LUKE THE PHYSICIAN
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I
LUKE THE PHYSICIAN
AND OTHER STUDIES IN THE
HISTORY OF RELIGION
W. M. RAMSAY, KT., HON. D.C.L., ETC.
WITH THIRTY-EIGHT ILLUSTRATIONS
HODDER AND STOUGHTON
LONDON MCMVIII
PREFACE
THE papers republished in this volume have appeared
in various Magazines, Contemporary Review, Exposi
tor, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, Geographical
Journal, to the editors of which my thanks are ten
dered. Most of them have been profoundly modified
and much enlarged ; but only in the last, which is
made up of six older articles, is there any essential
change in the original opinions. Elsewhere, the
alterations which have been introduced are intended
to render more precise and emphatic the views
formerly stated. Even the first article, which has
been little changed in expression, has been greatly
enlarged. Only in the sixth article (first published in
1882) have the additions been indicated.
The last article stands in much need of help and
criticism from more experienced scholars. In writing
it I felt the depths of my ignorance ; but the first
steps had to be taken in the subject. The most
striking result was reached at the last stage, and is
stated only in a footnote and the Table of Contents
and Index. The pagan temple-grave became the
Christian church-grave or memorion ; and the pagan
vi Preface
Ovpa appears as the church doorway on gravestones
in Isauria. The great Anatolian writers of the fourth
century are full of information, which yet remains to
be collected and valued. Professor Roll s Amphi-
lochius von Iconium is the one great modern study in
its department. The humble essays which conclude
this volume and my former series of Pauline and
other Studies tread in his footsteps ; but I am mindful
of the poet s advice, longe sequere et vestigia semper
adora.
I am indebted for the very interesting series of
photographs, not merely to my wife, but also to Miss
Gertrude Lowthian Bell, Mr. J. G. C. Anderson,
Senior Censor of Christ Church, Oxford, and Pro
fessor T. Callander, Queen s University, Canada ; and
I am grateful to them for permitting me to adorn my
preface with the names of such experienced and suc
cessful explorers, and my book with views so skil
fully taken in spite of the ink-black shadows cast by
that pitiless, sun.
The Index is largely the work of my wife.
W. M. RAMSAY.
ABERDEEN, 315* October, 1908.
CONTENTS
PAGE
LUKE THE PHYSICIAN .... x
II
THE OLDEST WRITTEN GOSPEL . . . . . 69
III
ASIA MINOR: THE COUNTRY AND ITS RELIGION . | 103
IV
THE ORTHODOX CHURCH IN THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE . 141
V
THE PEASANT GOD: THE CREATION, DESTRUCTION AND
RESTORATION OF AGRICULTURE IN ASIA MINOR . 169
VI
THE RELIGION OF THE HITTITE SCULPTURES AT BOGHAZ-
KEUI 199
VII
THE MORNING STAR AND THE CHRONOLOGY OF THE LIFE
OF CHRIST 2I
viii Contents
VIII
PAGE
A CRITICISM OF RECENT RESEARCH REGARDING THE NEW
TESTAMENT ... 247
IX
THE HISTORICAL GEOGRAPHY OF THE HOLY LAND . .267
ST. PAUL S USE OF METAPHORS DRAWN FROM GREEK AND
ROMAN LIFE . . .283
XI
THE DATE AND AUTHORSHIP OF THE EPISTLE TO THE
HEBREWS ... .299
XII
THE CHURCH OF LYCAONIA IN THE FOURTH CENTURY 329-410
Introduction : The District and its Ecclesiastical
Organisation. . 33 1
I. Chronological Arrangement of the Documents . 334
II. A Bishop of the Church Reorganisation after
Diocletian . -339
III. The Presbyters : their Relation to Bishops and
Deacons . 35 1
IV. Crosses and Christian Monograms as the Origin
of Ornament (also No. 42) . . 3 68
V. The Church Manager or Oikonomos . . 3 6 9
Contents ix
PAGE
VI. The Church in the Decoration of Tombs : the
Christian Grave in Isauria was a Miniature
Church 370
VII. Distinction of Clergy and Laity: its Early Stage 387
VIII. Deaconesses 393
IX. Martyrs ....... 395
X. Curses on Christian Graves . . . -395
XI. Virgins or Parthenoi in the JLycaonian Church . 397
XII. Heretic Sects 400
XIII. High-Priest of God ..... 403
XIV. Christian Physicians . . , . . 403
XV. Quotations from the New Testament 366 and 406
XVI. Slaves of God . . , . . . .407
INDEX .411
ILLUSTRATIONS
PLATES
TO FACE
PAGE
I. On the Byzantine Military Road : the Pass leading
to Dorylaion 106
II. On the Central Trade Route: the Source of the
Maeander I0 6
III. On the Central Trade Route : the Falls at Hiera-
polis . . . . . . . . 108
IV. The City, Rock and Castle of Kara-Hissar . . 112
V. The City, Rock and Castle of Sivri-Hissar . .116
VI. Roman Milestone on the Syrian Route . .- . 116
VII. Archaic Sepulchral Monument in Phrygia: Novem
ber weather . . . . . . .120
VIII. The Tomb of King Midas : a Phrygian Holy Place 124
IX. The Grave of an Ancient Phrygian Chief . .128
X. The Broken Grave of an Ancient Phrygian Chief . 132
XI. Phrygian Rock-tomb of the Roman Time . .136
XII. The Site of Pisidian Antioch and the Sultan-Dagh 140
xii Illustrations
TO FACE
PAGE
XIII. The Monasteries and Churches at Deghile, on the
Mountain above Barata . . . . .140
XIV. Church and Memorial Chapel on the Summit of the
Kara-Dagh : from the west . . . .158
XV. Church on the Summit of the Kara-Dagh: from
the south-east . . . . . . 158
XVI. The Throne of the Anatolian God, near Barata . 160
XVII. Ruins of Double-arched West Door of Church at
at Bin-Bir-Kilisse (Barata) . . . .160
XVIII. Monastery at Deghile on the Mountain above
Barata, showing brickwork used as ornament
in a stone building 124
XIX. Church at Deghile on the Mountain above Barata :
North Arcades of the Nave . . . .164
XX. Church at Barata : South Arcades of the Nave and
Apse . . . . . . . . 164
XXL The God and the King at Ibriz . . . .174
XXII. Early Turkish Art : Door of the Sirtchali Mosque
in Konia Frontispiece
XXIII. Early Turkish Art: Zazadin-Khan near Konia . 192
XXIV, The Gate of the Virgin- Goddess : looking over the
Limnai . . , , . . . .192
Illustrations xiii
FIGURES IN THE TEXT
PAGE
1. Plan of the Entrance to the Hittite Palace at Euyuk . 207
2. Relief at Euyuk. Procession of Worshippers, headed
by the Chief Priest and Priestess, approaching the
Goddess ........ 208
3. The Warrior Goddess of the Hittites with her Favourite
and Priest 210
4. The Chief Priest of the Goddess of Ephesus . .213
5. Apollo the Pastoral God of Lystra on a Third-century
Votive Relief 216
6. The Christian Star as a Decorative Dove and Leaf on
the Grave of a Third-century Christian Virgin at
Nova Isaura 328
7. The Symbol of the Cross as a Decorative Element on a
Lycaonian Grave . . . . . 33
8. Christian Architectural Decoration on the Grave of a
Physician at Nova Isaura 330
9. The Monogram of Christ as a Decorative Element on
a Lycaonian Grave . . . . . .368
10. Architectural Decoration (the entrance of the church)
on the Grave of a Third-century Bishop at Nova
Isaura 371
11. Christian Architectural Decoration and Church Screen
on the Grave of a Bishop at Nova Isaura, A.D. 300 379
xiv Illustrations
PAGE
12. Christian Architectural Decoration on the Grave of a
Fourth-century Deacon at Nova Isaura . . . 383
13. Christian Architectural Decoration on the Grave of a
Fourth-century Bishop at Nova Isaura . . .384
14. Anthropomorphic Lycaonian Christian Grave-stone,
showing Cross and Rosette (Monogram) as corres
ponding Decorative Elements . . . .410
ERRATA AND ADDENDA.
P. 109, 1. 6, for " the Frontispiece" read " Plate III ".
P. 203, note, for " Hermann " read " Humann ".
P. 273, note i, read " Quarterly Statement for 1895 ".
P. 281, note 2, for 200 read 250-5.
P. 328, fig. 6, for " symbol of the Cross " read " Christian Star ".
Pp. 340, 1. 17, 341, 1. i. This reading and interpretation will be defended in
Expositor, December, 1908.
I.
LUKE THE PHYSICIAN.
I,
LUKE THE PHYSICIAN.
IT has for some time been evident to all New Testament
scholars who were not hidebound in old prejudice that there
must be a new departure in Lukan criticism. The method
of dissection had failed. When a real piece of living litera
ture has to be examined, it is false method to treat it as a
corpse, and cut it in pieces : only a mess can result. The
work is alive, and must be handled accordingly. Criticism
for a time examined the work attributed to Luke like a
corpse, and the laborious autopsy was fruitless. Nothing
in the whole history of literary criticism has been so waste
and dreary as great part of the modern critical study of
Luke. As Professor Harnack says on p. 87 of his new
book, 1 lt All faults that have been made in New Testament
criticism are gathered as it were to a focus in the criticism
of the Acts of the Apostles ".
The question " Shall we hear evidence or not ? " presents
itself at the threshold of every investigation into the New
Testament. 2 Modern criticism for a time entered on its task
with a decided negative. Its mind was made up, and it
*Lukas der Artzt der Verfasser des dritten Evangeliums und der Apostel-
geschichte, Leipzig, Hinrichs, 1906. In order to avoid frequent reiteration of
the personal name, we shall speak, as a general rule, of " the Author " simply.
2 The bearing of this question is discussed in the opening paper of the
writer s Pauline Studies, 1906.
(3)
4 I. Luke
would not listen to evidence on a matter that was already
decided. But the results of recent exploration made this
attitude untenable. So long as the vivid accuracy of Acts
xxvii., which no critic except the most incompetent failed
to perceive and admit, was supposed to be confined to that
one chapter, it was possible to explain this passage as an
isolated and solitary fragment in the patchwork book. But
when it was demonstrated that the same lifelike accuracy
characterised the whole of the travels, the theory became
impossible. Evidence must be admitted. All minds that
are sensitive to new impressions, all minds that are able to
learn, have become aware of this. The result is visible in
the book which we have now before us. Professor Harnack
is willing to hear evidence. The class of evidence that
chiefly appeals to him is not geographical, not external, not
even historical in the widest sense, but literary and linguistic ;
and this he finds clear enough to make him alter his former
views, and come to the decided conclusion that the Third
Gospel and the Acts are a historical work in two books, 1
written, as the tradition says, by Luke, a physician, Paul s
companion in travel and associate in evangelistic work. This
conclusion he regards as a demonstrated fact (sicker nach-
gewiesene Tatsache^ p. 87). It does not, however, lead him
to consider that Luke s history is true. He argues very
ingeniously against attaching any high degree of trust
worthiness to the work, and hardly even concedes that the
early date which he assigns to it entails the admission that it
is much more trustworthy than the champions of its later
date would or could allow. That is the only impression
which I can gather (see below, p. 32) from the Author s
1 He hints at the possibility that a third book may have been intended by
Luke, but never written. See below, p. 27.
the Physician
language in this book. On the other hand, in a notice of
his own book (Sdbstanzeige)} he speaks far more favourably
about the trustworthiness and credibility of Luke, as being
generally in a position to acquire and transmit reliable infor
mation, and as having proved himself able to take advantage
of his position. I cannot but feel that there is a certain want
of harmony here, due to the fact that the Author was
gradually working his way to a new plane of thought. His
later opinion is more favourable.
Some years ago I reviewed Professor McGiffert s argu
ments on the Acts. 2 The American professor also had felt
compelled by the geographical and historical evidence to
abandon in part the older criticism. He also admitted that
the Acts is more trustworthy than previous critics allowed ;
he also was of opinion that it was not thoroughly trustworthy,
but was a mixture of truth and error ; he also saw that it is
a living piece of literature written by one author. But from
the fact that Acts was not thoroughly trustworthy, he
inferred that it could not be the work of a companion and
friend of the Apostle Paul ; and he has no pity for the
erroneous idea that the Acts could fail to be trustworthy if it
had been written by the friend of Paul. I concluded with the
words : " Dr. McGiffert has destroyed that error, if an error
can be destroyed ". But what is to Professor McGiffert
inadmissible is the view that Professor Harnack champions.
The careful and methodical studies of the language of
Luke by Mr. Hobart 3 and Mr. Hawkins 4 have been thor
oughly used by the Author. He mentions that Mr. Haw-
*In the Theologische Literaturzeitung (edited by himself and Professor
Schiirer), yth July, 1906, p. 404.
2 The review is republished in Pauline Studies, 1906, p. 321.
3 Medical Language of St. Luke, Dublin, 1882.
*Horae Synopticae, 1899.
6 I. Luke
kins seems to be almost unknown in Germany (p. 19), and
expresses the opinion (p. 10) that Mr. Hobart s book would
have produced more effect, if he had confined himself to
the essential and had not overloaded his book with collec
tions and comparisons that often prove nothing. I doubt
if that is the reason that Mr. Hobart s admirable and con
clusive demonstration has produced so little effect in Ger
many. The real reason is that the German scholars, with a
few exceptions, have not read it. That many of his ex
aminations of words prove nothing, Mr. Hobart was quite
aware ; but he intentionally, and, as I venture to think,
rightly, gave a full statement of his comparison of Luke s
language with that of the medical Greek writers. It is the
completeness with which he has performed his task that
produces such effect on those who read his book. He has
pursued to the end almost every line of investigation, and
shown what words do not afford any evidence as well as
what words may be relied upon for evidence. The Author
says that those who merely glance through the pages of Mr.
Hobart s book are almost driven over to the opposite
opinion (as they find so many investigations that prove
nothing). This description of the common German " critical
way of glancing at or entirely neglecting works which are the
most progressive and conclusive investigations of modern
times suggests much. These so-called " critics " do not read
a book whose results they disapprove. The method of
studying facts is not to their taste, when they see that it
leads to a conclusion which they have definitely rejected
beforehand.
The importance of this book lies in its convincing demon
stration of the perfect unity of authorship throughout the
whole of the Third Gospel and the Acts. These are a history
the Physician
in two books. All difference between parts like Luke i. 5-
ii. 52 on the one hand, and the " We "-sections of Acts
on the other hand to take the most divergent parts is a
mere trifle in comparison with the complete identity in
language, vocabulary, intentions, interests and method of
narration. The writer is the same throughout. He was, of
course, dependent on information gained from others : the
Author is disposed to allow considerable scope to oral
information in addition to the various certain or probable
written sources ; but Luke treated his written authorities with
considerable freedom as regards style and even choice of
details, and impressed his own personality distinctly even on
those parts in which he most closely follows a written source.
This alone carries Lukan criticism a long step forwards,
and sets it on a new and higher plane. Never has the unity
and character of the book been demonstrated so convincingly
and conclusively. The step is made and the plane is reached
by the method which is practised in other departments of
literary criticism, viz^ by dispassionate investigation of the
work, and by discarding fashionable a priori theories.
Especially weighty, in the Author s judgment, is the evi
dence afforded by the medical interest and knowledge, which
mark almost every part of the work alike. The writer of
this history was a physician, and that fact is apparent through
out. The investigations of Mr. Hobart supply all the evi
dence I think the word "all," without almost," may be
used in this case on which the Author relies. Never was a
case in which one book so completely exhausts the subject
and presents itself as final, to be used and not to be supple
mented even by Professor Harnack. It is doubtless only by
a slip, but certainly a regrettable slip, that the Author, in his
notice of his own book published in the Theologische Litera-
8 I. Luke
turzeitung, makes no reference to Mr. Hobart, though he
mentions other scholars from whose work he has profited.
The Author has up to a certain point employed the plain,
simple method of straightforward unprejudiced investigation
into the historical work which forms the subject of his study,
a method which has not been favoured much by the so-
called critical scholars of recent time. So far as he follows
this simple method, which we who study principally other
departments of literature are in the habit of employing, his
study is most instructive and complete. But he does not
follow it all through ; multa tamen suberunt priscae vestigia
fraudis. If we read his book, we shall find several examples
of the fashionable critical method of a priori rules and pre
possessions as to what must be or must not be permitted.
