faculty'.
So he leaves us, as the only way of maintaining the Petrine
origin of our Epistle, the not very hopeful line of defence that
Josephus borrowed from 2 Peter. It really requires some
courage,* in the face of so magisterial a decision, to give
utterance to the opposite conclusion at which I myself arrived ;
but I cannot help thinking that the Archdeacon would have
expressed himself less confidently if he had acted on Routh's
golden rule, ' Always verify your references'. For anyone
who merely looks at the coincidences as set forth, in the clever
way in which Dr. Abbott has arranged them, will easily arrive
at Archdeacon Farrar's conclusion, that there has been borrow-
ing on one side or the other ; but if he goes to Josephus and
looks at the passages in situ, he finds that one might read
them over a dozen times, as for centuries so many have done,
without ever being reminded of 2 Peter,
The first thing that strikes one on a comparison of the
passages is, that the alleged coincidences relate entirely to
words, and not at all to the thoughts. Josephus and 2 Peter
have quite different ideas to express, and what is asserted is,
that in doing so they manage to employ several identical
words. Now the case is just the reverse, where we have real
literary obligation, as in the instance of 2 Peter and Jude.
There the imitation is shown chiefly in matter ; in words very
much less.
But Archdeacon Farrar states that the two documents
have in common ' words in some instances not only unusual
* The question is one which must be decided by arguments, not by authorities ;
but I may mention that I have never had the discomfort of feeling myself quite alone
in my opinion. In the first place, the two or three most striking coincidences adduced
by Dr. Abbott are stock quotations from Josephus, used for the illustration of 2 Peter
by commentators, who never thought of founding on them a charge of borrowing.
Next, I have been allowed to use an unpublished criticism of Dr. Abbott's Paper, by
Dr. Quarry, who takes the same view of it that I have done. And he states that his
opinion was shared by the late Bishop Fitz Gerald. Through the kindness of Dr.
Sanday, I have become acquainted with an able American criticism of Dr. Abbott's
Paper, by Dr. Warfield, which appeared in the Southern Presbyteriatt Revteiv. And
lastly, Dr. Gwynn, who was kind enough to examine into this matter for my assist-
ance, arrived independently at the same conclusions as I had done ; and has given me
many additional reasons for holding them.
542 THE SECOND EPISTLE OF ST. PETER. [xxv.
but startling, words which are in some instances hapax Icgo-
mena, occurring together in much the same sequence and
connexion in passages of brief compass'. On all these points
1 take issue with him.
(i) They do not occur in passages of what I should call
'brief compass'. The words common which come so close
together in Dr. Abbott's report of the evidence lie well apart
in the respective authors. Dr. Abbott gives a list of thirteen
words common ; but these are taken from a folio page of
Josephus, and range from i. 3, to iii. 16, in 2 Peter.
(2) They are not 'in the same sequence and connexion'.
The words common which Dr. Abbott letters from a to h
appear in Josephus in the order, a, g^f, h, h,Cy d, e;in 2 Peter
in the order, g, c, d, b, h, e, /, a. The case, then, is as if one
finding two pieces of stuff of different patterns and material
should fix on some flowers or the like, occurring here and
there in each ; should cut up both into scraps, construct a
patchwork out of each, and then say, How like these pieces
are to each other.
(3) But the most important point of all is, that the words
common are not 'unusual or startling', or such as can fairly
he called ^ hapax legomena' . I cannot but think that Arch-
deacon Farrar, not having looked into the matter for himself,
jumbled up in his mind the two counts of Dr. Abbott's indict-
ment, that 2 Peter employs unusual and startling words, and
that he copied from Josephus. Dr. Abbott himself con-
fesses with the M\.vc\o^X. naivete [■^. 211) that in those parts of
2 Peter, where the unusual and startling words are found,
there is not a trace of obligation to Josephus ; in other words,
that if we find in 2 Peter a word likely to have fastened itself
on anyone's memory, it was not from Josephus he got it. And
this is not at all surprising, for Josephus is a commonplace
writer, in whom many startling and unusual words are not to
be found. In the case of real borrowing between Peter and
Jude, some of the words which are common are very striking
ones.
Now, when we are examining whether one writer is under
literary obligation to another, everything turns on whether
XXV.] ITS ALLEGED OBLIGATIONS TO JOSEPHUS. £^43
the phrases common are unusual, or such as two writers
might independently employ. What first roused my distrust
of Dr. Abbott's argument was the total want of discrimina-
tion with which he swells his list of proofs with instances,
which prove no more than that the writers compared both
wrote in Greek. He asks us (p. 54) to accept as a proof that
one writer copied from another that, in speaking of the rising
of a heavenly body, both use the verb avart'AAw. And (p. 57)
in considering whether 2 Peter copied Josephus, he asks us
to give weight to the fact that in speaking of the Divine
power both employ the word BvvafiiQ. This reminds us of the
charge (see p. 342) that Luke was indebted to Josephus for
his knowledge of the words tvtttlo and TraTc- It is clear that if
we are to arrive at any trustworthy conclusions we must
begin by weeding out from Dr. Abbott's lists words too
common to afford any proof of literary connexion.
But in deciding what words are to be so regarded there is
a question of principle to be settled. Dr. Abbott allows that
if words common to Josephus and Peter are also found in the
LXX. we cannot treat them as unusual words, being bound
to acknowledge that if Peter borrowed them at all, he may
have taken them from the LXX. and not from Josephus. Dr.
Abbott then proceeds to argue : Since if one of these common
words is found in the LXX., we cannot build an argument on
it, therefore, if it be not found in the LXX., we can. And
accordingly he classes such a common Greek word as roioa^i
as an unusual word, because not found in the LXX. This
argument might well be transferred to a book on Logic, as
an illustration for a chapter on fallacies. In order to make
the logic good, we must supply a suppressed premiss, which
Dr. Abbott will scarcely venture to assert, viz., that the only
two sources whence 2 Peter could have drawn his Greek were
the LXX. and Josephus, so that whatever he did not get from
the one must have been taken from the other. But every one
of the New Testament writers was using Greek every day of
his life ; and it is absurd to suppose that the men of that day
limited their vocabulary to that of the LXX., any more than
in our daily conversation we limit ours to that of the English
544 THE SECOND EPISTLE OF ST. PETER. [xxv.
Bible. There is none of the New Testament writers who does
not more or less frequently step outside the Biblical limits,
and enter into those of secular, and even classical Greek. But
if the charge of Babooism brought against 2 Peter be well
founded, he, of all others, might be expected to be least likely
to confine himself to Biblical limits. For in the sense of our
discussion a Baboo means one with an extensive literary and
very little practical knowledge of a language. 2 Peter is sup-
posed to have got up his Greek from solitary reading ; he is
censured for the number of words he uses, which are neither
found in the O. T. nor in Josephus ; so that Dr. Abbott is the
last who ought to ask us to believe that it was to these two
books he confined his studies.
But, indeed, I must give up the attempt to save Dr.
Abbott's logic ; for he does not himself pretend that 2 Peter's
reading was limited to the books just named, part of his in-
dictment being that our author was also indebted to Philo.
Dr. Abbott, indeed, has worked this vein rather superficially ;
for there is a whole host of 2 Peter's rare words in Philo — 6
Trpo<pY]TiKOQ A070C, IrrlXvaiQ, Ijxiroptvoixai, v7roC£ty/ua, adeaiuoQ, ciXwcng
and Trapavofjiia in close neighbourhood {De Mos. I. 127) ;
ivrpvipav, ^o^og", viripoyKa, SeXeaZ^iv, (TTOi\e'ia, poiZ,og, a/iadia^
tfforijuoc {De Sac. Ah. et Cain, p. 165 ; as in 2 Pet., ' equal in
value ', not, as in Josephus, to whom Dr. Abbott refers the
word, ' equal in privilege 'J, and, if anyone thinks it important
to add it, TOioa^i..
For my purpose it is immaterial to discuss whether the
possession of a common vocabulary proves that 2 Peter copied
Philo. There is no reason why the Apostle Peter might not
have been indebted to Philo. Eusebius (ii. 17) repeats a
story that had reached him, that, in the reign of Claudius,
Peter and Philo had been at Rome at the same time, and
had conversed with each other, Eusebius accepts the story
as true, and believes that Philo then learned from Peter
many things about Christianity. I do not myself believe
that Peter visited Rome at so early a time ; but Philo's
embassy to Caligula is a historical fact. It is rational to be-
lieve that Philo, on his visit to Rome, had much intercourse
I
XXV.] ITS ALLEGED OBLIGATIONS TO JOSEPHUS. 545
with the Jewish colony in that city; and that his writings
would thenceforward, if not before, be well known to the Jews
in Rome ; and might, to a certain extent, influence their
vocabulary. But when we find Philonic words in N. T.
writers we are not bound to believe either that they took
them directly from Philo, or even that Philo was the first
to use these words. I have already protested against Dr.
Abbott's tacit assumption that the ' linguistic sphere ' of the
contemporaries of 2 Peter is adequately represented by the
meagre remains still extant in the LXX., even including the
Apocryphal books. To complete that sphere we must in-
clude the works of Philo, which are a most valuable addition
to our knowledge of the theological language of the Jews of
the Apostolic age. But, though Philo may have enlarged
that language, he did not create it. It follows that coinci-
dences of a New Testament writer with Philo are not neces-
sarily proofs of borrowing.
But I have no interest now in contesting that point ; for
I am surprised that Dr. Abbott had not acuteness to see that,
in endeavouring to establish 2 Peter's obligation to Philo, he
was doing his best to demolish his own case.* Josephus
admired Philo, and notoriously copied him {Did. Chr. Btog.,
III. 452). The preface to the A nh'^tizYz'es of Josephus, which
Dr. Abbott supposes to have served as a model to 2 Peter, is
itself derived from the opening of De Opif. Mund. of Philo.
When we turn to the latter passage, among the first things to
catch the eye is one of the phrases Peter is accused of bor-
rowing from Josephus. The 7rXa<rroTc Aoyotc of 2 Pet. ii. 3 is
* Dr. Abbott's idea is that the theory that 2 Peter had borrowed from Josephus
would become more probable if it could be proved that this author was a habitual
borrower, destitute of all originality. It is scarcely a paradox to say that, on the
contrary, this author was so original, that he hardly knew how to borrow when he
tried. If he were not Peter, it was his business to borrow from the first Epistle ;
but he scarcely makes an attempt. He knew the Old Testament history, yet he has
extremely little of Old Testament language. He had read St. Paul's letters ; but we
should not have been able to prove it if he had not told us ; and yet we can distinctly
trace the use of Paul's writings in the first Epistle, though it does not mention Paul.
And if he used Jude's Epistle, he exercises great freedom in departing from his
original.
2 N
546 THE SECOND EPISTLE OF ST. PETER. [xxv.
alleged to be derived from the 7rXao-;iartuv of Josephus : but,
in the corresponding passage of Philo, we have fxvdiKoXQ
•nXaanaaiv, and within a few lines fxvQovg TrXaaafievoQ. It is
not clear to me that Peter's phrase was derived either from
Josephus or Philo; but, in any case, if Josephus steals from
Philo, how can he claim exclusive rights of proprietorship as
against Peter ? Why are we to suppose that Peter took from
the stream, when he could as easily have drawn from the
fountain head ?
We are now in a position to deal with Dr. Abbott's list
of coincidences. We first strike out coincidences in common-
place words ; for the whole force of the argument from coin-
cidences depends on the rarity of the words employed. Dr.
Abbott begins by inducing his readers to grant that two
writers, who both employ the phrase ' golden sleep', probably
do not so independently. On the strength of that concession,
he assumes that, if two writers both happen to say * I think
it right ', one must have borrowed from the other. We next
strike out of Dr. Abbott's lists words that occur elsewhere
N. T., or LXX. ; for even one such occurrence proves that the
word lay in Peter's 'linguistic sphere', and therefore that his
use of it needs no explanation. Such words are I'^oSoc for
decease (Luke ix. 31 : not used in Josephus absolutely, but
with the addition of tov tiyv) ; jUEyaXtiorrjc (Luke ix. 43 : see
also Acts xix. 27 ; Jer. xxxiii. (xl.) 9) ; e(^' 6aov (according to
Dr. Abbott, not elsewhere N. T., but actually in precisely the
same way Matt. ix. 15 ; not as in Josephus with the addition of
)(p6vov, but so three times by St. Paul) ; fxvdog (four times in the
Pastoral Epistles ; common in Philo) ; daiog (nine times in
LXX.) ; fjiiXXu) (in the jusXXijaw of 2 Pet. i. 1 2, there is a difficulty,
both of reading and interpretation; in the ov /xAAo; of Jose-
phus, a common Greek word is used in the most common-
place way). I think it needless to give reference for svaipua,
KaTa(ppovi(i)f irdpwv, or Bvvafxic (!).
The combinations of words on which Dr. Abbott lays
stress are also of the most commonplace character. One of
the most remarkable is Z koXwc Troiiirt TrpoatxpvTeg, to which
there is a parallel in Josephus. But KaXiog iroieiv, with a par-
XXV.] ITS ALLEGED OBLIGATIONS TO JOSEPHUS. 547
ticiple, is common N. T. (Acts x. ^t, ; PhiL iv, 14 ; 3 John 6) ;
and 7rpo(Ti Y(o is also a common word ; and that two common
words should happen to be combined is a matter calling- for
no remark. So also juvOoiq e^aKo\ovdt](TavTig. ' E^uKoXovOiu)
occurs four times in the LXX., and seems to be a favourite
with our author, who uses it three times ; and we have seen that
it is a mistake to treat juu^oc as an uncommon word. In Jose-
phus there are two various readings, and it is not certain that
l^aKoXovdiu) is his word at all. I count it needless to discuss
yiv(v(TKiiv oTi or SiKaiov riyuaOai. Nor need I notice alleged
coincidences in which there is no resemblance. Thus, Dr.
Abbott swells his list by pointing out that Josephus has the
word tvaXdoToi, 2 Peter in quite a different sense and context
etc aX(o(Tiv. Another case, in which 2 Peter certainly took
singular pains to disguise his theft, is that, in Dr. Abbott's
opinion, he derived dtiag koivwvoX (pvaewg (i. 4) from /LiaKpag
Koivojvoi TaXaiirwpiag in Josephus. But if 2 Pet. was incapable
of constructing such a clause for himself, he had a much
nearer model in Philo's XoyiKrig KeKoivojvijKaai (piKTstog {De So77in.
I. p. 647).
When Dr. Abbott's lists have been thus weeded of futili-
ties, and I come to inquire what Archdeacon Farrar refers to
as * startling and unusual words', or, as he calls them * hapax
legomena', found in two authors, I can think but of two cases —
that 2 Peter uses aptri] concerning the excellence of God; and
that he speaks of the divine 'nature' Oiia ^vcng. But we have
rag aperag concerning God in the first Epistle (ii. g) ; and if
it had been Dr. Abbott's object to prove that it was thence 2
Pet. derived the word, he would, no doubt, have laid stress on
the fact that in both places it occurs in immediate connexion
with the verb /caAlw, used concerning God's call of his people.
The word is similarly used O. T., Is. xlii. 8, 12, xliii. 21, on
which latter passage that of i Peter is based; and in the
singular, Hab. iii. 3. But in Philo the word, both singular
and plural, is repeatedly used of God. Thus : 7rf|0i dsov kol
T(ov aperojv avTov [Quis Rer. Div. HcBT. p. 488] : and in the
same page, rJjc 0£tac aptrijc Ty\v uKpoTTiTa I and TO ixiyiQog Tiqa
aptTtig Tov fxtyaXov Otov {De Somn. p. 635). The word, then,
2 N 2
548 THE SECOND EPISTLE OF ST. PETER. [xxv.
plainly lay within Peter's 'linguistic sphere', and there is no
pretence for saying that he needed to go to Josephus to learn
it. And the same thing may be said about Qtov (})vaig, which
is also a Philonic phrase : ySti yap Tr)v (jjiicnv tov Beov [De Mos.
II. p. 143 : see also De Spec. Legg. p. 343).
Thus, Dr. Abbott has completely failed to establish his
theory : but I must add that it is a theory which it was never
rational to try to establish. For what are the ways in which
an author exhibits his use of another ? (i) He may take his
ideas from another, following out the same arguments, and
using the same illustrations : (2) he may derive from his pre-
decessor some word or combination of words, such as two
writers would not be likely to employ independently: (3) he
may resemble his predecessor generally in his phraseology ;
and such resemblance of vocabulary would, of course, not be
confined to one particular passage of his author. But, in this
case, what we are asked to believe is, that 2 Peter prepared
himself for his task by studying one page of Josephus, and
then tried how many words out of that page he could manage
to introduce when writing on quite different topics. Did ever
forger proceed in such a way ? If he did, he surely took for
his model the author for whom he desired to pass, and not one
his knowledge of whom it was his interest to conceal. I must,
therefore, estimate Dr. Abbott's speculation at the same value
as the ingenious proofs that have been given that the plays
of Shakspeare were written by Lord Bacon, or the Epistles
of Clement of Rome by Henry Stephens.*
* I refer here to the Proteus Peregrinus of Mr. Cotterill, a writer after Dr.
Abbott's own heart, who employs the same methods, but with greater audacity.
He shows that, not only the Epistles of Clement, but the tract of Lucian De Morte
Peregrini^ the Epistle to Diognetus, large portions of the BibHotheca of Photius, and
several other works supposed to be ancient, are all modern forgeries. When it is
objected to him that the Epistles of Clement are found in the Alexandrian MS., in
the MS. lately found at Constantinople, and in a Syriac translation, he owns that
these facts do present a certain difficulty ; but declares that if the difficulty were ten
times as great, it would not be as great as the improbabiUty that the coincidences he
has pointed out could be accidental (p. 318). Reversing his argument, I draw from
his book a confirmation of my view, that coincidences as close as any Dr. Abbott
instances, and far more numerous, are found in cases where borrowing is demon-
strably impossible.
XXV.] ITS ALLEGED OBLIGATIONS TO JOSEPHUS. 549
It may seem that, however successful we are in refuting
the charge that 2 Peter copied from Josephus, by showing
that his obligations are more likely to have been to Philo,
yet this very characteristic of the second Epistle makes it
impossible that it could have the same author as the first.
I own that I felt some surprise on being taught by Dr. Gwynn
that affinity with Philo is a point of likeness, not of unlike-
ness, between the two Petrine Epistles. I give some of his
proofs. The references here and above are to the pages of
Mangey's edition, (i) The word avaytwao) seems to have
been introduced into Christian theology by i Peter ; it does
not occur in any previous Greek author, but must have been
known to Philo, who uses avayevvr](TiQ [De Mund. Incorrup.
404; De Mund. 1158), (2) Again, compare the vocabulary
of the following two passages in i Pet. : to Soic/jUtov rfjc TriaTHjiq
TroXvTinorepov \pvaiov tov airoWvinivov dia Trvpog oe ooictjua-
^ofiivov (i. 7); TO XoyiKOv adoXov yaXa (ii. 2 ; aBoXog, here
only N. T. ; XoyiKog, only Rom. xii. 1) ; with Philo [Alleg. I. 59,
in immediate connexion with to XoyLK6v\ 17 ^^6vy\aiq r\v iiKaae
Xpvaii^ aSoAqj kol KaOapa koX imrvQioiiivy Koi hiboKiixacr-
iJiivi^ KaX Tifxiq cpvcTsi. Closely following, in Philo, we find two
other Petrine words, cK^tQapTog and aTrovefxa), the latter here
only N. T. (3) oi» (pdapToXg, apyvpio^ rj ^pvaii^ (l Pet. i. 18);
Br]<ravpbv ovk tv (i) -)(pvabg koi apyvpog ovcriat ^uaprai icaroKftvrat
{De Cheriih. I. 147). (4) etti tov iTricrKOTrov rwv \pvx(vv (ii. 25,
here only in this application N. T.) ; but in Philo De Somn.
I. 634) we have [Gft^)] r(^ twv oXmv i-KiaKo-m^ : and it may be
added that in the same place Philo calls God tcjv oXwv
KTio-TTjCj this title being given to the Almighty by i Peter
(iv. ig), who alone of N. T. writers uses the word. (5) An
O. T. citation is made with the formula Trtpiix^i only N. T., in
I Pet. ii. 6; but also in Philo, De Abr. ii. i. (6) ottwc rag
aptTag k^ayyiiXriTt (ii. 9) ; here only N. T. The verb in the
corresponding place in the LXX. Isaiah is Stijyoii^at ; but
Philo De Plant. Noe, 348) has oc Tag Sjiliv tov Geou ipyhiv\
virepfioXag . . . l^ayyiXu. (7) The rare word avaxvyiQ (i Pet.
iv. 4) occurs De Mundi Incorr. 507, and elsewhere.
It is plain that, if there be evidence to prove that 2 Peter
550 THE SECOND EPISTLE OF ST. PETER. [xxv.
copied from Philo, there is abundance of like evidence avail-
able for the conviction of i Peter. I will not undertake to
say whether in either case direct obligation can be proved ;
and possibly some things which we might suppose to be
peculiar to Philo, had previously formed part of current theo-
logical language. But, at the time the first Epistle was
written, Philo is likely to have been, for a dozen years, the
author most read by educated Jews at Rome ; and, therefore*
one who mixed in that circle, and engaged in its discussions,
could hardly escape at least indirect influence from Philo.
This may, perhaps, afford the simplest explanation of the
Philonic colouring of the Epistle to the Hebrews. And
Dr. Gwynn has noticed that even Paul's letters, written from
Rome, present coincidences with Philo.*
I do not think it worth while to add some proofs with
which Dr. Gwynn has furnished me, that the charge of copy-
ing from Josephus might be made with as much plausibility
against the first Epistle as against the second. But, cer-
tainly, the result of an examination of Dr. Abbott's argument
has been to emphasize many points of latent resemblance be-
tween the two Epistles. If the second Epistle copies from
Jude, so does the first from St. Paul and St. James. Both
letters have a good deal in common with the diction of the
Graeco-Jewish literature represented for us by Philo and
Josephus. They have peculiarities of language in common,
* (l.) Philipp. iii. 12: ovx <iTi •^Stj . . . r er eKeicofiai, SidliKco Se . . . els to
= Philo, Alleg. iii. lOl : irav reXeiwQ^s Koi Ppafieiaii/ koL (TTf^dvoiv a^twO^s
(both of death).
(2). lb. iii. 20 : rj/xuv yap rh iroXiTevfj.a iu ohpavdls virdpxei,.
= Philo, De Con/. Lingg. 416 : [the souls of the wise] iiravepxavTai eKelffe ird\iv
'6QiV iipfiTjOricrav, irarpiSa /xty rhv oiipdviou X'^pov iv $ iroKiTevovTai, leVoc Se rhv
■nepijiiov fv qj TrapcpKyjcTav, PO/j.i^ovcrat.
Also De Joseph, 51 : e<pi4/j,evos €y'ypa<pe7ir9ai eV ti5 fxeyiarc^ koX apiaTCf iroXiTev-
/xaTi rovSe rov K6(Tf/.ov.
(3.) Coloss. i. 15 : 8s icrriv elKitiyrov @eov tov aopdrov, irpti)T6TOKOs irdffi)! Krlffews.
= Philo, De Mundt Opif., 6: t^v 5e h.6pa.Tov koX vorjThv Oetov x6yov e'lKSva.
\4yei &fov.
To which add De Somn. i. 653: . . . b k6(Tix.os iv § apxiepeis, . . . 6 irpoiTd-
yovos avTov Oilos \6yos. Cf. Heb. i. 6, ii. 17.
XXV.] ITS ALLEGED OBLIGATIONS TO JOSEPHUS. 551
including some objected to by Dr. Abbott as if only found in
2 Peter.* And, as Dr. Lumby has well shown, it is charac-
teristic of both to use striking and even startling expressions,
and to introduce unusual and mysterious topics. On the
whole. Dr. Abbott's Paper only serves to show how an able
and accomplished scholar may go astray, when, on the
strength of a comparative study of one New Testament book,
and a few pages of one secular author, he attempts to draw
conclusions which could not be safely maintained unless they
had been founded on a thorough investigation of a much
wider subject — the relations of New Testament Greek to the
written and spoken Greek of the Apostolic age.f
* Bunsen {Christianity and Mankind, v. 36), in a vain attempt to discredit
I Peter, argues from the close resemblance which he finds between it and 2 Peter,
and which he tries to establish by enumerating several thoughts and expressions
common to both.
f Quite lately Mommsen has published (Hermes xxi. 142) from a MS. in the
Phillips Library at Cheltenham a previously unknown stichometrical catalogue of
the books of the Bible, and also of the writings of Cyprian. The Ust had been made
in Africa in the year 359. It gives the Gospels in the order, Matthew, Mark, John,
Luke. Then follow, in a singular order, the Epistles of Paul, among which that to
the Hebrews is not counted, the Acts, the Apocalypse, and, lastly, the Catholic
Epistles as follows : —
eplae lohannis III. ur CCCCL.
una sola.
eplae Petri II. ver ccc.
una sola.
Zahn considers the * una sola ' as a protest made by one who held to an older tradi-
tion, which in each case acknowledged only one Epistle. But I am disposed to agree
with Harnack, that we ought to supply Judae in the first case, and Jacobi in the
second ; since the Epistles of Jude and James come in the respective places in the
Claromontane list.
XXVI.
NON-CANONICAL BOOKS.
HAVING in Lectures xi. and xix. spoken of Apocry-
phal Gospels and Apocryphal Acts, I now add a
lecture on other books known to the early Church, but which
did not find admission into the Canon.
The Apocalypse of Peter. I give the first place to this
work, because it claimed Apostolic authority, and because we
infer from the Muratorian Fragment {see pp. 49, 227), that it
had obtained a place, though not an undisputed place, in
Church reading before the end of the second century. I
mentioned (p. 228) that, at the beginning of the third century,
the Roman presybter Caius rejected, and ascribed to the
heretic Cerinthus, a book of revelations purporting to be
written by a great Apostle. Many have supposed that the
* great Apostle ' was St. John, but it seems to me quite as
likely that he may have been St. Peter; for if we are to
identify the book rejected by Caius with either of the two
Apocalyptic works mentioned in the Muratorian Fragment,
it is more natural to think of the work which that Fragment
describes as the subject of disputes at Rome. But the almost
complete loss of the Apocalypse of Peter leaves us without
any means of testing this conjecture. With regard to the con-
tents of the book we have only positive information as to two
passages, both indicating that the book contained a description
of the Last Judgment. One of these is preserved by Clement
of Alexandria in the Prophetic Selectioiis (41, 48), which, ac-
XXVI.] THE APOCALYPSE OF PETER. 553
cording to the general opinion of scholars, formed part of his
Hypotyposeis. Clement, who is habitually indiscriminate in
his reception of books, cites this Apocalypse as a genuine
Petrine work* and as Scripture ; but the extract which he pre-
serves gives us no favourable opinion of it. It deals with the
future condition of abortive births, and of children born in
adultery, exposed by their parents. The former, it says,
will be handed over to an angel nurse (ayyeXo) thjueAouyw)
under whom they will receive instruction, and after suffering
what they would have suffered if they had lived in the body,
will attain the better abode. The exposed children receive
like nursing and instruction, and grow to the condition
of the faithful here of the age of a hundred. On account
of the injustice done them they obtain mercy and salvation,
but only so far as freedom from punishment. I should infer
that the writer must have held the general necessity of bap-
tism in order to salvation, a special exception being made
in favour of these murdered infants, who, it may be remarked,
were presumably the children of heathens. The passage goes
on to tell that the bright shining of these children shall strike
like lightning the eyes of their unnatural mothers, from whose
unused milk shall be generated carnivorous little beasts
which shall devour them. I have quoted these puerilities at
length, because the passage furnishes proof that the Apoca-
lypse of Peter retained high consideration so late as the
beginning of the fourth century. Methodius [see p. 383) says :
— ' We have received in the divinely-inspired Scriptures, that
even those who are begotten in adultery are handed over to
angel nurses (rtj/isXouxotc a-y^ikoiq). For if they came into
* Lipsius, in his article Apocalypses, in Smith's Diet. Chr. Biog., states as on
the authority of Eusebius {H. E. vi. 14), that Clement reckoned this Apocalypse
among the ' antilegomena '. But it was Eusebius, not Clement, who so reckoned it.