These examples are almost all of the one kind. Wherever
anything occurs that savours of the marvellous in the estima
tion of the polished and courteous scholar, sitting in his well-
ordered library and contemplating the world through its
windows, it must be forthwith set aside as unworthy of
attention and as mere delusion. That method of studying
the first century was the method of the later nineteenth,
century. I venture to think that it will not be the method
of the twentieth century. If you have ever lived in Asia you
know that a great religion does not establish itself without
some unusual accompaniments. The marvellous result is not
achieved without some marvellous preliminaries.
Professor Harnack stands on the border between the nine
teenth and the twentieth century. His book shows that he
is to a certain degree sensitive of and obedient to the new
spirit ; but he is only partially so. The nineteenth century
critical method was false, and is already antiquated. A fine
old crusty, musty, dusty specimen of it is appended to the
the Physician
Author s Selbstanseige by Professor Schiirer, who fills more
than three columns of the Theologische Literaturzeitung, 7th
July, 1906, with a protest against the results of new methods
and a declaration of his firm resolution to see nothing, and
allow no other to see anything, that he has not been ac
customed to see : " These be thy gods, O Israel ".
The first century could find nothing real and true that was
not accompanied by the marvellous and the " supernatural ".
The nineteenth century could find nothing real and true that
was. Which view was right, and which wrong ? Was either
complete ? Of these two questions, the second alone is pro
fitable at the present. Both views were right in a certain
way of contemplating ; both views were wrong in a certain
way. Neither was complete. At present, as we are strug
gling to throw off the fetters which impeded thought in the
nineteenth century, it is most important to free ourselves
from its prejudices and narrowness. The age and the people,
of whatever nationality they be, whose most perfect expression
and greatest hero was Bismarck, are a dangerous guide for
the twentieth century. In no age has brute force and mere
power to kill been so exclusively regarded as the one great
aim of a nation, and the one justification to a place in the
Parliament of Man, as in Europe during the latter part of the
nineteenth century ; and in no age and country has the out
look upon the world been so narrow and so rigid among the
students of history and ancient letters. Those who study
religion owe it to the progress of science that they can begin
now to understand how hard and lifeless their old outlook was.
But we who were brought up in the nineteenth century can
hardly shake off our prejudices or go out into the light. We
can only get a distant view of the new hope. The Author
is one of the first to force his way out into the light of day ;
io I. Luke
but his eyes are still dazzled, and his vision not quite perfect.
He sees that Luke always found the marvellous quite as
much in his own immediate surroundings, where he was a
witness and an actor, as in the earliest period of his history ;
but he only infers, to put it in coarse language, " how blind
Luke was ".
What was the truth? How far was Luke right? I
cannot say. Consult the men of the twentieth century. I
was trained in the nineteenth, and cannot see clearly. But
of one thing I am certain : in so far as Professor Harnack
condemns Luke s point of view and rules it out in this
unheeding way, he is wrong. In so far as he is willing
to hear evidence, he comes near being right
Practically all the argument, in the sense of facts affording
evidence, stated by the Author has long been familiar to
us in England and Scotland. What is new and interesting
and valuable is the ratiocination, the theorising, and the
personal point of view in the book under review. We study
it to understand Professor Harnack quite as much as to
understand Luke : and the study is well worth the time and
work. Personally, I feel specially interested in the question
of Luke s nationality. On this the Author has some admirable
and suggestive pages.
That Luke was a Hellene is quite clear to the Author.
He repeats this often ; and if once or twice his expression is
a little uncertain, as if he were leaving another possibility
open, that is only from the scientific desire to keep well
within the limits of what the evidence permits. He has no
real doubt. The reasons on which he lays stress are utterly
different from those which have been mentioned by myself
in support of the same conclusion, but certainly quite as
strong if not stronger ; it is a mere difference of idiosyncrasy
the Physician 1 1
which makes him lay stress on those that spring from the
thought and the inner temperament of Luke, while I have
spoken most of those which indicate Luke s outlook on the
world and his attitude towards external nature. But just
as I was quite conscious of the other class and merely
emphasised those which seemed to have been omitted from
previous discussions of the subject, 1 so the Author s silence
about the class which I have mentioned need not be taken
as proof that he is insensible to such reasons. But those
reasons appeal most to the mind of one who has lived long
in the country and has felt the sense impressions from whose
sphere they are taken. Perhaps they are apt to seem
fanciful to the scholar who has spent his life in the library
and the study.
The sentimental tone and the frequent allusion to weeping,
which is characteristic of Luke, is characteristic also of the
Hellene: dort und hier sind die Trdnen hellenische (p. 25).
Mark and Matthew have hardly any weeping : there is more
in John; but Luke far surpasses John. Such ideas and
words as "injury" (an inadequate translation of the Greek
#/3pt9, Acts xxvii. 10, 21), "the barbarians," 2 are char
acteristically Greek. " Justice did not suffer him to live " (Acts
xxviii. 4) is exactly the word of a Hellenic poet : the words
are put in the mouth of the Maltese barbarians, but they are
only the expression in Greek by Luke of their remarks in
barbaric speech and their attitude to Paul ; and they are the
Hellenised thought of a Hellene. To Pindar or Aeschylus
Justice and Zeus are almost equivalent ideas.
In an extremely interesting passage, p. 100 f., the Author
sketches the character of Luke s religion. He recognises
l St. Paul the Traveller, pp. 21, 205 ff.
2 Both are confined to Paul and Luke in the New Testament.
12 I. Luke
with correct insight the fundamental Hellenism of Luke s
Christianity. To put the matter from a different point of
view, Luke had been a Hellenic pagan, and could not fully
comprehend either Judaism or Christianity. As in Ignatius,
so in Luke, we see the clear traces of his original pagan
thought, 1 and we detect the early stage of the process which
was destined to work itself out in the paganisation of the
Church. The world was not able to comprehend Paulinism,
and the result of this inability to understand the spiritual
power was the degrading of spiritual ideas into pagan personal
deities conceived as saints. It was not possible for even
Luke to spring at once to the level of Paulinism ; that would
need at the best more than a single life, even supposing that
there had been unbroken progress. As it happened, there
supervened a degeneration in the level of thought and com
prehension, after the first impulse communicated by Jesus
had apparently exhausted itself, until the Christian idea had
time slowly to mould the world s mind and impart to it the
power of comprehending Paulinism better. After the first
generation of Pauline contemporaries and pupils had died,
we see little proof that Paulinism was a living power until
we come down to Augustine, and then it appeared only for
a moment.
I confess, however, that the Author, while he catches this
undeniable characteristic of Luke s religious comprehension,
seems to miss the elements in his thought that were capable
of higher development. These were only germs, and the
I 1 do not mean to imply that the Author expresses exactly this opinion in
this form about Luke ; he pictures Luke s idea as a definite hard fact ; to me
it always comes natural to regard a man s ideas as a process of growth, and
to look before and after the moment. The Author isolates the moment. On
Ignatius see Letters to the Seven Churches, p. 159 ff.
the Physician 13
weakness of the Author s view seems to be that he recog
nises only the fully articulated opinion and is sometimes blind
to ideas which were merely inchoate. Hence I cannot but
regard the estimate (on p. 101) of Luke s Paulinism, i.e., of
his failure to grasp Paulinism, as too hard and too thin.
I may give an example to illustrate what I think was the
case. Like the Author, I think that the story in Luke i., ii., is
dependent on an oral not a written report ; but unlike him,
I think that this report comes from Mary herself. 1 Like
Professor Sanday, I should conjecture that it came through
one of the women named by Luke elsewhere. Here we
have a narrative which comes from a Hebrew source, from a
woman thinking in Hebraic fashion, one whose language was
saturated with Hebraic imagery. This narrative Luke has
transmitted to us in a form which clearly shows its Hebrew
origin, and equally clearly shows that it had been re-expressed
in Lukan language (as the Author has proved) and trans
formed by Luke. But also, I venture to believe, it has been
re-thought out of the Hebraic into the Greek fashion. The
messenger of God, who revealed to Mary the Divine will and
purpose, becomes to Luke the winged personal being who,
like Iris or Hermes, communicates the will and purpose of
God. Exactly what is the difference between the original
narrative and the Greek translation, I am not able to say or
to speculate ; but that there was a more anthropomorphic
picture of the messenger in Luke s mind than there was in
Mary s I feel no doubt. Yet I believe that Luke was trans
lating as exactly as he could into Greek the account which
he had heard. He expresses and thinks as a Greek that
which was thought and expressed by a Hebrew.
1 Christ Born in Bethlehem, p. 74 ff.
14 I. Luke
But, with this qualification, the passage on p. 100 f. appears
to me to be most illuminative and remunerative. As regards
the Hellenism of Luke the difference between us is one
merely of degree. We are really trying to say the same
thing, but expressing it through the colouring and transform
ing medium of our different personalities, and I too imper
fectly. The really important matter is this. In the first
place, the Author sees clearly and perfectly and finally the
first century character of Luke s thought : " He has come
into personal relations with the first Christians, with Paul "
(p. 103). In the second place, the Author s view that Luke
was so incapable of comprehending the spirit of Christianity
for that is inevitably implied in his exposition, pp. 100-
1 O2 only brings out into clearer light Luke s inability to
evolve from his inner consciousness the picture of Jesus
which looks out in such exquisite outline from his historical
work. The picture was given to, and not made by, Luke ; and
the Author himself shows plainly how it was given him. He
had intimate relations with some of those who had known
Jesus, and from that, more than from the early written ac
counts to which he also had access, he derived his conception.
Where he altered this conception, it could only be to introduce
his own poorer, less lofty ideas, and to betray his want of real
comprehension. I do not at all deny that there are in his
Gospel (as there are in the other Gospels) traces of the age
and the thoughts amid which they were respectively com
posed ; but these are recognised because they are inharmon
ious with the picture as a whole. They are stains, and not
parts of the original picture.
Accordingly, in spite of certain differences, so close does
this part of the task bring us, starting from our widely
opposed points of contemplation, that the conclusion of
the Physician 15
this brilliant passage is an expression of Paul s general
position in the Jewish and Hellenic world, as Harnack con
ceives it, which I am able to adopt and to use as my own :
" Paul and Luke are counterparts. 1 As the former is only
intelligible as a Jew, but a Jew who has come into the closest
contact with Hellenism, so the latter is only intelligible as a
Hellene, but a Hellene who has personally had touch with
the original Jewish Christianity." Usually, in his characteri
sation of Paul, the Author sees the Jew so clearly, that he
sees nothing else ; and, as a rule, I } find myself in strenuous
opposition to his conception of the great Apostle. Here he
recognises the very close contact of Paul with Hellenism.
We must, then, ask whether that contact had been so utterly
devoid of effect on Paul s sensitive and sympathetic mind,
as the Author often represents it to have been ? To me it
seems that, while Luke was the Hellene, who could never
fully understand or sympathise with the Jew 2 (though his
whole life and thought had been changed by contact with
the religion taught by Jews), Paul was the Jew who had
sympathised with much that lay in Hellenism and had been
powerfully modified and developed thereby, remaining, how
ever, a Jew, but a developed Jew, (( who had come into the
closest contact with Hellenism ".
In the familiar argument about the " We "-passages of
Acts, the Author puts one point in a striking and impressive
way. In these " We "-passages, as he points out and
as is universally recognised, Luke distinguishes carefully
between "We" and Paul. Wherever it is reasonably
possible, in view of historic and literary truth, he empha
sises Paul and keeps the " We " modestly in the background.
1 Gegenbilder, companion and contrasted pictures.
2 St. Paul the Traveller, p, 207,
1 6 I. Luke
Now, take into account the narrative in Acts xxviii. 8-10:
" And it was so that the father of Publius lay sick of fever
and dysentery : unto whom Paul entered in and prayed,
and laying his hands on him healed him. And when this
was done, the rest also which had diseases in the island
came and were cured [more correctly, ( received medical
treatment ]: who also honoured us with many honours."
In this passage attention is concentrated on Paul, so
long as historic truth allowed ; but Paul s healing power
by prayer and faith could not be always exercised. Such
power is efficacious only occasionally in suitable circum
stances and on suitable persons. As soon as it begins
to be exercised on all and sundry, it begins to fail, and
a career of pretence deepening into imposture begins.
Accordingly, when the invalids came in numbers, medical
advice was employed to supplement the faith-cure, and the
physician Luke became prominent. Hence the people
honoured not " Paul," but "us".
Here the Author recognises a probable objection, but con
siders it has not any serious weight, viz^ that Luke, like
Paul, may have cured by prayer and not by medical treat
ment. Against this he points to the precise definition of
Publius s illness, which is paralleled often in Greek medical
works, but never in Greek literature proper; and argues
that faith-healers do not trouble themselves, as a rule, about
the precise nature of the disease which is submitted to
them. He acknowledges that this is not a complete and
conclusive answer. He has strangely missed the real
answer, which is complete and conclusive. Paul healed
Publius (IdcraTo), but Luke is not said to have healed the
invalids who came afterwards. They received medical
treatment (eOepanrevovTo). The latter verb is translated
the Physician
" cured " in the English Version ; and Professor Harnack
agrees. Now in the strict sense edepairevovro, as a medical
term, means " received medical treatment " ; and in the
present case the context and the whole situation de
mand this translation (though Luke uses the word else
where sometimes in the sense of "cure"): the contrast
to Ido-aro, the careful use of medical terms in the passage,
and above all the implied contrast of Paul s healing power
and Luke s modest description of his medical attention to
his numerous patients from all parts of the island, all demand
the latter sense. Professor Knowling is here right.
The Author states a careful argument that, since Luke
and Aristarchus are twice mentioned together in the Epistles
of Paul, and Aristarchus is thrice mentioned in the Acts,
the silence of Acts about Luke is to be explained by his
having written the book ; and that there is no other explana
tion possible. Aristarchus, an unimportant person, is men
tioned in Acts solely because he was in relation with Luke.
Luke did not name himself, though he frequently indicates his
presence by using the first person. Luke and Aristarchus
were Paul s two sole Christian companions on his voyage to
Rome. These facts, the triple reference in Acts to a person
so unimportant in history as Aristarchus, and the silence
about Luke except in the editorial " we," point to Luke as
the author.
This argument occurs or appeals to every one who ap
proaches the book with a desire to understand it ; it carries
weight ; but the weight is lessened by the enigmatic silence
of Acts about Titus, a person of such importance and so
closely alike in influence to Luke. He who solves that
enigma will throw a flood of light on the early history of
Christianity in the Aegean lands. A conjecture that Titus
1 8 I. Luke
was a relative of Luke (brother or cousin) l is advanced in
St. Paul the Traveller, p. 390 ; and as yet I see no other
way out of the difficulty, since the only other supposition
that suggests itself vtz. t that Titus Lucanus was the full
name of the author, and that he was sometimes spoken of
as Titus simply, sometimes as Lukas (an abbreviated form)
introduces apparently far greater difficulties than it solves.
The attempt on pp. 15-17 to demonstrate that the writer
of Acts was closely connected with Syrian Antioch, seems
to me a distinct failure. That Luke had some family con
nection with Syrian Antioch 2 is in perfect harmony with the
evidence of his writings, and must be accepted on the evidence
of Eusebius and others ; but the Author s argument that this
influenced his selection and statement of details is anything
but convincing. A false inference seems to be drawn in
some cases. For example, it is pointed out on p. 16, note i,
that Syrian Antioch is only once alluded to in the Pauline
letters (Gal. ii. II), whereas it is often mentioned in a pecu
liar and emphatic way in Acts ; and the inference is drawn
that the emphasis laid on Antioch in Acts cannot be ex
plained purely from the facts and must be due to some
special interest which Luke felt in it. This reasoning implies
that the importance of different places in the early history
of Christianity can be estimated according to the frequency
with which they are mentioned in Paul s letters. Without
that premise the Author s reasoning in the note just quoted
has no validity ; but the premise needs only to be formally
stated, and its falsity is at once evident.
1 In the Expository Times, 1907, p. 285, Professor A. Souter argues that in
2 Cor. viii. 18 Luke is called " the brother " of Titus. This always seemed to
me highly probable; but d5e\</x$s might signify "cousin," and it might
indicate close friendship and intimacy (St. Paul the Traveller, p. 390).
2 On the character of this connection, see Note at the end of this article.
the Physician 19
In the view which I have tried to support, the reason
why Syrian Antioch is often mentioned in Acts is not that
Luke loved to speak of his own city, but simply and solely
its critical and immense importance in the development of
the early Church. In Antioch were taken the first important
steps in the adaptation of the Church to the pagan world ; for
the episode of Cornelius does not imply such a serious step,
and would have been quite compatible with the maintenance
of a really Judaic Church.