What the passage referred to says is, that * Clement in his Hypotyposeis gave short
comments (SiTj^'^aets) on all the Canonical Scripture, not even omitting the disputed
books, viz. Jude and the other Catholic Epistles and the Epistle of Barnabas, and
what is called the Apocalypse of Peter '. With respect to Jude, see p. 475. Clement
repeatedly quotes the Epistle of Barnabas, and appears to have no doubt of its
apostolic origin ; and there is no reason to suppose that he thought less favourably of
the Apocalypse of Peter.
554 NON-CANONICAL BOOKS. [xxvi.
being in opposition to the will and decree of the blessed
nature of God,* how should they be delivered over to angels to
be nourished with much gentleness and indulgence r and how
could they boldly cite their own parents, before the judgment
seat of Christ, to accuse them, saying : — " Thou didst not,
O Lord, grudge us thy common light, but these exposed us for
death despising thy command " ? ' [Sympos. ii. 6). There can
be no doubt that what Methodius here cites as ' divinely-
inspired Scripture ' is taken from the passage of Peter's
Apocalypse that is quoted by Clement of Alexandria.
The other extant passage of this Apocalypse is pre-
served by Macarius Magnes (see p. 164). We can infer that
at the very end of the fourth century it had not quite lost
its consideration. The heathen objector, as if the book were
recognized by Christians as an authority, selects a saying
of it for attack — ' The earth shall present all to God in
the Day of Judgment, and itself shall then be judged
with the heaven that surrounds it.' Macarius, in reply,
remarks that it will not avail him to decline the authority
of that Apocalypse, the same doctrine being taught in Is.
xxxiv. 4, and Matt. xxiv. 35.
I quoted (p. 456) the formal judgment of Eusebius (ill. 25)
about this book. He places it with the Epistle of Barnabas,
and the Shepherd of Hermas in the second rank of disputed
books (which he calls v6%a)^ or books not canonical, but known
to most ecclesiastical writers, and which stand on a different
level from books of heretical origin (among which he names
the Gospel of Peter), which no ecclesiastical writer has deemed
it fit to make use of. In an earlier passage (ill. 3) Eusebius
has with less discrimination lumped together all the Apoc-
ryphal books ascribed to Peter (the Gospel of Peter, the Acts
of Peter, the Preaching of Peter, and the Revelation of Peter),
as not received among Catholics, no ecclesiastical writer
either of former days or his own having used testimonies
* The reader will note the Oeou (^vais (see p. 548).
t Many critics thinlc that Macarius has preserved portions of a lost heathen work
directed against Christianity : I now incline to the opinion that Macarius has exer-
cised his rhetorical skill in writing the objections as well as the answers, though no
doubt the objections were such as he had really encountered in controversy.
XXVI.] THE APOCALYPSE OF PETER. 555
from them. We have seen that the last sentence is too
strongly worded, as far as the Apocalypse of Peter is con-
cerned ; but there can be no doubt that Eusebius is, in the
main, right as to the weakness of external attestation for the
book. And that it had generally dropped out of Church
reading in his time may be inferred from his classing it not
with the minor Catholic Epistles, but with the Epistle of
Barnabas and the Shepherd of Hermas. But a hundred
years after the death of Eusebius its use was not absolutely
extinct; for Sozomen in speaking (Vli. ig) of singular local
usages in different churches tells that in his time this Apoca-
lypse, though regarded as spurious by the ancients, was still
annually read on Good Friday in some Churches of Palestine.
Its continuance for some time in Church use is also testified
by its being included in the Stichometry of Nicephorus {see p.
178), where it immediately follows the Revelation of St. John,
and in the list of the Codex Claromontanns {see p. 453). Both
these authorities agree in making the length of the book
something less than a quarter of that of the Apocalypse of
St. John, the number of oTt'xot being in the former list 1400
and 300, respectively ; in the latter 1200 and 270. It has even
been conjectured that this had originally formed part of the
Sinaitic MS., of which six leaves have been lost, coming be-
tween the Epistle of Barnabas and the Shepherd of Hermas.
These leaves, no doubt, contained one of the disputed books ;
and the Revelation of Peter is not too long to have been in-
cluded in them. But it is doubtful whether it was long
enough to fill the gap, and Mr. Rendel Harris {Johns Hopkins
University Circulars^ 1884, p. 54) has urged the preferable
claims of the Psalms of Solomon*, which originally followed
the Canonical books in the Alexandrian MS. Each page of
the Sinaitic ordinarily contains four columns ; but the poeti-
* As it does not fall within my plan to treat of Old Testament Apocrypha, I
content myself with mentioning that these Psalms are i8 in number, and were pro-
bably written about 50 years before Christ. The list of the contents of Codex A
shows that they formed part of that MS., following the Epistles of Clement ; but these
pages are now lost. These Psalms were edited from another MS. by Fabricius in his
Codex Pseudep. V. T., and more recently by YiS\.%&x\.i€idLm\n.% Messias Judceorum.
556 NON-CANONICAL BOOKS. [xxvi.
cal books of the Old Testament are written in arixoL, or verses
divided according to the sense, and with only two columns on
a page. Now, the Epistle of Barnabas ends on the third
column of a page, and the fourth is left blank, contrary to the
scribe's usual practice. This would be explained, if the book
which was immediately to follow was poetical, requiring two
columns on a page. Thus, the book of Malachi ends on the
third column of a page, and the fourth is left blank, because
the following book (the Psalms) is written cttixv^ov.
It is barely worth while to mention conjectural attempts
to discover traces of the influence of Peter's Apocalypse.
The extant fragments of the treatise on the universe, by
Hippolytus, contain a description of the unseen world and
the intermediate state, which Bunsen imagined to have been
derived from this source. With less probability, Hilgenfeld
claims for this Apocalypse a passage twice quoted by Hip-
polytus {De Antichrist., 15, 54) as a saying of a prophet, but
not found in our text of the Old Testament. It is not likely
that Peter would have been cited as 'the prophet', and, not
to quote other instances, we have seen (p. 459) that early
fathers sometimes read in their O. T. text passages not found
in ours. From the assumption, however, that 'the
prophet' means the 'Apocalypse of Peter', Hilgenfeld draws
a startling inference. He finds further on (c. 68) in the same
treatise of Hippolytus : ' The prophet says " Awake thou
that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give
thee light " ' ; and he concludes that the original of this
saying is also to be traced to Peter's Apocalypse, whence
it was borrowed by the author of the ' spurious ' Epistle to
the Ephesians ! Hilgenfeld's discussion is to be found in the
last fasciculus of his Nov. Test. ext. Can. recept., 2nd edition,
1884.
I will not speak at length of other Apocalypses, none of
In addition to the proof which the presence of these Psalms in Codex A affords that
they obtained some amount of circulation among Christians, may be mentioned that
they are included in the Stichometry of Nicephorus, and that they are made use of in
the Gnostic work Pistis Sophia. That work contains several Psalms, some of which
are adaptations of Psalms of David, others of these Psalms of Solomon.
XXVI.] THE EPISTLE OF BARNABAS. 557
which can be called really early. The most important is that
of Paul, whose account, 2 Cor. xii. 2-4, of the revelations with
which he had been favoured offered a temptation to a forger
to atone for the Apostle's silence on the subject. Accordingly
we hear from Epiphanius (xxxviii. 2) that the Gnostics
had an avajSariKov IlavXov, which professed to be a secret
record of the mysteries then revealed to the Apostle. All
trace of this book has been lost. That which has actually
come down to us as the ' Apocalypse of Paul ' is much later.
Sozomen, in a passage (vii. 19) already cited, tells that a work
thus inscribed was in much esteem among the monks, and he
reports that the book was said to have been found by divine
revelation in the reign of the then present emperor (Theodo-
sius the younger) buried in a marble box, under what had
been the house of Paul at Tarsus. Sozomen ascertained from
an aged presbyter at Tarsus that this story was not true.
The same Apocalypse is condemned by Augustine [zn Johan.
Evang. c. 16, tract. 98). It is to be found in Tischendorf's
Apocalypses Apocrypha. (1863), and more recently has been the
subject of an investigation by Brandes, Visio Pauli, 1855. I
content myself with mentioning that the appearance in the
book of an angel Temeluchus indicates that the author had
studied the Apocalypse of Peter.
The Epistle of Barnabas. — A second work included by
Eusebius in his list of disputed books bears the name of a
member of the Apostolic company, the Epistle of Barnabas.
It is found in the Sinaitic MS., beginning on the leaf
where the Revelation ends, and placed, together with the
Shepherd of Hermas, as a kind of appendix to the New Tes-
tament books. Its being found at all in a MS. intended for
Church use seems to indicate that it had at one time been
used in the public reading of the Church, while its position
at the end shows that at the time the MS. was written it stood
on a lower level than the Canonical writings. The same
thing may be inferred from its inclusion among the 'antile-
gomena ' in the Stichometry of Nicephorus, where it follows
the ' Revelation of Peter.' It is quoted several times by Cle-
^^8 NON-CANONICAL BOOKS. [xxvi.
ment of Alexandria,* who calls its author sometimes the
Apostle Barnabas, sometimes the Prophet Barnabas. Else-
where he states that he was one of the Seventy ; and one
passage is worth quoting as throwing light on the authority
which Clement ascribed to the Epistle. It is taken by Euse-
bius (ii. i) from the seventh book of the Hypotyposeis : — * Our
Lord after his Resurrection communicated the Gnosis to
James the Just, John, and Peter : these communicated it to
the other Apostles, and the other Apostles to the Seventy,
of whom Barnabas also was one.' Accordingly, Clement
would regard the 'Gnosis', of which the Epistle under con-
sideration is full, as really a divine tradition, though only
reported second-hand. Origen also appeals to the * Catholic
Epistle of Barnabas' {Adv. Cels. i. 63), and cites it as Scrip-
ture [Comm. in Rom. i. 24). These two Alexandrian witnesses
make up nearly the whole of the testimony favourable to the
Epistle. If it were not for the existence of an early Latin
translation, we might even doubt whether it was known at
all in the West before the fourth century. One coincidence
with Justin and Irenaeus has been mentioned (p. 518); but
in another place that admits of comparison, an allegorical
interpretation of the law concerning clean and unclean ani-
mals, Irenasus (v. 8) seems to be quite independent of Bar-
nabas (10). TertuUian {Adv. Marc. iii. 7) appears to be
clearly indebted to Barnabas (7) in describing the scapegoat
as pierced and spit upon ; yet if he knew our Epistle as that
of Barnabas, it seems strange that he should ascribe the
same authorship to the Epistle to the Hebrews. Jerome
* Lightfoot says {Clement, p. 12), 'Clement of Alexandria cites the "Apostle
Clement" as he cites the "Apostle Barnabas", one of whose interpretations he never-
theless criticises and condemns with a freedom which he would not have allowed him-
self in dealing with writings regarded by him as canonical.' I do not think that the
passage referred to [Strotn. ii. 15) quite warrants the inference drawn from it ; and
the phrase, ' criticises and condemns ' is certainly too strong. Clement is engaged
in showing that all sins are not equal, and he quotes, apparently with approbation,
an exposition by Barnabas of the three classes of sinners referred to in Ps. i. i. It is
scarcely a ' condemnation ' of Barnabas that he goes on to mention alternative, or
even preferable, ways of making out the three classes. It is more to the purpose that
Clement {Paed. ii. 10) corrects the natural history of Barnabas, but without mention
of him by name.
XXVI.] THE EPISTLE OF BARNABAS. ^^g
(De Vir. Illust. 6; see also Comm. in Ezek. xliii. i6) makes
no doubt that the author of the Epistle was the Barnabas
of the New Testament, but says that the Epistle is counted
among apocryphal Scriptures. Elsewhere [Dial. Cont. Pelag.
iii. 2) he quotes from the Epistle a saying which had been
previously quoted by Origen {Adv. Cels. i. 63) ; but he at-
tributes it to Ignatius, probably through lapse of memory.
Turning to the internal evidence we find the contents of
the book such as certainly would not make us wish to include
it in our Canon of Scripture. To cite one oft-quoted pas-
sage, Barnabas misquotes the book of Genesis [see Gen. xiv.
14 ; xvii. 27), as recording that Abraham circumcised 318 of
his household, a number expressed in Greek by the letters
TIT]. It does not appear whether Barnabas called to mind
that the book had been written not in Greek but in Hebrew.
At all events he expounds that ir{ denote Jesus, and / the
cross ; and he is so satisfied with his exposition that he adds,
* No one has received a more genuine word from me than
this ; but I know that ye are worthy.'* He goes on to ex-
plain the meaning of the prohibitions against eating the flesh
of the animals counted as unclean, of all of which he gives
spiritual explanations, in which the natural history is quite
as curious as the theology. These spiritual explanations
constitute the ' Gnosis ' which, in the mind of this author,
gives him his chief claim on his reader's attention. One
example will suffice. The prohibition to eat the hyena
means that we are to avoid adultery and other such sins ; for
* Many of the fathers have thought this exposition worth copying, e.g. Clem.
Alex., Strom, vi. it, p. 782; Ambrose, De Abraha, i. 15 ; Prudentius, Psychom, 57 ;
and even in our own times it has found a defender. Keble {Tracts for the Times, 89)
says : ' In whatever measure the fact is made out, that the received Greek version of
the Scriptures was under a peculiar providence, in the same degree it is rendered not
improbable, that even in such an apparently casual thing as the number of Abraham's
servants, there was an eye to the benefit and consolation which the Church should
long after receive, on recognizing, as it were, her Saviour's cypher, in the account of
the one holy family triumphantly wrestling against the powers of the world.' The
Valentinians, whether deriving their method from Barnabas, or discovering it inde-
pendently, found their 18 Aeons in the first two letters of the Saviour's name.
(Irenaeus I. iii. 2.)
^60 NON-CANONICAL BOOKS. [xxvi.
this beast changes its sex each year, being one year male,
the next female. I remember that when I was a young
student myself I heard some of these passages quoted in a
sermon in our chapel by one whose memory we still hold in
honour. The preacher's view was that the Epistle was a
genuine work of the Apostle Barnabas, and he produced the
passages in order to show what rubbish an Apostle was
capable of writing when he was not inspired. He thought
thereby to exalt the authority of the inspired Scriptures as
being sui generis , and unlike not only the writings of other
men, but the writings of the same men when not inspired.
His object was to establish the supreme authority of Scripture,
but in real truth he did just the reverse. For according to
this view the authority of Scripture must yield to whatever
authority it is that settles which of the Apostolic writings
are inspired, and which not. I own I know no proof that
the Apostles were inspired in a different way when they
were writing and when they were speaking ; and in a
different way when they were writing some books and when
they were writing others. And as I have said, if this view
be correct, the supreme authority in the Church is that
which brings Apostles to its bar, tests their writings, and
assigns to some the attribute of inspiration which it denies
to others. But what that authority is I don't know. I know
that the general sense of the Christian Church has refused
to put the Epistle of Barnabas on a level with those of
St. Paul ; but if you ask by what tribunal, or by what
formal act this conclusion has been arrived at, I should be
as much puzzled as if you asked me by what tribunal it has
been decided that Shakespeare is a greater poet than Beau-
mont and Fletcher. Without saying anything about the
Church's claim to expect Divine guidance, we can hardly
refuse to yield at least as much deference to her decisions
as we pay to received opinion in matters of taste. And
so, no matter who wrote the Epistle we are considering,
we shall not accept it as inspired. But if we believe the
Apostle Barnabas to have been the author, since he was a
man who in his lifetime had claims, like those of St. Paul,
XXVI.] THE EPISTLE OF BARNABAS. 561
to be God's inspired messenger, we require a theory to explain
the grounds on which we are to maintain tliat the writings of
one are more above ou criticism than those of the other.*
It is perhaps not preparing you to judge with quite un-
biased minds of the question of the autliotship of the Epistle
that I have allowed you to see what consequences are likely
to follow if the apostolic authority be conceded. But judges
who are above being prejudiced by considerations of this
sort, and who would have no difficulty in believing Apostles
to have been guilty of any amount of error, have pretty
unanimously decided that the Epistle was written at a later
time than Barnabas is likely to have lived to, and that the
author is a different manner of man from what the historical
Barnabas is described as having been. The main argument
is derived from the whole attitude of the writer towards Ju-
daism. The historical Barnabas was a Levite, and was trusted
by the Jerusalem Church, to whom he introduced Paul. In
his only difference with St. Paul on the subject of Judaism
he erred by too great concessions to the Jewish party. Now
the writer of the Epistle does not show that acquaintance
with Jewish rites which the Levite Barnabas must have had.
I exemplified to you, in the case of the number 318, that he
does not quote the Old Testament accurately. In fact gross
inaccuracy is the rule with him ; and in his account of Jewish
rites (and on the symbolizing of Christ by these rites he
builds many arguments) he deviates widely from the Old
Testament. Nor can we have recourse to the supposition
that the rites traditionally practised in Jerusalem at that time
differed from those prescribed in the Old Testament ; for the
Talmud, which may be supposed to have preserved Jewish
traditions, gives the so-called Barnabas as little countenance
as the Old Testament does.
But more remarkable even than his inaccuracy in speak-
ing of Jewish institutions is his total want of respect for them.
He does not look on the performance of the Jewish rites as
* Westcott, for example, holds (iV. T. Canon, p. 41) that Barnabas can in no case
be ranked with the Twelve, or St. Paul, not having rLceived his Apostolate directly
from our Lord, as they did,
20
^52 NON-CANONICAL BOOKS. [xxvi.
introductory and preparatory for Christ, but as a gross sin —
a misconception of the true meaning of the law. He has a
spiritual exposition for the Mosaic precepts, and he holds that
the Jews, by taking them literally, excluded themselves from
God's covenant. He even represents the Jews as deceived by
an evil angel. Paul forbade the Gentiles to be circumcised ;
but, in Acts xxi., the statement is repelled as a calumny
that he taught the Jews to forsake Moses, and not to circum-
cise their children nor walk after the customs. This writer,
under the name of Barnabas, would seem to condemn the
Jews for having observed such customs even before our Lord's
coming. And his whole tone of feeling towards the Jewish
nation is such, that when I balance the probabilities that a
born Gentile should acquire as much knowledge of the Old
Testament as this writer displays, or that a born Jew should
come to feel towards his own nation so completely as an out-
sider, I prefer to embrace the former probability.*
A less formidable difficulty in the way of ascribing the
authorship to the Apostle Barnabas arises from the date of the
Epistle. There is a range of some forty or fifty years within
which the date may lie ; but it is certain [ch. 16) that it is later
than the destruction of Jerusalem. Now (see p. 446), we should
not expect to find the Apostle Barnabas in activity so late ; and
tlie silence of Paul's later Epistles about him might lead us to
think he had died before Paul. But this is only a presump-
tion which must yield to any good evidence on the other side;
and Paul's silence would be accounted for if Barnabas had
gone off to work in a completely different sphere — for ex-
ample, Egypt. A limit in the other direction to the date of
the Epistle is furnished by its complete silence as to any of
the Gnostic theories which caused so much controversy in the
Church quite early in the second century. The anti- Judaism
of the Epistle might make us think of Marcion ; but the
Epistle is distinctly pre-Marcionite, there being not the least
* It is worth while, in this point of view, to compare this Epistle with the Gospel
according to St. John, which has been characterized by some critics as ' anti-Jewish '
{see pp. 23, 270), but which will be seen to be intensely Jewish as compared with
Barnabas.
I
XXVI.] THE EPISTLE OF BARNABAS. 563
trace of any of the notions peculiar to that heretic* On these
grounds the Epistle cannot be dated later than A.D. 120.
There are two passages which have been used to determine
more precisely the date of the Epistle. In ch. 4, in proof that
the last days are at hand, he quotes Daniel's prophecies (vii.
8, 24) of ten kings, and of one king overthrowing three others.
He does not enter into the question how the ten kings were
to be made out, but merely remarks, ' ye ought therefore to
understand '. The brevity of this comment indicates that
Barnabas found the fulfilment of the prophecy in some
patent fact, and not in one requiring historical or chrono-
logical studies to discover it. I therefore know no explana-
tion of his words so natural as that the Epistle was written
in the reign of Vespasian. It is true that a historical
student might discover that, counting Julius Caesar, Ves-
pasian was only the tenth emperor, while Daniel's words
would lead us to think of his 'little horn' as representing
an eleventh king ; but Barnabas is one of the last writers
from whom minute accuracy of interpretation need be ex-
pected. If he lived in the reign of Vespasian, the rapid
overthrow in succession of three emperors, Galba, Otho,
and Vitellius, might naturally make him think that he
was witnessing a fulfilment of Daniel's prophecy of one
king subduing three. I know no other time when his lan-
guage would be natural. On this account, though som^e
other considerations would induce me to push down the
date of the Epistle to the second century, I find it hard to
resist the inference that we must ascribe it to the reign of
Vespasian, A.D. 70-79. In the other passage (16) he quotes
the prophecy 'They that destroyed this temple shall them-
selves build it up again ',t and adds, * and so it comes to
pass. Through their making war it was destroyed by their
* With regard to the suggestion, thrown out p. 437, that this may be the Epistle
to the Alexandrians rejected, on account of its Marcionite tendencies, in the Muratorian
Fragment, it must be borne in mind that even if our Epistle was really addressed
to the Alexandrians, there is no evidence that it ever bore that title ; and that it is
even doubtful whether it was known in the West at the date of that Fragment.
t A free quotation from Isaiah xlix. 17 (lxx.) : ra^^ olKo5ofA.r]di}(rri u<p' wv Kadripedrjs
Kal ol ipT]ix<iiaavT4s ere e^iXtvaovrai e'jc aov.
2 0 2
^64 NON-CANONICAL BOOKS. [xxvi.
enemies, and now both they and the servants of their enemies
shall build it up again.' It has been supposed that this
refers to some attempts to rebuild the Temple in the reign of
Hadrian ; but I find no evidence of anything of the kind to
give a probable explanation of the language of Barnabas ;
and it seems to me plain from the rest of the chapter that it
is in the building up of a spiritual temple that he finds the ful-
filment of the prophecy. The argument, therefore, for the earlier
date, drawn from the former passage, remains undisturbed.
There is nothing in the letter itself to determine the place
to which it was addressed; but since it is from Alexandria we
first hear of it, it seems probable enough that it was sent to
that city. Alexandria contained a large Jewish population,
and thus the conflict with Judaism would there occupy much
of Christian attention. Possibly, too, some Jewish rites may
have been different in Egypt and in Palestine. The name
Barnabas, found in the title of the letter, does not appear in
the letter itself. All that we discover from it is that it was
written by a Christian teacher, to a Church in which he had
himself laboured, and to which he was accordingly well known.
We are not forced to suppose that it was written from a dis-
tance : the author may have merely wished to leave his
people a written record of his teaching. If the author was
not the Apostle Barnabas — and I find it hard to believe he
was — the question will be asked how the letter came to bear
his name. The best conjecture I can make, setting aside the
guess that the author's name may really have been Barnabas,
is that the Church of Alexandria was founded, if not by Bar-
nabas himself, by men of Cyprus, who owed their knowledge
of the Gospel to him, and that so his name came to be
attached to a venerable record of early teaching preserved in
that Church.
The Epistle of Clement. This venerable document has
clearly a right to be next considered. It is true that although
Kusebius calls the Epistle /jeyaArj, Oavjiiaaia, afw/xoAoyjj/jfvrj Trapa
wcKTiv (ill. 1 6, 37), he does not include it in his list of ecclesias-
tical books (see p. 456) ; and even if the omission arose from
XXVI.] THE EPISTLE OF CLEMENT. 565
inadvertence, the possibility that the book could be forgotten
shows that it had no serious pretensions to canonical authority
when Eusebius wrote. But it had evidently made a profound
impression on the earlier Church, It was written in the
name of the Church of Rome* to the Church of Corinth, and
was intended to appease a sedition in the latter Church,
ending in the unwarrantable deposition of some presbyters
from their office. The letter, which is framed on the model
of the Apostolic Epistles, is mainly taken up with enforcing
the duties of meekness, humility, and submission to lawful
authority. The reception it met with in the Church to which
it was addressed is evidenced by a letter written about A, D.
170, by Dionysius, then bishop of Corinth, to Soter, bishop
of Rome, to acknowledge a gift of money which the Roman
Church had sent, exercising their ' hereditary custom ' of
liberality. Dionysius states that the letter accompanying
this gift had been read at their meeting on the Lord's Day,
and would continue to be so read for their edification, as also
the former letter of the Roman Church, written by Clement
(Euseb. iv. 23). The public reading of Clement's letter spread
to other Churches; and Eusebius (iii. 16) says that he knew of
the practice existing in very many Churches, both formerly
* Not in the name of Clement, which is not once mentioned, and which we only
learn to connect with the Epistle by independent tradition. In fact, it is remarkable
how all through the first two centuries the importance of the bishop of Rome is
merged in the importance of his Church. In the subsequent correspondence men-
tioned above, Dionysius of Corinth writes to the Church of Rome, not to Soter, its
bishop. Ignatius, when on his way to suffer at the wild-beast shows at Rome, writes
to deprecate intercession likely to be there made for his release ; and he addresses the
Church, not the bishop. And it is curious, that from this writer, who is accounted
the strongest witness for Episcopacy in early times, we could not discover that there
was any bishop at Rome. No mention is made of the bishop of Rome in the Shep-
herd of Hermas. And in the account which Epiphanius, evidently drawing from an
older writer, gives of the intercourse of Marcion with the Church of Rome {Haer.
42), the dealings of Marcion are represented as being entirely with the Roman pres-
byters ; and it may be doubted whether Epiphanius found in his authority the solution
which he suggests, that at the time the see was vacant. At the very end of the cen-
tury, when Victor attempted to enforce uniformity of Easter observance, it was still
in the name of his Church that he wrote, asking that provincial councils should be
assembled in order to report on the matter. This is evidenced by the plural rt^iuffare
in the reply of Polycrates (Euseb. v. 24).
566 NON-CANONICAL BOOKS. [xxvi.
and in his own time {see also Jerome, Vtr. III. 15, Photius,
Cod. 1 13). With this agrees the fact that it is found (together
with a second Epistle) in the Alexandrian MS. of the New
Testament, but coming as a kind of appendix after the
Apocalypse. The scribe, however, has included it among
New Testament books in his table of contents ; and in a
Syriac version, to be mentioned presently, it is even joined to
the Catholic Epistles. On the other hand, in the list of
Nicephorus it is not even placed with the ' antilegomena ' in
company with the Apocalypse of Peter and the Epistle of
Barnabas, but among the 'Apocrypha,' with the Acts of Peter,
John, and Thomas. It seems to have been scarcely known
to the Western Church, and there is no evidence of any early
translation into Latin. The second-century attestation to the
Epistle is copious. It is clearly referred to by Hermas in a
passage which will come under consideration in the next
section; it is recognized by Hegesippus (Euseb. iii. 16, iv. 22),
who speaks of it in connexion with his visit to Corinth, and
probably found it in use there ; it is cited by Irenaeus (iii. 3),
and several times by Clement of Alexandria, who once
[Strovi. iv. 1 7, p. 609) gives Clement the title of Apostle, and
another time (vi. 8, p. 272} cites by mistake a passage of
Clement as from the prophet Barnabas. Probably Clement
found the two Epistles of Clement and Barnabas together,
appended to his ' Apostolus ', or collection of Apostolic letters.