The reason why Antioch is rarely mentioned by Paul is
that his letters are not intended to give a history of the de
velopment of the Church, but to warn or to encourage his
correspondents. Only in Galatians i., ii., does Paul diverge
into history, and there Antioch plays an extremely important
part. It is the scene of action from Galatians i. 2 1 (where
Syria means Antioch) down to ii. i, and again ii. 11-14;
and in these two references how much historical weight is
implied !
The Author s further suggestion that Mnason the Cy
priote, whom Paul and his companions found living at a
town between Caesareia and Jerusalem, 1 may have been
the missionary from Cyprus that helped to found the Church
in Antioch (p. 16, n. 2), has absolutely nothing in its favour,
and is an example of the sort of vague " might have been "
which annoys and irritates the plain matter-of-fact English
scholar, but which is extremely popular among the so-called
" Higher Critics " abroad and at home. Those suggestions
of utterly unproved and improbable possibilities lead to
nothing, and should never be made, as here, buttresses for an
1 At Jerusalem, as the Author thinks, assigning no value to Western
readings. My own view is that even the Accepted Text bears the same sense
as the Western (Expositor, March, 1895, p. 213 f.).
2o I. Luke
argument, founded on the Author s observation that among
the Antiochian leaders mentioned in xiii. i, no Cypriote
occurs. 1 But we must remember that the first of the list,
the outstanding leader of the Antiochian Church, Barnabas,
was a Cypriote ; and, though he was not one of the mission
aries who helped in the original foundation, he came to
Antioch immediately after the foundation ; and there is no
reason to assume that the five leaders mentioned in xiii. I
must include all the original founders.
The imagined contrast between the importance attached
in Acts to Syrian Antioch and Paul s comparative silence
about it, is strengthened by the quotation of Acts xiv. 19
as a reference a confusion of Syrian with Pisidian Antioch,
evidently a mere slip, but a slip into which the Author
has been betrayed by eagerness to find arguments in favour
of a theory.
Not much better seems to me the inference drawn from
the first speech of Jesus (Luke iv. 21-27), which begins
with " this parable, Physician, heal thyself," and ends with
a reference to Naaman, the Syrian. In this the Author
finds conclusive proof that Luke was a physician, and that
he was keenly interested in Antioch. What connection
has Damascus with Antioch? True, we now speak of
them both as in Syria. But Syria was not a country.
There was no political connection between Damascus and
Antioch when that speech was delivered, and as little when
Luke composed his history. The two cities were in different
countries, under different rule, far distant from one another,
and having so far as we know nothing in common. One
was the capital of a Roman Province, the other was subject
1 Ein Cyprier wird nicht genannt.
the Physician 21
to the barbarian King of Arabia. It is only on the map
that they look close to one another.
The cases in which I find myself obliged to disagree with
the Author are generally of one class, and are due to the
fact that he frequently regards as indicative of Luke s in
dividual character details which are forced on the historian
by his subject. We have found some examples in the
Author s attempted proof that Antioch had a special interest
for Luke as his birthplace. On p. 106 he attempts similarly
to show that Ephesus had a special interest for him, and
is specially marked out among the Churches by him ; this
supposed interest he explains by the further supposition that
Luke settled and wrote either at Ephesus or in a district for
which Ephesus had a central significance, and he adds that
this country may have been Achaia. Why Ephesus should
have a central significance for one who resided in Achaia is
not easy to see, except in the sense that it had a central
significance for the Gentile Church in general : in other
words, that Ephesus was a leading and specially important
Church. But, if it was so, does not its importance sufficiently
explain the attention and space which the historian Luke
devotes to it, without supposing that he had some private
and personal love for speaking about the city ? Moreover?
this assumed residence of Luke in Achaia is not in harmony
with the Author s footnote on the same page, in which he
says that, while Acts clearly shows the foundation of the
Church at Corinth to have been the principal achievement
of Paul s second journey, yet Luke himself had no relation
to the Corinthian Church. 1 How it could have been possible
1 For my own part I think that Luke had relations with the Corinthian
Church (St. Paul the Traveller, pp. 284, 390). But this is, as yet, merely
matter of opinion.
22 I. Luke
for Luke to settle in Achaia, and yet not come into any re
lation to Corinth, but regard Ephesus as the point of central
significance for his district, I cannot in the circumstances of
the Roman period understand, nor does the Author try to
explain. The rest of Achaia communicated with Ephesus
only through Corinth; and it is simply incredible that
residents in Achaia should disregard Corinth and look to
Ephesus.
The Author seeks to prove that Luke felt a special
interest in Ephesus mainly from the character of the
Ephesian address (Acts xx. 18 ff.) ; and he mentions (i) the
heartfelt tone of affection in which Paul addresses the elders
of Ephesus ; (2) the way in which Paul s address on that
occasion is turned into a general farewell to the congrega
tions of the Aegean district ; (3) that he knows and takes
notice of the later history of the Ephesian Church.
(i) The facts seem to me only to illuminate Paul s feeling
towards Ephesus and to mark out Luke s report as being a
trustworthy account of an address which was really de
livered ; Luke sinks and Paul alone emerges in the report.
The words spoken by Paul prove nothing as to Luke s
feelings unless the speech is either a fabrication of Luke s,
or an unnecessary part of a history of the time, unim
portant in itself and not characteristic enough to deserve
insertion. Now, if true, the speech throws much light on
the character of Paul : it is uttered on a great and unique
occasion : it is the one episode in Acts which brings out into
clear, strong relief the intense interest which Paul felt in his
Churches. In short, it is eminently required in order to
complete the picture of Paul s work in the Aegean world,
and it was spoken at the moment when Paul was taking
farewell of that world in order to enter on the new world of
the Physician 23
the West (after consecrating the results of his work in the
Aegean world by an offering at Jerusalem intended to
cement the unity of all the Churches of the East). The
speech is introduced with eminent dramatic propriety. It
is historic in its scope and weighty in its matter. He who
argues that the words reveal Luke s feelings, not Paul s, is
therefore driven back on the other alternative, that the
speech was a fabrication of Luke s ; but we remember that,
on the Author s view, Luke was present and heard the speech.
How can we reconcile the contradiction ? Luke, a com
panion and admirer of Paul, listened to the address
delivered on such a remarkable occasion ; but, in place of
reporting the speech which he heard, he presents his readers
with a fabricated one.
This contradiction can be reconciled only by declaring
Luke to have been a singularly bad historian ; and such is
the Author s view : Luke was incapable of being accurate,
and was untrustworthy as a historian. But is this view
natural ? Is it reconcilable with the literary skill and the
sympathetic insight of the work ? Could the man who tells
the story of the voyage and shipwreck make such a false
account of another great occasion ?
(2) The farewell to Ephesus was at some points expressed
by Paul as a general farewell, because his audience included
representatives of all the Churches, in Achaia, Macedonia,
Asia and Galatia; and though these representatives were
accompanying him to Jerusalem, yet, when he was explain
ing that he intended to come no more into those regions
(having, as we know, Rome and the West now in view),
he naturally began to speak more generally : " Ye all, among
whom I went about preaching, shall see my face no more ".
This is said to all the congregations, Corinth, etc,, which,
24 I. Luke
though absent, were represented by delegates, who would
report his farewell.
(3) Considering Paul s past experience elsewhere, it is
not strange that he should be able to foresee what dangers
from without and from within awaited Ephesus. Further,
the Author has just pointed out that the address had
already become general; why, then, does he assume that
this sentence 29-30 applies only to Ephesus, and shows
such a knowledge of later Ephesian history as proves the
subsequent acquaintance with, perhaps actual residence in,
Ephesus of the historian who composed the address and put
it into the mouth of Paul ? It might equally plausibly be
argued, on the contrary, that this sentence shows ignorance
of subsequent Ephesian history, for both John and Ignatius
agree that Ephesus was long the champion of truth and
the rejecter of error. 1
In general, one feels that, where the Author is at his best,
he is studying Luke in a straightforward way and drawing
inferences from observed facts ; where he is less satisfactory,
he has got a theory in his head, and is straining the facts
to support the theory.
He lays much stress on the fact that inconsistencies and
inexactnesses occur all through Acts. Some of these are
undeniable ; and I have argued that they are to be regarded
in the same light as similar phenomena in the poem of Lucre
tius and in other ancient classical writers, viz., as proofs
that the work never received the final form which Luke
intended to give it, but was still incomplete when he died.
The evident need for a third book to complete the work,
together with those blemishes in expression, form the proof:
see below, p. 27.
1 Letters to the Seven Churches^ p. 240 f.
the Physician 25
But the Author finds inconsistencies and faults in Luke
where I see none. He complains, e.g., that Luke is not dis
turbed by the fact that Paul was driven on by the Spirit
to Jerusalem, and yet the disciples in Tyre through this
same Spirit seek to detain him from going to Jerusalem.
I cannot feel disturbed any more than Luke ; such were the
facts ; and I can only marvel that the great German scholar
thinks we ought to be disturbed. Nor can I blame Luke
(as the Author does, p. 81) because Agabus s prophecy,
xxi. ii, is not fulfilled exactly as it is uttered. Luke is
merely the reporter of what he heard Agabus say ; and we
can only feel profoundly grateful that he recorded the
simple facts, and did not suppress the prophecy or adapt it
to the event.
The tendency to regard historical details which Luke
narrates as indicative of his personal character often takes
the form of blaming the historian for being inconsistent,
where the inconsistency (if it be such) was the fault of
the facts, not of the narrator. I quote just one example.
In xvi. 37 Paul appeals to his Roman rights as a citizen :
" one asks in astonishment why he does so only now ".
One may certainly be quite justified in asking the question,
but one is not justified in blaming Luke because Paul did
not claim his rights sooner. This is an interesting question.
Paul had already several times submitted to punishment
from Roman or municipal magistrates without claiming his
immunity from such treatment as a Roman. At this point
he began to take advantage of his privileged position. Is
not this a step in his realisation of the relation of the Church
to the Empire ?
We take it that Luke is right, and that Paul did not at
first reveal his Roman citizenship to the Philippian magis-
26 I. Luke
trates. If that is so, it is absurd to blame the historian for
telling the truth. The Author, presumably, must hold that
Luke is wrong, that Paul did claim his rights earlier, and
that Luke either suppressed or was ignorant of the Apostle s
earlier appeal. Now the Author s view is that Luke was in
Philippi as Paul s companion ; the facts therefore must have
been known to the historian, but he did not record the
first claim. Such conduct would justify the very severe
strictures which the Author makes on Luke s inability to tell
a story clearly and correctly. But how difficult it is to work
out that theory in a reasonable way ! If Paul claimed his
rights on the preceding day, how did it come that he was
beaten in defiance of the privilege of a Roman citizen ?
And, if the magistrates were convinced by his claim on the
morrow, how came they to disregard it on the first day?
Or are we to suppose that the beating was an invention of
Luke s ?
In short, here and generally, we come back to Professor
McGiffert s view (as stated above) that, if Luke was a friend
and companion of Paul, his history must be accepted as
thoroughly trustworthy. The qualities of intellect and
heart which are revealed in his work show that he was an
exceptionally well-qualified witness and narrator. The
Author s theory that Luke was Paul s contemporary and
personal friend, and often an eye-witness of the events which
he records, but yet was untrustworthy as a recorder even of
what he had seen, leads into many hopeless inconsistencies,
of which the above is only one slight specimen.
There are clear signs of the unfinished state in which this
chapter was left by Luke ; but some of the German scholar s
criticisms show that he has not a right idea of the simplicity
of life and equipment that evidently characterised the jailer s
the Physician 27
house and the prison. 1 The details which he blames as
inexact and inconsistent are sometimes most instructive about
the circumstances of this provincial town and Roman
colonia.
But it is never safe to lay much stress on small points of
inexactness or inconsistency in any author. One finds such
faults even in the works of modern scholarship, if one ex
amines them in the microscopic fashion in which Luke is
studied here. I think I can find them in the Author him
self. His point of view sometimes varies in a puzzling way.
On p. 92 the paragraph Acts xxviii. 17-31 is said to be
clearly modelled to make it the conclusion of the whole work.
On p. 96 the Author confesses his inability to solve the
serious problem presented by the last two verses, and suggests
the possibility that Luke intended to write a third book.
Again, on p. 20 he numerates xx. 5, 6 as part of the " We"-
sections, but on p. 105 f. he declares that Luke first met
Paul at Troas, accompanied him to Philippi, and there
parted from him, to rejoin him after some years, and in fact
the meeting took place once more at Troas. But if the re
union only took place at Troas, then xx. 5, 6 cannot be a
genuine part of the " We "-sections.
I suspect that inexactness on the Author s part forms the
foundation for a charge which he brings against me. He
speaks of my theory that Luke was employed by Paul as a
physician during his severe illness in Galatia. If I have so
spoken it would be a clear example of inexactitude and
inconsistency on my own part. I entirely agree with Pro
fessor Harnack that Paul first met Luke in Troas, and that
Luke never travelled with Paul in Galatia ; and I think this
is put quite clearly and strongly in my book, St. Paul the
1 St. Paul the Traveller, p. 220 ff.
28 I. Luke
Traveller. I may elsewhere have been guilty of this in
exactitude and inconsistency; but I cannot remember to
have made such a statement. I have doubtless spoken of
Luke as being useful as a medical adviser to Paul in travel
ling, as, e.g., I have said that Luke would have discouraged
any proposal to walk sixty miles in two days (Acts xxi. I6), 1
more especially since Paul was liable to attacks of fever ; but
his fever was not confined to Galatia or to any one journey.
Moreover, a traveller may be guided by his physician s advice,
even though the physician does not accompany him.
The Author has an object in thus dwelling on the incon
sistencies and inexactitudes of which Luke is guilty. He is
here preparing to cope with the supreme difficulty in Acts,
viz., the disagreement between the narrative of Acts xv. and
that of Galatians ii. i-u, if these are taken (as the Author
takes them) to be accounts of the same event, or series of
events. These are so plainly inconsistent with one another
for the attempts to represent them as consistent are among
the strange things in the history of learning that, if they
depict the same incident, one must be fatally inaccurate.
Now, as Paul was present and took part in the incident, his
evidence must rank higher, unless he be condemned as in
tentionally misrepresenting facts, a theory which few adopt
and which need not be considered. Luke then must be
wrong, where he is in disagreement with Paul. The dis
agreement can be readily explained by those who regard
Acts as the work of a later period : history, as they may
reasonably say, had become dimmed by lapse of time, by the
growth of prejudice, and by various other causes. But how
can those explain it, who maintain (as the Author does) that
Acts was written by the friend, coadjutor and personal
] In a paper now reprinted in Pauline and other Studies (1906), p. 267.
the Physician 29
attendant of Paul, the friend of many other persons closely
concerned and certain to possess good information? The
inconsistency is not in unimportant details, easily caught
up differently by different persons : the inconsistency is
fundamental and thorough.
To that question the Author has to prepare his answer;
and his answer is that Luke was habitually inaccurate and
inconsistent with himself. This answer is always a difficulty,
against which the Author is struggling with extraordinary
dialectic skill throughout his book, but the struggle is vain
and success impossible. Luke is not, in the Author s exposi
tion, a single character. He is a double personality, good
and bad.
The truth is, as has frequently been pointed out, that the
whole problem which governs so completely and so disas
trously this and most modern books about Acts is a mere
phantom, the creation of geographical ignorance, the result
of the irrational North Galatian view. Acts xv. describes a
different scene from Galatians ii. 2-11.
On p. 1 06 f. the Author discusses the relation between
Luke and the Gospel of John, and points out that of all
the Apostles Luke shows interest in none but Peter and
John. The idea that this greater frequency of reference to
these two Apostles might be due to their greater importance
in the development of Christianity as the religion of the
Empire (which I hold to be the truth) is set aside without
even a passing glance by the Author. The reason must lie
in some accidental meeting of Luke with, or personal relation
to, John. It is quietly assumed from first to last that the
determining motive of Luke in his choice of events for
record or omission lies in personal idiosyncrasy or caprice,
never in the importance or insignificance of the events. The
30 I. Luke
Author says that, considering his predilection for John, it is
remarkable that Luke does not mention him in Acts xv.,
when Paul shows in Galatians ii. that John was one of the
three prominent figures in the incident ; and the only in
ference which he draws is that Luke had not read the letter
to the Galatians. But, even if that inference were true, it
would not be a sufficient explanation, for Luke had abundant
opportunity of learning the facts and the comparative au
thority of the various Apostles from other informants ; and
the Author fully grants that he made considerable use of oral
information. The only justifiable inference which the mere
commonplace historian would permit himself to draw is that,
according to the information at Luke s disposal, John did
not play a prominent part in the incident described in Acts
xv., whereas he was prominent in the scene described by Paul
(Gal. ii. 2-10).
The view which at present commends itself to me (but
which might, of course, be altered by more systematic con
sideration) is that the writer of the Fourth Gospel knew the
Third, but that the writer of the Third did not know the
Fourth and had little direct personal acquaintance with its
author. The analogies which Dr. Harnack points out are
analogies of subject, forced on both by external facts, and
not caused by the character of the two writers.
It sounds, at first hearing, strange to us that the Author
feels himself as the first to observe that the female element is
so much emphasised in Luke, whereas Mark and Matthew
give women very small place in the history. 1 This seems
such a commonplace in English study, that I felt obliged to
1 Woratif, soviet ich mich erinnere, bisher noch nie aufmerksdm gemacht
warden ist. . . . Erst Lukas hat sie [i.e., Frauen] so stark in die evangelische
Geschichte eingefuhrt.
the Physician 31
be almost apologetic and very brief in referring to the subject
in Was Christ Born at Bethlehem ? (pp. 83-90). Yet when
one s attention is called to the fact, it is not easy to refer to
any formal and serious discussion of this extremely important
side of the evidence about Luke s personality ; and it may be
that the Author is the first, at least in modern German
scholarship, to treat the topic in a scholarly way. The truth
seems to be that German scholars have been so entirely
taken up with the preliminary questions, such as " Was there
a Luke at all ? " that they have never tried to discover what
sort of man he was. Even those who championed his reality
were so occupied in proving it by what are considered more
weighty arguments, that they forgot the mode of proof which
seems in my humble judgment to be far the strongest, viz.,
to hold up to the admiration of all thinking men this man
Luke in his humanity and reality. Do his works reveal to
us a real man ? If so, they must be the genuine composition
of a true person ; no pseudonymous work ever succeeded or
could succeed in exhibiting the supposititious writer as a
real personality. Professor Harnack has only half essayed
the task. He has entered on it, but never heartily, for he is
too much cumbered by prepossessions, by old theories only
half discarded, and above all by the hopeless fetters of the
North-Galatian prejudice, which inevitably distorts the whole
history.
I have pointed out, in the passage just quoted (p. 90),
that this attitude of Luke s mind is characteristic of Mace
donia (implying thereby that it is not characteristic of Greece
proper) : I might and should have added that it is character
istic also of Asia Minor. But there is much to say on this
subject, and here I can only refer to the discussion of the
effect on subsequent Christian development produced by the
32 I. Luke
Anatolian craving for some recognition of the female element
in the Divine nature (Pauline and other Studies, 1906, p.
135 ).
" The traditions of Jesus, which lie before us in the works
of Mark and Luke, are older than is commonly supposed.
That does not make them more trustworthy, but yet is not
a matter of indifference for their criticism." x So says the
Author on p. 113. These are not the words of a dispassionate
historian ; they are the words of one whose mind is made up
a priori, and who strains the facts to suit his preconceived
opinion. In no department of historical criticism except
Biblical would any scholar dream of saying, or dare to say,
that accounts are not more trustworthy if they can be
traced back to authors who were children at the time the
events which form this subject occurred, and who were in
year-long, confidential and intimate relations with actors in
those events, than they would be if they were composed by
writers one or two generations younger, who had personal
acquaintance with few or none of the actors and contem
poraries. 2 But compare above, p. 4.
There is room, and great need, for a dispassionate and
serious examination of the question how far there exist in the
Gospels traces of the age in which they were composed, and
of the thought characteristic of that time. Such an ex
amination cannot now be conducted to a useful end by one
who begins with his mind made up as to what must be later
and what cannot be real, for this prejudice must inevitably
be of nineteenth century character and hostile to any true
1 Die Ueberliefemngen von Jesus, die bei Markus und Lukas vorliegen,
sind alter als man gewohnlich annimmt. Das macht sie nicht glaubwurdiger,
ist aber dock fur ihre Kritik nicht gleichgultig.
2 The Author dates Luke s History A.D. 80. For a different reason I argued
that Luke iii. n was written under Titus, 79-81 (St. Paul the Traveller, p. 387).
the Physician 33
comprehension of first century realities. I cannot but think
and maintain that there are later elements in the Gospels,
showing the influence of popular legend, and reminding us
that after all the picture of Jesus which stands before us in
the New Testament has always to be contemplated through
glass that is not perfect and flawless, through a human and
imperfect medium. 1 The flaws can be distinguished, but the
marvel is that they are so few and so unimportant. The
picture is so strong, so simple in outline, and so unique, that it
shines with hardly diminished clearness through the medium.
After stating in a general way the position which Professor
Harnack takes up in this remarkable book, it is only fair to
give some specimens in detail of the arguments on which he
relies. As we are in almost entire agreement with the main
position of his book, it will conduce to clearness to say that
most of the quotations which will be made at the outset are
of points which seem to show his method at its best. In the
concluding pages some remarks will be made on the method
of proof which is employed in the book.
The Author s argument and inferences about the passages
in which the first personal pronoun " We " is used are stated
most definitely on p. 37 f. After minutely examining Acts
xvi. 10-17, an< 3 observing the identity in words, construction,
tone and thought, with the style of the rest of the Acts and
the Third Gospel, he argues that, if the writer of the Acts
took this passage from a " Source," he has left nothing in it
unchanged except the first personal pronoun : everything
else he has recast into his own characteristic vocabulary,
1 Legend gathers quickly in the East. It is, for example, an interesting
study to observe how the historic figure of Ibrahim Pasha has been hidden
beneath a crust of legend in the districts of Asia Minor which he held from
1832-40. The name is famous, but the legends gather round it,
3
34 I- Luke
syntax and style. Such a procedure is simply inconceivable,
and therefore there remains only the position that the writer
of the whole book is himself the original composer of these
" We "-passages : he is the man whose personal presence in
Troas and Philippi with Paul obliges him to speak as a wit
ness of and sharer in the action.
It is possible, the Author argues on p. 38, to go one step
farther. The writer did not take this passage, xvi. 10-17,
from his own old notebook or diary, and insert it in his
history. When he wrote the history twenty to thirty years
after the events, he could not possibly have retained in all
respects exactly the same style as he used in his old note
book. This passage was written when the Book of the Acts
was written ; it was composed as part of the whole work,
though this does not preclude the view that he had notes
written down at the time, with which he could refresh his
memory. This argument is absolutely conclusive to every
person that has the power of comprehending and appreciat
ing style and literary art ; unfortunately many of the so-
called " Higher Critics " seem to have become devoid of any
such comprehension through fixing persistently their atten
tion on words and details.
Luke was not merely a witness, he took part in the action :
" Straightway we sought to go forth into Macedonia, con
cluding that God had called us for to preach the Gospel
unto them," and " we sat down and spake unto the women "
(xvi. 10, 13): here the narrator makes himself one of the
missionaries to Macedonia. He was not a mere companion,
he was an enthusiastic missionary to that country ; and on
my view (though not on the Author s view) he continued to
be specially devoted to that country, except in so far as the
still closer personal devotion to Paul called him away.
the Physician 35
The Author, on the contrary, is disposed to connect Luke
with Ephesus, with Asia and with Achaia (as has been stated
above, p. 21). He finds a sufficient proof that Luke was
not a Macedonian l in Acts xxvii. 2 " we put to sea, Aris-
tarchus, a Macedonian of Thessalonica, being with us " (p. 31).
I cannot see any force in this reasoning. On the same
principle it might be argued that Luke was not an Asian
(which the Author is inclined to believe that he was), because
in xx. 4, 5, he speaks of " Asians, Tychicus and Trophimus,"
who " were waiting for us at Troas ".
The remarkable passage, Acts xvi. 9, must detain our
attention for a moment, while we apply to it a principle
which the Author lays down on p. n, though he does not
apply it to xvi. 9, and would deny the inferences which we
shall draw. He points out that, throughout the "We"-
passages, Luke distinguishes carefully between "We" and
Paul : wherever it is reasonably possible in view of historic
and literary truth, he emphasises Paul and keeps the " We "
modestly in the background. 2 Now observe in xvi. 10 how
the " We " is put forward. The vision was seen by Paul
alone, the message was given to Paul alone, "Come over
into Macedonia and help us ". Yet the narrative continues,
" And when he had seen the vision, straightway we sought
to go forth into Macedonia, concluding that God had called
us for to preach the Gospel unto them ". Without any ap
parent necessity, even without any apparent justification,
the writer assumes that, because Paul has been called into
Macedonia, Luke shares in the call. There is no other
passage in which the "We" is forced in without obvious
1 In this paragraph I am using the words Macedonian and Asian of Luke
in the sense of residing in Macedonia or in Asia, which is not strictly accurate,
but is convenient.
2 See above, p. 15 f.
36 I. Luke
justification ; and on the view stated in St. Paul the Traveller,
pp. 200-3, there is a justification hidden beneath the surface
in this case also, for Luke had played a part in the vision,
and was therefore forced to conclude that he as well as Paul
was called to Macedonia. Several reasons (which need not
be repeated here) are there stated, which point to the idea
that the man of Macedonia, whom Paul saw in the vision
and recognised at sight as a Macedonian, was Luke; and
these are confirmed by the observation now stated.
Every time I read this remarkable passage, xvi. 6-10,
I am more and more struck with the intense personal feeling
that lies under the words, the hurry and rush of the narrative,
and the quiet satisfaction of the conclusion, " God had called
us". Luke is here introducing himself, in the moment when
he played so important a part in determining the course of
Paul s work. The large space which is given to the Mace
donian work in the Acts is out of proportion to its importance,
and can only be explained by Luke s strong personal interest
in it.
The Author gives as an example of the style of the " We "-
passages a similar analysis of xxviii. 1-16, a specimep of
continuous sea-narrative ; his treatment cannot be shortened,
but must be studied in full. Only one criticism has to be
made on this excellent piece of investigation. It is strange
that on p. 44 the Author quotes, as if there were any prob
ability in it, Professor Blass s unjustifiable objection to, and
conjectural alteration of, the reading TrapaarffMO) Awo-icovpoLs,
" whose sign was the Twin Brothers," given by MSS. and
all other editions in Acts xxviii. 1 1. Neither of them has
observed that this dative absolute is the correct technical
form, guaranteed by many examples in inscriptions. This
has been pointed out, and some examples quoted in an
the Physician 37
article published long ago in the Expositor}- There is no
detail in which the exact technical accuracy of Luke s ex
pression is more clearly made out than this, and yet Professor
Blass would change it into a commonplace relative clause,
<j> rjv Trapdo-^fjiov Aioa-Kovpwv y which is Greek so unidiomatic
as to be hardly Greek at all.
The author devotes considerable space to statistics about
the occurrence of the same words in the " We "-passages
and in Luke generally, as contrasted with the rarity or
total absence of many of those words in Matthew, Mark
and John. It is impossible to abbreviate this argument:
the reasoning must be taken as a whole, and seems con
clusive, though opinion will always differ a good deal as to
the value of such verbal arguments in proving identity of
authorship. Personally, I have not as a rule much belief
in such arguments, but it must be confessed that the statis
tics in this case are impressive.
The single sign of difference between the language of
the " We "-passages and the rest of Luke lies in the
unusually large number of words in the former, which
are used nowhere else by Luke. Words which an author
uses only once and no more occur throughout the writings
of Luke as well as in all the other books of the New
Testament ; they are distributed in a fairly even way, and
in proportion to the amount of the " We "-passages there
should be in them about thirty-eight words which occur
nowhere else in the Acts and the Third Gospel ; whereas
1 Room for it fails in the present volume. In St. Paul the Traveller, p. 346,
it did not occur to me even to defend this common technical usage (dates by a
consul s name, e.g., being always tacked on loosely by this absolute dative in
Greek, ablative in Latin) : I had not realised how little known the technical
and the colloquial Greek of the later Hellenistic and the Roman period was
known even to such masters of Greek as the late Professor Blass.
38 I. Luke
there actually occur 1 1 1 of that class. But this is due to
the subject-matter. Navigation and voyages play a large
part in the " We "-passages, because it was to a large extent
on voyages that Luke accompanied Paul in the earlier years
of their friendship ; and he was by nature interested as a
Greek in seamanship. Three-fifths of the words which are
peculiar to the " We "-passages are technical terms relating
to ships, parts of a ship, naval officers, sea-winds, manage
ment of a ship, and matters of navigation generally, and
almost all of them are nouns, while the few verbs without
exception denote actions required in seamanship. Such words
are forced on the writer by his subject ; and, as the Author
rightly remarks, it is a striking fact that in spite of the
novelty of subject in chapter xxvii., describing the ship
wreck, the ordinary style and vocabulary of Luke are
traceable with perfect clearness even in that long passage
(p. 60).
It is, of course, acknowledged by practically all scholars
that Luke employed written Sources. These written
Sources he has modified and recast so that they assume
much of his own style. Now, if any one still continues, in
spite of the above-stated proofs from style and vocabulary,
to urge that Luke found the " We "-passages in a written
Source, and took them over into his book, transforming
them into his own style and language, the Author replies
by a careful study of the way in which Luke elsewhere uses
his written Sources, from which he demonstrates that in
spite of the freedom with which Luke handled and touched
up his written Source, the original style, syntax and vocabu
lary still are clearly traceable in the transformed narrative.
This is one of the most important and striking parts in the
Author s work, and will reward the closest attention.
the Physician 39
While every one admits freely as a starting-point that
Luke had access to written narratives about many events
of which he had not been an eye-witness for he himself
mentions in the opening of his Gospel that there were many
such written Sources, founded on information given by eye
witnesses, to which he could have recourse there is not
much agreement as to the extent to which, and the parts of
his two books in which, he was indebted to these Sources.
But there is at any rate one Source, the character of which
is indubitable: for we possess the Source in practically
its original form (or a form so near the original as to be
equally useful for the immediate purpose of this investiga
tion), and can thus tell exactly how far and in what way
Luke used it. Some Sources are more or less a matter of
conjecture and inference, as they are lost in the original
form and are merely supposed as the foundation of Luke s
narrative. But it is practically universally admitted now
that Luke employed the Second Gospel : he took a copy of
Mark in much the same text and extent as we now possess,
and he wrote out three-fourths of it in his own Gospel in
much the same order as Mark wrote it. He improved the
Greek, he touched it up with explanatory additions and
"improvements" or "corrections," and he added greatly
to it from other sources of information, oral or written ;
but the style, syntax and vocabulary of Mark are clearly
discernible in the borrowed passages.
The Author exemplifies this in two passages, Mark i.
21-28 (i.e., Luke iv. 30-37) and Mark ii. i-n (i.e., Luke
v. 17-24). A few verses may be quoted from the first as a
specimen of this most luminous and instructive investigation,
which ought to be studied by every one in the Author s own
words.
40 I. Luke
Mark i. 21. And they go into Luke iv. 31. And He came down
Capernaum, and straightway on the to Capernaum, a city of Galilee, and
Sabbath day He entered into the He was teaching them on the Sabbath
synagogue and taught. day.
Mark has used the plural " they went after him " in the
previous verse, and continues his narrative accordingly. But
Luke had the singular in iv. 30 (which belongs to a passage
derived from a non-Markan source), " He passing through the
midst of them went His way " ; and was therefore obliged to
change Mark s plural to the singular. Further, in the pre
ceding verses Mark s scene was the shore of the Sea of
Galilee, and therefore the simple verb "go" was suitable.
But Luke s scene in the preceding passage was at Nazareth,
and he marks the change of scene from the hill-country of
Nazareth to the lower coast of the lake, " He came down ".
And, as the readers for whom he wrote did not know the
topography of Palestine, he adds to the name Capernaum
the explanation " a city of Galilee ".* Again, Mark was fond
of the word "straightway," and often employed it (as in
verse 23) ; but Luke disliked the usage, and often omits
the word. Mark allowed the verb " teach " without an ob
ject ; but this also was not a usage that Luke approved, and
he inserted " them " (not very lucidly). The process " was
teaching " seemed to Luke to express the facts better than
the simple " taught ". He found the expression " was teach
ing " in the following sentence of Mark, and brought it over
to this place.
22. And they were astonished at 32. And they were astonished at
His teaching ; for He was teaching His teaching, for His word was with
them as having authority and not as authority,
the scribes. 2
1 Luke has already mentioned Capernaum in iv. 23 ; but there it occurs
incidentally in a speech of Jesus, and explanation is unnecessary and would
be out of place. Here the topographical explanation is useful and suitable.