But the impression made by Clement's revival of the Apostolic
method of teaching distant Churches is testified even more
strongly by the indirect evidence of the use made of his
letter. It is a matter of dispute whether certain coincidences
in the Epistles of Ignatius are sufficient to prove acquaintance
with Clement's letter, but there can be no doubt as to the
constant employment of it in the Epistle of Polycarp. The
beginning and ending of the letter of the Church of Smyrna,
relating to the martyrdom of Polycarp, are both fashioned
after the pattern of Clement's Epistle ; and his form of ad-
dress, ' the Church sojotirning in Rome {TtapoiKovaa 'Pw/urjv) to
the Church sojourning in Corinth ', became an established
formula, which was adopted in the letters of Dionysius of
XXVI.] THE EPISTLE OF CLEMENT. 567
Corinth (Euseb. iv. 23), and of the Churches of Vienne and
Lyons (v. i). And further evidence is furnished by the
legendary stories, having Clement for a leading personage,
which gained so much circulation by the end of the second
century, or the beginning of the third. There can be no doubt
that it was the celebrity which his widely-circulated Epistle
had given to the name of Clement which recommended that
name to the inventors of these legends.
The letter begins by explaining that it would have been
written earlier if it had not been for repeated calamities in
which the Church of Rome had been involved. It used to be
supposed that the persecution under Nero was here referred
to, but the best critics are now agreed that all the notes of
time in the letter oblige us rather to refer it to the reign of
Domitian,* during which the Roman Church had to suffer a
severe trial of persecution. The date would thus be about
A. D. 96. This date well agrees with the statement of Irenaeus
(iii. 3), probably derived by him from Hegesippus, that the
Apostles Peter and Paul, having founded the Church of
Rome, committed the government of it to the Linus who is
mentioned in the Epistle to Timothy; that to Linus succeeded
Anencletus, and to Anencletus Clement. Thus Clement is
separated by two Episcopates from the time of the Apostles.
This corresponds very well with the interval between the
reigns of Nero and Domitian, but cannot be reconciled with
the fiction which made Peter first bishop of Rome, and
Clement his immediate successor. When this fiction came
to be accepted as historical truth it was attempted to mend
the chronology by a theory that Linus only held office as
Peter's deputy, and dying during that Apostle's lifetime, was
succeeded by Clement ; Anencletus, who has left no mark on
history, being degraded to the third place. But there is every
* This date has the authority of Eusebius (iii. 16), and, apparently, also the
earlier authority of Hegesippus. "What Eusebius says is, that in the twelfth year of
Domitian Clement succeeded to the bishopric of Rome ; that he was the author of
an admirable Epistle still extant, written in the name of the Church of Rome to the
Church of Corinth, to appease a sedition in the latter Church ; and that Hegesippus
testifies that the sedition took place in the time of the afore-mentioned.
568 NON-CANONICAL BOOKS. [xxvi.
reason for adhering to the account of our oldest witness,
Irenseus. The names Linus, Cletus, Clement, have from the
earliest times been commemorated in that order in the Roman
Liturgy. What inducement could there have been for thrust-
ing the unknown name of Cletus before that of Clement,
unless it had a chronological title to precedence? If we
have found reason to think that Clement belongs to the reign
of Domitian, we cannot attach much value to a guess of
Origen's {In Joliann. i. 29), that he was the same as the
Clement mentioned by Paul (Phil. iv. 3). The name is far
too common a one to allow of our disregarding the difiiculties
of place and time which stand in the way of an identification.
In modern times it has been imagined that Episcopacy
had not arisen before the end of the first century, and that
Linus, Cletus, Clement, were but the names of leading pres-
byters. But if so, we may ask, how came it that the letter of
the Roman Church should be universally known as the letter
of Clement, whose name is not once mentioned in it ? I know
no good explanation of this but the old one, that this was
because Clement was generally known to be at the head of
the Roman Church at the time the letter was written. We
are not to suppose, however, that the name bishop was then
distinctively used to denote the head of the Church, nor are
we bound to think that the line of separation between him
and other presbyters was as marked as it became in later
times. The words bishop and presbyter are used inter-
changeably by Clement, as in Paul's Pastoral Epistles, It
has been thought, however, that although Clement's letter ex-
hibits the prominence of a single person as chief in the Church
(A Rome, it affords evidence that there was no such promi-
nence in the Church of Corinth, whose bishop is not mentioned
in the Epistle. But this inference is not warranted; for it is
plain from the letter itself that if Corinth had ever had a
bishop, he was out of office at the time the letter was written.
The letter was occasioned by the deposition of certain ' presby-
ters'; and it has been just said that Clement would use the name
'presbyter' in speaking of what we now call the 'bishop'.
Now, it is to be observed that the state of things at Corinth
XXVI.] THE EPISTLE OF CLEMENT. 569
is not adequately described by such phrases as ' schism ',
* feuds', 'dissensions '. Clement calls it [ch. i) an ' abominable
and impious sedition ' (fxtapag koi avocrtov oracTEwc], which he
compares {c/t. 4) to the sedition which Dathan and Abiram
made against Moses.* Accordingly he does not attempt to
heal the Corinthian schism by exhortations to mutual con-
cessions ; but he rebukes those whom he addresses, and
exhorts them to unequivocal submission to the authority
which they had resisted. He tells them of the necessity of
order in things temporal and in things spiritual ; he tells
them that those whom they had deposed held an office insti-
tuted by, and handed down from, the Apostles themselves.
And he says : ' It is shameful, dearly beloved ; yes, utterly
shameful and unworthy of your conduct in Christ that it
should be reported that the very steadfast and ancient Church
of Corinth, for the sake of one or two persons, maketh sedition
against its presbyters.' ' Ye, therefore, that laid the founda-
tion of the sedition submit yourselves unto the presbyters,
and receive chastisement unto repentance, bending the kneest
of your heart.' The letter throws no light on the question
whether the presbyters deposed were all equal in rank, or
whether one was superior to the rest.
It bears on the question of Roman supremacy that we
should understand the amount of disorder in Corinth. If
there had been merely a schism there, we might wonder
that Rome should undertake to arbitrate between rival
claimants to office in a distant city. But if it be under-
stood that the Corinthian Church had distinctly violated
what was elsewhere recognized as Apostolic order, the
letter ceases to give evidence of Roman supremacy, for the
enormity of the offence would give to a distant Church
* I make a suggestion in the next section as to the possible origin of the sedition.
t The phrase is taken from the Prayer of Manasses, and seems to afford the
earUest instance of its use. This document, which is included among the Apocryphal
Books of the Authorized Version, was not admitted into the Canon by the Council
of Trent. But there is some evidence of early Church use of it. It is found in the
Alexandrian MS., in the collection of hymns appended to the Psalter. It had been used
by Julius Africanus (fr. 40, Routh. Rell. Sac. ii. 288), and it was copied into the
Apostolic Constitutions, ii. 22.
570 NON-CANONICAL BOOKS. [xxvi.
the right of expostulation. Clement's language: 'If certain
persons should be disobedient unto the words spoken by
Him through us, let them understand that they will entangle
themselves in no slight transgression and danger; but we
shall be guiltless of this sin', does not appear to me to indi-
cate any official superiority of his Church, but only to be such
as any Christian preacher might use in rebuking known sin.
No Church was better entitled to use expostulation with
another than the Church of Rome, which exercised liberality
towards the rest, not only in hospitable treatment of the
strangers whom business was continually drawing to the
great capital, but also, as we have just seen, in direct gifts
to foreign Churches. But, no doubt, this early example of
successful interference must have done much to increase the
prestige of the Church by whose exertions peace had been
restored.
In Clement's Epistle such copious use is made of the Old
Testament, that it may be probably inferred that the author
was a Jew by birth, familiar with the book from childhood.
In citing it the ordinary formulae of Scripture quotation are
used; but the books of the New Testament are treated
differently. Clement shows his acquaintance with them by
weaving their language into his discourse ; but he does not
formally quote them as authoritative Scripture, except that he
uses in this way sayings of our Lord, which, however, would
seem in his use of them to derive their authority from having
been spoken by Him, rather than from the book in which
they were recorded.
Until lately Clement's Epistle had been only preserved in
one MS. (viz., as already stated, the Alexandrian MS. of the
New Testament): and there not complete, for a leaf of this
part of the MS. had been lost. But a few years ago notice was
taken that a manuscript book in a library at Constantinople
contained, among other early writings, a copy of Clement's
Epistles. Its text was made known to scholars in 1875, in an
admirable edition of Clement, published by Bryennius, metro-
politan then of Serrae, now of Nicomedia, a prelate whose
learning does honour to the Church to which he belongs. And,
XXVI.] THE SHEPHERD OF HERMAS. 571
strange to say, almost about the same time a third authority
for the text was recovered in a Syriac version, contained in a
Syriac N. T. acquired by the University of Cambridge. In
this MS. Clement's Epistles regularly take the place of New-
Testament books, coming as part of the Catholic Epistles,
after Jude, and before the Pauline Epistles, and even furnish-
ing lessons for Church reading.
Although I professed to treat of the Epistle of Clement, I
have just used the plural number, ' Epistles ', for our MS. au-
thorities give us two Epistles ascribed to Clement. Eusebius,
who usually speaks of Clement's Epistle in the singular num-
ber, mentions (ill. 38) that there was a second Epistle which
bore Clement's name, but that it had not as much circulation
as the former, and that it had not been quoted by the ancients.
And internal evidence shows that the second, though an
early document, is later, by at least a generation, than
Clement's genuine Epistle. Indeed, now that we have the
document complete (for the mutilation of the Alexandrian
MS. had until lately deprived us of the conclusion), we learn
that it is not an Epistle at all, but a written homily, intended
to be publicly read in Church. The writer is distinctly a
Gentile, and contrasts himself and his readers with the Jewish
nation in a manner unlike the genuine Clement. And instead
of confining his quotations to the Old Testament, he has
many citations from the Gospels, giving in one place the
name Scripture to the source of his quotation. He used
Apocryphal Gospels besides : one of his quotations we can
trace to the Gospel according to the Egyptians. Yet he
appears to have written before the great conflict with Gnos-
ticism began, so that we may confidently ascribe the document
to the first half of the second century.
The '■Shepherd' of Hennas. — Returning now toEusebius's
list of disputed books, I come to treat of the 'Shepherd' of
Hermas. The passage quoted from the Muratorian Frag-
ment (p. 49) testifies the high consideration in which the
book was then held. Although the writer refuses to the
* Shepherd ' a place in public Church reading, he lays down
572 NON-CANONICAL BOOKS. [xxvi.
that it not only mighty but ought to be read in private, and his
language plainly indicates that, in some places at least, the
Church use of the book had been such as to cause danger of
its being set on a level with the Canonical Scriptures.
Irenaeus (iv. 20) actually quotes a passage from the book,
with the words, 'Well said the Scripture'. Clement of
Alexandria quotes the book several times, and to all ap-
pearance fully accepts the reality and divine character of
the revelations which it contains. Origen, commenting on
Rom. xvi. 14, says, 'I think that this Hermas is the author
of the book which is called the ' Shepherd', a writing which
seems to me very useful, and, as I think, divinely inspired.'
But his references to the book elsewhere clearly indicate that
it did not then stand on the level of the Canonical Scriptures ;
and he several times owns that it was not received by all.*
In fact, the rise of Montanism made the Church much more
cautious in the use of non-Canonical writings. It was felt
that the prerogatives of Scripture were infringed on, when
the utterances of modern prophets were circulated as having
like claims on the acceptance of Christians. An opponent of
the Montanists (Euseb. v. 16) declares that he had abstained
from writing against them, lest he should seem to desire to
add anything to the word of the Gospel of the New Testa-
ment, to which no one who is resolved to walk according to
the Gospel can add anything, and from which he cannot take
away. This state of feeling led to a severer scrutiny of the
claims of books which had been admitted into public Church
use ; and it is intelligible why the Muratorian writer should
deprecate the Church use of a book which he believed to be
not more ancient than the Episcopate of Pius. The change
of feeling as to Hermas took place in the lifetime of Tertullian.
In an early treatise [De Oratione) he disputes against certain
persons who thought themselves bound to sit down at once after
prayer, because Hermas is recorded to have done so. The
book must evidently have enjoyed high authority when its
narrative statements could thus be turned into rules of dis-
* eV T^ \)'k6 Tivcuy KaTa(ppopov/nfvcf> fiifiKioj rt^ Xloiixivi (De Pritic. IV. II).
XXVI.] THE SHEPHERD OF HERMAS. 573
cipline. Tertullian, in reply, says nothing to disparage the
authority of the book, but only contends that such an inference
from it is not warranted. That the book then existed in a
Latin translation may be inferred from Tertullian's describing
it by its Latin name, Pastor, contrary to his practice in
speaking of books which he knew only in Greek. In a work
written several years later, and after the rise of Montanism
[De Pudic. 10), Tertullian contemptuously repudiates the
authority of the ' Shepherd ', declaring that it was not counted
worthy of being included in the Canon, but had been placed
by every council of Churches, even of the Catholic party,
among false and apocryphal writings.* But that the book
still continued to enjoy some consideration appears from
Tertullian's going on to speak (c. 20) of the Epistle to the
Hebrews as more received in the Churches than ' that apocry-
phal " Shepherd " of the adulterers '. It is worth while to copy
what Eusebius says of the book (iii. 3) : * It is to be observed
that this book has been disputed by some, on whose account
it cannot be placed among the homologoumena ; but by others
it has been judged most necessary for those who have
especial need of elementary instruction. Hence, also, we
know that it has been publicly read in Churches, and I ob-
serve that some of the most ancient writers have employed
it.'t With regard to what is here said about introductory in-
struction, it is to be remarked that the feeling grew up that the
books of Scripture were the property of the Church, and there-
fore could not so fitly be used in teaching those who had not yet
been admitted to it. And so Athanasius [Ep. Fest. 39) classes
the ' Shepherd ', with the teaching of the Twelve Apostles
and with some of the deutero-canonical books of the Old Tes-
tament, as not canonical, but useful to be employed in cateche-
* ' Si non ab omni concilio ecclesiarum etiam vestrarum inter apocrypha et falsa
judicaretur.' We can infer from the 'vestrarum ' that the councils which condemned
the Shepherd were later than the time of separation of Tertullian from the Church.
t 'itrTeoc ois koX tovto Trphs fiev Tivaiv avTi\4\eKTai, 5i ovs oiiK h.v eV 6/io\oyov/ji.evoLS
Tedeiri, v(p' erfpcev 5e avayKaiSrarov oTs fidAicrra Sel (XTOiXeicicrecas ei(rayoii'ytK7Js KeKpirat,
tideu -^Sr) Koi 4v iKKArjaiais ta/jnv avrh SeSrifiocrievfj.ei'ou, koI tuv iraAaioTaToi;/ 8e ffvyypa-
<piMv Ke^prifxivovi Tiuas avT^ KaTeiXrjcpa.
274 NON-CANONICAL BOOKS. [xxvi.
tical instruction * The ' Shepherd' forms part of the appen-
dix to the Sinaitic MS. ; it is also included in the list of the
Codex Claromonianus, and some twenty Latin MSS. survive to
attest that it had some circulation in the West.
The book, the history of whose reception I have sketched,
consists of three parts. The first part, called Visions, relates
different revelations with which the author had been favoured,
stating particularly the occasion and place of receiving each
vision. The scene of each of these visions is laid in Rome or
its neighbourhood, so that the document clearly belongs to
the Roman Church. This part concludes with a narration of
the vision which gives the name to the book. A man comes to
Hermas in the garb of a shepherd, and tells him that he is the
angel of repentance, and that he has come to dwell with him,
being the guardian to whose care he has been intrusted.
This 'Shepherd' then gives him, for his own instruction and
that of the Church, the 'Commandments', which form the
second, and the ' Similitudes ', which form the third part of the
work. With regard to the general purport of these revela-
tions, it will suffice here to state briefly that they are intended
to rebuke the worldliness with which the Church had become
corrupted ; to predict a time of great tribulation as at hand,
in which the dross should be cleared away, and to announce
that there was a short intervening time during which repent-
ance was possible, and would be accepted. The question as
to the possibility of forgiveness of post-baptismal gross sin
was then agitating the Church. The solution which Hermas
offers is, that during that short respite the then members of
the Church might obtain forgiveness. But only once : for
this was an exceptional favour, and those who joined the
* Having enumerated the books of Scripture, and declared these to be the only
fountains of salvation, to which none may add nor take away, he goes on to add, ' for
greater accuracy ', 8tj iaTi /col eVepa ^L^Xia rovraiv t^aidtv, ov Kavovi^6fieva fiey,
■TirvTTwixtva 5e irapa raiv TlaTepuv avayiPtiiTKecrdai ro7s &pTi Trpo(Xfpxo/j.eyois Kal
Pov\ofievois KaTr)x^^<^&^^ t^v rrjs evffe^eias \6yov ^o(pia ^oAofxHvTos Kal 2o(pia 2ipax,
Kal ''EffOrjp, Kal 'lovSlO, Kal Tco^ias, Kal AtSaxh KaXovfjiffr] rwv 'f^iroffT6\iiiv, Kal 6 noifii)!/.
And he proceeds to distinguish the two classes of books which he has enumerated
from apocryphal books, which are only the invention of heretics.
XXVI.] THE SHEPHERD OF HERMAS. 575
Church afterwards must expect no other forgiveness than that
which they obtained in baptism.
Concerning the date of the * Shepherd,' received opinion
still accepts the statement of the Muratorian Fragment, that
the author was brother to Pius, bishop of Rome, and wrote
during his Episcopate : that is to say about the middle of the
second century. I have said (p. 51), that I myself believe that
statement to be erroneous ; but, before discussing this point,
it will be convenient to say something on some preliminary
questions about which there is less room for dispute. If you
consider these questions in order, you will be able to judge
how far you can travel in my company.*
(1.) Did the author wish his readers to believe that he had
actually seen the visions, and received the revelations which
he relates } Donaldson {Apostolic Fathers, p. 326) thinks that
if Hermas fancied he saw the visions he must have been
silly, and if he tried to make other people believe he had
seen them, he must have been an impostor. He prefers to
think he was neither one nor other; and therefore he looks
on the book as belonging to the same class as Bunyan's
Ptlgrtm's Progress, in which edifying lessons are conveyed
through the medium of allegorical fiction, which no one is
supposed to take as a record of actual facts. It is to me
amazing that anyone with ordinary powers of literary per-
ception could read the book of Hermas, and doubt that the
author, impostor or not, intended his readers to take him
seriously. The judgment I have quoted illustrates what I
said (p. 319-320), that a man incapacitates himself for his-
* The early date of Hermas was in recent times first seiiously maintained by Zahn
(^Der Hirt des Hermas, 1868). Zahn is an authority whom it may not be safe always
implicitly to follow, but who, at least, cannot be treated with disrespect. When he
came forward to maintain the genuineness of the Ignatian letters he was regarded by
many as the advocate of a hopeless cause ; but Bishop Lightfoot's great work attests
that he has won the verdict. I think he would have been more successful in gaining
adherents in the present case, if the author with whom he deals were more generally
read ; for it appears to me that many scholars simply hold fast to the traditional
opinion about a not very interesting book which they do not care to study for them-
selves. My own opinion was formed as the result of investigations commenced with a
strong prepossession against the conclusion which I ultimately adopted.
^y6 NON-CANONICAL BOOKS. [xxvi.
torical criticism, if he so takes up the modern attitude of
mind towards the supernatural, as not only to disbelieve in it
himself, but to be unable to conceive that men in former times
felt differently. A man might now publish an edifying fic-
tion in the form of a vision, and without taking any special
precaution feel sure that his readers would not imagine he
wanted them to take it as real. But in the second century a
writer was bound to calculate on a different state of feeling on
the part of his readers. And, in point of fact, the ' Shepherd '
was for a time very generally accepted as a record of real
revelations. And no critic of early times, whether he accepted
the book or not, dreamed that its author wished to convey
any other impression.
(2.) What, then, are we to think of what Hermas, when
relating the circumstances of his visions, tells about himself
and his family ? If the story be fiction and allegory, we have
no right to suppose any of these details to be more real than
the angels and towers which he sees in his visions. Nor are
we even warranted in assuming that the name Hermas,
ascribed to the recipient of the revelations, is that of the
author himself. But both the story itself, and the manner of
telling it, prove that this is no work of fiction. The author
of such a work would strive to give some intelligible account
of the hero of his narrative ; but here Hermas, as if writing
to people who knew him, gives no direct account of himself,
and his story has to be deduced by piecing together several
incidental notices. What we gather from them is, that
Hermas had been brought to Rome as a slave ; that Rhoda,
the lady to whom he had been sold, set him free, and loaded
him with many benefits ; that he had acquired some property,
and been engaged in trade, which he owns he did not always
carry on honestly ; that he married a not very handsome
wife, who unfortunately was not able to govern her tongue ;
that he had other trouble with his children, who in time of
persecution denied the faith, and betrayed their parents ; that
he thus lost house and property, but remained steadfast in the
faith, and supported himself by agricultural labour. Some
have imagined that the ' Shepherd' was a romance written in
XXVI.] THE SHEPHERD OF HERMAS. ^yy
the middle of the second century, but intended to have as its
hero the Hermas mentioned a hundred years before in the
Epistle to the Romans. But it is not credible that the author
of a romance would invent for his hero such a history as I
have described, representing him not even as a clergyman
but a layman, an elderly married man, with an ill-conditioned
wife and children. I have dwelt at length upon this point
because I am persuaded that the key to all sound criticism
on the * Shepherd ' is to understand thoroughly that the
Hermas who tells the story is no fictitious character, but a
real person, who published his visions for the edification of his
contemporaries.
(3.) But did he invent these visions, or did he himself
believe in them ? I have no hesitation in saying that he did
believe in them. It is not merely that the whole book im-
presses me with belief in the narrator's good faith in this
respect ; but the stories themselves, when examined, show
every mark of being, not arbitrary inventions, but attempts
to record the imaginations of a dream. I take, for example,
the first vision. Hermas relates that he had one day seen
his former mistress, Rhoda, bathing in the Tiber, and had as-
sisted her out of the water. And, admiring her beauty, he
thought what happiness it were for him had he a wife like
her in form and indisposition. Further than this his thought
did not go. But soon after he had a vision. He fell asleep,
and in his dream he was for a long time walking and strug-
gling on ground so rugged and broken that it was impossible
to pass. At length he succeeded in crossing the water by
which his path had been washed away, and coming into
smooth ground, knelt down to confess his sins to God. Then
the heavens were opened, and he saw Rdoda saluting
him from the sky. On asking her what she did there, she
told him that she had been taken up to accuse him before the
Lord, who was angry with him for having sinned against her.
He asks her how ? Had he ever spoken a lewd word to her ?
Had he not always treated her with honour and respect ? She
owns it, but accuses him of having entertained an evil thought,
and tells him of the sin of evil thoughts, and their punish-
2 p
5^8 NON-CANONICAL BOOKS. [xxvi.
ment. Then the heavens were closed, and he was left shud-
dering with fear, not knowing how he could escape the judg-
ment of God if such a thought as his were marked as sin.
Then he sees a venerable lady sitting in a great white chair,
with a book in her hands. She asks why he who was usually
so cheerful is now so sad. On his telling her, she owns what
a sin any impure thought would be in one so singleminded,
and so innocent as he ; but she assures him it is not for
this God is angry with him, but because of the sins of his
children, whom he, through false indulgence, had allowed to
corrupt themselves ; but to whom repentance was still open,
if he would w^arn them. Then she reads to him out of her
book : of the greater part he can remember nothing, save that
it was severe and menacing; but he remembers the last
sentence, which was mild and consoling. She leaves him
with the words, 'Play the man, Hermas'.
Now, if we take this story as allegorical fiction, it is im-
possible to assign a meaning to it. There is not a word more
about Rhoda through the whole book. Why has she been
introduced ? What is she intended to represent ? Why
should Hermas be first told that God was angry with him on
one account, and then be told that it was really on another
account God was angry ? On the other hand, the want of
logical connexion between the parts of the story is explained
at once if we take his own word that it was a dream. There
is no difficulty in believing that he had seen Rhoda as he
tells, and that the thought he had entertained afterwards
in his sleep presented itself to him as a sin. It is quite like
a dream that Rhoda, as principal figure, should fade out, and
be replaced by another ; that sensations of physical distress
in his sleep should suggest the ideas, first of walking on and
on without being able to find an outlet; afterwards of mental
distress at words spoken to him ; and altogether like a dream,
too, that he should imagine himself to have heard a long dis-
course, yet be able to tell nothing of it but the words heard
just before awakening. It therefore seems to me quite false
criticism to put any other interpretation on the story told by
Hermas than that his * visions ' commenced in the manner
XXVI.] THE SHEPHERD OF HERMAS. 579
he describes, by his having what we should call a very vivid
dream. He was much impressed by it, and when, in the
following' year, he dreamed again of the lady and her book,
he regarded it as a divine communication, and set himself, by
fasting and prayer, to obtain new revelations. More visions
accordingly followed, and he made himself known to his
Church as favoured with Divine revelations. I see no reason
for doubting the truth of this story, though I naturally think
that the visions of Hermas gained a good deal in coherence
when he came to write them down. I believe, also, that the
last two sections of his w^ork contain records of his waking
thoughts, which he regarded as inspired by an angel who,
he had persuaded himself, had come permanently to dwell
with him. The conclusion, then, at which I arrive is, that the
work of Hermas is not to be classed with Bunyan's Pilgrim^ s
Progress^ but rather with the revelations of St. Teresa, St.
Francesca Romana, St. Gertrude, St. Catherine of Siena, and
other literature of the same kind, of which there is such
abundance in the Roman Catholic Church.
Are we, then, who do not believe in the revelations of
Hermas, to set him down as a crazy person, and to regard
those who believed in him as fools ? The examples I have
just cited may make us hesitate before coming to such a con-
clusion. St, Teresa, for instance, visionary as she was, did
much useful work, and exhibited a large amount of practical
good sense. In respect of sobriety, the visions of Hermas
contrast very favourably with some of the other literature
with which I have compared them. I will not discuss the
vision of Col. Gardiner, which w^as accepted as real by Dr.
Doddridge, nor need I remind you how many persons who
can by no means be described as fools have thought it worth
while to record remarkable dreams, under the belief that
supernatural intimations might thus have been given. But
if you think that the Church of Rome was in the beginning
of the second century too easy in its reception of the revelations
of Hermas, I will ask you to bear in mind that the men of
that age are not to be scorned because their views as to God's
manner of governing His Church were different from what
2 P 2
58o NON-CANONICAL BOOKS. [xxvi,
the experience of so many following centuries has taught us.
We all believe that in the time of our Lord and His Apostles
a great manifestation of the supernatural was made to the
world. How long, and to what extent, similar manifesta-
tions would present themselves in the ordinary life of the
Church, only experience could show. Again, if we are able
to give a natural explanation of some mental phenomena
which were once thought to indicate supernatural interference,
it is no disgrace to men of early times that they were not ac-
quainted with modern philosophy. Even in the Church of
Rome, though we may think it gives credence too lightly to
modern miracles, a visionary would now receive from her
spiritual guides instruction as to the possibility of deception,
and as to the need of caution, for which, in the second century,
no necessity might be felt.