2 The quotations here follow the Authorised Version almost exactly, but
the Physician 41
In the second half of the verse the thought is entirely
remodelled and transformed into Lukan Greek and Lukan
language ; the verb had been transferred to the preceding
sentence, and change was therefore imperatively required. 1
23. And straightway there was 33. And in the synagogue there
in their synagogue a man in an un- was a man which had a spirit of an
clean spirit ; and he cried out, say- unclean demon, and he cried out with
ing a loud voice
Luke here cuts out the possessive "their," and replaces
the preposition "in" (perhaps a literal rendering by Mark
from the original Semitic, not very satisfactory in Greek) by
" which had " ; he defines " unclean " more precisely ; he
substitutes the more vivid " with a loud voice " for the simple
"saying"; and omits "straightway" (compare verse 21).
Verses 24 and 25 are taken over unchanged, except that
in 25 Luke changes " out of" into "from ".
A comparison like this might be carried out over the
whole of the matter common to Mark and Luke. In some
places there is distinctly more change than here. But even
where there is most change, enough remains to show the
character of the Source. Slight alterations to improve the
Greek are frequent. Complete refashioning of the thought
and expression is rare. Words and phraseology which Luke
rarely employs where he is writing freely are retained from
the Source. Luke recognised that a certain type of narra
tive style had been established for the Gospel, and he
allowed this to remain. Especially in the beginning of a
borrowed paragraph he altered more freely to suit the pre-
occasional slight changes are made to follow the Greek more literally, as here
" was teaching," where both Authorised and Revised Versions give " taught "
(which is better English in this case).
1 Similarly, when the Bezan Reviser transferred the idea, " he neglected a
region," from Acts xvi. 8 to xvii. 14, he remodelled the former passage.
I. Luke
ceding narrative. From some places it is clear that he did
not translate verse by verse, but considered a paragraph or
incident as a whole, and transferred touches from one point
to another, where they seemed more effective. He studied
effect more, or rather, perhaps, he pictured the scene to him
self more vividly than Mark did, and lit it up with more
vivid forms of language, e.g.
Mark ii. 3. And they came carry- Luke v. 18. And behold ! men
ing unto Him. carrying.
It will be best to give one continuous example from the
Author, showing the net result over a short paragraph, of
Luke s way of treating the Markan original ; the capitals
indicate non-Markan matter, and the italics matter which
is gathered from Mark but occupies a different place in his
narrative. The reader observes how Luke in his opening
words places the picture before the reader s eye.
MARK n. i-io.
i. And when He entered again into
Capernaum after some days, it was
noised that He was in the house.
2. And many were gathered to
gether, etc.
3. And they come, bringing, etc.
4. And when they could not come
nigh . . . they uncovered the roof, and
when they had broken it up, they let
down the bed.
5. And Jesus seeing their faith, etc.
6. But there were certain of the
scribes sitting there, and reasoning in
their hearts.
LUKE v. 17-24.
17. And it came to pass on one of
those days that He was teaching ; and
there were PHARISEES AND DOCTORS
OF THE LAW Sitting by, WHICH WERE
COME OUT OF EVERY VILLAGE of
GALILEE AND JUD^A AND JERU
SALEM : and the power of the Lord
was with Him to heal.
Nil.
18. And behold, men bring, etc.
19. And not finding by what way
they might bring him in, they ... let
him down THROUGH THE TILES.
20. And seeing their faith, He, etc.
21. And the scribes and the Phari
sees began to reason, saying, Who
the Physician 43
7. Why does this man thus speak ? is this that speake-th blasphemies ?
He blasphemeth ; who can forgive Who can forgive sins, but God
sins but one, God ? alone ?
8. And straightway Jesus, per- 22. But Jesus perceiving their
ceiving in His spirit that they so reasonings, etc.
reasoned within themselves, etc.
9. Whether is easier, etc. 23. Whether is easier, etc.
10. But that ye may know that the 24. But that ye may know, etc.
Son of man hath power on earth, etc.
Mark ii. I Luke v. 17. Luke prefixes an introductory
sentence in which he describes the general situation and lays
stress on the fact that it was for Jesus a day of power (per
haps implying an idea, natural to a physician, that His power
was not always equally strong in Him). This sentence is
non-Markan, yet most of it actually lies in Mark s account of
the incident, and merely needs to be gathered out of what
he relates. The last statement regarding the power of
Jesus might perhaps be inferred by a physician from Mark ii.
10 f. ; but it goes beyond what Mark says.
Moreover, in the first sentence Luke describes the com
pany, Pharisees and doctors of the law, and their origin from
numerous distant villages of almost all Palestine. Mark only
incidentally mentions in verse 6 that there were scribes
present. Luke gives the picture of a large assemblage of
learned and distinguished persons. Mark in verse 2 (not
reproduced by Luke) tells us of the crowd, but leads us to
understand that the crowd was of the ordinary kind, and we
should naturally infer (though Mark does not exactly say so)
that it mainly consisted of the people of the district and was
rather uneducated as a whole, though there was a sprinkling
of scribes among them (verse 6).
The two pictures are markedly different. If Mark was
the sole authority upon whom Luke here could draw, this
passage would certainly suggest that Luke made additions
44 I- Luke
from his own imagination without actual testimony, and that
he went at least to the verge, if not beyond the verge, of what
is allowable in thus reconstructing a picture from the words
of an earlier authority.
The question, then, arises : Had Luke no other authority ?
The Author seems tacitly to assume that he was dependent
solely on Mark ; and, if so, one can only say that Luke goes
beyond his authority and his picture is less trustworthy.
Hence on the Author s assumption the general impres
sion that results would be unfavourable to Luke s historical
trustworthiness in comparison with Mark.
But is the assumption correct ? I cannot think so. Luke
claims to have had several authorities (i. 2). The certainty
and the detail in which he describes the character of the
crowd and its origin from all Palestine seem to me to imply
the use of other testimony besides Mark.
One Markan detail is omitted. Luke nowhere states the
exact locality ; but leaves us to gather from v. I, 12, 16, that it
was near the lake of Gennesaret.
In the sequence of the narrative the frequent use of the
simple " and " to connect the sentences is not Luke s own^
style, but is taken by him from his authority. Various
changes are made in the words of Mark to improve the style.
Some of these changes are in the direction of a " Biblical
style," which Luke seems to have regarded as suitable, and
which he did not employ except where he thought the
occasion and subject to be suitable ; e.g., he does not use it
in i. i-4,^but begins at once to employ it in i. 5 ff. ; examples
here are the introduction of " they began to reason " instead
of" they were reasoning " (ii. 6 v. 21), and the form " it came
to pass" (17). Other changes are made to avoid words or
usages which he disliked : he avoided the phrase " and
the Physician 45
straightway," he changed the adjective " a man sick of the
palsy " (7rapa\vTiKo?) into the participle " a man that was
palsied " (TrapaXeXu/Ltez/o?), and so on. He substituted the
better Greek word K\LVILOV for the vulgar KpdftarTov. He
altered Mark s words, " perceiving that they so reasoned
within themselves " into " perceiving their reasonings ".
The Author rightly remarks that the change from " thy
sins are forgiven" to "thy sins are forgiven thee" (twice, ii.
5, 9 ; v. 20, 23) is difficult to explain. There may be more in
this slight addition than meets the eye.
It is also noteworthy that in Mark the scribes " were
reasoning in their hearts," and that Jesus perceived "in His
spirit that they so reasoned within themselves/ whereas
in Luke they simply reasoned and Jesus perceived their
reasonings. Yet Luke s report of Jesus words, " What reason
ye in your hearts ? " shows that the words were not spoken,
but only thought. Here the picture given by Mark with
such repeated emphasis is exactly the picture that we
gather from Luke, when we read his narrative to the end ;
and it becomes clear that his omission of " in the hearts " was
due to stylistic reasons alone, as was his omission of " in His
spirit " in v. 22 (which he evidently considered otiose).
The changes from ii. 4 which are introduced in Luke v.
19 are of a more serious kind, and give a radically different
picture of the event. It might fairly be said that they have
almost the effect of misrepresenting the facts. The same
effect is produced in a few other cases ; but this is either for
the sake of making the situation more intelligible to his
readers, who were Western, not Oriental, or possibly because
he doubted the accuracy of some detail in the Source. The
present case may be taken as a good example. It is briefly
noted by the Author, who, however, does not discuss it, but
46 I. Luke
refers in a word to Wellhausen s explanation. The words
are fully discussed in my Essay on the Credibility of Luke
( Was Christ Born at Bethlehem ? pp. 58-64) ; but I may
epitomise here what is stated at length there. Mark ii. 4
describes how the bearers of the paralytic stripped off the
covering of clay and soil from the (flat) roof of the house,
broke a hole in the ceiling, and let down the bed through it.
This description was true of the simple Palestinian hut, but
was unintelligible to a person who knew only the houses of a
Greek or a Roman city. Luke adapts his account of the
incident (not to a Greek house, but) to a Roman house, and
tells how the bearers of the man who was paralysed went
up on the tiled roof, 1 and let the sick man down through
the hole (impluvium) which was in the roof of the public
room (atrium) of every Roman house. There was not a hole
of this kind in the roof of Greek houses, and Luke therefore
wrote for an audience or a single reader (viz., Theophilus, a
Roman official 2 ) familiar with Roman houses, z>., living either
in Italy or in some Roman colony like Philippi. Perhaps
we may assume that the Roman style of house was common
in this Roman colony. We could hardly make such an,
assumption about the Colony Corinth, where probably Greek
fashion was dominant ; but at Philippi the Roman soldiers
were numerous.
There is no question here that Mark states the actual
facts, and Luke misrepresents what occurred. The ques
tion is whether Luke, familiar only with Greek or Roman
houses, misunderstood the description of the incident on the
roof of a rustic hut in Palestine, or intentionally stated the
1 He imitates even the Latin usage, which used the term " the tiles "
(tegulce) to indicate the roof.
2 St. Paul the Traveller, p. 388.
the Physician 47
facts in this changed way in order to make the scene more
easily intelligible to his readers (or his reader, Theophilus),
preserving indeed the general character of the scene, but
altering the details and the surroundings from Palestinian
to Italian. But, after all, how small even in this case is the
change ! for though a good many sentences are needed to
explain it to the modern reader, it is completed in two or
three words in the Greek.
What is most striking as the result of the Author s in
vestigation is (i) the slightness of the changes as a whole
that Luke makes in his authority, and the faithfulness with
which on the whole he reports his authority, even preserving
largely Mark s very simple method of connecting sentences
by " and " (KOI) a kind of connection which is much rarer
in the parts where Luke composes freely.
(2) His almost invariable practice of touching up descrip
tions of medical matters : on this there will be more to say
in the latter part of the present paper.
(3) The way in which, even where he most freely alters,
he preserves a certain style of expression, which he evi
dently considered to be an established and suitable form for
the Gospel. We recognise in Luke a marked sense of style
and great dramatic propriety in varying the style to suit
difference of scene and action. This has been the quality
of Luke as a stylist that most impressed me during years
of study. There is a certain modulation and freedom in
his expression, which varies in obedience to the feeling
of the moment and to the changes of scene ; and the
Author is sensitive to this beyond any other of the German
scholars whom I have read. Even Professor Blass, greatest
of Lukan editors, has been so taken up with explanation,
and attention to readings, and questions of verbal har-
48 I. Luke
mony, that he has not been sufficiently (if I may venture to
say so) alive to this highest quality of style. In the Author s
hands this observation leads to very important results
regarding the first two chapters of Luke s Gospel. But,
before passing to this much controverted topic, I should
like briefly to call attention once more to the paragraph
Acts xvi. 6- 1 1 as a specimen of this quality in Luke. It
has long appeared to me that this is the most remarkable
paragraph, from a certain point of view, in the whole of
Luke s writings : it is most full of himself and his whole
view of history and life and his Pauline comprehension,
most instinct with vibrating emotion (St. Paul the Traveller,
p. 200) : " the sweep and rush of the narrative is unique
in Acts: point after point, province after province, are
hurried over " : Paul is driven on from country to country,
Galatic Phrygia, Asian Phrygia, the Bithynian frontier,
Mysia, the Troad, and he must have been in despair as to
what was to be the outcome of this dark and perplexing
journey, until at last the vision and the invitation ex
plained the overruling purpose of all those wanderings.
We cannot wonder that the commentators have been so
perplexed and nonplussed by this paragraph, and that they
have had recourse to such shifts to make their way through
it ; perplexity is the fact or emotion which underlies
the whole passage, and that is what the style brings out.
The writer felt that breathless, panting eagerness, so to say ;
and his style is modelled to suit the emotion. The style
here and always is almost out of the writer s control : the
subject and the emotion compel the style, or, rather,
clothe themselves naturally in the suitable words. That
is the perfection of style. But it puzzles the commen
tator. We must here and everywhere in Acts follow truth
the Physician 49
and life; we must regard the surroundings and the geo
graphy.
And, if Paul is here driven on from country to country,
if the historian has to hurry over the lands to keep pace
with his subject, is not that the whole life of Paul the
Christian? Paul thinks imperially: "he talks of Pro
vinces, and, as he marches on in his victorious course, he
plants his footsteps in their capitals". 1 It is hardly too
much to say that all the rest of right Lukan study is an
exposition of the meaning and spirit of that one paragraph
where the mind of Luke and the influence of Paul are most
perfectly expressed.
Regarding Luke i. and ii., the Author is of the opinion
that the historian is dependent entirely on oral tradition,
and used no written Source ; he regards those chapters as
purely legendary. He allows the possibility that the narra
tive part may depend on an Aramaic written Source
translated by Luke himself; but he is not favourably dis
posed to this view, and he is absolutely convinced that the
hymns of Mary, i. 46-55, and Zacharias, i, 68-79, are tne
free composition of Luke himself, that they were originated
in the Greek form, and never had an Aramaic form. The
proof lies in the fact that the language and style are so
thoroughly Lukan, adapted with extraordinary skill from
fragments of the Old Testament (the Septuagint).
Considerable part of this view seems to me highly prob
able. I have always felt and maintained that Luke regarded
this part of his history as being a pure addition made by
him to the Gospel as recorded by his predecessors : he had
obtained it from oral, not literary sources. 2 He believed,
^Pauline and other Studies, p. 198.
2 Christ Born at Bethlehem, Chap. IV.
4
50 I. Luke
however, that those sources were good, and he would not
have been satisfied with popular tradition. The man who
wrote i. 1-4 could never have gone on to repeat in i. 5 ff. a
mere popular tale, or have invented without authority such
hymns as those of Mary and Zacharias. Exaggeration and
overdoing of a view fundamentally correct is here the char
acter of the Author s opinions.
The Author does not draw the following inferences, but
they seem to follow from what he does say. The style of
Luke s history is governed according to the gradual evolu
tion of the Christian Church out of its Jewish cradle. It
is most strongly Biblical (i.e., taken from the Septuagint
Greek) and Hebraistic in describing the birth and early
years of Jesus. In describing the life and death and words
of Christ it is less Biblical, but still is deeply tinged with
Hebraism, while in many parts it shows strong traces of
non-Lukan style due to the use of written Sources. In
describing the earliest stage of the Palestinian Church after
the death of the Lord, it continued to be distinctly Hebrais
tic, and parts of the Acts even go beyond the later parts
of the Gospel in the intensity of the Hebraistic tinge, a$ if
marking the narrowed spirit of the early Church, which had
hardly yet begun to understand the universality of Christ s
message. In the second half of Acts (except in chap. xv.
and in some of the scenes at Jerusalem, where the earlier
Hebraistic tone is perceptible) it is most thoroughly Greek
and Lukan. The preface to the whole history, Luke i. 1-4,
is on the same level as the second half of Acts, in excellent
and markedly individual Greek here we have the true and
natural Luke. As the Author says, the problem of the
language and style of the Third Gospel taken by itself
would be insoluble, but by the aid of comparison with the
the Physician 51
Acts, everything is clear. It may be doubted, however,
whether the Sources in the Third Gospel could be disen
tangled, were it not that we can recover the originals inde
pendently of Luke, through their survival in the Gospels of
Mark and Matthew.
I do not mean that Luke was unconscious of the variation
in style : such an assertion would be ridiculous. But he
did not originate the variation his subject originated it;
and he did not employ it for mere literary and artistic
effect, as the Author definitely maintains, but for historical
reasons, as a means of conveying more clearly and effec
tively his meaning.
Study of the two forms, Hierosolyma and Jerusalem,
which appear side by side in Luke s Gospel and Acts, shows
both that Luke was conscious of the difference between them,
and that he learned from Paul how to employ it for effec
tive presentation of his subject. There is no trace of atten
tion to this difference in the other Gospels ; * but it is clearly
present in the writings of Paul, who probably originated it.
The form Jerusalem occurs twice in Galatians, Hierosolyma
three times : the latter is in that Epistle clearly a geo
graphical term, the former is hieratic and Judaistic, as it is
in Revelation and Hebrews. A similar distinction can on
the whole be traced in Luke though it is partly obscured by
various causes (notably by uncertainty, and sometimes
perhaps by corruption, in the text).
I. Hierosolyma occurs only four times in the Third Gos
pel, 2 always very definitely in a geographical sense, while
1 They all use only the form Hierosolyma, except that Matthew once has
Jerusalem. The latter form is almost confined to Paul and Luke in the New
Testament ; exceptions are noted above.
2 Always in passages that have no parallel in the Gospels of Mark or
Matthew.
52 I. Luke
Jerusalem occurs twenty-six times : some of the latter cases
are mainly geographical in sense, but the atmosphere of the
passage, the spirit of the context, may be regarded as deter
mining the form to be employed. Some of these cases are
in passages common either to Mark or to Matthew; and
Luke has deliberately altered the form used. But most are
in passages or in clauses peculiar to Luke. The following
list, taken from the Concordance by Moulton and Geden, tells
its own tale.
II. Passages peculiar to Luke : name Jerusalem occurs in
Luke ii. five times; Luke x. 30; in xiii. three times; xvii.
II ; xix. ii ; xxiii. 28 ; xxiv., five times.
III. Passages common to Luke with Matthew or Mark,
or both :
Luke iv. 9. Jerusalem. Mt. The holy city.
,, v. 17. Mt., Mk. omit.
vi. 17. Hierosolyma.
ix. 31. ,, omit.
,,
ix. 53* " " " "
xviii. 31. ,, Hierosolyma. .
xxi. 20, 24. ,, ,, omit
Thus, while Luke has frequently the form Jerusalem, he
uses it only twice in places where Matthew or Mark actually
employ the other form. It is a principle of verbal suitability
which is peculiar to himself among the Evangelists, one
which he almost certainly learned from Paul. 1
IV. In Acts i.-xii., xv., Jerusalem occurs twenty-five times,
Hierosolyma six times.
iThe idea that Paul adopted it from Luke may be dismissed without
hesitation. Their usage cannot be independent of one another, if they were
friends and companions. Paul is not likely to have taken it from a prede
cessor.
the Physician 53
V. In Acts xiii., xiv., xvi. ff., Jerusalem occurs fourteen
times, Hierosolyma nineteen times (but according to the
text of WH., the numbers are twelve and twenty-one).
Many of the places where the form Jerusalem is used are
markedly hieratic and Hebraising.
While details in some cases are uncertain, the general
result of these statistics is clear. Luke did, beyond doubt
or question, attach some meaning to the distinction of form.
He deliberately and intentionally chose sometimes one,
sometimes the other. He was not guided by his Source, for
in some few cases he changes the name used in his Source,
and in other cases inserts the name where the Source did
not use it. The distinction is clearest where he depends on
eye-witness, and had no written Source. The distinction has
no literary value, but only a historical and real value. It was
used as a device to express meaning, not to give external and
formal beauty. Professor Harnack, who maintains that Luke
aimed at the latter kind of effect alone, without any thought
of the former, cannot explain such a fact as this. Finally,
Luke took the distinction from Paul, in whose case it would
be ridiculous to think of a conscious striving after formal
and artistic or rhetorical effect.
A similar case is found in the distinction between the names
Saul and Paul. Luke consciously and deliberately uses the
former to indicate the Apostle in his character as a Hebrew,
the latter in his character as a citizen of the Graeco-Roman
world. I have little to add to, and nothing to retract from,
the exposition of this subject in St. Paul the Traveller, pp.
8 1 -8. Here again we have a distinction used by Luke, in
regard to which no one can dream of any striving on his part
for artistic or literary effect : it originates entirely in the
delicate perception of real fact and historic truth. It is,
54 I. Luke
probably, not necessary nowadays to waste time on the
old-fashioned idea that Luke depended on two written
authorities, in one of which the Apostle was called Saul,
while in the other he bore the name Paul.
In respect of Luke s style, I regret to find myself in one
important respect holding a view diametrically opposed to
that of the Author. The style appears to me natural, un
forced, determined by the subject in hand. The Author,
on the contrary, takes the view that Luke s style is ex
tremely artificial and elaborated (pp. 80 f., 152), that he
paid the most minute and careful attention to form and the
external qualities of style, but was careless to the last degree
of fact and truth and consistency. It has been pointed
out in an earlier part of this article what is the fixed idea
and motive that induces the Author unconsciously to exag
gerate (as I venture to think) the inconsistencies and the
artificiality, the contempt for facts and the devotion to verbal
art, that he discovers in Luke. He seems to me to have
often been misled by that fixed idea so as to misunderstand
Luke s method of narration. For example, he thinks that
Luke in Acts xvi. 27 describes the jailer as not having
observed the earthquake, but only its consequence, the
opened doors. It is quite evident that Professor Harnack
has never had the misfortune (or, shall I say, the good for
tune ? for it is a good preparation for appreciating this pas
sage) to live in a country subject to earthquakes. If he had,
he would never think it necessary for the historian to record
that a person, who was wakened from sleep by an earthquake
(as the jailer was wakened), was cognisant of the fact that
an earthquake had occurred, for no person is roused by an
earthquake without perceiving it. Luke and his readers
knew better about earthquakes ; and when he described the
the Physician 55
earthquake and its consequences, and added that the jailer
was wakened, he could reckon on every one of his readers
understanding without formal mention that the jailer per
ceived the earthquake. He who reads Luke without apply
ing practical sense and mother- wit and experience will always
misunderstand him ; and one of the chief purposes of my
St. Paul the Traveller was to illustrate the fact that these
qualities must be constantly applied in studying Luke.
When you think you find an " inconsistency " in Luke, you
should look carefully whether you have been sufficiently
applying these qualities, before you condemn the supposed
fault.
The Author is not disposed to admit that any written
Source was used by Luke in the first half of Acts. He
rejects with contempt all the numerous speculations about
Sources used in the Acts i.-xii. as empty, unmethodical and
valueless, excepting only the attempt of Bernhard Weiss to
prove that one such written Source can be traced here and
there in Acts i.-xv. : Weiss detects numerous inconsis
tencies, and explains these by the hypothesis that Luke
was here only a Redactor, who failed to harmonise his
material thoroughly. But, so far as language and style go,
the Author finds no part of Acts i.-xv. that can be separated
from the rest as showing signs of a different hand and
expression, whereas in the Third Gospel the parts common
to Luke and Mark, and those common to Luke and Matthew,
show such signs distinctly. On the ground of difficulties
regarding facts and the treatment of facts, the Author is
disposed to consider that Luke used a written Source for
the episodes in which Peter plays the chief part ; but the
Source was Aramaic and Luke translated it himself, so that
56 I. Luke
his own style appears alone in the Greek form. 1 Even in
this case, however, the hypothesis that oral information
alone was used by Luke cannot (in his opinion) be con
vincingly disproved.
The Author rightly attaches great importance to the
proof that the writer of the Third Gospel and the Acts was
a physician. The same personality is felt throughout.
The proofs are found in all parts of the work, both those
written by Luke as an eye-witness and those which he has
borrowed from Sources that are known to us. The Author
enumerates six classes of proofs :
1. The presentation of the subject as a whole to the
reader is determined to a certain degree by point of view,
aims and ideals of a medical character.
2. Acts of healing are recorded in abundance and with
especial interest.
3. The language of the history is coloured by the speech
of physicians (in the way of technical medical terms, etc.).
These three proofs, however, are not sufficient. Jesus
did much as the great physician and healer ; and it must
be the case that the four Gospels should vary in the atten
tion which they pay to this side of His work and character,
and that one must go beyond the others in this respect.
It would not follow that the one which goes beyond the
others was written by a physician. But these proofs are
raised to a demonstration by the following reasons :
4. The description of the several cases of sickness men
tioned shows the observation and knowledge that mark a
physician.
1 In the Third Gospel the parts common to Luke and Matthew rest
ultimately on an Aramaic Source, but the Author considers that Luke
used a Greek translation from the original Aramaic, and did not himself
translate. See below, p. 74.
the Physician 57
5. The language of Luke, even when he is not treating
of medical matters and acts of healing, has a medical colour.
6. Where Luke is speaking as an eye-witness, the medical
element is specially clearly visible.
The proof of these six propositions lies in the cumulative
effect of a great number of small details scattered over the
whole of Acts and the Gospel. It is, of course, impossible
to give any analysis of such a demonstration. There are
few striking cases to quote even as specimens ; and one or
two samples would give no conception of the strength of
the cumulative proof. One of the most effective instances
has been quoted above, p. 16.
This topic leads up to a question which I do not remem
ber to have seen adequately discussed. Even in the passages
that have been taken over by Luke from the Source which
we still possess almost in its original form in the Gospel of
Mark, wherever there occurs any reference to illness or
medical treatment of sick persons, Luke almost invariably
alters the expression more or less, as in v. 18 he changes
the term " a paralytic " l of Mark ii. 3 to " a man who was
paralysed". He could hardly ever rest satisfied with the
popular untrained language used about medical matters by
Mark. 2
In some cases the change does not imply really more
than is contained in the original Source, and amounts only
to a more scientific and medically accurate description of
the fact related in the Source. But in other cases a real
addition to knowledge is involved, as appears, e.g., from the
following examples :
1 " A man sick of the palsy " in the Authorised Version.
2 This is the second class of alterations, systematically introduced by
Luke into the parts which he takes from Mark, as mentioned on p. 47.
58 I. Luke
1. Mark iii. I speaks of a man with a withered hand ;
Luke vi. 6 adds that it was the right hand : the medical
mind demands such specification.
2. Luke viii. 27 adds to Mark v. 2 that the possessed man
had for a long time worn no clothes : this was a symptom of
the insanity that a physician would not willingly omit.
3. In Luke viii. 55 the physician mentions that Jairus
daughter called for food (cf. Mark v. 42). Various other
examples occur.
In such cases are we to suppose that Luke simply made
these additions without any authority, inventing them as
natural and probable ? That is the Author s decided opinion
(p. 130, n. 4) ; according to him, these are examples of Luke s
carelessness about fact and truth. But why must we suppose
that Luke, who in the Author s opinion had access to so
many oral sources of information, and who so often used
sources of this kind in both books of his history, never had
access to any oral authority for any event narrated by Mark ? l
Is it not more natural to suppose that the authorities with
whom he had conversed told him sometimes about incidents
which Mark records; and that, while he preferred to use
Mark s account as his basis, he made additions in some cases
from other authorities ? Those who reject wholly the pos
sibility that Luke could have had access to any good oral au
thority possessed of first-hand knowledge of the facts, are
justified in regarding those additions as pure invention ; but
it seems inconsistent in the Author to maintain that Luke s
witnesses (whom he admits to be first-rate) confined their
statements strictly to matters that Mark omitted. Moreover,
Luke is known to have used at least one written Source, apart
from Mark ; we can trace it where it was employed by both
1 See above, p. 44.
the Physician 59
Luke and Matthew. There were perhaps cases in which Luke
gathered information from it, though Matthew did not use
it (see below, p. 77).
The question inevitably arises, What effect will this book
have on general opinion ? The interest and value of the book,
as has been already said, 1 seems to lie even more in the evolu
tion of the thought of a striking modern personality, viz.> the
distinguished Author, than in the study of Luke. It shows
the Author on the threshold of the twentieth century thought,
yet not able completely to shake off the fetters and emerge
out of the narrow methods of the nineteenth century.
It may be doubted whether Professor Harnack s book,
highly as we must estimate the ability and the clever ratio
cination displayed in it, will change any one s opinion or
convince any one who was not already convinced of the truth
that Luke the companion of Paul wrote the Third Gospel
and the Acts. Its method is too deeply infected with the
vice of most modern investigations into questions of the kind :
it is too purely verbal ; it has too little hold on realities and
facts. The history of literary criticism of ancient documents
during the last fifty years has demonstrated that by such
purely verbal criticism one can prove anything and nothing.
Almost all the real progress that has been made comes from
the discovery of new evidence, and not from verbal criticism
of the old books. It is only by bringing the old books into
comparison with facts and life that they can be profitably
studied.
It is difficult to think that the Author himself can attach
much value to the verbal proofs which he gathers together in
his third Appendix, with the intention of showing that the
1 See above p. 10.
60 I. Luke
letter of the Council in Jerusalem (Acts xv. 23-29) is the free
composition of Luke without any written authority. I can
not imagine that the Author arrived at his opinion on the
strength of the verbal evidence, which is singularly weak and
conflicting; and, in fact, he confesses on p. 154 that the
verbal arguments are perhaps less important than the reasons
of fact and history. One feels that his opinion was reached
first on the latter ground, and the verbal reasons are mere
buttresses added afterwards in the attempt to support the
tottering pile. One notes with real regret the special plead
ing in the comments on xv. 23, where Kara in ol Kara TTJV
1 Avn6 X t iav /cal 2vpiciv is proved to be a Lukan usage (as if
any one could doubt this) by comparison with the totally
different sense of Kara in Acts ii. 10, Ai$\)T)<$ TT)? Kara Kvprjvrjv.
It needs no demonstration that Luke could use the preposi
tion with an accusative ; so could any other Greek speaker
from the Danube to the Nile, and from the Atlantic Ocean
to the Persian Gulf. And the attempt to make out, in
defiance of the plain sense and linguistic usage, that ol Trpea-
Pvrepoi, aSeX^oi is the easy reading and ol Trpea/Svrepoi, KOI
ol a8e\(j)oi the more difficult reading, and therefore more
liable to alteration, mixes up argument and meaning in the
style of a lawyer pleading a bad case.
The same character attaches to much of the commentary
on the following verses. What bearing has it on the ques
tion whether the Council or Luke composed the letter that
a7rajye\\iv (which is found in verse 27) is used by Luke
twenty-five times, by Mark only twice, and John twice ? 1
What reason does this give for thinking that the Apostles
could not use the word? Paul uses it twice, the Epistle
1 There are some textual differences on this point. Moulton and Geden
give it five times in Mark, three times in John.
the Physician 61
to the Hebrews has it, the Septuagint has it, Matthew uses
it eight times.
Why point out that Matthew and Mark do not use the
perfect of aTroareXXa) ; as if that had any, even the remotest,
bearing, on the question ? Both use the verb very frequently,
and as a matter of fact Matthew has the perfect passive in
xxiii. 37. John uses the verb and its perfect freely. Paul,
Peter and Hebrews have it (the first using even the perfect
active). Similar remarks rise to one s lips in a good many
other parts of this short commentary : many of the notes
are absolutely irrelevant, and prove nothing, do not even
point towards anything. Why heap them up? They
merely weaken the Author s argument, for they show that
he has tried every way and found nothing to buttress his case.
But, while the Author spends several pages in this dis
cussion, he does not explain his position on the really im
portant questions that arise about this letter. His position
is far more difficult in this instance than that of the more
thorough -going " critics," who maintain that Acts was com
posed by a late writer : they find it quite natural that this
late writer should have to make up this document from his
own resources. But the Author considers that the his
torical Luke, the companion of Paul, wrote the Acts, and
that Luke was in the closest relations with Paul during the
latter part of the very journey in which (he tells us) Paul
delivered this letter to all his non-Jewish converts in the
Galatian cities as an authoritative guide for their conduct in
life. Luke certainly makes it clear and inevitable that this
Decree of the Council at Jerusalem was the solution of the
difficulty for himself and for all in his position. Now what
every one asks from the Author, and what he is bound to
furnish, is some explanation of the matter. How does it
62 I. Luke
come that Luke was so entirely ignorant of the words of a
Decree which he describes as of such immense importance,
and which Paul had in his hands when he met Luke at Troas ?
Or if Luke knew the words of the Decree, does the Author
seriously believe, and wish to make us believe, that the his
torian threw aside the real Decree and composed a sham one
in its place ? Finally, the Author must explain what he con
siders to be the relation between the sham Decree and the
real one. Do they state the same thing, or different things ?
If the same, why does Luke in this case rewrite a document
entirely, whereas in other cases (as the Author proves so
carefully and so conclusively) he retains so much of his
original Source? Or does the Author consider that the
Council was a pure fiction, the Decree a mere invention,
and the story that Paul carried it to Antioch and delivered
it to his Galatian converts an elaborate lie ? If that be
so, how does he reconcile this with Lukan authorship?