(4.) I come, then, to the question. Did Hermas see his
visions in the Episcopate of Clement ? He himself plainly
intimates that he did. For he states that in his vision he re-
ceived the following instructions: — 'You shall write two
books, and send one to Clement and one to Grapte. And
Grapte shall admonish the widows and orphans, and Clement
shall send it to foreign cities, for to him that office has been
committed. And you shall relate it to the presbyters of the
Church.' The natural inference from this passage is, that at
the time of the vision Grapte was what we may describe as
chief deaconess of the Roman Church, and that Clement was
the organ by which it communicated with foreign Churches.
And we have every reason to think that he was so described
on account of the celebrity gained not long before by his letter
sent to a distant Church. Different ways have been devised
of escaping this inference. I really don't know whether we
are to count Origen as rejecting the obvious meaning of the
passage, though he does manage to find an allegory in it.
He treats [De Princip. iv. 11) of three modes of interpreting
Scripture, corresponding to the tripartite nature of man — body,
soul, and spirit. And he imagines that he finds them indi-
cated in this passage, Grapte, who instructs those of lowest
spiritual discernment, being the literal interpretation, and
XXVI.] THE SHEPHERD OF HERMAS. 581
Clement and Hermas himself representing the two higher
methods of interpretation. A solution more acceptable to
modern habits of thought is that a real Clement is intended,
only not the Clement who wrote the Epistle to the Corinthians.
But it must be pronounced extremely improbable that within
a comparatively few years of the writing of that letter there
should be another Clement, whose function it also was to
cornmunicate on behalf of the Church of Rome with foreign
Churches, but who has left on ecclesiastical history no trace
of his existence.* A third solution is that Hermas, no doubt,
wished his readers to believe that he saw his visions in the
Episcopate of the well-known Clement ; but he was telling a
lie. He really wrote forty or fifty years later. But we can-
not adopt this solution unless we abandon the results we
have already obtained. If the work is a mere fiction, the
imaginary hero may have lived under Clement, and the real
author when you please ; and his name may or may not have
been Hermas. But if he was a man who told his contempo-
raries of visions, real or pretended, which he claimed to have
seen himself, it would be absurd of him to destroy his chance
of being believed, by asserting that he saw the vision at a
time when it was notorious that he had either not been born,
or could have been only a child. It is to be remembered that
the vision represents him to have been then an elderly mar-
ried man, with a grown-up family. I must add, that Hermas
had no motive whatever for antedating his work. His pro-
phecy announced tribulation close at hand, and only a short
intervening period for repentance. It would be absolutely
contrary to his interest to pretend that the prophecy had been
delivered forty or fifty years previously. All his readers
would then know that the prediction had failed, for nothing
had come of it. And the promise of forgiveness, which
excluded all those baptized after the date of the prophecy,
would not be applicable at all to the generation to which the
book was offered. I therefore find it impossible to resist the
* On the method of solving historical difficulties by imagining for real characters
duplicates unknown to history, the reader may consult S. R. Maitland's tenth letter
on Fox. If he does not know it already, he will thank me for the reference.
582 NON-CANONICAL BOOKS. [xxvi.
evidence afforded by this passage, that Hermas must have
attained to middle life before the death of Clement. I may-
claim Bishop Lightfoot as agreeing with me in this result ;
for he repeatedly speaks of Hermas as a younger contempo-
rary of Clement [Philippians^ p. 167 ; Clement^ p. i, &c.).
When this result has been adopted, the main question may
be regarded as settled. For the remaining point in dispute
concerns not the date of Hermas, but the credit due to the
Muratorian writer.
(5,) If we admit that the vision was seen in the Episcopate of
Clement, can we accept the Muratorian statement that Hermas
wrote the ' Shepherd ' while his brother, the Bishop Pius, sat
in th2 chair of the Church of the city of Rome ? Lightfoot
thinks we can ; and he suggests modes of reconcilement,
which, indeed, I tried for a long time myself before I could
persuade myself to abandon the Muratorian statement alto-
gether. Hermas may have been considerably the older of
the two brothers : perhaps we may give up half the Mura-
torian statement, and believe that he was the brother of Pius,
but not that it was durifig his Episcopate he wrote the * Shep-
herd'; perhaps if we had the Greek of the Muratorian fragment
we might not find that assertion there. Then, again, we have
not such certain knowledge of the dates of early Roman
Episcopates as to forbid our manipulating them a little.
Could we not screw up the date of Pius somewhat, and
screw down the date of Clement ? Possibly we could bring
down the date of the death of Clement as late as no ; and
perhaps we might bring up the accession of Pius earlier than
139, which Lipsius names as the earliest admissible date.
But I abandoned these attempts when I saw that a real
reconcilement with the Muratorian writer was in the nature
of things impossible. His object was to prove Hermas to be
quite a modern personage. How could he be that if he had
attained the age of forty before the death of Clement ?
Let us inquire, then, if we are bound to reconcile ourselves
with this writer. Who was he ? Had he any real knowledge
of the events of the Episcopate of Pius ? Critics confess them-
selves unable to answer the former question, and the majority
XXVI.] THE SHEPHERD OF HERMAS. 583
of those who accept his statement about Hermas answer the
second question in the negative. He describes Pius as
'sitting in the chair of the Church of the city Rome' and
evidently has no suspicion that the constitution of that
Church was different in the days of Pius and in his own.
But in Hermas the honour of a ' chair ' is not confined to a
single person, and the critics of whom I speak imagine that
Episcopacy was only then struggling, against much opposition,
into existence. If the Muratorian writer knew nothing of
such a patent fact as the constitution of the Church in the days
of Pius, he cannot be an authority as to the date of publica-
tion of a book which must have appeared, if not before, at the
very beginning of that episcopate. I have elsewhere * given
my reasons for thinking that the Muratorian Fragment is a
document not earlier than the episcopate of Zephyrinus, that
is to say, the beginning of the third century; and I will now
mention my theory as to the discovery that the author of the
' Shepherd ' was brother of Pius. This discovery is found also
in a note appended to a very ancient catalogue of the bishops
of Rome. Many good critics have thought that the earlier
part of this catalogue was derived from a list made by
Hippolytus of the bishops of Rome down to his time, which
formed part of his Chronology. My theory, then, is, that
Hippolytus, in the course of the investigations necessary
for framing this list, ascertained that Bishop Pius had a
brother named Hermas, and that he then jumped to the
conclusion (as he was a man quite capable of doing) that
this Hermas was the author of the ' Shepherd '. Whether
this theory of mine be true or not, I hold that whatever
conclusions as to the date of the ' Shepherd ' we draw
from a study of the document itself ought not to be laid
aside, in deference to the authority of a writer concerning
whose means of information we really know nothing. If no
more be granted than Lightfoot has conceded, its date is
quite early in the second century, and it therefore deserves
the highest attention from the student of Church history.
* Smith's Diet. Chr. Biog., articles, Muratorian Fragment, Montanism.
584 NON-CANONICAL BOOKS. [xxvi.
And, if it be read without any prepossession to the contrary,
I am persuaded that its contents will be found entirely to
correspond with that early date, since it reveals an imma-
turity of development both in respect of doctrine and of
Church organization.
The length of the discussion necessary to establish the date
ofHermas precludes me from treatingof many interesting ques-
tions raised by the contents of the book ; and I will only say
something as to what we may gather from it as to Church
organization. It has been the bane of ecclesiastical history
that so many have studied it only in the hope to gain from it
some weapon which might be used in modern controversies.
It is natural to think that if priority of presbyters had been
the Church's original rule, the government of a single head
could not have been established without some resistance on
the part of those who were dispossessed of their equal
authority. It has been hoped to find some exception to the
almost total silence of Church history as to such resistance, in
the language in which Hermas rebukes the strifes for pre-
cedence among Christians. I think I am without prejudice
in this matter ; for I find it much easier to prove from Scrip-
ture that individual Christians are bound to submit to the
established order of the Church than to prove that the Church
had been bound to develope its organization in one particular
way. And for me it has only a speculative interest to inquire
what was the process by which the Church arrived at the state
of things that we find when Church history first comes into
clear light at the end of the second century, at which time we
find bishops everywhere, and no memory that there had ever
been any other form of Church government. But as far as I
can see, the question whether one presbyter had pre-eminence
over others was one in which Hermas took no interest, and
on which he tells us nothing. He clearly distinguishes him-
self from the presbyters, and makes no claim to be one of
their body. But he has something to tell us about the * pro-
phets ', the class to which, I have no hesitation in saying, he
himself belonged. The Church had then its authorized
teachers and rulers; but we learn from Mandat. xi. that
XXVI.] THE SHEPHERD OF HERMAS. 585
there were, besides, ' prophets ', or as we may call them, lay
preachers. Such a prophet was permitted to give exhortation
in the public meetings for worship.* After the intercessory
prayer had been made, the angel of the prophetic spirit would
fill the man, and he would give exhortation to the people as
the Lord willed. It is a mark of the antiquity of our docu-
ment that it indicates that ' gifted ' persons were still per-
mitted, as in I Cor. xiv. 26, to speak in the Church. It can
readily be imagined that the interference of the rulers of the
Church would sometimes be necessary to suppress indiscreet
or erroneous teaching. It strikes me as possible that the re-
bellion in the Church of Corinth, where, even in St. Paul's
time, spiritual gifts had been exercised without due regard to
order, may have originated in an unsuccessful interference of
authority with some leading prophets. It was soon found
expedient to confine the work of exhortation to the Church's
authorized teachers. When, towards the end of the second
century, the Montanists brought prophesying again into
prominence, precedents in their favour were neither numerous
nor then very recent ; and it was found that the inspired
authority which these prophets claimed threatened to be sub-
versive of all Church order and fixity of doctrine. Hermas
belonged to an age when the exercise of prophetic gifts was
not discouraged by the Church authorities ; but he is dis-
tinctly pre-Montanist. I have already mentioned how repug-
nant his teaching was to the Montanist Tertullian. Hermas
occasionally gives indications of some little jealousy f 'of the
superior dignity of the presbyters. Thus, in one vision, the
Church, who appears to him in the form of a lady, bids him
sit down. 'Nay,' he modestly answers, ' let the presbyters be
seated first.' ' Sit down, as I bid you,' the lady replies. But his
chief anxiety is to guard the office of prophet from being in-
truded on by unworthy persons. Some, it would appear,
claimed to be prophets in the modern sense of the word: per-
* In Hermas, as in St. James's Epistle, the Christian community is t] iKKKr\cr'i.a,
the assembly for worship, ^ crvvaywyi).
t Those who take Hermas for a fictitious character are blind to the amusing little
touches of human nature which constantly show themselves.
586 NON-CANONICAL BOOKS. [xxvi.
sons would visit them, ask them questions about their private
affairs, and pay money for their advice ; and Hermas states
that their predictions would occasionally turn out right. But
he urges that the Spirit of God does not speak in answer to
questions ; that is to say, when man wishes Him to speak, but
when He Himself chooses to speak. These false pretenders, so
ready to prophesy in a corner, are dumb when they come into
the Church assembly. Their whole manner of life must dis-
tinguish the true prophet from the false : the one is meek,
humble, easily contented ; not talkative, ambitious, greedy,
luxurious, like the other.
The circulation which the work of Hermas obtained gives
us reason to think that his own claims as a prophet were ad-
mitted by his Church, and that the record of his visions was
sent to foreign Churches as he desired. But I can well believe
that there had been some hesitation as to recognizing him, and
thus that a little soreness of feeling on his part may have
arisen. For, though a pious man, he does not appear to have
been a well instructed one ; and some of his doctrinal teach-
ing, which is not accurate when judged by the standard of our
own day, may well have been thought unsatisfactory by the
presbyters of his own. He does not formally quote the scrip-
tures either of Old or New Testament ; nor does he make
much use of either, his coincidences being closest with the
Epistle of St. James. It is very possible that he came from
the Jewish section of the Church ; but, in his work, there is
not a trace, not to say of anti-Paulinism, but even of Judaism.
In his teaching the Jewish nation has no special prerogative ;
and even the ' twelve tribes ' are only the various nations
which make up the Christian Church.
Hermas and Theodotion. — Something, however, must be
said as to the use made by Hermas of one Old Testament
passage ; because it has been imagined to afford an argument
subversive of the conclusions I have arrived at as to the early
date of the work. In the visions of Hermas (I7. ii. 4) he sees
a terrible wild beast, from which he is delivered by the pro-
tection of 'the angel who is over the beasts, whose name is
Thegri.' This Thegri, of whom no one else makes mention.
XXVI.] HERMAS AND THEODOTION. 587
had been a puzzle to commentators until not long since, when
the solution was obtained by Mr. Rendel Harris [Johns Hop-
kins' University Circulars^ ill. 75]. He compares the words in
Hermas, 6 Kvpiog aTr^cFTtiXev rbv ayytXov avrov, rov IttL twv
urifjiijjv ovTOf ov TO ovo/na. eoti Qeypi, kol Ivicbpu^tv to aTOfia avTov
iva firj at Xvfxavy, with the WOrds of Daniel vi. 22, 6 daog fxov
airiaTuXz tov ayyeXov awrov, koi kvicppa^e to. oTOfiaTa twv XtovTwv,
Ktti otifc eXvfii^vavTo fxe, when the use of Daniel by Hermas is
seen beyond mistake. But, in the original, the verb corre-
sponding to Ivi^pa^iv is "Ijp ; and it becomes apparent that
we must correct Qey^i into CfTpi', and understand ' the angel
wlio stops the mouths of the beasts '.
This remark by Mr. Harris led to a further remark by Dr.
Hort. He pointed out {Johns Hopkins' University Circular s,
iv. 23) that the strong coincidence between Hermas and the
book of Daniel only exists when Theodotion's version of the
latter book is used. The corresponding verse in the LXX-
merely has o-tcrwicc' [xi. 6 Otog airb tCiv XiovTwv. In another place,
Indeed, it has 6 Q^oq cnrtKXttae tq aro/iaTu twv XtovTwv ; but it
neither has Ivtcppa^ev, nor does it use the verb XvfiaivoiJiai. It
follows that Hermas used, not the LXX. version of Daniel,
but that of Theodotion ; and, therefore, that we must take it
as a fixed point in our discussions about the date of Hermas,
that he is later than Theodotion ; and Theodotion is com-
monly believed to have made his version not very early in
the second century.
Now, let me say in the outset, that conclusions drawn
from the study of the character of an entire book are not to
be lightly displaced by an argument founded on a single
passage. Thus, when treating of the genuineness of i Thessa-
lonians, I did not think it worth while to discuss the ingenious
little argument which Holsten (see note, p. 386) founded on
ch. i. 3. In the present case we have in our hands the whole
book of Hermas, containing many notes of time ; but we
have no trustworthy information as to the date of Theodo-
tion's version, and (what will presently be seen to be of more
importance) no information what other Greek versions there
may have been antecedent to his. We are, therefore, on
588 NON-CANONICAL BOOKS. [xxvr,
much firmer ground if we use Hermas to throw light on the
history of Greek translations of the book of Daniel than vice
versa.
Another preliminary consideration may be mentioned,
which may lead us to suspect that there must be some flaw in
this argument for the later date of Hermas. The argument
proves a little too much : it proves that the Epistle to the
Hebrews was also written late in the second century. When
the writer of that Epistle uses the phrase (xi. i^^), ' stopped
the mouths of lions,' we can scarcely doubt that he had Dan.
vi. 2 2 in his mind. We may also take it as certain that he
used a Greek, not a Hebrew, Bible. But, if it was the Sep-
tuagint version of Daniel that he used, how came he to
stumble on the word t^^a^av instead of the aTriKXnae of
the LXX. ?
The knowledge which the Christian Church has possessed
of Greek translations of the Bible was principally, if not ex-
clusively, derived from Origen's great work the 'Tetrapla.' In
the first column of that work he published the version of
Aquila, noted for its slavish literalness and ruthless sacrifice
of Greek to Hebrew idioms ; in the second column the ver-
sion of Symmachus, marked by greater purity of Greek ; in
the third column the Septuagint ; in the fourth the version of
Theodotion, who is said to have been less an independent
translator than a reviser of former translations. These were
not the only translations which had been made before the
time of Origen ; for he recovered and published fragments of
two or three other versions ; but these alone had reached him
unmutilated. Of these four, the Septuagint alone is regarded
as pre-Christian. Aquila's, which is accounted the oldest of
the others, is said to have been characterized by an animus
hostile to Christianity, and to have been intended to deprive
the Christians of the use of certain O. T, texts on which they
had founded arguments. Accordingly, the Septuagint was
the Greek version which was used in the Christian Church,,
with one remarkable exception, the Book of Daniel. St.
Jerome states repeatedly that the Christian Church used, not
the Septuagint translation of the Book of Daniel, but that of
XXVI.] HERMAS AND THEODOTION. ^gg
Theodotion. For example, in the preface to his translation
of the Book of Daniel, he says : ' Danielem Prophetam juxta
LXX. interpretes, Domini Salvatoris Ecclesiae non legunt,
utentes Theodotionis editione ; et hoc cur accident, nescio.
Sive quia sermo Chaldaicus est, et quibusdam proprietati-
bus a nostro eloquio discrepat, noluerunt LXX. interpretes
easdem linguae lineas in translatione servare ; sive sub
nomine eorum ab alio, nescio quo, non satis Chaldaeam
linguam sciente, editus est liber ; sive aliud quid causae ex-
titerit ignorans, hoc unum afifirmare possum, quod multum a
veritate discordet et recto judicio repudiatus sit ' (see also the
Preface to the Commentary on the Book of Daniel, the Pro-
logue to Joshua, and ApoL cont. Ruf. ii. 33). Thus it appears
that Jerome, who was acquainted with the Tetrapla of Origen,
took notice that the version of the Book of Daniel in use in
the Church of his day was that given in the Tetrapla, not in
the Septuagint column, but in the column which presented
the version of Theodotion. Jerome is a perfectly competent
witness to this matter of fact, though he professes himself
unable to offer any but conjectural explanations of it. It
would appear that Origen said nothing to throw light on it ;
though Jerome quotes him as having, at least on one occasion,
given, by his example, his countenance to the desertion of the
Septuagint for Theodotion. ' Judicio magistrorum ecclesiae
editio eorum (LXX.) in hoc volumine repudiata est, et Theo-
dotionis vulgo legitur; quae et Hebraeo et ceteris translatori-
bus congruit, unde et Origenes in nono Stromatum volumine
asserit se quae sequuntur ab hoc loco in Propheta Daniele,
non juxta LXX., qui multum ab Hebraica veritate dis-
cordant, sed juxta Theodotionis editionem disserere ' [in
Dan. iv. 5).
It is, accordingly, Theodotion's version of Daniel which is
ordinarily found in Greek Bibles; but the version which stood
in the Septuagint column of Origen's Tetrapla has been re-
covered from a single MS., preserved in the Chigi Library,
and was printed at Rome in 1772. It will be found appended
to Tischendorf's second and subsequent editions of the Sep-
tuagint. An extant Syriac version, and the citations of
^go NON-CANONICAL BOOKS. [xxvi,
Jerome, fully establish its claim to be Origen's Septuagint.*
The Roman edition contains a comparison of the variations
between the two versions, and a comparison will also be found
in the Appendix to Pusey's Daniel the Prophet, p. 606.
Now, to speak first of the date of Theodotion's version,
there is one account which places it so late, that if Hermas
used it, so far from living early in the second century, he
could not even have lived in the episcopate of Pius. Harvey,
for example (on Irenaeus, III. xxi.), states that the version of
Theodotion was put forth in the year A. D. 181. But here Har-
vey followed, and not very carefully,t a most untrustworthy
authority, Epiphanius. When it was the custom to date an
event by the year of the emperor's reign in which it occurred,
it plainly would be impossible to know the interval between
events which happened in different reigns without knowing
the succession of emperors, and the length of the reign of
each. Such knowledge was therefore a necessary part of the
stock in trade of a skilled chronologer. In the passage referred
to [De Menss. et Pondd., 17), which treats of Greek transla-
tions of the Bible, Epiphanius goes somewhat out of his
way to exhibit his possession of this knowledge ; but his
information was not very accurate, and whatever may have
been the errors for which he is himself responsible, they
have been so largely added to by his transcribers, that his
Greek text, as printed by Petavius, exhibits a really stu-
pendous mass of blunders. Dr. Gwynn was good enough
to consult for me, at the British Museum, a Syriac transla-
tion, bearing date before A. D. 660. We are thus enabled
to clear away the worst of the blunders, and of those that
remain we may charitably believe that some had arisen
through negligence of transcribers before the Syriac transla-
* The claim is made in the subscription : Aa»'i7;A Kara rovs 6. eypd(pT) e'l avTiypd^pov
exovTOS T^v inro(r7}u.€ici)(nv TavT-qV iypd^-q eK tSiv rerpa/TtKwv, e| 6iv koX iraperedr].
f Harvey got the date i8i by taking Epiphanius to have said, 'in the second
year of the reign of Commodus '; but what Epiphanius says is, 'in the reign of the
second Commodus '. The Paschal Chronicle, also following Epiphanius, places the
publication of Theodotion's version in the consulship of Marcellus and -^^lianus,
that is, in the year 184.
XXVI.] HERMAS AND THEODOTION. ^gi
tion was made. What we are here concerned with is, that
Epiphanius means to say that the translation of Symmachus
was made, not, as the Greek has it, in the reign of Severus,
but in the reign of Verus, by whom Epiphanius means
Marcus Aurelius, that being his paternal name ; and that the
translation of Theodotion was made in the following reign,
which Epiphanius calls that of Commodus the Second ; for
he had previously mentioned a Lucius Aurelius Commodus,
by whom he means the partner of Marcus Aurelius, com-
monly known under his adopted name of Verus.
It was, however, easier for Epiphanius to get authentic in-
formation as to the succession of Roman emperors than as
to the history of Greek translations of the Old Testament.
I need not inquire how many of his blunders arose from
erroneous information, how many from a habit of supplying
by invention the defects of his information. In the present
case the latter cause seems to have been largely in opera-
tion. In Origen's columns the versions stood in the order,
Aquila, Symmachus, LXX., Theodotion, from which Epi-
phanius jumped to the conclusion that Aquila, Symmachus,
Theodotion, was the chronological order. So, having placed
Symmachus in the reign of Aurelius, which is probably
too early, he puts Theodotion in the following reign. We
find additional reason for distrusting him when we read
what he goes on to tell about Theodotion, who, according
to his account, was a native of Pontus, and had been a
disciple of Marcion until he became a proselyte to Judaism,
when he learned the Hebrew language. But we learn
from Irenseus that Theodotion was really an Ephesian ;
and we can have little doubt that Epiphanius has mixed up
Theodotion with another translator of the Old Testament,
Aquila, who was a native of Pontus, and of whom also the
story is told that he had been a Christian before he became a
proselyte to Judaism. And it would seem to be for no better
reason than because he has placed Theodotion at Pontus, that
Epiphanius makes him a disciple of the great Pontic heresi-
arch, Marcion. We must then dismiss Epiphanius's whole
account of Theodotion as being absolutely without historical
^g2 NON-CANONICAL BOOKS. [xxvi.
value. It may not be all pure invention ; but we have no
means of disentangling the grains of truth it may possibly
contain.
With respect to the date of Theodotion, we can say, with
certainty, that Epiphanius has placed it too late in naming
the reign of Commodus ( 1 80- 192), For Ireneeus, who wrote in
the beginning of that reign, speaks (iii. 21) of the versions of
Aquila and Theodotion, and as we shall presently see, his
use of the latter translation is such as to show that it could
not then have been recent. Irenseus does not mention Sym-
machus ; and so it is probable that he, and not Theodotion,
was the latest of the three translators just named. When we
have rejected the testimony of Epiphanius, we are left without
any precise information as to the date of Theodotion ; but I
have no wish to dispute the common opinion that he lived in
the second century, because the question with which we are
really concerned is whether he did more than revise a previous
translation different from the Septuagint.
Though it is only within very wide limits we can tell when
Theodotion lived, we can assign a later limit to the time when
his version of the book of Daniel came into use in the Chris-
tian Church. Its use was not due, as some have supposed, to
the influence of Origen, but is to be found in the previous
century. Overbeck has carefully examined [QiKzst. Hippol.
Specimen, p. 105) the quotations from Daniel made by Irenaeus
in his great work on heresies, with the result of finding that
Irenseus habitually uses the version of Theodotion, not that
of the LXX. Since we know the greater part of Irenaeus
only through the medium of a Latin translation, it might be
objected that the quotations only inform us as to the version
in use in the time of the translator, and not that used by
Irenseus himself. Overbeck, therefore, has pointed out three
passages in particular where the argument of Irenseus turns
on words peculiar to Theodotion's version. These are the
quotations of Dan. xii. 7, in IV. xxvi. i ; of Dan. ii. 44, in V.
XX. I, and V. xxvi. 2. In a citation of Dan. xii. 9, 10, which
Irenaeus (I. xvi.) reports as made by the Marcosians, there is
a conflation of the two versions. Overbeck has also studied
XXVI.] HERMAS AND THEODOTION. 5^3
the citations in the work of Hippolytus on Antichrist, and
finds, as might be expected from the fact that Hippolytus was
a hearer of Irenaeus, that he also used the version of Theodo-
tion. This result is confirmed by Bardenhewer's study of the
remains of the work of Hippolytus on Daniel, his report being
that Hippolytus not only used the version of Theodotion, but
seems ignorant of any other, and that his interpretation some-
times directly contradicts the Septuagint version.
Archbishop Ussher, in his Syntagma de LXX. Interpret.
Versiorie, prints Justin Martyr's quotations from Dan. vii.,
and the quotations of Tertullian and of Clement of Alexan-
dria from Dan. ix. On examining these passages, I found
that Justin's quotations were taken from the LXX., the varia-
tions not being greater than are found on comparing with
that version Justin's citations from other books of Scripture,
but those of Tertullian and Clement from Theodotion. And
in this result, as far as regards Clement, Overbeck agrees.
But the case of Tertullian is curious. Ussher's citations are
taken from the work, Adv. Judaos, of which chap, g, and
those following, have been suspected by Neander to be spu-
rious.* But in Tertullian's other writings his citations are
from the Septuagint. A single example will suffice as illus-
tration. The words (Dan. x. 11) translated in our version,
*■ O Daniel, a man greatly beloved,' are rendered in the LXX.
AavnjA, avOfXDTTog tXtiivog d ; but by Theodotion, avi)^ IttiBv-
ini(l)v. Now in De Jeju7i. g, the passage is quoted in the
form, 'Daniel, homo es miserabilis '; but in Adv. Judceos g,
* Vir desideriorum tu es.' The treatise against the Jews, if
written by Tertullian, mu.5t have been one of his latest works,
* Neander's main ground for suspicion {Antignosticus, ii. 530, Bohn) is that the
treatise against the Jews has several passages in common with the third book against
Marcion, which cohere with the context in the latter work, not in the former. It is
clear, therefore, that the author of the former treatise borrowed these passages ; but
I hesitate to say that we can thence infer he was not Tertullian ; for it is common
with voluminous writers to save themselves trouble by turning to new account what
they had written on a former occasion. I have myself pointed out {Hermathena,
I. 103) that the use made (chap. 8) of the chronology of Hippolytus proves that the
treatise against the Jews cannot be much earlier than A. D. 230, a time however
when, there is reason to believe, Tertullian was still in literary activity.