He declares that Luke is to the last degree careless of truth
and consistency; but such elaborate falsification goes far
beyond mere carelessness ; it implies wilful intention to mis
lead.
These are not questions that can be evaded. They must
be answered, in order to make Professor Harnack s view
intelligible and rational to us, who desire to understand
him. It is not sufficient to waive them aside (as the
Author does) on the plea that they have been discussed by
others ; for these others think differently about essential
points.
On this question the Author s argument is mainly of
words ; yet one does not feel that it was through these
studies of words that he attained his present opinions.
Where the verbal argument of this book possesses demon-
the Physician 63
strative value, it has more than words to rest on. Thus, in
the study of the parts common to Mark and Luke, the
reasoning rests on the firm foundation of the original written
Source, and investigates the process by which Luke trans
formed this original into the words of the Third Gospel.
In the study of the " We "-passages it has a large extent of
varied narrative to deal with, and it cannot wholly neglect
the facts. But, when the Author takes small pieces like the
song of Mary or the Decree of the Council of Jerusalem,
and analyses the language and rests purely on verbal statistics,
we fail to find strength in the reasoning.
Take as a specimen with which to finish off this paper,
the passage Acts xxviii. 9 f., which is very fully discussed
by the Author twice (pp. II f. and 123 f.). He argues that
the true meaning of the passage was not understood until
medical language was compared, when it was shown that the
word Ka07j\jrev , by which the act of the viper to Paul s
hand is described, implies " bit," and not merely " fastened
upon". But it is a well-assured fact that the viper, a
poisonous snake, only strikes, fixes the poison-fangs in the
flesh for a moment, and withdraws its head instantly. Its
action could never be what is attributed by Luke the eye
witness to this Maltese viper ; that it hung from Paul s hand,
and was shaken off into the fire by him. On the other
hand, constrictors, which have no poison-fangs, cling in the
way described, but as a rule do not bite. Are we then to
understand, in spite of the medical style and the authority
of Professor Blass (who translates " momordit " in his edition),
that the viper " fastened upon " the Apostle s hand (KaO^ev) ?
Then, the very name " viper " is a difficulty. Was Luke
mistaken about the kind of snake which he saw ? A
trained medical man in ancient times was usually a good
64 I. Luke
authority about serpents, to which great respect was paid in
ancient medicine and custom.
Mere verbal study is here utterly at fault. We can make
no progress without turning to the realities and facts
of Maltese natural history. A correspondent 1 obligingly
informed me years ago that Mr. Bryan Hook, of Farnham,
Surrey (who, my correspondent assures me, is a thoroughly
good naturalist), had found in Malta a small snake, Coronella
Austriaca^ which is rare in England, but common in many
parts of Europe. It is a constrictor, without poison-fangs,
which would cling to the hand or arm as Luke describes.
It is similar in size to the viper, and so like in markings
and general appearance that Mr. Hook, when he caught
his specimen, thought he was killing a viper.
My friend, Professor J. W. H. Trail, of Aberdeen, whom
I consulted, replied that Coronella Icevis, or Austriaca, is
known in Sicily and the adjoining islands; but he can
find no evidence of its existence in Malta. It is known to
be rather irritable, and to fix its small teeth so firmly into
the human skin as to hang on and need a little force to
pull it off, though the teeth are too short to do any real
injury to the skin. Coronella is at a glance very much like
a viper ; and in the flames it would not be closely ex
amined. While it is not reported as found in Malta except
by Mr. Hook, two species are known there belonging to the
same family and having similar habits, leopardinus and
zamenis (or coluber] gemonensis. The colouring of C. leopar
dinus would be the most likely to suggest a viper.
These observations justify Luke entirely. We have here
a snake so closely resembling a viper as to be taken for one
by a good naturalist until he had caught and examined a
1 Mr. A. Sloman, Kingslee, Farndon, Chester.
the Physician 65
specimen. It clings, and yet it also bites without doing
harm. That the Maltese rustics should mistake this harmless
snake for a venomous one is not strange. Many uneducated
people have the idea that all snakes are poisonous in varying
degrees, just as the vulgar often firmly believe that toads are
poisonous. Every detail as related by Luke is natural, and
in accordance with the facts of the country.
The Author quite fairly quotes this passage as an example
of Luke s love for the marvellous. One cannot doubt that
the reason for its appearance in Luke s history is that it
seemed to the writer a proof of Paul s marvellous powers.
We see now that, while it was bound to appear marvellous
to Luke, the event was quite simple and natural. No one
can doubt, probably hardly any scholar has ever doubted,
that the incident is narrated by an eye-witness : it is so vivid
and so direct, so evidently a transcript from life, that its
character is self-evident. But of what value would mere
verbal examination be in this case without investigation of
the real facts and surroundings in which the incident
occurred ? It is the same throughout Luke s history from
beginning to end. One may refer to the incidents of the
stoning and reviving of Paul at Lystra, and the recovery
of Eutychus at Troas, which are not necessarily marvellous,
but which both Luke and the public assuredly considered to
be so; yet (as is shown in St. Paul the Traveller) Luke,
while revealing what was the general belief and his own,
describes the events simply and accurately, without intruding
anything that forces on the reader his own marvellous inter
pretation.
NOTE. A word must be added about the meaning of
Eusebius s statements as to Luke s origin, TO /JLCV 761/09 &v
rcbv a-Tr Mzmo%et a9. In S/. Paul the Traveller , p. 389, I
5
66 I. Luke
expressed the opinion that this peculiar phrase, used in pre
ference to one of the simple ways of saying that he was an
Antiochian or resided at Antioch, amounted to an assertion
that he did not live in Antioch, but belonged to an Antiochian
family. Professor Harnack does not say anything that con
flicts with my statement (so far as I have observed), though
he does not formally agree with it, and, on the whole, rather
neglects it; quite probably he may never have observed it.
But several others have disputed it, and asserted that
Eusebius describes Luke as an Antiochian. Some parallel
passages will show that I was right ; had Luke been known
to Eusebius as an Antiochian himself, the historian would
not have said that " by family he was of those from Antioch ".
Arrian, Ind. 1 8, mentions Nearchos, son of Androtimos,
TO 7z/o? yitez; Kprjs 6 Neap^o?, o> /eee Se eV J.yu,$t7r6Xet rf) lirl
ZrpvfjLovi, (compare Bull. Corr. Hell., 1896, p. 471). Nearchos
was by family a Cretan, but he resided in Amphipolis, where
probably his father settled, and where the son could only be
a resident stranger, not a citizen : l hence he continued to be
" Cretan by family, settled in Amphipolis ". Similarly we
find in an epitaph of Olympos in Lycia Telesphoros, son of
Trophimos, <yzvei Tlpv^vrja-eov^, 2 a resident in Olympos and
married to an Olympian woman (Bull. Corr. Hell., 1892, p.
224). As resident strangers acquired no citizenship, it was
1 Unless an act of the Macedonian king forced the conferring of citizen
ship.
2 Though I have no right to decide on such a point, I should be disposed to
regard Upv/j.vri(reovs as the better accentuation : the form is due to rough and
coarse local pronunciation of Greek, often exemplified in inscriptions of Asia
Minor : many examples of this are quoted in writings on Asia Minor of
recent date, e.g., KarevKeo-uavav for KaTfffKfvaffav, where ov must be regarded
as a representation of the sound of W. In Upvp.vr]ffeo6s it represents either W or
the modern pronunciation F. See, e.g., Histor. Geogr. of As. Min., p. 281;
Studies in Eastern Provinces (1906), p. 360.
the Physician 67
necessary to have some method of designating them in
the second or third generation : had Telesphorus himself
migrated from Phrygian Prymnessios, he would have been
called npv/jLvrjcr(Tv^ OIK&V eV J O\vfjLiTw (Cities and Bisk, of
Phr., ii., p. 471), or more formally after the analogy of CJ.G.
2686 (olfcrjcrei /J.6V Me/X?;crio9, <j>voret, Be ? Ia<rfcu?). Josephus,
Ant.) xx., 7, 2, speaks of Simon resident in Caesareia Stratonis
as lovSaiov, KvTrpuov &e 76^09.
The form CLTTO Ogvpvyxecos, etc., is used in the Egyptian
Papyri apparently in the sense of " belonging to Oxyryn-
chos, etc.," without any implication that the person was not
resident there ; but in this expression the critical word 761/09
is omitted : examples are numerous, e.g., AKoivys, KW/JLOVOS,
Awvvcriov, TWV anro ^O^vpvy^cov TroXecos, Grenfell and Hunt,
Oxyr. No. 48, 49.
The form rwv OLTTO is also used in a way different from
the last example, equivalent to etc r&v, e.g., VTTO Ne^epiros
TWV CLTTO Me//,<ea>9, Greek Papyri Br. Mus. p. 32 (Nepheris
was resident in Memphis) ; compare also Kdaropo^ . . .
TWV CLTTO KGo/jirjs JL/c(wp6a)9 /caTaryewo/jLevfyv] 1 ev Kcoj^rj Mvd%ei,
Amherst Papyri^ 88. In the second case Castor was not a
resident in his proper village : in the former case it is possible
that the formula is used in a papyrus of the Serapeum,
because Nepheris was at the moment at the Serapeum outside
of Memphis. But I do not venture to make any statement
about Egyptian usage. Literary usage certainly has a dis
tinguishing sense for rcov OLTTO, e.g., 2e/3f)po<; r&v airo T?}9
avwOev $pvyia$, Aristides, i., p. 505 (Dindorf) : this Roman
officer of high rank belonged to a Jewish family of Upper
Phrygia and also of Ancyra, but he was not a resident in
1 wt in pap., corrected to [ou] by the editors : the writer made a gram
matical blunder, which ought not to be improved by editors.
68 I. Luke the Physician
Upper Phrygia, for we know his career of Roman service
(Waddington, Pastes, p. 218) ; in fact, considering the customs
that ruled at the period in question, he was probably not
even educated in Upper Phrygia, but in Italy, as he was
able to enter the senatorial career when a youth.
The expression T&V OLTTO is also used in the sense of
" descended from a person," e.g., T&V air* "ApSvos HpaK\et,$5>v
(Bull. Corr. Hell., 1892, p. 218), "of the Heracleids descended
from Ardys," the Lydian king.
Frankel, Inschr, Perg., i., p. 170, takes the phrase appended
to a royal letter, AOrjvayopas eK Ilepyd/jLov, as meaning
that Athenagoras the scribe was not a Pergamenian citizen,
but a resident only. But the meaning is, "Athenagoras
(was the scribe: the letter was written) from Pergamos".
II.
THE OLDEST WRITTEN GOSPEL.
II.
THE OLDEST WRITTEN GOSPEL.
IN reviewing Professor Harnack s study of Luke the Physician
we found that the best part of a very notable book was the
comparison of the sections which are common to Luke and
Mark, and the analysis of the relation between those two
writers. In this detailed comparison: the Author could not
confine himself to considerations of words (that vice of the
nineteenth century) ; he was obliged constantly to take into
consideration the things of real life; and we observed in
this case, as often before, that Lukan criticism keeps right
only when the study of words is constantly controlled and
directed by the observation of facts and realities.
The problem before the Author was to determine the
principles on which Luke had dealt with the narrative of his
authority, Mark. This task, which would have been im
possible if the authority had perished, was facilitated by the
fact that the same original document which Luke employed
in those sections lies now before us as the Gospel of Mark ;
and it is possible to see exactly what changes Luke in
troduced, and to determine what reasons and principles
guided him in making certain modifications in the narrative
of Mark. As a whole, the result of the Author s examination
was that Luke reproduces the facts accurately, that he to a
certain degree changes the words in the interests of literary
style, but that even these verbal changes are generally
confined to single words or short phrases ; and that there is
(71)
72 II. The Oldest
a notable absence of all attempt to introduce new meaning
into Mark s narrative or to intrude into the record ideas
belonging to the age when Luke was writing. Luke im
proves the language of Mark, where he follows him ; but re
presents his meaning with impartial and remarkable fidelity.
Where he desires in his Gospel to give more information than
Mark gives, he generally does it in distinct sections, based
evidently on other authorities, written or oral. 1 And the fair
presumption is that he represents those other authorities with
the same perfect fidelity as he shows in the case of Mark.
We found ourselves compelled to differ from the Author
chiefly in two respects. In the first place, there were other
parts of his work in which he seemed to be too much under
the influence of purely verbal methods, a kind of reasoning
of which we entertain a profound distrust, and one which
has led to many errors in many departments of literature;
purely literary considerations of language and style often
afford valuable suggestions and start new trains of thought,
but they have never produced any results that can be relied
on permanently, except when they are constantly guided and
tested and controlled by more objective and real methods.
The plan of the Author s new book, which forms the subject*
of the present article, leaves little or no room for this
fault 2
In the second place, the Author seemed to us occasionally
to have not quite freed himself from certain prepossessions
1 We were, however, disposed to believe (differing herein from the Author)
that occasionally Luke modified or completed a statement of Mark by know
ledge gained from some other source (see p. 58) ; though these modifications
do not amount to changes of essential facts.
z Spriiche und Reden jfesu, die zweite Quelle des Matthaeus und des
Lukas : Leipzig, Hinrichs, 1907. Beitrdge zur Einleitung in das Neue
Testament, II. Heft. Since the present article was first published, a transla
tion by Rev. J. R. Wilkinson, M. A., has appeared (Williams & Norgate, 1908).
Written Gospel 73
and assumptions which ruled the hard and unilluminative
criticism of the later nineteenth century. That that criticism
was needed as a protest against older dogmatism and previous
assumptions, I should be the last to deny, and have always
freely admitted ; but it was only on the destructive side that
it was sound ; its attempts at reconstruction were valueless
and misleading, because the negative presumptions from
which it started vitiated all its positive inferences.
In the Author s new book, Sayings and Speeches of Jesus,
forming the second part of his Contributions to the Intro
duction to the New Testament, the method of detailed com
parison, which ruled in the best portion of his Luke the
Physician, is carried out even more completely, and forms
the basis of the whole study. Hence I find myself in cordial
agreement with the method and the results to a much
greater degree than in the previous case. The main result,
that the lost Common Source of Luke and Matthew was
a work earlier than Mark, appears to me to be firmly estab
lished, and to lead straight to conclusions of the highest im
portance. Although those conclusions are not in harmony
with the Author s opinions, they seem to me to spring in
evitably from his main line of argument.
That the first, and in many respects the most important,
authority on which Matthew as well as Luke relied was the
Gospel of Mark, practically in the form in which we possess it,
is now generally admitted. In studying the relation of Luke
to this Source, the Author did not require to take into account
Matthew s version of the same Source, because Luke was
wholly independent of Matthew, and the Source still lies
before us. But in the case of the second Common Source of
Luke and Matthew, the problem is a far more complicated
and difficult one. The Source has been lost, and it is only
74 II. The Oldest
through the comparison of Luke and Matthew that we can
recover an outline of its contents and character, and to a
certain extent reconstruct the lost original document. This
original is for brevity s sake referred to as Q; and on pp.
8 8- 1 02 the Author prints all of it that he believes to be
recoverable with certainty or high probability. As he says
himself, it is necessary to fall back occasionally on conjecture
and hypothesis, as the evidence does not justify perfect
confidence.
In the course of this article we shall diverge slightly from
the Author s custom, and shall use the symbol Q to denote
the restored form of the lost Source, as given by him, pp.
88- 1 02, while we shall refer to the Source in its complete and
original form (which was indubitably longer, perhaps much
longer, than the Author s restoration), by some circumlocution,
such as " the lost Common Source " or " the Collection of Say
ings " (a name used by the Author, but not in our view an
adequate name, though it perhaps rests on ancient authority).
The original of Q was written in Aramaic; but both
Luke and Matthew used the same Greek translation, and
therefore throughout the Author s work Q denotes a certain t
Greek book, and not the older Aramaic original. The
question is mentioned whether Luke or Matthew may
occasionally have gone behind the Greek form Q and con
sulted the Aramaic original for some details ; but the
Author is confident that such a procedure, if it ever hap
pened, was extremely rare, and that generally Q alone may
safely be assumed as the single and final source of a certain
portion of Luke and Matthew, about one-sixth of the former
and two-elevenths of the latter. Perhaps Aramaic scholars
might differ from the Author on this question : it is under
stood that one well-known English scholar, who has always
Written -Gospel 75
taken a very different view, still adheres to his own opinion.