2 Q
594
NON-CANONICAL BOOKS. [xxvi.
and full forty years later than the treatise of Irenaeus. It
might seem more likely than not that in that interval of time
Theodotion's Daniel, which was habitually used by Irenseus,
would have been made by translation accessible to Latin-
speaking Christians. Cyprian shows acquaintance with both
versions, using, for instance, the LXX. form of Dan. ii. 35,
Test. ii. 17; but ordinarily Theodotion : see, for example,
Dan. xii. 4, in Test. i. 4. In any case, it seems to follow from
what has been said, that the so-called Septuagint Daniel was
accepted as such at the time that the early Latin translation,
used in Africa, was made ; and that it was during the interval
between Justin Martyr and Irenaeus that it came to be super-
seded in the Christian Church by Theodotion's version. The
latter version could scarcely have been very modern when it
achieved so great a success : but how much older it was we
are unable to say.
But I have my doubts whether, instead of propounding
the question when and how the Septuagint version of Daniel
came to be superseded by Theodotion's, we ought not rather
to inquire how, when, and where the Chigi version came to
be taken for the Septuagint. In fact, the received opinion of
a silent rejection of the LXX. version is attended with great
difficulties. The interval between Justin Martyr and Irenaeus
does not put much more than thirty years at our disposal in
accounting for the change. Irenaeus (III. xxi.) believed in
the divine inspiration of the Seventy interpreters. Does it
seem likely that he would cast away a portion of what he
believed to be their work without a word of explanation r Is
it not strange, too, that the upstart version should meet as
much acceptance in Alexandria as in Gaul ? And is it not
strange, too, that it should be Theodotion, who of all the
ancient interpreters followed most closely the lines of the
LXX., and is supposed to have been least acquainted with
Hebrew or Chaldee, who should have cast the LXX. com-
pletely aside, and made a totally independent translation ? I
am therefore disposed to believe that Theodotion followed the
lines of an older version,* and that this was the one used by
* Dr. Gwyiin has noted a verse (x. 6) in the LXX. Daniel, which affords ground
XXVI.] HERMAS AND THEODOTION. 595
Irenseus. In fact, our common use of the phrase * the Sep-
tuagint ' attributes to that work greater unity than it really
possesses. Critics are now agreed that the different books
included in it were not all translated by the same hands or at
the same time ; so that it is really not a single version, but
a collection of different versions. If a purchaser now asks for
a copy of the Septuagint, the book that goes by that name,
which the bookseller will offer him, will contain, not the
Chigi version of Daniel, but Theodotion's version. May it
not be the case thatlrenaeus and Clement had no intention of
superseding the Septuagint, but only that the collection to
which they gave the name of Septuagint, instead of the Chigi
Daniel (which was accepted as part of the Septuagint in
Palestine, where Justin Martyr lived and where Origen made
his Hexapla), contained a different version ; probably not
Theodotion's, but the version which was the basis of Theodo-
tion's revision ?
At all events, an examination of the Chigi Daniel will
make it appear intensely improbable that this could have
been the only version through which the book of Daniel was
known to Greek-speaking Jews until the second century after
Christ. For this version is not so much a translation as a
free reproduction of its original, bearing to Theodotion's ver-
sion the same relation that the Apocryphal First Book of
Esdras bears to the corresponding portions of the Canonical
Scriptures. Dr. Gwynn's conjecture seems to me well worthy
of consideration, that the Apocryphal Esdras and the Chigi
Daniel may have had the same author. There is one remark-
able coincidence between them : cnnjpHaaTo avTa tv r^T aSwAf/^*
avTov (i Esdras ii. 10; Dan. i, 2). And the two works re-
semble each other, not merely in continual arbitrary changes
for a suspicion that it was based on a former version, in points at least approaching
to Theodotion's. There is nothing in the Hebrew corresponding to rh a-rSfia aurov
uffel da\d(Tff7}s ; but this rendering might be accounted for as an editorial re-writing
of rh (Tcifia ccbrov wiTel dapffls, a literal rendering of the Hebrew preserved by Theodo-
tion. The rendering of Tharshish by ddXaacra, though quite exceptional in the LXX.,
is found once, Is. ii. i6, and has rabbinical authority; see also Jerome's Commen-
tary m loc. ; but it seems impossible to account for o-rJ/ta, except as a corruption of
2 Q 2
5q6 NON-CANONICAL BOOKS. [xxvi.
from the original, but in both containing ornamental addi-
tions. As the Greek Daniel adds to the Chaldee the stories
of Susanna and of Bel and the Dragon, so the Greek Esdras
adds the story of the three young men at the Court of King
Darius. The latter even contains a hymn after the pattern of
the ' Song of the three Children ', though on a much smaller
scale. And, though the Book of Esdras had not the good
fortune to be admitted into the Canon of the Council of Trent,
no part of the deutero-canonical books has received more ex-
tensive Patristic recognition than the story just cited. The
Apocryphal Esdras may very possibly be an older trans-
lation than the Canonical Ezra ; for the latter is a separate
book from that of Chronicles ; but to all appearance they had
formed one book when the translation of the Apocryphal
Book was made; and that this was the original form of the
Hebrew may be gathered from the identity of the last verse
of Chronicles with the first verse of Ezra. This difference
of form of the two Greek books prevented them from being
taken as different translations of the same book; and so,
both passed as distinct books into the Greek Bible under the
names of First and Second Esdras. But, if the range of
contents of the two books had been the same, it might
well have happened that the Apocryphal Esdras might
have been placed by Origen in his Septuagint column, and
the Canonical Esdras in the Theodotion column ; and then
we should have a parallel to what has happened in the case
of the two versions of Daniel.
However, I hope that nothing that has been here thrown
out as conjecture will be regarded by the reader as essential
to my argument. We evidently cannot infer, from coinci-
dence in a single verse, that Hermas was later than Theodo-
tion, if it is possible that in that verse Tlieodotion followed
the lines of an older translator. So the question is, Have we
reason to think, as Dr. Hort's argument assumes, that if
Hermas had been older than Theodotion he must have used
the Chigi version ? I have just said that it is more probable
than not that, long before the second century after Christ, the
Chigi version should have had to encounter the rivalry of a
XXVI.] HERMAS AND THEODOTION. 597
more faithful translation. And an examination of the New
Testament goes far to enable us to assert as a fact what has
been here thrown out as a probability. Dr. Gwynn furnished
me with a table of the New Testament citations of Daniel,
compared with the corresponding renderings in Theodotion
and in the so-called Septuagint. And, instead of the table's
exhibiting an exclusive use of the latter version, I was really
surprised how little evidence it afforded that that version was
even known to the N. T. writers, though it must certainly
have been in existence long before their time. I have already
referred to the Epistle to the Hebrews. The Apocalypse is
the N. T. book which makes most use of the Book of Daniel.
In that book the result of the comparison is, that there are
several passages in which St. John does not use the LXX., and
does approach nearer to Theodotion ; and that there is no-
thing decisive the other way. So that I actually find in the
Apocalypse no clear evidence that St. John had ever seen the
so-called LXX. version. The following are some of the
passages in question : —
(1) Rev. ix. 20: ra fiSaiAa to. )(pvaa kuI to. apyvpa kol ra
\a\Ka Koi TO. \Wiva Ka\ to. ^vXiva a o'vre ^Xiirtiv ^vvavrai ovre
QKoveiv uvTi wipnraTtlv. There is not a word of this in the
LXX. ; but Theodotion has, Dan. v. 23,rowc Beoug tovq \pvaovQ
Ka\ apyvpuvg kol \a\KOVQ koi ai^ripovg koi ^vXlvovg kol Xiuivovg, o\
ov (iXiirovcn koi 01 ovk aKOVovcn.
(2) Rev. X. 5 : lo/notTtv ev rt^ Z^wvtl. So Theod. Dan. xii. 7 ;
but LXX., hyfjioat Tuv t^uivra.
(3) Rev. xii. 7 : M<\;f"'A - . - tov TroXe/irjo-at. Theod. has
also TOV TToXejuJicrat (Dan. x. 20) ; but LXX., diafxax^(^Oai without
TOV.
(4) Rev. xiii. 7 : TrilXefiov peTu rwv ayiojv. So Theod. (Dan.
vii. 21) ; but LXX., irpog Toiig ayiovg.
(5) Rev. xix. 6 : cptovi) oxAou. So Theod. (Dan. x. 6) ; but
LXX., 0wp)7 dopvjduv.
(6) Rev. XX. 4, and Dan. vii. g. Apoc. and Theod. have
Kp'ip.a : LXX., Kpiaig.
(7) Rev. XX. I I : Tonog oiik ivpidrj avTo'ig. So Theod*
(Dan. ii. 35) ; but LXX., wart jujj^U' KuTaXtKpOrivui t^ avTiov.
598 NON-CANONICAL BOOKS. [xxvi.
If the first or the last of these examples had been found
in Hermas, instead of in the Apocalypse, it would certainly
have been regarded as affording positive proof that Hermas
used Theodotion. In the present case it may be said that St.
John was not under the necessity of using any version, and
could have translated for himself from the Chaldee. And so,
no doubt, he could. And yet, I think nothing but a strong
preconceived opinion that St. John could have used no
other version than the LXX. would prevent the conclusion
from being drawn that he actually does use a different
version. The author of the Apocalypse did not write Greek
with such facility that he should scorn to use the help of
a Greek translation; and in fact, in the case of other books
of Scripture, he shows himself acquainted with the Greek
Bible. I think that some of the coincidences noted above,
between St. John and Theodotion, especially the tov TroXe/i^o-ai
of No. (3), are more than accidental ; but that St, John used a
translation of some kind appears more clearly from the very
numerous passages where Theodotion and LXX. agree, and
St. John agrees with both — a thing not likely to happen so
often if he was translating independently. But if St. John
used a translation, that translation was not the LXX., with
which he gives no clear sign of agreement. I find instances
which may induce us to think that the version employed by
St. John was not identical with Theodotion's, but scarcely
anything to show that it was the Septuagint. I only notice
two cases where, on a comparison of the Apocalypse with the
LXX. and Theodotion, the advantage seems to be on the side
of the LXX. These passages are : —
(ij Rev. i. 14 : 17 KS^aXjj qvtov kui al Tpi)(^g XevKoi wc ipiov
Xeukov, tt>c X"^^' •*"' ^'^ 6^0aXjUoi avTov o)q (j>Xo^ irvpog kqI 01
TToSec avTov ofxoioi ^aXicoAtjSavw. Dan, vii. 9 (LXX,), t^^wy
TTEjOt/SoXr/v uxrei \i6va kuX to TQi^uifxa Tr\Q Kt(paXr\Q avTov tjad kpiov
XevKOv KaOapov' (Theod.), to evSvfxa avTOv XtVKOv worci \iiji}V, kolX 17
dp\^ rriQ Ki(paXr\q avTOV wad epiov Kadapov. Dan. X. 6 (LXX.),
01 ofpOaXfxol avTov ojaa XafjnraSeQ irvphg . . . icai ot irooeg wati
XoXkoq t^acFTpaTTTtjjv' (Theod,), 01 6^0aXjUOi avTov wan Xaixiradtg
TTvpbg . . . KQt Ta crKiXr) tjjg opaaig '^^oXkov ariX^ovTOg.
XXVI.] HERMAS AND THEODOTION. 599
(2) Rev. xix. 16, jSncrtXjuc (iacTiXihw Koi KvpioQ Kvpiutv. So
LXX. (Dan. iv. 31), Gjoc tCov deCov koX Kvpiog Tlov kvo'kvv Kol
(iamXtvQ TU)v ftamXiuw, to which there is nothing corresponding
in Chaldee or Theodotion. The former example proves, if
proof were necessary, that St. John was not dependent on
Theodotion's version ; but does not prove that he used the
LXX. I do not know that any stronger proof of that can be
given than whatever the latter example may be thought to
afford.
Dr. Gwynn has also examined the use made of Daniel in
other N. T. books, and still with the result that that use can-
not be accounted for on the supposition that the N. T. writers
used only the Septuagint version of Daniel. For example,
the words KaracTKiivouv and Iv roXg (cXaSotc, which occur Matt.
xiii. 32, are found in Theodotion's version of Dan. iv. 7 ; but
not in the LXX., which instead of KaT6(TKfivouv has evoaatuov.
Again, Clement of Rome (<;. 34) quotes Dan. viii. 10 : 'Ten
thousand times ten thousand stood before him, and thousand
thousands ministered unto him ' ; and for * ministered ' he has
Theodotion's word iXuTovpyovu, not the LXX. Wepamvov.
Further, the Apocryphal Book of Baruch contains several
verses taken from Dan. ix. ; Baruch i. 15-18, being nearly
identical with Dan. ix. 7-10, and Baruch ii. 11-16, with Dan.
ix. 15-18. Some critics bring down this book as late as the
reign of Vespasian, but none bring it later. Now, on com-
paring the passages, Baruch is found to be considerably
nearer Theodotion than the LXX. Thus, taking the latter
passage : —
Bar, ii. 11. ot,- tZi'iyy^Q ro\> Xaov <too eKyi")? Alyvirrov.
So Theod. But LXX., 6 c^ayayojv tov Xaov aov t/c yng
AlyVTTTOV.
Bar. t7roiij(7ac (TiavT(i> ovopa wc n Vf^^P"^ avTij.
So Theod. But LXX., Kara Tr)v nptpav TavTrjv.
Bar. ii. 14. HaaKovcrov Kvpie. So Theod. But LXX.,
eiruKOvaov SiairoTa.
Bar. ii. 16. kXIvov to ovq (tov. So Theod. But LXX.,
Trp()(T\^ii-, instead of kATi'oi'.
6oo NON-CANONICAL BOOKS. [xxvi.
The instances adduced not only clearly prove all I want
to establish, namely, that coincidences with Theodotion's
version do not prove that a document is not as early as the
first century ; but they seem to point distinctly to the ex-
istence in that century of a version of the Book of Daniel
having closer affinities with Theodotion's than with the LXX.
If the latter was the only translation known to St. John, he
must have deliberately rejected it, and preferred to render for
himself. And such a course would certainly be adopted by
any Jew who was able to read the original, and who at all
valued faithfulness of translation. Is it then intrinsically
probable that for centuries every Jew competent to ascertain
the fact kept to himself his knowledge of the unfaithfulness of
the current version ; and that none had the charity to make a
better version for the use of his Greek- speaking brethren ?
On the other hand, is it very improbable that such a version,
if made, should now only live for us in its successors, as
Tyndale's translation lives for us in the Authorized English
version ?
However, as far as the date of Hermas is concerned, it is
not necessary that we should arrive at any certain conclusion,
as to whether or not there existed in the first Christian century
any translation of the Book of Daniel but the Hexaplar Sep-
tuagint. All I want is to establish that we really know very
little on the subject of first-century Greek translations. If,
then, it can be established on other grounds that the Book of
Hermas belongs to the early part of the second century, no
reason for rejecting that date is afforded by the fact that we
find in the book a verse of Daniel quoted in a form for which
the Hexaplar Septuagint will not account.
The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles. — It would evidently
be impossible for me to keep within reasonable limits if I
were to attempt to speak of all the remains of early Christian
antiquity which present interesting subjects for discussion. I
have therefore taken as my guide the list of works whose
claims to be included in the public use of the Church
Eusebius thought it worth while to take into consideration
XXVI.] TEACHING OF THE TWELVE APOSTLES. 6oi
when making his list of canonical books [H. E. iii. 25). Of
the books there mentioned there remains but one which I
have not yet noticed. In company with the Epistle of
Barnabas, Eusebius names ' what are called the Teachings of
the Apostles' [tCjv arroaToXiov al X^yofxevai di^a\ai). I have
already (see p. 574) referred to the list of canonical books
given some years later by Athanasius, in his 39th Festal
Epistle ; and there you find, excluded from the books of
Scripture, but joined with the Shepherd of Hermas, as useful
for employment in catechetical instruction, ' what is called the
Teaching of the Apostles ' (AtSa;^ij KaXovfuivt) tCjv ctTroaToXdJv) :
you will observe that the singular number is used. The
AtSa^J? oTToaroAwv is also included in the Stichoindry of
Nicephorus (see p. 178). It is found there in an appendix
giving a list of apocryphal books of the New Testament, viz.,
the Travels of Peter, of John, of Thomas, the Gospel of Thomas:
then follows the Didache, and then books to which the name
* apocryphal ' can only be applied in the sense that they have
no claim to possess the authority of Scripture, viz., the Epistles
of Clement, of Ignatius, of Polycarp, and the Shepherd. In
this list the length of the AtSax*'? is given as 200 cstixoi* by
which we see that it was a short book, since in the same list
the Apocalypse of St. John is said to contain 1400 ariyoi.
Until very lately we could only form a vague judgment
that the work known to Athanasius and Eusebius must have
been the nucleus round which gathered the institutions which
form the extant eight books oi Apostolic Co7istitutions. It is now
agreed that this work, in its present form, is not earlier than the
middle of the fourth century; and in recent times much has been
done to trace the history of the growth of the collection. The
subject is too wide a one for me to attempt to enter into it ;
but it is necessary to mention an ancient tract, the founda-
tion of Egyptian Ecclesiastical Law, first published in Greek
from a Vienna MS. by Bickell {Geschichte des Kirchenrechts^
1843), but extant also in Coptic, ^^thiopic, Syriac, and
• Harnack calculates that the Didache published by Bryennius would make 300
ariyoi.
6o2 NON-CANONICAL BOOKS. [xxvi.
Arabic. Bickell called it Apostolische Kirchenordnung ; and,
in order to distinguish it from the Apostolic Constitutio7is,
which, in their present form, are certainly a later work, I
shall refer to this under the name of the * Church Ordi-
nances '. Its title in the Greek MS. is al '^lara-^aX al Sm
KAi7jU£vroe, Kui KavovhQ \KKk\\(sia(yTiKoi tujv ayiutv aTToaroAwi'. It
may be divided into two parts: in the first each of the
Apostles is introduced as giving a piece of moral instruc-
tion ; in the second part the Apostles in like manner seve-
rally give directions about ordinations and other Church
rites. I may mention that the number of twelve Apostles is
made out in a singular way. Cephas is made an Apostle dis-
tinct from Peter : he and Nathanael take the place of James
the Less and Matthias. Paul is not mentioned at all. Now,
when this tract is compared with the seventh book of the
Apostolic Constitutions^ the latter is found to begin with a large
expansion of the moral instruction contained in the first part
of the former ; and the conclusion suggests itself that this tract
was one of the sources employed by the compiler of the Apos-
tolic Constitutions. Further, this moral instruction begins with
what we may regard as a commentary on Jer. xxi. 8, * Behold
I set before you the way of life and the way of death ', words
which may themselves be connected with Deut. xxx. 15, * See,
I have set before you this day life and good, death and evil '.
The ' Church Ordinances ' set forth in detail the characteris-
tics of these ' Two Ways '. One sentence of this exposition
is quoted by Clement of Alexandria as Scripture [Strom, i. 20,
P- 377)> whether he got it in the ' Church Ordinances ' them-
selves, or in an earlier document, from which they borrowed,
*My son, be not a liar; for lying leads to theft'. The
use of an earlier document is made probable by our finding
elsewhere this teaching about the ' Two Ways '. The Epistle
of Barnabas consists of two parts. The first part, which con-
tains the doctrinal teaching, is brought formally to a close in
ch. 17, and then the writer abruptly says. Let us now pass to
another doctrine and discipline (yvdnr/v icat 'hi^ayj]v]. And then
he proceeds to give the teaching of the ' Two Ways ', present-
ing numerous coincidences with the corresponding section in
XXVI.] TEACHING OF THE TWELVE APOSTLES. 603
the * Church Ordinances '. Now, a curious fact is, that this
second section of Barnabas is not extant in the ancient Latin
translation ; whence suspicion has arisen as to the genuine-
ness of this portion of the Epistle. But any hesitation as to
accepting the testimony of the Greek text is removed by the
fact that passages from this section are expressly quoted as
from Barnabas by Clement of Alexandria [Strom, ii. i8,
p. 47 0> 3-"^ by Origen [De Princ. III. ii. 4). And it may be
added, as bearing on the question presently to be considered,
whether Barnabas was original in this part of his teaching,
that Origen, at least, appears to consider him so, quoting
him as the authority for the teaching concerning the ' Two
Ways '. The probable explanation of the omission of this
section by the Latin translator is that he left it out because
the West was already in possession of the teaching concern-
ing the * Two Ways ' in another form. Evidence of the
existence of such a form is found in the commentary on the
Creed by Rufinus, written towards the end of the fourth
century. He gives [cc. 37, 38) a list of canonical and ecclesi-
astical books, founded on that of Athanasius ; but whereas
Athanasius couples the Didache with the Shepherd, Rufinus
has in the corresponding place, ' libellus qui dicitur Pastoris,
sive Hernias; qui appellatur Duse viae, vel Judicium Petri'.
Now, it is to be observed, that whereas Eusebius (iii. 3),
enumerating the apocryphal books bearing the name of the
Apostle Peter, gives the titles of four works, the Acts, the
Gospel, the Preaching, and the Revelation of Peter ; Jerome
in his Catalogue adds a fifth, the Judgment of Peter. We
cannot but think that the works mentioned by Rufinus and
by Jerome are the same ; and the second title, the ' Two
Ways ', leads us to think that it must have contained the same
matter as is found in the second part of Barnabas, and in the
' Church Ordinances ', only that instead of this teaching being,
as in the latter book, distributed among the Apostles, it
was apparently, in the Western book, put into the mouth of
Peter.
The facts of which I have given a summary were discussed
in an able Paper by a Roman Catholic divine, Krawutzcky, ia
6o4 NON-CANONICAL BOOKS. [xxvi.
the Theol. Quartalschrift, 1882, who drew from them the follow-
ing inferences : that, as early as the second century, the section
in Barnabas which treated of the ' Two Ways ' was expanded
and formed into a separate tract ; that it came into Church use,
and was the work cited as Scripture by Clement of Alexan-
dria ; that, to give greater weight to the teaching, it was put
into the mouth of Peter ; that this work was made use of by
the compiler of the ' Church Ordinances', who made the alte-
ration of distributing the teaching among the twelve Apostles ?
that the compiler of the seventh book of the Apostolic Consti-
tuitons, without any aquaintance with the ' Church Ordinances',
made independent use of the 'Two Ways '; so that by com-
parison of the 'Constitutions' and 'Ordinances', a restoration
of the earlier work which furnished a common element to both
might be obtained.
Within two years scholars found reason to think that it
was quite true that the * Constitutions' and * Ordinances' had
a common source, but that there was no need of conjectural
restoration in order to recover it. I have related (p. 570) the
discovery by Bryennius at Constantinople of a complete copy
of Clement's Epistles. The same volume contained other Eccle-
siastical writings, and in particular a complete Greek text of
Barnabas. The attention of the discoverer seems at first to
have been quite absorbed by the use to be made of his volume
in restoring the text of previously known documents ; and
though he published his edition of Clement in 1875, it
was not till the close of 1883 that he gave to the world a
previously unpublished work contained in the same volume.
This bears the heading ' Teaching of the Twelve Apostles '
(A/Sa^r) TU)v StvdeKu awocTToXiov), and commences 'Teaching of
the Lord by the twelve Apostles to the Gentiles'. It then
goes on to give the teaching of the 'Two Ways', which occu-
pies the first half of the tract. Then follows a second part,
giving directions first about baptisms, then about Eucharistic
formulae, then about Church teachers, and in conclusion there
is an eschatological passage treating of the Second Coming
of our Lord. This work bears every mark of very great anti-
quity; and it has been commonly accepted as belonging to
XXVI.] TEACHING OF THE TWELVE APOSTLES. 605
the beginning of the second century, if not to the latter part
of the first. And it has been generally recognized as the
work known to Eusebius and Athanasius, and as the common
source of 'Ordinances' and 'Constitutions', Kravvutzcky, how-
ever, resists the temptation to regard the Didache as the ful-
filment of his critical anticipations. He maintains that the
result of a comparison of the ' Ordinances ' and the Didache
is not that the one book borrows from the other, but that both
have employed a common source. And he holds that the
Didache displays Ebionite tendencies, and was probably not
written before the close of the second century. And it is
quite true that there is much in the book that not only a
Roman Catholic, as Krawutzcky is, might naturally dislike
to accept as orthodox teaching, but with which even a mem-
ber of our own Church cannot feel satisfied.
I do not count among reasonable causes of offence that
the book displays great immaturity of Church organization,
but rather accept this as a proof of the great antiquity of
the document. In that part which treats of Church teachers
the foremost place is given to Apostles and Prophets. But
the word ' Apostle ' has not the limited meaning to which
modern usage restricts it. The 'Apostles' are wandering
missionaries or envoys of the Churches. Directions are given
as to the respect to be paid to an Apostle, and the entertain-
ment to be afforded him by a Church through which he
might pass; but it is assumed that he does not contemplate
making a permanent stay. On the contrary, if he demands
lodging for more than two nights, or if on leaving he asks
from his entertainers a larger supply than will suffice to carry
him to his next lodging, he shows that he is no true prophet.
Now, the word aTrotrToAoc was in Jewish use applied to mes-
sengers sent by the rulers at Jerusalem with letters to Jewish
communities elsewhere ;* it is used in the New Testament of
envoys or commissioned messengers of the Churches (2 Cor.
viii. 23 ; Phil. ii. 25) ; but those are called in a special sense
Apostles who derived their commission not from men, but from
* See references in Lightfoot [Galatiafis, p. 92).
6o6 NON-CANONICAL BOOKS. [xxvi.
Jesus Christ. Hermas, also [Sim. ix. 15), appears to use the
word in a wide sense, representing the building of the
Church as effected by forty ' apostles and teachers', and these
as not holding the foremost place in the work. The use of
the word, therefore, in the Didache affords no cause of offence,
but attests the antiquity of the document. The chief place in
the instruction of the local Church is assigned to the ' pro-
phets', whose utterances were to be received with the respect
due to their divine inspiration, and who were entitled to re-
ceive from their congregations such dues as the Jews had
been wont to render to the high priests. The possibility is
contemplated that in the Church there might be no prophet.
In that case the first-fruits are to be given to the poor.
Mention is also made of teachers, by which I understand
persons who gave public instruction in the Church, but who
did not speak 'in the spirit', as the prophets did. The place
assigned to the prophets corresponds very well with the state
of things which I infer from Hermas, but with this notable
difference, that in Hermas the prophets appear to be subordi-
nate to the presbyters. Here, on the contrary, the first men-
tion is only of apostles and prophets ; then directions are
given for Sunday Eucharistic celebration, and then is added
' elect, therefore* to yourselves bishops and deacons '. These,
we are told, are to be honoured with the prophets and teachers,
as fulfilling like ministration. The inference then suggests
itself that at the time this document was written the Eucharist
was only consecrated by the president of the Church assembly,
who held a permanent office, and who, probably, might also
be a preacher ; but that in the mind of the writer the inspired
* The Didache fails to give any confirmation to the theory put forward by Mr.
Hatch in his ' Bampton Lectures ', that bishops and deacons were primarily ap-
pointed for the administration of the Church funds. Knowing that such administra-
tion was one of the bishop's functions in the time of Justin Martyr, we are rather
surprised to find no mention in the Didache that gifts intended for the poor passed
through the hands of the bishops or deacons. Whatever may be meant by ' the
gifts' in Clem. Rom., ch. 44, the function there ascribed to the presbyters is that
of oiTering, not of administering them ; and the displaced Corinthian presbyters are
commended, not for the integrity with which they had discharged the latter office,
but for the meekness with which they had ' borne their faculties ' in the former.
XXVI.] TEACHING OF THE TWELVE APOSTLES. 607
givers of public instruction held the higher place. No men-
tion is made of the necessity of obedience to any central
authority at Jerusalem, Rome, or elsewhere. Whether the
state of ecclesiastical organization here indicated agree or
not with what we may think likely to have existed in apos-
tolic times, and whether we accept the author as a witness
to the general practice of the Church in his time, or only as
to that which prevailed in his own locality, or according to
his own notions of fitness, still there is no reason for setting
him down as a heretic, and the unlikeness of his account to
the constitution which we know became general before the
second century was far advanced, may be taken as proof of
the writer's antiquity.
I find much more cause of offence in the Eucharistic
prayers which are given {cc. 9, 10). In the first place, we
are surprised to find information given as to the most sacred
mysteries of the religion in a document clearly intended for
the instruction of catechumens. It is free to us, no doubt, to
suppose that in that early age no reserve was practised ; but
Athanasius recommended that the book known to him as
the Didache should be employed in catechetical instruction.
Would he use it for such a purpose if it revealed what only
* the faithful know ' ? These Eucharistic prayers themselves
contain no mention of our Lord's institution of the rite, and
no mention of His Body and Blood. And through the whole
document I find no unequivocal proof that the writer really
believed in our Lord's Divinity, or that he looked on Him as
more than a divinely commissioned teacher. Krawutzcky
remarks that the writer is silent as to the doctrines of the
Incarnation and Redemption and of the sending of the Holy
Ghost. Still, if he was an Ebionite, he belonged to the
better sort of them ; he is certainly no Elkesaite. He gives
directions for the blessing of the Cup ; but in the ascetic sect
from which the Pseudo-Clementines emanated, wine does not
seem to have been employed, even in Eucharistic celebration.
In deciding as to the date of the Didache, a crucial question
is the determination of its relation to Barnabas and Hermas.
The coincidences between the Didache and Hermas are not
I
6o8 NON-CANONICAL BOOKS. [xxvi.
numerous, and there is room for controversy whether there
is literary obligation on either side. I believe that the co-
incidences are not accidental ; but as I take Barnabas to be
older than Hermas, I need not spend time on the later writer
of the two. In the case of Barnabas the obligations on the
one side or the other are too extensive to admit of dispute.
The parallel passages of Barnabas occupy four pages in
Bryennius's edition. Bryennius himself entertained no
doubt that the Didache was indebted both to Barnabas and
Hermas, and this view is also taken by Hilgenfeld, Harnack,
and Krawutzcky. But Zahn and other good critics hold the
opposite opinion ; and they advance arguments which seem
to me to prove decisively that in that part of the Didache
which treats of the ' Two Ways ' there is no obligation to
Barnabas. The precepts in the Didache are systematically
arranged, following the order of the Decalogue, on which
they serve as a commentary ; in Barnabas they are quite
promiscuous. It is not a probable hypothesis that the author
of the Didache went through Barnabas, picking out the
moral precepts, and that he succeeded in arranging his ex-
cerpts into a S5'mmetrical whole. Yet if I am right in re-
ferring Barnabas to the decade A. D, 70-80, if the Didache
was so much older, and had so much authority as to be
thought worth pillaging by Barnabas, its claims to be really
an Apostolic document deserve serious consideration ; and
how are we to explain the very limited circulation which
this truly Apostolic teaching obtained, so that it has had
the very narrowest escape of perishing altogether ?
In solving this difficulty I have found the greatest as-
sistance from a study of the Didache in connexion with the
Talmud, by Dr. Taylor.* It results from his investigations
that the Didache is an intensely Jewish document, and that
• The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles, with Illustrations from the Talmud,
by C. Ta3'lor, D.D., Master of St. John's College, Cambridge. Through Dr.
Taylor's kindness I have just seen a forthcoming paper of his in the Expositor, in
which he studies the parts of Barnabas which are common to the Didache, and
establishes, by convincing reasons, the conclusion to which I had already come, that
in these parts Barnabas is not original.
XXVI.] TEACHING OF THE TWELVE APOSTLES. 609
its contents are so well accounted for by the use of Jewish
sources, that we lose all temptation to imagine that the
author had need to resort to Barnabas for guidance. But
Dr. Taylor's illustrations do more than convince me that the
author of the Didache had received a Jewish training ; they
seem to me to make it probable that the ' Two Ways ' is
a pre-Christian work : in other words, that the author of
the Didache has taken a Jewish manual of instruction for
proselytes, and has adapted it for Christian use by additions
of his own ; in particular by insertions from the Sermon on
the Mount. This hypothesis would account for the heading",
Teaching of the Twelve Apostles to the Gentiles. It has been
remarked by several that there is nothing in the work which
suggests that it is intended for exclusively Gentile use ; nay,
that as I have intimated before, it does not even seem adapted
for the use of catechumens, Jews, or Gentiles. But the title
would be accounted for if the original of the document were
a manual of instruction for Gentile proselytes to Judaism.
There seems at least to be sufficient inducement to take this
as a working hypothesis, and see how it will bear examina-
tion. For there is a test which can be applied to it, namety,
to examine whether Barnabas knew the Didache in its pre-
sent Christianized form. If he did, Barnabas was so early
that it is unreasonable to assume that there was an earlier
form. On the other hand, if Barnabas knew, not the
Didache but the supposed Jewish parent of the Didache,
it is likely that when he adapted it to the use of his Christian
disciples, the Jewish element in the work would no doubt
remain the same as in the Didach^; but that the addi-
tions of specially New Testament teaching would, except
for some chance coincidences, be different. Now, when
we look at the four pages in Bryennius which contain
Barnabas's adaptation of the 'Two Ways ', we find that he
has not Christianized it at all. There is no use of the Gos-
pels, no mention of Jesus Christ, not a word that might not
have been written before our Lord was born. I do not know
how it will appear to others, but to my mind it comes with
the force of demonstration, Barnabas never saw the Didache.
2 R
6io NON-CANONICAL BOOKS. [xxvi.
I find it impossible to believe that if he knew that work he
would have gone over it, adapting it to his use by carefully
erasing every line which contained anything of specially
Christian teaching, or which implied a knowledge of oral or
written Gospels. Traces of such knowledge may be found in
other parts of the Epistle of Barnabas, but not in this section.
The supposition that theDidache had a Jewish original becomes
thus something more than a mere hypothesis : it is a conclu-
sion forced on us if we believe that Barnabas did not use the
Didache, and that the Didache did not use Barnabas. The
difference of order in the two documents is at once explained.
The author of the Didache wrote with the Jewish original
before him, and systematically followed its order; Barnabas,
merely in giving practical exhortation, interwove, as his
memory furnished them, precepts from a manual with which
he had formerly been familiar.* And if he did not reproduce
very accurately either the language or the order of the docu-
ment he used, this, as Dr. Taylor has remarked, ought not
to surprise anyone who considers how Barnabas deals with
the Old Testament.
If we admit that the Didache is but a Christianized form
of an originally Jewish book, the question whether the writer
who gave the work its present form knew Barnabas assumes
a different aspect. For, besides the section on the *Two
Ways', common to both books, there is one clear coincidence
between the early part of Barnabas and the last chapter of
the Didache, an entirely Christian chapter, which treats of
the Second Coming of our Lord. If I am right in supposing
that Barnabas did not know the Didache in its present form,
the obligation cannot be on his side. On the other hand, all
the marks of superior antiquity that have been found in the
Didache belong to the Jewish element in the book, so that
there is no reason for denying an acquaintance with Barna-
bas on the part of the writer who contributed the Christian
* This introduces a new element for the determination of the question (p. 562),
whether or not the so-called Barnabas was a Jew. I now suspect that he had been
XI Gentile proselyte to Judaism, and had thus become acquainted with the 'Two
Ways'.
XXVI.] TEACHING OF THE TWELVE APOSTLES. 6ll
element. There is a difficult phrase in this last chapter,
which, if we could only be sure that we interpret it rightly,
would afford a more direct proof of the dependence of that
chapter on Barnabas. It gives as the first of three signs of our
Lord's immediate coming, ctijjueTov eKTrsTacrewQ eu ovpavi^. I think
Archdeacon Edwin Palmer has given the best explanation of
this. He refers to the words of Isaiah (Ixv. 2), *I have
stretched forth (l^eiriTacra) my hands to a disobedient and
gainsaying people '. Barnabas interprets this of our Lord's
* stretching forth ' his hands on the cross ; and Justin Martyr
[ApoL i. 35 ; Trypho 197), and several other fathers follow
him in giving this mystical meaning to the verb fKTTfrai/vu/it.
If we could count the author of the Didache in the number of
these followers, his phrase is at once explained as meaning
the sign of the cross. If this explanation be right, the rela-
tive order of Barnabas and this part of the Didache is de-
termined. If Barnabas came first, the phrase in the Didach6
is explained ; but if the Didache came first, a phrase so
obscure would never suggest to Barnabas his interpretation
of Isaiah, and without that interpretation we should be at a
loss to know how the phrase came to be adopted.
We can apply the same method of examination to the
* Church Ordinances '. On the first glance, indications show
themselves of the use of Barnabas ; for the commencement of
both is the same : ' Hail, ye sons and daughters ' ! And
in the sequel there are found other sufficient proofs of
acquaintance with Barnabas on the part, at least, of the
writer who gave the work its present form. But the
section on the ' Two Ways ' follows precisely the order of
the Didache, and not the order or disorder of Barnabas.
The ' Two Ways ' are introduced with a Gospel quotation :
* On these two commandments hang all the law and the
prophets ' ; but this quotation is not found in the Didache.*
* There is a passage in Clement of Alexandria {Paed. iii. 12, p. 305) which sug-
gests a use of the Didache by its interpolation in the Decalogue of the precept oh
iratSocpOop^ffets, and the passage is introduced with the same New Testament quota-
tion as in the ' Church Ordinances '. Clement, however, could so easily have
supplied the quotation from his own resources that it would not be safe to infer
2 R 2
5i2 NON-CANONICAL BOOKS. [xxvi.
And towards the conclusion there are other New Testament
quotations not found in the Didache. But the general ab-
sence of the Christian element is striking on a comparison
of the ' Two Ways ' in the * Ordinances ' and in the Didache ;
for the same order is followed in both, but the additions
from the Sermon on the Mount which appear in the latter
are absent from the former. I notice just one coincidence.
Where Barnabas simply has 'Thou shalt be meek', the Di-
dache has ' Be meek, for the meek shall inherit the earth ' ;
the 'Church Ordinances', * Be meek, for the meek shall in-
herit the kingdom of heaven'. I do not think this affords a
proof that the ' Ordinances' used the Didache, but rather the
reverse. Both agree in occasionally making New Testament
additions to precepts which occur in Barnabas in a purely
Jewish form ; but these additions are in every other case
different. It is not strange if in this one case the precept of
meekness suggested the same words of our Lord to the diffe-
rent writers, who, however, show their independence by quot-
ing them in different forms. The conclusion, then, to which
I come is, that the first framer of the 'Church Ordinances'
was not acquainted with the Didach6, and that the two works
are independent attempts to throw Jewish instruction into the
form of Apostolic teaching : but with this difference of form,
that in the Didache the whole was generally described as
Apostolic teaching, but that in the ' Ordinances ' the precepts
were distributed among different Apostles. I should conjec-
ture the latter to be an Egyptian work : the former, on ac-
count of its strongly Jewish character, to have had its birth
in the country east of the Jordan, where Christian Jews were
numerous. There was, as I have said, a third form of the
'Two Ways' current in the West. For want of evidence, we
cannot say whether the publisher of this form knew Didach6
or 'Ordinances', or, as is quite possible, only the Jewish
parent of both.*
that Clement knew the Didache in its Egyptian, not its Palestinian, form ;
especially since it would be as easy to draw a contrary inference from Cohort, ad
G elites, p. 85.
* There is one Western quotation from Doctrina Apostolorum (Pseu Jo-Cyprian,
XXVI.] TEACHING OF THE TWELVE APOSTLES. 613
If we compare the Didache with the Seventh Book of the
Apostolic Constitutions we find quite a different result. There
the New Testament illustrations from the Didache are all re-
produced ; and it is apparent that the compiler of the ' Con-
stitutions' knew and used the Didache.
It seems to me, then, that there is grave reason for ques-
tioning the common opinion that we owe to Bryennius the
recovery of a book of great importance in the history of our
religion — a work which had enormous circulation, and which
has left traces of its influence in distant places. If reference
is made to the testimonies which I have already quoted, ex-
hibiting knowledge of the existence of a book of ' Apostolic
Teaching ', they will be seen to be very few. I do not find, for
example, in the extant worksof Tertullianor Irenseus* evidence
of knowledge of the existence of such a book. And I find no
certain evidence that the Palestinian form of the Apostolic
teaching was known at all in the East before the middle of
the fourth century. The quotation by Clement is more likely
to have been from the Egyptian form, with which he has a
point of contact in regarding Cephas as a person distinct
from the Apostle Peter (Euseb. H.E. i. 12). It seems to me
that the book whose title Eusebius quotes in the plural num-
ber, ot ^i^ayjxi Thiv cnrodToXwv, is more likely to have been
composed in the form in which the teaching was distributed
among several Apostles than in that form which does not
suggest the use of any but the singular number. Athanasius
uses the singular number, and the date of his 39th Festal
Epistle is so late (a.D. 367), that I should willingly believe the
Didache, as we know it, to be the book intended, if I did
De Aleatoribus, p. 96, Hartel). It has affinities with a passage in Biyennius's
Didache, but differs a good deal in form.
* There is, I thinli, reasonable ground to infer knowledge of the Didache from
one of the mysterious fragments, as from Irenaeus, published by Pfaff, from a Turin
Catena, which has since disappeared. I see no feason to doubt that Pfaff found the
extracts ascribed to Ireiiaeus in the MS. which he copied ; but Catenae often make
mistakes in their ascription of authorship, and though I believe the extract in question
to have been from the work of an ancient authoi", I do not beUeve that that author
was Irenseus. Zahn's remark is conclusive, that this fragment quotes the Epistle to
the Hebrews as St. Paul's.
6 14 NON-CANONICAL BOOKS. [xxvi.
not feel some hesitation arising from doubts already expressed
as to whether this book is one which Athanasius would have
put into the hands of catechumens.
If the view I have taken be correct that the Didache, as
we know it, was a work of very limited circulation and in-
fluence, which spread but little and slowly outside the purely
Jewish section of the Church, it ceases to be of much im-
portance in the history of the Christian Church ; but it even
gains in importance when regarded as a contribution to the
history of Judaism, exhibiting the religious training which
had been received by pious Jews before the Gospel was
preached to them. I therefore turn back to examine how
much of the Didache can be supposed to have been based
on a previously existing Jewish manual. To that manual
we naturally refer the first five chapters containing the
'Two Ways'. The sixth is a short chapter, giving license
to the disciple, in matters of food, not to bear the whole yoke
if he is not able, but insisting on his at least abstaining from
things offered in sacrifice to idols. Nothing forbids us to
think that this was a rule of life prescribed by Jews to a
proselyte, and the whole chapter may have been found
textually in the original manual.
The seventh chapter treats of baptism. The candidate is
previously to have been taught all the preceding instructions ;
then he is to be baptized in the name of Father, Son, and
Holy Ghost. The baptism is to take place in preference in
running water ; if this cannot be had, in standing water ; if
cold water cannot be had, it may take place in warm water ;
by which we are apparently to understand that if neither river
nor pond were accessible, the baptism might take place in
drawn water, such as that of a bath. If water in sufficient
quantity could not be had, water might be thrice poured on
the head in the name of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.
Both baptizer and baptized were to fast previously, and, if
possible, others with them ; but in any case the person to be
baptized must fast beforehand one day or two. It is evident
this chapter has been Christianized ; but the original docu-
ment could hardly have failed to contain in the corresponding
XXVI.] TEACHING OF THE TWELVE APOSTLES. 615
place instructions about baptism, which was a ceremony con-
sidered essential in the admission of proselytes. The doctrine
of the absolute necessity of the preliminary fast receives a
curious illustration from the Pseudo-Clementines. In the part
of that romance [Recog. vii. 36 ; Horn, xiii, 11) which relates
the baptism of Clement's mother Peter directs that she must
fast one day previously. She declares that she has eaten
nothing for the last two days (a fact to which Peter's wife
bears witness), and asks to be baptized at once. Peter
smiles, and explains that a fast made without reference to
baptism will not count. She must fast all that day ; they will
all fast with her, and then she can be baptized the next
day.
The next chapter in the original in all probability
treated of fasting and prayer. The Didache here directs the
disciple to fast twice a week ; but not on Mondays and Thurs-
days, like the hypocrites, but on Wednesdays and Fridays ;
and to pray three times a-day ; but instead of praying like
the hypocrites, to use the Lord's Prayer, which is given with
the doxology. It appears to me that the adapter here de-
signedly departed from his original ; and that the rules of
fasting and the prayers which he calls ' of the hypocrites ',
were those which he found in his original, and for which he
substitutes purely Christian equivalents, Epiphanius [Haer.
16) speaks of the Monday and Thursday fast as a Pharisaic
institution. The author of the Didache had, no doubt, in his
mindj our Lord's words, which occur so often in Matt, xxiii.,
' Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites ' !
The ninth and tenth chapters of the Didache are generally
understood as referring to the Eucharist. I have already in-
timated some difficulty as to this view, and the difficulty is
increased by the fact that the Eucharist is treated of in a later
chapter (14). Why should it be treated of twice? I believe
the answer to be, that in the corresponding ^place of the
original Jewish manual the proselyte was taught as the con-
cluding piece of his instruction forms of benediction to be used
before and after solemn meals. These forms, I take it, the
compiler of the Didache adapted for Christian use, leaving it
6i6 NON-CANONICAL BOOKS. [xxvi.
free, however, to persons endowed with prophetical gifts to
use different forms if they chose- These forms might be used
in the Christian Love Feasts ; but I do not believe that the
Eucharist proper is treated of before the fourteenth chapter.
And, in fact, if I am right in my inference from the ' there-
fore ' at the beginning of chap, xv., the Didache agrees with
Justin Martyr in making consecration the office of the presi-
dent of the assembly, and there could be no reason why for-
mulae for the purpose should be taught to the ordinary
disciple. It is true that the word ivxapiGTia is here used in
the Didache, and it is ordained that no unbaptized person
shall eat of it. Yet I am disposed to believe the explanation
to be, that the word Eucharist had not yet come to be used
exclusively of the Lord's Supper. In the Clementines great
prominence is given to Peter's benediction of meals in cases,
where if an administration of the Eucharist, as we understand
the word, be intended, Peter must have made every meal a
Eucharist. For example, Clement, narrating his intercourse
with Peter, previous to his baptism, says : — * And when he
had said these things, and had taken food, he by himself, he
commanded that I also should take food, and he blessed
over the food, and gave thanks after he was satisfied,* and
exhorted me with a word concerning that [which he had
done]' ; and after these things he said, God grant thee that
thou mayest in everything be like unto me, and mayest be
baptized, and this same food with me thou mayest re-
ceive.'t
* Compare juera rb einrXriffOrivai {Didache, ch. lo).
t Clem. Recog. i. 19, translated for me from the Syriac by Dr. Gwynn. The
strongest evidence that Clement of Alexandria knew the Palestinian form of the
Didache is, that he uses (Quis dives salvus, 20) the phrase 'vine of David',
which occurs in one of these benedictory prayers. The phrase itself we may well
believe occurred in the Jewish benediction, and there meant the Jewish people. And
it is possible that this benediction may have been copied into the Egyptian form of
the ' Apostolic Teaching '. It is generally owned that the latter part of the ' Church
Ordinances ', as we have them, is a later addition ; but in order to make room for that
addition, the ' Way of Death', and possibly some other portions of the original docu-
ment have been cut away. Bomemann notices {Theol. Literaturz. 1885, 413) that
Origen also has ' verje vitis quae ascendit de radice David ' [In Librum Judicum,
Hom. 17).
XXVI.] TEACHING OF THE TWELVE APOSTLES. 617
I do not know whether the influence of a Jewish original
can be traced beyond chap. x. ; and yet it is quite possible that
a Jewish manual might contain directions as to the reception
of airoaToXoi, there being Jewish officers so called, as has
been already remarked. And if the manual had contained
orders as to the payment of first-fruits for the support of the
high-priests, we could understand why the Didache, in direct-
ing that first-fruits should be paid to the prophets, should
add, ' for they are your high-priests '. At any rate, chaps, xiv.,
XV., and the last chapter, on our Lord's Second Coming, are
not likely to have had anything corresponding in a merely
Jewish book. But there is one passage about which a few
words must be said. I have said that in the section of
Barnabas on the * Two Ways ' there is no use of the Gospels ;
but there is one passage which apparently exhibits a use of the
Acts and of St. Paul. Barnabas says (ch. xix.) : ' Participate
with your neighbour in all things, and say not that things are
your own ; for if you have been participators in that which is
incorruptible, how much more in corruptible things.' The
passage strongly recalls Rom. xv. 27, and i Cor. ix. 11. But
the same words are found both in the Didache and in the
* Church Ordinances', save that instead of acpdaprio we have
adavdrw. If we could take the three as independent witnesses,
it would follow that there must have been corresponding
words in the Jewish original; and then the question would
arise whether that original may not have been old enough to
have been known to St. Paul. But as there is also what
looks like a use of Acts iv. 32, the passage can scarcely be
pre-Christian ; and I am therefore disposed to believe that
Barnabas is here the original, I have already come to the
conclusion that the Christian adapter of the Didache had seen
Barnabas, and he may have made an addition from that
source. I have not made any systematic study of the ' Church
Ordinances ' ; but I share the general belief that the latter
half is not of the same date as the earlier portion ;* and the
later compiler may have been acquainted with the Didache.
* There is in the latter one very curious passage (§. 26), indicating jealousy of
the women on the part of the Apostles, which I suspect owes its origin to something
6i8 NON-CANONICAL BOOKS, ETC. [xxvi.
Since the above was in type, Dr. Schaff has kindly com-
municated to me a note in the forthcoming new edition of his
work on the Didache, from which I learn that an American
scholar, Mr. Potwin, has called attention to the following"
passage in Origen [De Princ. III. ii. 7) : * Propterea docet nos
Scriptura divina, omnia quas accidunt nobis tanquam a Deo
illata suscipere, scientes quod sine Deo nihil fit.' Now, since
we have in the Didache (iii. 10), ra cru/xjSaivoira aoi lvepyr]iJ.aTa
u)Q ayaOa irpocf^i^rj, tlSwg on arsp Oaov ovShv yivtrai, Mr. Potwin
concludes that Origen knew the Didache, and regarded it as
Scripture. But he overlooks that the same words are found
both in Barnabas and in the ' Church Ordinances ', so that it
remains undetermined from which source Origen drew the
words. But in the preceding chapter Origen (see p. 603) had
quoted as from Barnabas the section on the ' Two Ways ' ;*
and since (see p. 558) he elsewhere quotes Barnabas as
Scripture, we have no inducement to look beyond Barnabas
for the source of the present quotation; and Mr. Potwin's
interesting remark appears rather to furnish additional proof
of the respect in which Origen held the Epistle of Barna-
bas than to establish his knowledge of the Didache. Since
Clement of Alexandria knew the Didache in some form, and
since Origen, even if he had not met the book in Egypt, would
be likely to have heard of it during his residence in Palestine,
I should expect that a search through Origen's writings would
elicit some proof of his knowledge of the Didache ; but no
clear proof of this kind has, as far as I know, yet been pro-
duced.
in the Gospel according to the Egyptians. At least, the same feature shows itself in
the Gnostic work, Pisiis Sophia, which is also Egyptian. In p. 57, when Mary,
who has already been highly commended by the Saviour for her previous answer, is
about to speak, Peter leaps forward, and says : ' Lord, we cannot suffer this woman
to take place with us, for she will not allow any of us to speak, but is speaking very
often;' and again, p. 161, Mary says : 'I would answer, but I am afraid of Peter,
who is threatening me, and who hates our sex '.
* This quotation cannot be used negatively to prove tliat Origen was not ac-
quainted with the Didache, since the angels on account of whom Origen cites the
passage are not mentioned in the Didache.
INDEX
TO
PERSONS AND SUBJECTS.
Abbot, Ezra, Dr., 6l, 71, 75, 78, 84.
Abbott, Ed-win A,, Dr., on Fourth
Gospel, 78 : on Encratism, 81 ; on
Synoptic Gospels, 145, 148-51 ; on
2 Peter, 529-51.
Abgar legend, 202, 346-8, 504.
Abraham, 480, 559.
Acts of the Apostles ; see Contents,
Lecture xviii.
Ada?ns, Professor, 266.
Adulteress, pericope of, 97, 166.
^non, 271.
African Church ; its language, 44.
Alexander, Syriarch, 351.
Alexandria, 42, 167, 230, 447, 564,594.
Alexandrian MS. : see Codex A.
Alexandrians, Epistle to, 49, 436,
563-
Alford, Dean, 133, 141, 335, 534.
Alogi, 229.
Ambrose, 38, 349, 559.
Amen, the Christian, 360, 361.
Ammonius, harmony of, 83, 86.
Amphilochius, 502.
^Pi.vay€VV7)(Tis, 302, 549.
'AvdKvffis, 420.
Anastasius Sinaita, 264.
Anatolius, 509.
Andrew, Acts of, 364, 370.
Anencletus, 567.
Anger, no, 185.
Anicetus, 261.
Anne, mother of Virgin, 194.
'Avo/jLia, 21.
Antitheses of Marcion, 205.
Apelles, Gnostic, 177.
Apocalypse of John, 224, 508, 601;
see Contents, Lectures III., xir.,
XIII., XIV. ; and for its use of
Daniel, 597, 598.
of Peter, 227, 552-6, 566.
of Baruch, 228.
of Paul, 557.
Apocryphal Gospels, 35, 120, 165, Lec-
ture XI.
■ Acts, Lecture xix.
Apocrypha, Jewish, 508, 555.
Apollinaris of Hierapolis, 264.
of Laodicea, 311, 508.
Apollonius, 356.
Apollos, 73, 445, 449-
Apostle, name not Hmited to the
Twelve, 283, 605.
Apostles, false, 31, 32.
Apostolic Church Ordinances, 602
sqq.
620
INDEX TO PERSONS AND SUBJECTS.
Apostolic Constitutions, 360, 509, 569,
601 sqq.
Aquila and Priscilla, 480.
Aquila, translator O. T., 537, 588, 591.
Aramaic, ii"], 143, 156, 532.
Archippus, 397.
'Aper^, 547.
Aringhi, 369.
Aristarchus, 386, 396, 429.
Aristion, 90, 91, 104, 279.
Arnold, Matthew, 61.
Artetnon, 52, 55.
Ascension of our Lord ; believed by
early Church, 164 ; recognized in
Fourth Gospel, 292, 302 ; in the
Apocalypse, 303 ; previous relation
of, known to St. John, 305.
Assumption B. V.M., 376-8.
of Moses, 508, 510.
Athanasius, 265, 436, 502, 516, 573-4,
613.
Pseudo-, 285, 508.
Athenagoras, 78.
Augustine, 38, 127, 155, 178, 213,349,
357, 375, 438, 499, 508-9, 557-
Autoptic touches in Mark, 155 ; in
Fourth Gospel, 177.
Bahooism, 529-39, 544.
Bdbylo7t, the name how used, 462-4.
Baethgen, 84.
Balaam, alleged nickname for St. Paul,
27.
Baptism, precept of, not directly men-
tioned by St. John, 302 ; St. John
and Justin, 74; female, 348 ; lay,
352 ; Gnostic administration of, 360 ;
rules for, in the Didache, 614.
Barcochba, 501.
Bardenhewer, 593.
Barnabas, -^21, ^2i„ 437-8; his claim
to authorship of Epistle to the
Hebrews, 445-54.
Epistle of, 108, 474, 518,
S53> 556-64 ; and the Didache, 601
sqq.
Barsalihi, 83-5.
Bartholomew, 167.
Baruch, Book of, 599.
Apocalypse of, 228.
Basil, 394, 513.
Basilides, 58, 61, 104, 415, 457,
515-
Baur, 13; his Canon, 24, 124, 211,
213, 223, 256, 286; on Mark, 156;
on the Acts, 312 ; on Paschal dis-
putes, 260-3 ; 01^ Pauline Epistles,
379-86, 395-9, 405, 414, 442, 451.
Baur's theory of early Church History,
Lect. II., 320-6, 332, 364-5, 379,
460, 469, 482-3.
Beast, of Apocalypse, 26, 225, 245-6.
Beasts, four, 38.
miracles on, in Gnostic Acts,
359-62.
Bede, 497.
Bel and the Dragon, 596.
Benary, 245.
Bentley, 5, 8, 164.
Beroea, 168.
Bickell, 601.
Birthplace of our Lord, 289.
Bishops and Deacons, 395, 606.
Blastiis, 265.
Bonnet, 344.
Bomemann, 616.
Borrowing, literary, 134, 524.
Boycotting, 252.
Brandes, 557.
Brethren of our Lord, 504,
Brindley, 407.
Bruce, 509.
Bryennius, 570, 601, 608-14.
Bugs, story of, 372.
Bunsen, 49, 551, 556.
Burgon, Dean, 86, 160.
Byrrhus, 375.
Byzantium, 370.
Caiaphas, 270, 274.
Caius, of Rome, 50-57, 228, 331, 368,
436, 464, 552.
INDEX TO PERSONS AND SUBJECTS.
621
Caius, of 3rd John, 284.
Caligula, 253, 463.
Calvin, 253, 433, 440, 514.
Canon, how formed, 12 1-7, 193, 498-
500, 512-14, 525, 559, 560, 569.
Carpocrates, 506.
Carthage, Council of, 439, 525.
Caspari, 267.
Cassiodorus, 474, 514-8.
Catacombs, 43, 369.
Catholic Church, 408-11.
Epistles, 473, 571.
Cave, our Lord's birth in a, 71, 195.
Celsus, 160.
Cephas, 291, 602, 613.
Ceriani, 228, 508.
Cerinthus, 28, 228-31, 552.
Chagigah, 258.
Cherubim and the Gospels, 38.
Chigi version of Daniel, 589 sqq.
Chiliasin, 228-30.
Christology, of fourth Gospel, 216; of
Synoptic Gospels, 218 ; of Apoca-
lypse, 220-4,413; of St. Paul, 224,
400, 413 ; of St. James, 494.
Chrysostom, 257, 349, 423, 513,
536-
Church (see Catholic).
Church Ordinances, 602 sqq.
Circumcision, a title of honour with
St. Paul, 30-1, 562.
Clement, of the Epistle to the Philip-
pians, 336, 568.
Clement of Alexandria, 41, 42, 43, 48,
60, 93, III, 167, 197, 203, 212, 213,
257, 281, 309, 330, 356, 363, 364,
372, 373, 391, 401, 434, 440, 457,
474, 478, 501, 506, 508, 517, 552,
558, 566, 593, 611, 616.
Clement of Rome, 564-571, 14, 20, 32,
43, 88, 106, 310, 382, 391, 403,
414, 423, 430, 433, 439, 456, 457,
465, 476, 521, 548, 555, 599, 601,
611.
his second Epistle, so-called,
671, 205, 403, 413, 521, 611.
Clementines, Pseudo-, 14-20, 75-7
364-67, 80, 173, 356, 448, 460, 477,
500, 509, 520, 607, 615 ; their N. T.
quotations, 176, 177.
Codex J^, 108, i6r, 296, 308, 394, 516,
537, 539, 555, 557, 574-
A, 537, 548, 555, 566, 571.
B, r6r, 296, 308, 394, 439, 516,
537, 539-
• C, 226, 308, 537.
I>, 314.
K, 537.
L, 163, 537.
Amiatinus, 375.
Augiensis, 454.
Aureus, 375.
Cheltoniensis , 551.
Chisianus, 589.
Claromo7ttanus, 453, 516, 551,
555, 574-
Coincidences, John and Synoptics, 304,
John and Paul, 413.
Acts and Epistles, 334, 338,
470.
Peter and Paul, 466.
Peter and James, 470.
Lukeand Josephus, 341, 342.
2 Peter and Josephus, 541,
548.
N. T. and Philo, 544-51.
St. John and Theodotion,
596-8.
Barnabas and Didache, 61 1.
Colossians, 223, 396—403.
Cofnmentary, earliest N. T., 60.
Cotnmodus, 590-92.
Contradictions between Fourth Gospel
and Synoptics, 287 ; do not disprove
early date, 258.
Controversies, dying out of, 408-9.
Conybeare, 380.
Cook, Canon, 162, 336.
Corinth, Church of, 564, 570.
Corrections of N. T. text in third cen-
tury, 56, 58.
Cotterill, Mr. 548.
622
INDEX TO PERSONS AND SUBJECTS.
Cross, Gnostic cult of, 371.
Cross-references in Acts, 317.
Crowji of Life, 222, 482.
Cum?ning, Dr., 250.
Cureton, 160, 189.
Cyprian, 160, 369, 517, 551, 594.
Pseudo-, 365, 612.
Cyprus, 339, 447.
Cyril of Alexandria, 160, 496.
of Jerusalem, 160, 359, 516.
Cythnos, 244.
Damasus, 369, 504.
Daniel, 219, 390, 587-99.
Darwin, 422.
Dathan and Abiram, 569.
Davidson, Dr., 7, 236, 21 r, 311, 318,
326, 333. 379, 388-9, 395-6, 401,
409, 419, 426,433, 518, 528.
Decretal Epistles, 7, 273.
Demas, 350, 397, 429.
Demetrius, 286.
De Morgan, Professor, 266.
Derenbourg, 483.
De Rossi, 369.
Derry, Bishop of, 210, 396.
Des Cartes, 82.
Development of Doctrine, 492-3.
De Wette, 289, 320, 405.
Diatessaron, 80, 83-86, 348.
Didache, 283, 496, 601-18.
Didymus, 502, 508, 515.
Dillmann, 510.
Diodorus, 86.
Dionysius of Alexandria, 26, 225-35,
279, 436, 456-
^ 0/ Corinth, 87, 226, 310,
464, 565, 566.
Barsalibi, 83-5.
Dioscorides, 533.
Diotrephes, 284-6.
Discourses of our Lord, unique, 1 14-15.
Dismas and Gestas, 202.
Dispersion, 270, 479.
Divinity of our Lord, taught by St.
Jolm, 216-224.
Divinity of our Zorrf asserted by Him-
self, 218, 300.
Docetism, 196, 199-201, 285, 362, 363,
371-
Doddridge, Dr. 579.
' Domine quo vadis ', 367.
Donaldson, 575.
Dressel, 76.
Drummond, 74, 78-
Ducange, 360.
Duchesne, 369.
Easter Controversies, 259-264.
Ebedjesu, 514.
Ebionites, 14, 76, 607 ; meaning of
word, 173, 483; two kinds, 18;
their Gospel, 169, 173; their Acts,
364 ; opposed by St. John, 374.
Edersheim, 257.
Edessa, 17, 83, 345, 356, 364.
Edinburgh Review, 245, 248.
Egyptians, Gospel according to, 41,
203, 204, 618.
Eichhorn, 147, 148.
Eleutherus, 402.
Elkesai, 18, 19, 173, 324, 365, 402,
607.
Ellicott, Bishop, 381.
Encratism, 81, 204-5, 345, 353, 363,
372, 415-
Enoch, 501, 509, 510.
Eothen, 315.
Epaphras, 397.
Epaphroditus, 395.
Ephesus, 27, 72, 232, 241, 329, 375,
398, 420, 424, 480.
Ephesians, Epistle to, 392, 394, 403-
413, 556-
Ephraem Syrus, 83-6, 229, 282, 477,
502.
^'E.iriyvwiris, 4I9»
'ETTtouirjoj, 145.
Epiphanius, 168, 16, 149, 173-76,
196, 197, 202, 2o5, 229, 349, 3:5,
504, 515. 557,565, 590-92,615.
'ETTi^aceja, 419.
INDEX TO PERSONS AND SUBJECTS.
623
Episcopacy, 284, 395, 430, 565, 568,
584-6.
Episemon, 253-4.
Erasmus, 433, 514-15.
Esdras, Book of, 595.
Eucharist, institution not recorded by
St. John, 298 ; Christian belief in,
300, 606-7, 616 ; evidential value
of, 299 ; Gnostic rites, 360.
Eusebius, 87-89, 50, 64, 83, 87-96
101-5, 152, 160, 166, 172, 181, 186,
227, 229, 248, 252, 264, 279, 305,
310, 346, 356, 402, 414, 433-4, 455,
463, 473, 499, 513, 517, 544, 553-4,
557, 564, 603, 613.
Evodius, 508.
Ewald, 426.
'E^^pafia, 537.
"EioBos, 520, 546.
Eznig, 458.
Ezra, 596.
Eabricius, 343, 555.
Farrar, Archdeacon, 245-9, 252, 254,
381, 540-47-
Fasting, 614.
Feasts, yewish,m Fourth Gospel, 268.
Firmilian, 401, 517.
FitzGerald, Bishop, 68, 175, 253, 336,
541-
Florinus, 37.
Forgery, 57, 282, 380, 522-4.
Friend of God, 476.
Fritzsche, 228, 245, 509.
Fumeaux, 5.
Galatians, 16, 24, 325, 336, 491.
Galen, 342.
Gamaliel, 366.
Gardiner, Col., 579.
Garrett, Mr., 510.
Gelasius, Pope, 504.
of Cyzicus, 508.
Genealogies omitted by Tatian, 85,
Gentiles, their admission into the
Church, 325, 408, 609.
Gieseler, 213.
Glaucias, 515,
Gnosis, 417, 558.
Gnosticism, date of commencement,
400-3 ; two types of, 353, 506 ;
use of St. John's Gospel, 79; cult
of cross, 371; Acts 346-55; and
miracles, 372; tale about Hades,
457-8 ; story of death of Zacharias,
196.
Gohar, Stephen, 437.
Godet, 157, 254.
Gospels, why four, 37-8; meaning of
word, 124 ; ' according to ', no; lost
Gospel, 67; genesis of, 128-30;
their publication prehistoric, 123;
(see Apocryphal).
Grapte, 580.
Greek, the language of early Roman
Church, 43, 54; whether spoken in
Holy Land, 187 ; of New Testa-
ment, 239, 489, 533, 588.
Gregory the Great, 369.
Nazianzen, 349.
Nyssen, 196, 349.
Grotius, 388, 522.
Gundephorus, 357.
Gutschmid, 354, 357.
Gwynn, Dr., 296, 395, 419, 521, 536,
539,541-51,590- 9,616.
Hades, 202, 347, 457-9.
Hadrian, 401, 501, 564.
Hapax lego?nena, 527, 542, 547.
Harmony of Gospels, 83-6, 103.
Harttack, 84, 90, 105, 448, 551, 601,
608.
Harris, Rendel, 555, 587.
Harvey, 590.
Hatch, 606.
Hausrath, 426.
Hebrew, alleged original language of
St. Matthew, 92-3, 165-91 ; words
preserved by St. Mark only, 69.
624
INDEX TO PERSONS AND SUBJECTS.
Hebrews, Gospel according to, Lect. x.,
165-90, 87, 343.
Epistle to, Lect. xxi., 432-
54, 88, 335, 523, 551, 573, 588, 597.
Hegesippus, 49, 87, 186, 401-2, 414,
478, 484, 503, 507, 566-7.
Helena, 366.
Hellenists, 43, 447, 532.
Heracleon, 60, 81, 363, 364.
Heretic, 417.
Heretical testimony to Gospels, 57 ;
Gospels, 192-209,
Her7nas, 571-600, 43, 48, 114, 310,
4i3> 438, 457. 459, 475. 521, 555,
557, 602, 608.
Hermogenes, 350.
Herodotus, 360, 399, 531.
Heumann, 254.
Hilge7ifeld, 70, 76, 102, 108, 180, 185,
193, 194, 197, 222, 294-6, 341, 365,
379, l^l^ 389. 395-6, 407. 433. 468,
508, 518, 555, 608.
Hippocrates, 342, 537.
Hippolytus, 62-61, 160, 200, 203, 229,
257, 266, 366, 368, 411, 437, 477,
520, 556, 583. 593-
Hitzig, 245.
Hohart, Dr., 145, 342.
Hohhes, 292.
Holsten, 386, 587.
Holtzmami, 341, 406-7, 466.
Holy Ghost, the name feminine in Ara-
maic, 180.
Hone, 192.
Hooykaas, Dr., 286, 312, 315,
Hope, Apostle of, 471.
Hort, Dr., 61, 64, 159, 164, 395, 447,
527. 538, 587, 596.
Hospitality of Christians, 282.
Howson, Dean, 380.
Hug, 213, 478.
Hugo, Victor, 247, 414.
Hystaspes, 365.
Iconium, 341.
Iconoclasts, 371.
"iStos, 536.
Ignatius, 21, 106, 186, 300, 310, 382,
391. 565-6, 601.
Inaccuracy of quotations, 69, 1 34-5.
Inspiration of Scripture, 2, 3, 37, 54-6,
126, 510-11, 560.
Irenmcs, 35-40, 48, 54-5, 65, 78-9,
88-9, 91, 105, III, 159, 200, 212,
226, 243, 252, 261, 279, 281, 309,
361, 366-8, 382-4, 391, 396, 402-3,
412-4, 437, 457-9, 509. 518, 558,
566-8, 592, 613.
Irish Revisers C.P., 75.
Irony of St. John, 293.
Jafnes, the Lord''s brother, 178, 337,
478, 486, 493, 503.
Epistle of; Lect. xxiii.
and Shepherd of Hermas, 586.
Gospel of, 120, 194, 198.
Jason, 386.
Jeremiah, Pseudo-, 459.
Jerome, 38, 53, 85, 127, 168, 171, 176,
179, 180, 196, 229, 282, 331, 345,
352, 361. 374. 383. 391, 415. 438,
473, 499, 502, 504, 508, 512-15, Si7»
527-8, 558, 566, 588-9, 595. 603.
Pseudo-, 345, 515.
Jerusalem, how often visited by our
Lord, 305-8 ; its Church, 402 ; its
bishop, 478, 500.
Jesus Justus, 397.
Jews, the phrase, 23, 271, 387, 562;
its use by St. Paul, 31.
Jewish Christians fraternized with
unconverted brethren, 262, 561.
Jewish hostility to Christians, 31, 501.
Joachifn, 194.
John the Baptist (see Baptist).
John the Apostle, not mentioned in
fourth Gospel, 62, 280 ; whether
visited Asia, 281 ; whether visited
Rome, 255, 285 ; knew of other
Gospels, 257 ; John and the robber,
370.
INDEX TO PERSONS AND SUBJECTS.
625
John, Gospel according to, see Lects.
XII. -XVI I., 562.
the First Epistle, 201-3, 528.
the Second and Third, 281-7.
Acts of John, 371-5.
John the Elder, 91, 231-2, 279-82.
Jortin, 193.
Josephus, 143, 188, 246, 257, 270, 273,
341-2, 462, 483, 520, 539-50.
jfudas Iscariot, 308, 311.
Thomas, 347, 355-64, 504-
Jude, Epistle of, Lect. XXIV.
Judith, 297.
Julian, Emperor, 496.
the Pelagian, 178.
Julius Africanus, 569.
Junilius, 513.
Justin Martyr, 58, 63-80, 93, I02,
III, 120, 142, 151, 157-9, 197, 203,
224, 301-2, 360, 365, 391, 396, 402,
414, 434, 459, 496, 501, 509, 518,
521,558,593,611,616.
Justus Barsabas, 374.
Juvenal, 42, 93, 495.
Yiavtrwv, 479, 530.
Keble, 231, 559.
Keim, 185, 281, 461.
Kerioth, 308.
Kihn, 513.
Klostermann, 157,
Ko(;U7j(ris, 376.
Krawutzcky, 603-8.
Krenkel, 342.
Labyrinth, 52.
Lachmann, 164.
Lactantius, 365.
Lamb, as title of our Lord, 235.
Laodicea, Paschal, disputes at, 263-4.
Council of, 525.
Laodiceans, Epistle to, 205, 392-5.
Latin translation N. T., 42.
words in St. Mark, 43.
Laud, Archbishop, 253,
Laurence, Archbishop, 509.
Leathes, Dr. Stanley, 238.
Lee, Archdeacon, 222.
Lee, Bishop, 181.
Lekebusch, 333.
Leucius Charinus, 355, 370-379.
Leusden, 527.
Lewin, Mr., 381.
Lightfoot, Bishop, 10, 18, 52, 70, 84,
88, 90, 97, 100, 102, 103, 105, 182,
186, 213, 284, 340, 381, 391, 394,
401, 407, 459, 465, 504-5, 558, 605.
Linus, 430, 567.
Lipsius, 344, 36, 149, 185, 202, 348,
369, 375, 448, 462, 553, 582.
Liturgical use of Gospels, 93-4.
Liturgy of Rome, 44, 568.
Logia of St. Matthew, 98-103.
Logos, 45, 72-3, 80-1, 208, 235, 275,
3or, 399-
LoTnan, 379.
Longinus, 68.
soldier, 202.
Lost Gospel, 67.
— — Epistles, 391.
Lots, drawn by Apostles, 356.
Lucian, 441, 548.
Lucifer of Cagliari, 502, 508.
Luke, his literary skill, 317; his medi-
cal knowledge, 145 ; his principles
of selection, 329 ; Luke and Philip,
330 ; his means of information,
332 ; shows no knowledge of Paul's
Epistles, 337-8 ; not named in MSS.
as author of Acts, 314.
Luke's Gospel, not anti-Jewish, 23 ;
whether known to Papias, 99-101.
Lumby, Dr., 525, 528-9, 551.
Luther, 249,433, 440, 445, 487.
Lyciis, 397.
Lydia, 395.
Lyons (see Vienne).
Macarius Magnes, 164, 458, 554.
M'Clellan, Mr., 257, 266.
Mahaffy, Professor, 82, 134, 399.
Mahomet, 200, 253.
2 S
626
INDEX TO PERSONS AND SUBJECTS.
Mai, i8i.
Maitland, 581.
Malchion, 502.
Manasses, Prayer of, 569.
Man of Sin, 389, 391.
ManichcEans, 355-6.
Marcion, 17, 20, 60, 80, 205-9, 3 10,
382, 396, 403, 437, 562, 591-
Marcus, heretic, 361, 397; Marcosians,
592.
Mark's Gospel, not an abridgment of
Matthew, 155 ; its relation to Peter,
92, 155, 464 ; its Aramaic words,
69 ; its Latin words, 43 ; its sup-
posed original, 95 ; its autoptic
touches, 155; occasion of composi-
tion, 463 ; its accuracy attested by
Papius, III.
, Last twelve verses of,
159-164.
Marsh, Bishop, 147-8.
Martin of Tours, 8.
Martyrdom of Paul, 327, 368-9 ; of
Peter, 465 ; of other Apostles, 363.
Massoretic text, 54.
Matthew'' s Gospel, not anti-Pauline, 22;
independent of Luke's, 140 ; its sup-
posed original, 95, 96 ; whether
written in Hebrew, Lect. x.
Matthew, Pseudo-, 198.
Matthias, 456.
Mayerhoff, 406.
Melito of Sardis, 264-6, 363, 378.
Pseudo-, 345, 383.
Memoriter quotations, 108-9,
Menander, heretic, 366.
Methodius, 349, 383, 553-4.
Meyer, 141.
Michael, Archangel, 509.
Michaelis, 147.
Milan, 47, 448.
Millennariattism, 2 26-230.
Minucius Felix, 521.
Miracles, 5-13, 79> I5I» 3I9. 495-
Moesinger, 84, 86.
Mommsen, 368, 557.
Money-changers, he ye good, 18, 177,
186, 380.
Montanism, 50, 52, 79, 437, 572, 583-5.
Morality, Christian, 495.
Moses, Assumption of, 508.
Law of, 204, 408-10, 480-8, 562.
Muratorian Fragment, 46-63, 212,
227, 309-10, 328, 373, 391-2, 403,
414, 423, 436, 458, 477, 5or, 517,
552. 560, 571-4, 582-4.
Murphy, Mr. J. J., 222.
Nazarenes, 176.
Neander, 401, 593.
Nepos, 231.
Nero, 243-7, 368, 423.
Neuhauer, 188.
Niccea, Council of, 192-3.
Second Council of, 371.
Nicephorus, 178, 200, 355, 508, 555-7,
566, 601.
Nicodemus, Gospel of, 120, 201, 347.
Nicholson, 177, 187.
Nicolaus, 27.
Oil, 359, 374-
Olshausen, 540.
Omissions of fourth Gospel, 62, 287-
308.
Onesimus, 397.
Onesiphorus, 349, 417, 430.
Ophites, 413.
Origen, 48, 60, l8l, 186, 196-7, 200,
230, 281, 356, 363-4, 370, 394, 435,
474, 501, 505-8, 516-7, 520, 558,
568, 572, 580, 592, 596, 603, 616-8.
Otho, 563.
Otto, 363, 384.
Overbeck, 320, 592.
Palestine, knovm to Fourth Evangelist,
321.
Paley, 18, 380, 405, 443.
Palmer, Archdeacon, 611,
Pamphilus, 168.
INDEX TO PERSONS AND SUBJECTS.
627
Pantcenus, 41, 167, 187, 434.
Papias, 61, 79, 80, 87-106, no, 118,
122, 142, 155, 160, 165, 170, 187,
190, 212, 215, 226-7, 279, 310, 330,
374, 457, 463-
Papylus, 90.
Parallel between Peter and Paul, 326.
'Pantell, 252.
Parthia, 244.
Parthians, Epistle to, 213.
Paschal Chronicle, 90, 257, 264-5, 59°'
Controversies, 259-263.
Passover, whether eaten at Last Supper,
259-263.
Pastor, 573.
Pastoral Epistles, 206, 413-32, 568.
Paul, his personal appearance, 350;
report of his speeches in the Acts,
333-6 ; whether released from Roman
imprisonment, 422 ; martyrdom, day
of, 368-9, 464 ; Apocalypse of, 557 ;
Paul and Simon Magus, 16; and
John, 225 ; and Peter, 326, 567 ;
and Barnabas, 446, 561.
Pauline Epistles, 33, 379-432, SSh
571 ; whether known to Luke, 337.
Paulinists andanti-Paulinists, 20, 335 ;
(see Baur's theory).
Paulinisni of Apocalypse, 26-32, 224-
5; of Peter, 461.
Paul of Nisibis, 513.
Paulus, 10, 151.
Pearce, Bishop, 68.
Peregrinus, 441, 548.
Peshitto, 160, 229, 282, 436, 477, 502,
513-
Petavius, 590.
Peter of Alexandria, 196.
Peter the Apostle, his character, 461 ;
his speeches reported in the Acts,
338, 528 ; his Roman Episcopate,
15 ; his martyrdom, 285, 369, 464 ;
Peter and Mark, 92, 153-4, 4^4, ^'^^
Paul, 326, 567; legends of, 614,
618.
the First Epistle, 92, Lect. xxii.
Peter the Apostle, the Second Epistle,
29, Lect. XXV.
Gospel according to, 196, 456,
505, 554-
Acts of, 364-70, 554.
Preachingof 19, 186,1356, 364, 554.
Apocalj^se of, 227, 474, 552-6.
Judgment of, 603 .
PM, 613.
Pflsiderer, 224, 395, 461.
Pharisees, in Acts, 317.
Philaster, 149, 229, 362.
Philemon, 223, 396, 406.
Philip, 330 ; Acts of, 364.
Philippi, 262.
Philippians, Epistle to, 395-6.
Phillips, Dr., 83, 348, 551.
Philo, 73, 99, 257, 461, 477, 519, 521 ;
his influence on N.T. Greek, 544-51.
Philoxenus, 511.
Photius, 355, 52, 178, 362, 383, 437,
474, 517, 548, 566.
Phrynichus, 145.
Pilate, Acts of, 120, 201.
Pistis Sophia, 373, 556, 618.
Piiis I. of Rome, 48, 572-5, 582.
Pliny, 341, 460, 495.
Plutnptre, 257, 444.
Pococke, 511.
Poison, 314.
Polemo, 354.
Polycarp, 21, 31, 36, 39, 79, 106, 212,
261, 281, 310, 382, 391, 404, 414,
434, 457, 566, 601.
Poly crates, 265, 330, 565.
Porphyry, 7, 164, 204.
Pothinus, 36.
Potwin, Mr., 618.
Preaching Christ, 112, 1 16.
Proclus, 331.
Proconsuls, 339.
Prophet, False, of Revelation, 26, 246-
248, 252.
Protevangelium, 194— 8, 505.
Protonice, 348.
Prudentius, 368, 559.
2 S 2
628
INDEX TO PERSONS AND SUBJECTS.
Purists, 239.
Pusey, 590.
Quarry, Dr., 82, 466, 520, 541.
Quartodecimans, 79, 255-70.
Quotations, O. T., 68, 146, 527.
Rahab, 490.
Ramathaijn, 308.
Raven, 530.
Reeves, Bishop, 348.
Regeneration, 74, 302, 549.
Renan, 8, 25, 27, 77, 80, 89, 95-7, lOO,
no, 113, 126, 15s, 185, 189, 200,
213, 218, 235, 243-s, 252, 268, 271,
285, 288-90, 294-6, 306-8, 319, 350,
379, 380.
Resurrection, 33, 53, 317, 350, 383.
Revelation (see Apocalypse").
Reuss, 139, 245, 395, 421.
Rhoda, 576.
Roberts, 188.
Romans, Epistle to, 48, 394, 577 ; its
use in Hebrews, 445 ; in i Peter,
466 ; whether in James, 491.
Rome, Church of, 564-76, 579-584-
Routh, 311, 541, 569-
Royal La-cV, 475. .
Rufinus, 15, 364, 474, 517, 603.
Rushbrooke, 148, 150.
Sacrifices and Elkesaites, 18, 21, 174.
Sadducees, 317, 483.
Sadler, Mr., 67, 131.
Sagaris, 264.
Salome, 195, 204-5.
Samaria, 367.
Sanday, Dr., 68, 208, 257, 268, 270,
541-
Satan, 419.
Saturniniis, 204.
Sauppe, 399.
Schaff, 618.
Schenhel, 395, 50b.
Schleiermacher, 95, 139, 185.
Schisms, healing of, 20.
Scholten, 109, 142, 212, 281, 286,
Scriptures, the word how used, 37.
Seal, 352, 359.
Second Coining, 211, 248, 390, 604, 616
Septuagint, 268, 421, 507, 537, 545,
587-99-
Serapion, 196.
Sergius Paulus, 339.
Sermon on the Mount, 66, 140, 609.
Sethites, 458.
Seufert, 466-9.
Sibyl, 244, 365, 621.
Silas, 313.
Silence of tradition as to publication of
Gospels, 121-3; of St. John, 289;
of fourth Gospel as to St. John, 62,
280; of Acts as to Paul's Epistles,
338 ; as to martyrdom of Peter and
Paul, 309, 328 ; of Eusebius, 87, 95.
Simon Magus, 14, 246, 364-7, 402.
Sinaitic MS. (see Codex )^).
Sixtus of Rome, 369.
2Ka(^rj, 360.
Smith of Jordan Hill, 6, 134.
Socinians, 216.
Solecisms of Apocalypse, 238.
Solomon, Psalms of, 238.
Sophocles, 293.
Sophronius, 184.
Soter of Rome, 261, 565.
Sozomen, 555-7-
Speaker's Commentary, 210, 255, 257,
336, 381, 395, 419, 525, 528.
Stanley, Dean, 245, 271.
Stichometry, 178, 200, 355, 454, 551,
555, 557-
Stobceus, 399.
Stoicism, 334, 475, 521,
Stone, J., 412.
Strabo, 339.
Strauss, 8, 10, 14, 39, 46, 75, 77, lOO,
185, 216-17, 298.
Sulpicius Severus, 9.
Supernatural Religion, 9, 40, 76, 87,
207, 208, 341.
Susanna, 596.
INDEX TO PERSONS AND SUBJECTS.
629
Syjneon of Jerusalem, 478, 508, 522.
Sym7nachus, 477, 588, 591.
Syncellus, 509.
Synoptic Gospels, 218, 303-7 ; Lect.
VIII., IX.
Synopticon, Rushhrooke'' s, 148, 150.
Syriac versions, 457, 566, 571 (see
Peshitto.
Tacitus, 5, 244, 430.
Tahnud, 257, 561, 608.
Tarsus, 334, 557.
Tatian, 78-86, 363, 415, 521.
Taylor, Jeremy , 75.
Dr. C, 608.
Teaching of Twelve Apostles, 283, 496,
573, 600-617.
Temebichus, 557.
Tendency School, 13.
Tennyson, 105, 240.
Terence, 63, 292.
Tertullian, 42-45, 54, 160, 196, 201,
206, 212, 309, 349, 373, 382, 39i»
396, 403, 414, 438, 445-6, 458, 464,
477, 501, 509, 517, 533, 558, 572,
593, 613.
Pseudo; 149,
Tertius, 391.
Tetrapla, 588.
Thaddceus, 202, 346-8, 504.
Thamyris, 350.
Tharshish, 595.
Thebaic Version, 439.
Thecla, 341, 349-54, 374, 524-
Thegri, 586.
Theodore of Mopsuestia, 178, 392, 513.
Theodoret, 52, 78, 83, 160, 5x3.
Theodotion, 533, 586-600.
Theophilus of Antioch, 62, 77, 78, 85,
88, 127, 229, 396, 414, 520.
Theophylact, 401.
Thessalonians, Epistles to, 385-92.
Thessalonica, 340.
Thiel, 504.
Thilo, 343.
Thirlwall, 10, 293.
TJioma, 71, 78, 81, 383.
Thomas, Gospel of, 198-200, 456 ;
Acts of, 347, 354-64.
Thucydides, 413.
Tillemont, 376.
Timothy, 313, 441 ; (see Pastoral
Epistles') .
Tischendorf, 120, 161, 201, 296, 343,
367, 376, 557, 589-
Titus, 313 ; (see Pastoral Epistles).
Tradition, Triple, 148-154.
silence of, 123.
Trajan, 253, 281, 401-2, 460, 470,
503.
Tregelles, 47, 163, 297.
Trent, Council of, 569, 596.
Trophimus, 417.
Tryphcsjta, 352.
Turibius, 359.
Two Ways, 602-17.
Tychicus, 397-8, 405.
Tyndale, 608.
Unleavened bread, 263.
Ur-Markus, 95.
Z/jjA^r, 394, 593.
Valetttinus, 58-61, 79, 411-12, 559.
Valerian, Emperor, 369.
Van Sittart, 538.
Variations of independent translators,
117; of Evangelists, 135.
Various readings, argument from, 42,
56, 70.
Vatican, 368.
Council, 49, 376.
Manuscript (see Codex B).
Vegetarianism, 204.
Velleius Paterculus, 5.
Veronica, 202.
Versions, use of, 57 ; old Latin, 457,
661.
Vespasian, 246, 251, 563, 599.
Fjcifor 0/ Ca^Ma, 82, 85.
of Rome, 43, 265, 565.
630
INDEX TO PERSONS AND SUBJECTS.
Vienne and Lyons, 36, 252, 310, 414,
457, 519, 567-
Virgin, marriage of, 195 ; assumption
of, 376-7.
Virginity of Mary, 194; of John, 373.
Vocabulary, changes in, 399, 419, 535.
Volkmar, 26, 185, 207, 246, 365, 510.
IVace, Dr., 84.
Wahl, 533.
Warfield, 541.
' We^ sections of Acts, 312-325.
Weisse, 426.
WeizsUcker, 185, 461.
Westcott, Canon, 10, 47, 61, 67, 68,
70, 77, 159, 164, 176, 178, 187, 203,
210, 225, 229, 241, 25s, 257, 266,
268, 270, 383, 455, 458, 504, 516-17,
527, 538, 561.
Wetstein, 520, 536.
Whately, Archbishop, 74.
Wieseler, 257, 266-7.
Wisdom, description of, Prov. viii.,
45-
Book of, 444.
Wordsworth, Bishop, 443.
Works, good, 487.
Wright, W., 344, 376.
Wurm, 266.
Xenophon, 399.
Zacharias, death of, 195.
Zahn, 84, 186, 370-6, 382-3, 551, 575,
608, 613.
Zeller, 222, 320.
Zephyrinus, 50, 583,
I
INDEX
TO
PASSAGES OF SCRIPTURE CITED.
I.— OLD TESTAMENT.
PAGE
Genesis iv. 15 99
vi. I 509
/ xiv. 14 559
XV. 6 98
xvii. 27 559
xviii. 17 477
xxii. 7 , 293
Exodus iii. 14 . . . .• 239
xii. 6 260
46 256
xxiv. 8 299
Lev. xviii. 28 537
Num. ix. 12 256
xi. 8 175
Deut. X. 9 99
xi. 14 479
xviii. 22 250
xxi. 23 470
xxviii. 25 479
XXX. 4 480
15 602
Joshua X. 20 .""387
XV. 25 308
2 Samuel xii. 3 293
2 Chron. xii. 1 2 387
XX. 7 476
xxxi. I 387
xxxvi. 22-3 596
PAGE
Ezra i. I 596
Nehemiah i. 9 480
Psalms i. I 558
iv. S 404
viii. 6 443
xxii. 6 458
xxiii. 4 459
xxxiv. 20 257
xl. 6 444
xii. 9 268
Ixxxvi. 13 459
xc. 4 519
cxviii. 22 338, 468
cxl. 3 229
cxlvi. 2 480
Proverbs iii. 34 47°
viii. 12, &c 45
X. 12 470
xxvi. II 513.536-7
Isaiah i. i 198, 233
ii. I 233
6 595
vi. I 233
9, 10 268
viii. 14 466
xi. 2 182
ID 221
xxviii. 16 466, 468
632 INDEX TO PASSAGES OF SCRIPTURE CITED.
Isaiah, xxxiv
xli.
xlii.
xliii.
xlix.
lii.
liv.
Ixi.
Ixv.
Jer. iii.
XV.
xxi.
xxxiii.
xl.
Ezekiel i.
viii.
xvii.
• • ■ xviii.
• 4
8, 12
21...
ir...
IS--.
5 •••
2 ...
lO...
2 .. .
14...
10. ..
• • XXXIV
•Daniel i.
PAGE
521,554
476
547
547
563
347
412
306
412
611
412
179
602
546
546
......... 38
180
479
203
182
..•. 507
595
233
7-10 665
35. 594,597
44 592
5 655
9 .
9 .
6 .
3 .
10.
7 .
2 .
2 .
6 .
PAGE
Daniel iv. 7 599
31 599
V. 3 665
23 597
vi. 22 587-8
vii- — 593
I, 2 233
8, 24 563
9 597-8
15 233
21 597
viii. 10 599
19 387
ix. — 593, 599
7-10 599
15-18 599
X. 6 594, 597-8
II 593
20 597
xi. 36 387
■ xii. 4 594
7,9,10 592,597
Hab. iii. 2 198
3 547
Zech. xii. 10 268
Mai. iv. I 521
II.— APOCRYPHA.
I Esdras ii. 10 595
2 Esdras viii. 3 108
] "-31 459
xii. 42 520
Wisdom ii. 1 7 444
iii- 2 519
vii. 22, 26 444
' vii. 27 477
Wisdom xii. 10 444
xvi. 21 444
Ecclus. XV. 11,12 492
Judith V. 19 480
2 Mace. i. 27 480
Baruch i. 15-18 599
ii- 11-16 599
Bel and the Dragon 180
III.— NEW TESTAMENT.
Matthew i. 3, 23 169
18 37
ii. — 67
i 22
Matthew iii. 4 143
iv. I 179
5,10 146-7
v. — 140
INDEX TO PASSAGES OF SCRIPTURE CITED.
^33
Matthew v. 20
37
PAGE
475
481
48 482
vi. 16 170
24 333
vii. 1,57 146,482
21 582
22,23 21
26 481
viii. 5, 1 1, 16 22, 141
ix. 6, 12 136, 144
14-17 146
IS 546
X. 3 504
27 22
32, 33, 40 218,222
xi. 10 147
15 222
27-29 205,218
xii, 13 118, 182
40 459
50 211
xiii. 14 „ 268
32 599
55 156,503-5
57 304
xiv. I 138
5 276
.. 33...., 159
36 144
, . XV. 8, 9 147
xvi. 27 222
xviii. 3 75
25 144
xix. 21 181
23, 24 144, 146
XX. . . . .
12.. ..
23 ... .
30....
xxi. 9, 15
10, II
. 25....
33 ... .
41....
167
530
374
220
220
307
277
1x8
170
PAGE
Matthew xxi. 42, 43 .... , 23, 468
44 H^i
xxii. 5 536
23 169
43 221
xxiii. 12 481
35 196-7
37 308
xxiv. — 390
13, 30, 42 222
22 146
30, 31, .... 219,222,390
35 554
xxv. 14 536
31 219
xxvi. 17 256
xxvii. 8, 15, 33,46 169
19,24,25 23
49 86
56 506
65 219
xxviii. 15, 19 23, 169
18, 20 218
Mark i. — 153
2 147
6 144
29 105, 157
30 102
32 141
ii. 3 144
4 145
10 136
17 144
18-22 146
iii. 5 "8, 156, 159
7 188
17 Ill
18 504
21 156
V. 7 136, 145
23,41 145
vi.3 156,503
6 159
14 138
19 144
634 INDEX TO PASSAGES OF SCRIPTURE CITED.
PAGE
Mark vi. 20 276
27.
37.
•39-
41.
52.
43
361
156
146
159
vii. 6, 7 147
«.i4,36 155-6
• '47.- 145
•X. 16, 17 156
23,25 144-6
xi. 15 145
• 23....... 482
• 31 277
xii. I 118
38.... 117
42 43
xiii. 20 146
XIV. 5
" - iz. ..... ,.
• IS-..
■ 62
6s
XV. IS, 39, 44
• 43....... •
xvi. I . . . . . . . .
.... 304
.... 256
.... 146
.... 219
.... 145
.... 43
.... 145
.... 161
17-19 .... 160,305, 374
9-20 159-164
Luke i. — i 85
1-5.....; 120-22
■ 4 127
ii. 46 200
iii. 2, 21, 23 17s
19 138
iv. I 317
• 8, 9... 146-7
• 19. 306
40 142
• 44... 307
•v:t7.. 317
•• 18, 31 144
• ' 24 136
• • ■ 33-39 146
vi. -^.. 140
■ • 10. 118
Luke vi. 16.. ,
20
24-5
42
vii.- 5
■ 27..
28..
7
16
31,33,43.
vni.
ix.
X. 8 .
X. 18,
20.
PAGE
504
481
482
146
23
147
136
138
146
..519-20, 546
337
102
222
140
140
22
530
3
55
54, 57 479
— 140
26.
34.
xiv.
XV.
xvi.
xvii.
xviii.
XX.
13....
26-31
24....
.5,6.
9 ....
18....
46.;..
.... 21
.... 308
140, 167
.... 181
. . . . 140
.... 333
.... 519
. . . . 146
.. 276-7
.... 118
. . . . 146
.... 117
.... 97
.... 218
.... 7
.... 30s
. . . . 146
15
24
3
12
IS... 175, 256
43, 44 70
60...
5i...
28
12
39
John i.
219
308
23
305
186
49, 51 305
1-3 71-83, 208, 223
INDEX TO PASSAGES OF SCRIPTURE CITED.
635
PAGE
John i. II 208
13 235
'4 210, 236, 275
17, 22 276
25 269
28 271
29 223, 276
32,40,43 291-2
S3 175
34 296
42 536
44 105,271, 277
45, 46 272,289, 292
ii. — 81
I, II.. 209, 271,275, 278
5 269
II, 17, 22, 23,.. 275, 278
13, 23 268
14 236
16 209
18, 28 2X2
20 273,294
24 303
iii- 3 76, 302
4 294, 302
5 23s
13, 15 223, 292, 302
14 209
17 210
23 271
24 291
25 269
29 236
35 223
iy. 6 277
9 269
II 271
15 294
22 209, 270
24 81
27,33 270, 278
35 271
42 210
44 304
46 271
PAGE
John iv. 52 277
V. I 269
18, 23 221, 223
24 210
28 211
32, 33 277
39, 46 209
vi. — 298
. 2, 4 269, 298
..... 7,9,11.274,277,296-8,304
23 303
32 209, 236
37 304
41 271
42 292
47, 51,53 223
52 271,294
55 301
62 223,292,302
70 291
71 303
vii. I 271
15 270
22 61
24 236
27,31 61,275
35,36 270,294,480
37 236, 269
4i,42,49-52..272,289,296
viii. 15 97
20 277
34 520
39 234
48 269
51-55 236
56 209
58 223
ix. 1-3 77, 177
2 270
X. 7, 27 76
II 235
14-17 223
16 30
22, 23 269, 277
41 276
636 INDEX TO PASSAGES OF SCRIPTURE CITED.
PAGE
John xi. 2 296, 305
16 277-8
18 271, 296
23 277
25 223
44 236
48 274
49-52 235,270, 294
54 271,278
55 269
xU- 2, 5 304-5
16 276
xii. 21 277
31,34 275
35 210
40 268,327
41 209, 235
xiii. I 256, 269
3, 8 236
II 303
17 481
18 268
22, 23, 24.... 278-9, 285
27 305
29 256, 278
xiv. 5, 8 277
6, 10, 14, 20 223
23 223, 236
22 277,504
XV. 5,9,20 223, 236
xvi. 7 305
17 278
20 210
33 236
xvii. 3 2 10, 223
5, 10 223
6 236
xviii. 2 278
10 277
13 270
14 296
15 278,285
16 292
28 256, 269
12 274
PAGE
John xix. 13 74, 272
21 294
26 278
31 269
35 275,296,303
36-37 209,256
39 296
XX. 2, 3 277, 279, 285
17 292, 302
19, 25 278
28, 29 223,347
31 132,223,303
xxi.— ..85, 212, 277, 295-6
2 271
3, 7 278-9, 285
8, 9 296
12 464
15-17 236
16 235
18 523
19 285
20, 22 212, 279, 296
24 275,278,296
25 282,294
Acts i. 5 316
13 504
17, 18 528
21 121
23 356
ii. 20 529
23 338,529
24 310
32 470
42, 46 300
. iiL I 285
12 528
15, 18 470
iv. I 317
II 338,468
12 310
18 529-30
21 529
28 338
32 617
36 446
INDEX TO PASSAGES OF SCRIPTURE CITED. 637
PAGE
Actsv. 17, 28 317, 529
30 470
39.... 318
42 112
vi. I 448
s 316
vii. 38. 98
58. 316
viii.— 17, 330, 365
I 316-17
14... 285
18 17
40 316
58 ••• 446
ix. 7 13s
27 323, 446
30, 35 317,446
X. 27 529
33 547
38 116
39..-- 470
4i----- 310
42. 338,470
43 470
47 316
xi. 16, 19 317
20 112, 446
22, 25 317, 323
28 314
• xii. 2 279
12 447
13 318
17 478
xiii. 5 321
7 339
13 317,341
39 325
46 322
51 341
xiv. 6 341
13 446
. xv. — 478, 482
I 488, 492
5,8 316-17
II 486
PAGE
Acts XV. 19 492
20, 25, 29 29
28,38 317
xvi. 4 29, 317
9 •••• 314
12, 20 340
15 282
xvii. — 334-6,385
5 282
6 340
H 317
xvii. 19-34 334-6
. .xviiu I,. 19 480
5 317,336,385
6 333
12 340
14 459
20 306
24 445
25 276, 529
xix. 3 276
9 529
27 546
38 340
XX. — 425
4, 5 ..•313-17,340, 386
6 262
16 306, 313-15
17 315
19-35 333
25 329, 424
28. 395,432
29., 310
34 396
35 106, 310
xxi. — 330, 451,562
4, 10 315
8, 16 282, 316
18 314, 478
20 317
21: 451
24, 25 29, 323
26 317
29. 317,418
38 343
638
INDEX TO PASSAGES OF SCRIPTURE CITED.
PAGE
Acts xxii. — 335
20 316
xxiii. 9 317
26 318
xxiv. 18... i 317
XXV. II 317
25 423
xxvi. 18 325
32 317,423
xxvii. — 6, 314
2 386
xxviii. 3-9 7. 320
16 314
Romans i. 4 335
8 387
17 444
ii. 13 491
16 Ill
17-23 487
25, 27 490
28 31
iii, 2 98
22, 24 223
28 486
iv. 19 443
V. 1,9, 10 223
3 491
vi. 7 467
10 470
16 520
vii. 23 491
viii. 17, 18 223, 467
29 443
34 164
ix. 3 324
5 223
25, 33 465-6
xii. — 443
I, 2 467, 549
6, 7 467
9 443
10-19 282, 443, 466
xiii, — 246
1,3,4 459, 466
xiv. 9 223
PAGE
Romans xiv. 19 443
XV. 10 444
12 221
19 282
27 617
33 393,444
xvi. — 43,393
3 480
14 572
20-27 393
21 386
23 282-5
25 I", 393-5
I Cor. i. 12 291
"•4 387
6 444
iii. 2 387, 444
22 223, 291
iv. 7 491
9 453
14 388
V. 7 223, 263
9, II 388,392
vi- 4 75
9 490
II 496
viii. 6 223
23 605
ix. 5 291
II 617
15 396
20 324
X.— 507
I 98
27 337
xi. I 387
8 98
II 616
20 300
23 337
xiv. 16 361
26 585
33 389
XV. 3, 5, 7 34, 291
b, 7 179, 337,493
INDEX TO PASSAGES OF SCRIPTURE CITED.
639
PAGE
I Cor. XV. 9 410
25 223
26, 27 442-3
33. 35 490
50 384
2 390
xvi. 7 444
8 262
xvi. 13 333
19. 20 452, 466
aCor.ii. 17 387
iv. 5 112
vi. 2, 16 444
vii. 2 387
viii. 9 223
24 444
xi. 2 412
xi. 3 98
9, 10 336, 387, 396
13 32
22 448
24, 25 337, 387
xii-2-4 557
21 506
xiii. I 444
5, 14 223
II 389
Galatians i. i 223
6 389
19 478, 503
ii. 9 28, 291, 478
II 16
12 333,478
16, 20 223
iii. 13 223, 470
16 444
19 444, 508
27 223
iv. 2 1 98
26 30
V. 2, 3 333, 488
10 388
13 466, 507
20 417
vi. 7 490
PAGE
Galatians vi. 9 ogg
"6 31
Eph. i. — 406,413
, 3-14 406, 413, 468
7 223
10 419
20-22.. 75, 164, 223, 468
23 412
"•2-9 223, 419
" 30,411
18 223,468
19 408
20-22 406, 412, 468
iii. 1-9 403-8, 410-13
9-11 468
16-20 406, 413, 468
iv. 1-4 403-7
8-10 444,459,468
13-27 419
16-25 406, 412
17-30 333,404-6
V. 5 223
H 444
15-25 406
22 536
25, 29 404
vi. II, 13 419,532
21, 22 405
23 419
Phil i. I 395, 432
II 490
15 113
18 396
19,25-26 423-4
ii.6, 7,10 223, 538
5-II 400
24 423
25 605
iii. 2 31
5 317,448
9 326
12 550
19 506
20 550
iv. 3 222,395, 568
640 INDEX TO PASSAGES OF SCRIPTURE CITED.
PAGE
Phil. iv. 14 547
16 336, 386
Colossians J. — 72
1-26 406
7 397
9, 10 419
IS 396,413, 550
15-18 222-3, 413
ii. 2. 4 406,419,490
■8,7,19.. 406
II 31
21 204
iii. 1-16 164, 406
4, 10 419
iv. 5-8 405-6
10-13.. 385, 397, 428, 447
14 • 145, 313
16 392, 398, 406
21 429
I Thess. i. 1-3 386-7, 587
1,5,6,8 387
9 386
• ii.4. 5, 6, 7 387
9 387-8, 396
14-16.. 271,386-7
iii. 6, II 223, 385
iv. II, 12 388
13-18 385,390
V. 2 , . 481
6 466
8 419
12. 395
21 177
23 490
2 Thess. ii. — 390
1-12 389
2-1 1. 388-9
8 419
14 Ill
iii. 3 396
• 4,8, 10, 12, 13, 16.. 388-9
■ 17...... 391
■ iv;'i4V. 388
I Tim.i. 1; 4, H 4^9
17. ..••■.'.••• 414
PAGE
I Tim. ii. 4, 5 223, 419
14 98
iii. 2 282, 432
iv. 3 204
12 419, 424
V. 10 282
vi. II 419
vi. 20 402
2 Tim. i. 10 442
13 419
15-18 426
17 350,417
ii. 8 Ill
22, 25 419
iii- 7 419
iv. I 470
6-8 222,419
9-22 426-30, 480
" 313
16 423,441
19...... 480
20 417
Titus i. I, 7 419, 432
8, 14 282,417
ii-9 536
14 497
iii. 8 488
10 417
Philemon 22 423
24 313,385,428
Hebrews i. i 444
2 435.444
3 164,434,444
4, 6, 7, 13.. 434,443-4,550
ii. 2 444
3 440, 450
8, 14 442-3
9,17 435,550
iii- I 434
iv. 12 72
V. 12, 14 98,444,450
vi. — 437,450
3,10 444,450
4 490
16 435
INDEX TO PASSAGES OF SCRIPTURE CITED.
641
PAGE
Heb. viii. 1,6 164, 508
10 444
ix. 28 470
X. — 452
12 164
5,28,38 444
33-37 441, 453
xi. — 489
12, 13 443, 465
33 588
xi. — 453
2-4 164,450-3
II 490
14-17 443-4
xii. 20 333
xiii. 1-3 282, 443, 453
5,7 443-4
20 444
23 442, 448
24 452
James i. 3, 4, 5 47°, 482, 49°
b 479
7, 8 222, 475
II 470,479
12 222, 482
13 492
14 530
15-17 490-1
22 481, 490
25 481
26,27 475,495
ii. — 484
1 493
2 476, 480,482
5 481
6,7....222, 476,480, 493
8 476, 490
10-12 490-1
13 477
18 490
21 480
23 222,477
24 486
25 480
26 222
PAGE
James iii. 2 476
3 222
4 479
5 222
", 12 479
15-18 476,490
iv. 1-9 470, 476,482
James iv. 10 482
II, 12 476, 482
13, 16 477, 480
17 491
V. 1-6 476, 482
4, 10 480
7, 8, 9 . . 479, 489, 493-4
II, 12 476, 481
13 474
14, 15 494
17 479-80
I Peter i. 2 338
3-12 468, 471
7 235, 470, 549
10-13.,.. 235, 468, 470
14 465-7,527
18 235, 549
19 235,527-8
20 338, 468
22 235
23 235,471
24 470
ii- 2 527
4-7 338, 468
5 235, 467
6-8 338, 466
9-10..., 235, 465,528-9,
547, 552.
12 528
13, 14, 16 466-8
20 459, 471
24 470
25 549
iii- 1-5 522, 534
2 528
4 468
8, 9 466
18 235, 468, 470
2 T
642
INDEX TO PASSAGES OF SCRIPTURE CITED.
PAGE
I Peter iii. 19, 20 457, 468, 471
21 471, 528
22 164, 468
iv. I 467, 528
3 465
4 549
5 470
9 282
10, II, 13 98,467
12 471
16 459
19 549
V. I 286, 467, 470
2,1, 235,472
4,5 222, 333,470
8 466
9 471
13 92, 235, 462-4
14 466
2 Peter i. i 527-8
3-5 527-8, 547
7 527-8
8,9 527
10-16 523-8
12 520-1, 546
15 518
17 521
18 523
19, 21 520
ii. 1-3 ....519,527-8, 545
4, 58 •••• 333,513-519
7-9 527-8
12 527
13-15 29, 527-9
16, 18 527-9
19 520, 527
21, 22.. 513, 528-9,536
iii. I 458, 523
5-7 527
8 518
9 520
10 ....481, 521, 528-9
II, 12, 14 ..521, 527-8
15 29,523
16 527
PAGE
I John i. I 275
3-5 79
4 210
7 223
ii. 2, 5 223, 236
11-13 210, 236
18, 28 212
iii. I 78
3-9 223, 235
12-14 210, 236
iv. 3 285
4 236
9, 14 210
13 223
V. 4 236
6 211
15-20 296
24 210
2 John— 212, 235, 283-5
3 John— 282-5
6 547
12 296
Jude I, 4, 17 502-511
6 510
7,8 27, 510
9 508
II 27
12, 13 507-10
14, 16 509, 510
20 333, 510
Rev. i. I, 6, 9 233, 235
5 413
7 236
8, 17 221
14 598
16 236
ii. 2 27, 386
4, 5 32
7, II, 17 236
9 26
10 222, 482
14, 15 27
20-22 506
iii. 3 481
5 222, 236
INDEX TO PASSAGES OF SCRIPTURE CITED.
643
PAGE
Rev. iii. 8-10 26, 236
9, 12 27, 238
14, 21 ..220-21,234, 413
18 235
20 236
V. 1-3 229
5 221
6, 9 . , 30, 220, 235, 236
12, 13 220, 236
vi. 4, 9 236
9,10 255
vii. 4-8 30
14. 15 236
ix- 20 597
X- 5 597
7 282, 413
xi. 2 252
8 30
12 303
xii- 7 597
II, 12 235-6
xiii- 7 597
3, 6, 8, 12, 14.. 236, 244
II 246
xiv. 8, 12 235,438
xvi. 12 244
PAGE
Rev. xvi. 15 481
xvii. 5 235
'^ 255,453
10, II 243-4
16, 17 246-251
xviii. 20, 24 236, 255
xix. 6 597
7 236,412-13
13 234,599
16 220, 597
20 246
XX. 2 238
4 597
6 221, 236
II 597
^ii- 2 30,233,236, 413
3 236
6 252
7 236
9, 14 413
xxii. I, 3 221
2 233
7, 9 236
13, 16 221
17 236,413
18, 19 226
THE END.
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