But at least there can hardly be any doubt that a Greek
translation did exist, and was used by both Luke and
Matthew, whether or not they controlled it by consulting
the Aramaic in addition. And the Author seems also to
have established his theory of Q to the extent that his
restoration can be relied on as giving a fair amount of the
original document in a trustworthy form and as permitting
certain positive inferences, but not negative inferences
founded on the failure of any particular incident in his
restoration of Q. There is much probability that in some
cases the lost Common Source was much longer than the
restored Q.
Incidentally, in this study of the two largest Sources
which Luke and Matthew made use of, one must be strongly
impressed with the utter impossibility of recovering from
any single author alone the authorities which he tran
scribed. Let any one take Luke s Gospel by itself, or
Matthew s Gospel by itself, and examine verse by verse the
parts that come from Q and from Mark respectively. He
must conclude that the problem of analysing either the
Third or the First Gospel separately and distinguishing the
Q-parts, the Mark-parts, and the parts taken neither from
Q nor from Mark, would have been quite insoluble without
extraneous help.
And, more than this, if Mark were lost, while both
Luke and Matthew were preserved, it would of course be
easy to distinguish the common Matthaeo-Lukan parts
from the parts peculiar to each ; but it would be utterly
impossible to analyse that common Matthaeo-Lukan Gospel
into its two parts, the Markan and the non-Markan. Only
the existence of Mark makes it possible to tell what is
;6 II. The Oldest
Markan and what is non-Markan. Yet take Q by itself,
and read it apart from Mark, and the least observant
scholar must be struck by the difference of character, style,
language, and point of view.
Further, if one took Luke s Gospel by itself, and pro
ceeded according to some definite peculiarity, such as, for
example, the name of the Holy City, starting from the
principle that the passages in which the Hebrew form
Jerusalem was used were founded on a different original
Source from those parts in which the Greek form Hiero-
solyma was used, how misleading and absurd would be
the results of such an hypothesis ! So in the Acts, the old
"critical" (or rather uncritical) idea that the use of the
names Paul and Saul indicated two different Sources has
probably been abandoned by even the most unenlightened
and unprogressive of modern scholars. It has long been
proved conclusively that Luke had a definite purpose in
distinguishing the names Paul and Saul, and employed
sometimes the one, sometimes the other, for the sake of
historical effect. So, also, he had a clear purpose of his
own in distinguishing the names Jerusalem and Hierosolyma,
and he actually alters Mark s Hierosolyma into Jerusalem,
in order to carry out his own peculiar purpose (see above,
p. 5 iff.).
The futility of various other similar criteria might be
easily shown, if it were worth while; but we pass on,
only pausing for a moment to ask whether in the analysis
of the Pentateuch too much has not been made of the
distinction between the two names of God, Elohim and
Jehovah or Yahwe. Even admitting (as we do fully) that
different older Sources lie behind the extant form of the
Pentateuch, is it not possible that there may be some
Written Gospel
purpose guiding the choice of the final compiler or author
in his use of the two names ? I always bear in mind the
warning words which Robertson Smith often emphatically
used in conversation, that, while the diverse Sources of the
Pentateuch could on the whole and in the rough be dis
tinguished, it must always be utterly impossible to attain
certainty about the precise points and lines of cleavage in
the existing text (a warning which has been wholly forgotten
by some scholars, who since his death claim to speak for him
and to present his views on current questions to the public).
A general outline of this pre-Lukan and pre-Matthaean
Common Source, then, can be recovered from the agreement
of the non-Markan parts of Luke and Matthew; but, of
course, there remain two important questions to be deter
mined before we can regard the resultant group of literary
fragments as a full and trustworthy representative of that
old book.
In the first place, did Luke and Matthew take the whole
of the lost Common Source and incorporate it in their re
spective Gospels ? Were there not parts of that book which
Luke alone or Matthew alone extracted, and for which
therefore we have only one authority ? It seems to us
probable, 1 and even practically certain, that there was a good
deal which only one of them incorporated in his Gospel :
Luke treats the book with great freedom, and puts in
different parts of his Gospel scraps of it which Matthew
places side by side as continuous exposition. Such freedom
seems quite irreconcilable with the idea that they agreed in
utilising the entire book. This part of the Common Source
(which we believe to have been considerable) is for the most
part hopelessly lost to us. We may conjecture that certain
1 The Author holds the same opinion.
;8 II. The Oldest
paragraphs or sentences of Matthew alone or of Luke alone
were taken from the lost Source ; and in such cases argu
ments from language or style or thought might be fairly
brought in to support the conjecture. But such conjectures
can never be ranked on the same level as the agreement
of Matthew and Luke ; and they do not apply to any large
continuous part of the book. Yet the attempt ought to be
made, and will certainly be often made, to specify and
collect those parts of the lost Sources that were used only
by one Evangelist. The Author expressly recognises that
this is a work which awaits and will reward patient investiga
tion (pp. 2, 121).
Further, are there not passages in which the Source coin
cided in subject with Mark, and the latter seemed to Luke
and Matthew to be preferable not necessarily as divergent,
but as more complete or better expressed? Was it the
case as it would be if the Author s restoration of Q were
even approximately complete that the lost Source never,
or hardly ever, covered a part of the same ground as Mark ?
There seems an overwhelming probability that two such
books must have agreed oftener than appears in the Author s
restoration. It is clear that they covered the same ground
as regards the relations of Jesus with John the Baptist and
as regards the Temptation, but covered it in very different
ways. In the case of the Temptation, for example, Mark
restricts himself to a brief sentence; and both Luke and
Matthew here neglect Mark and follow Q. Now suppose it
had happened that the lost Common Source had been pre
served, but that Mark had perished and we were attempting
to restore his Gospel from the agreement of Luke and
Matthew, some critics would certainl maintainy that Mark
had never heard of the Temptation. As it is, we can see
Written Gospel 79
that there is no inconsistency or disagreement on this point
between Mark and Q ; but the latter is far more detailed and
complete. Were there not many cases in which the sharp
and clear narrative of Mark was preferred by the two later
Synoptics to a brief allusion in the lost Common Source ?
This seems to us inevitably to have been the case ; and all
these parts of Q, which were distinctly inferior to Mark in
historical import and weight, are now hopelessly lost.
The consequence of this loss has been that Q has the
appearance of being almost wholly confined to Sayings and
Speeches of Jesus. This appearance we must consider to
be untrue to the real character of the original lost Source.
It is clear even from the agreement of Luke and Matthew
that Q was not quite free from narrative : the parts relating
to John the Baptist and the Temptation and the Centurion
of Capernaum contain some narrative ; several sections in
the Author s Q, 3, 18, 22, 29, 30, 54, and others, must
obviously have been accompanied by some narrative, how
ever brief. In many others it is inconceivable that a first
hand authority (as the Author considers the writer of Q to
have been) could have sent down to posterity, or published
for his contemporaries, such a disjointed and disconnected
scrap as that which can be got from the agreement of
Matthew and Luke.
We must, therefore, conclude that there was more narrative
in the lost original document than appears now in Q, and
that sections i, 2, 13, 14 1 of the Author s restoration give a
truer conception of its character than most of the other
sections. It was not a mere collection of sayings, but a
narrative, noted down by a person whose interest lay mainly
in the sayings and the teaching of Jesus, and who made the
1 The Baptist, the Temptation, the Centurion.
8o II. The Oldest
narrative subsidiary to the speeches. This person wrote,
not with the purpose of composing a biography, but from
interest in the character and the teaching of a remarkable
personality, recording what He said, and employing narrative
mainly in order to make the recorded words more significant
and more instructive. In the account of the Temptation
it is evident that the circumstances and the situation must be
described in order to make the words intelligible to the
reader.
These conclusions, to which we seem to be involuntarily
driven by the facts, are quite consistent with the Author s
views, though they perhaps modify in some degree the
general impression which he gives of the lost Common
Source. The opinion which on the whole he is disposed to
hold is that this Source was the work of the Apostle Matthew,
being the collection of Logia which Matthew (as Papias says)
composed. The Author fully concedes that Papias under
stood this collection of Logia to be simply the First Gospel
(p. 172) ; but he tends to the view that Papias in this
matter misunderstood his authority, that Matthew merely
gathered together a collection of sayings, and that both Luke
and the writer of the First Gospel made use of the collec-
tion.
The question here rises, how do the two extant Gospels
stand related to the original Source ? Do they represent it
fairly, and which of them reproduces it most accurately ?
The Author shows repeatedly, both as regards the Markan
portions and as regards Q, that while Luke sometimes gave
more emphatic expression to the ideas of his Sources, he
did not add anything of consequence to them on his own
authority. In fact, as has been previously pointed out, 1 the
1 See above, pp. 47, 4, 32,
Written Gospel 81
Author s results from his detailed examination of Luke,
sentence by sentence and paragraph by paragraph, stand
in the most marked contrast with his general reflections
upon Luke s character as a historian. In both the Author s
volumes Luke bears the detailed test even better than
Matthew; the Author declares that while Matthew on the
whole preserves the actual words of the Sources more
exactly than Luke, he in certain rare cases adds something
of his own to them, whereas he finds no case where Luke
adds to the Source any expression betraying the spirit and
ideas of the later time when he was composing his Gospel.
But while the Author s detailed test gives this result, he
strongly condemns in general Luke s incapacity, inaccuracy
and untrustworthiness as a historian.
As to the date when this collection of Sayings was
gathered together, the Author expresses a definite opinion.
He considers that the book of Sayings and Speeches was
composed before the destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70,
and before the Gospel of Mark. Otherwise he leaves
the question of date an open one, except that he will not
allow it to be much earlier than Mark. This he infers from
the fact that the Gospel of Mark is wholly independent of
and unconnected with the collection of Sayings ; he argues
that if this collection had been long in circulation before
Mark wrote, it would be impossible that Mark should
not have known it and used it (p. 172).
But, while the Author rightly perceives that this lost
Source is older than Mark, his train of reasoning seems
inconclusive and unconvincing. It involves one big assump
tion, viz., that Mark desired to make his work supersede
that older book. Now, if we follow the authority of Papias
that Mark wrote the "Gospel according to Peter," there
82 II. The Oldest
seems not the slightest reason to think that he would desire
to supersede the older narrative, or to intermingle with
Peter s narrative the account given by another (whether
Matthew or any one else), or that he would feel himself
bound to introduce speeches and sayings from another
Source into the narrative as he gathered it from Peter. It
is perfectly natural and probable that he may have known
the old book of " Sayings and Speeches," and yet composed
a narrative according to Peter, wishing not to supersede but
to complete the older work. Still we are not eager to
maintain that Mark was acquainted with the collection of
Sayings. That lies in the region of possibilities, not of
scientific investigation.
At this point we meet one of the Author s prepossessions,
which we cannot sympathise with. He holds that the type
of a Gospel viz.> the principle that its central topic and
guiding motive must be the death and resurrection of the
Lord was fixed by Mark ; " being required by the needs
of a catechetical apologetic " (p. 1 74). We must differ toto
caelo from this assumption and from the vast consequences
that follow from it. The type of the Gospel was fixecl by
the facts, and not by the accident of Mark s composing a
Gospel. This type dominated the whole situation, and
guided the thought and word of the Apostles from the
moment when they began to understand the facts, i.e.,
from the first Pentecost. In this type of the Gospel, as it
quickly formed itself out of the actual events, the death of
Christ was the essential and critical factor ; and on this
factor the whole narrative turns. That was the case with
the speeches of Peter and of Stephen at the very beginning
and, as we take it, with every exposition of Christian
truth thereafter, except when from time to time a " new
Written Gospel 83
theology " arose and lingered for a short time, only to pass
away, often rinding its grave in the mind in which it origi
nated.
But the Author, on the contrary, is obliged, by his assump
tion that Mark fixed the type of the Gospel, to hold that the
picture of the first Church, as given in the Acts, is unhistorical,
and that the speeches of Peter and Stephen are merely the
free compositions of Luke, expressing his own ideas of what
they ought to have said, an incipient Paulinism. So he is in
consistency bound to maintain, and so he does maintain, even
in his latest expression in Lukas der Artzt. 1 And, on the
same principle, he holds (p. 171) that the same cause,
Paulinism, exerted a strong influence in moulding the form
of Mark s Gospel. In a word, this view practically implies that
Paul originated the recognised type of Gospel, that pre-
Pauline Christianity was of an essentially different character,
and that in that earliest period any so-called germs of Paulin
ism, i.e., any stress laid on the efficacy and power of the
Saviour s death, must be regarded as an anachronism and an
impossibility. The nature and origin of Paul s teaching is
here involved ; and I find myself absolutely at variance with
the Author. To me it appears that the facts, which deter
mined the type of the Gospel, imposed it on the minds of the
Apostles, generally, and that Luke s report of those early
speeches is historical and trustworthy ; and I am utterly
sceptical as to the possibility that Mark, or any other man,
could have fixed immutably and permanently (as the Author
maintains, p. 174) the type of all subsequent Gospels.
But, it will be objected, here in Q is a Gospel which is
utterly different from the established type, which never
mentions the death of Christ or bases the efficacy of Christ s
1 He % often tacitly assumes it. See above, p. 22.
84 II. The Oldest
teaching on His death a Gospel which the Author, mainly
on the ground of this character, holds to be earlier than
Mark s Gospel, but not very much earlier.
This is an important argument, which needs and will
reward careful consideration. It involves two points, (i)
Is it true that, as the Author maintains, the lost Common
Source took no notice of the death of Christ ? (2) If that
was the case, when was that Common Source written ?
It is, of course, correct procedure on the Author s part
to restrict the scope of Q in the first instance to the parts
which can be restored with approximate certainty from
the agreement of Matthew and Luke, and to set aside
rigorously all that does not rest on this assured basis
though even thus there are some places where, as he says,
it is impossible entirely to avoid conjectural work. But
in deducing from this restoration the character of the lost
Source, one must remember that this restored Q is incom
plete, and one must draw no inferences of a purely negative
character, i.e., one must never infer that there was in the lost
Source no mention of any particular event or group of events
merely on the negative evidence that in the restored Q no
mention occurs of the event or group of events. To justify
such an inference it is necessary to show that Q is positively
inconsistent with the supposition that the event or group of
events was known to the writer of the lost Source.
Accordingly, to find that there is in Q (as determined by
the agreement of Matthew and Luke) no mention of Christ s
death, does not afford sufficient proof that His death was
not mentioned in the lost Common Source. It would, as far
as this reason goes, be quite possible that this Source (which
on the narrative side is scanty and confessedly poorer than
Mark) was in the conclusion so distinctly inferior to Mark
Written Gospel 85
that the latter (combined to some extent with other Sources)
was preferred by both Matthew and Luke ; and it might
even be possible to speculate whether this Source was not
used by one of the two alone in some parts.
But there is stronger ground for the Author s view : the
teaching of Q is inconsistent with the idea that the writer
of the lost Source regarded the death of Jesus as the funda
mental fact in the Gospel. One acquires the impression
throughout that Jesus was to him the great Teacher, not
that He was the Redeemer by His death : Jesus was to
him the Son of God, the King who reveals the Kingdom
of Heaven. In the Teaching of Jesus, the Kingdom of
God stood out prominently, and its nature, with the con
ditions of entering it, were emphatically stated : the sons of
the Kingdom, who had the right of birth, i.e., the Jews,
were to be rejected, and the Gentiles from all the world were
to find a home with Abraham and Isaac in the Kingdom of
God (sections 42, 13, 30); it was not a Kingdom of this
world, it was a process of development and growth in the
mind of the individual (section 40) : hence, to speak against
the Holy Spirit (which works this process in the mind of
man) is the fatal and unpardonable sin (section 34^, 29) : in
this it is already implied, as is said in Luke xvii. 21, that
" the Kingdom of God is within you ". The way of salva
tion, i.e., the Kingdom of God, does not lie outside of, or
apart from, common life, but in the ordinary life of man (i.e.,
it is the spirit in which that life is lived) ; and every man
has the opportunity of being justified by the spirit of wisdom
(section 15, 12). The revelation by the Son is the only and
necessary way by which man can attain to the knowledge of
God (section 25) ; this way of salvation is a difficult path
with a single narrow entrance (section 41) ; it was unknown
86 II. The Oldest
to many prophets, though now shown publicly to those who
saw and heard Him (section 26) ; it is hidden from the wise
and the educated, but revealed to infants (section 2 5); the
Kingdom of God has come near those cities whither the
true teachers and Apostles go (section 22, 16); there is need
for many workers in this harvesting of the world (section 1 8).
In this Teaching there lies implicit the Gospel of Christ,
but the foundation on which alone (according to the univer
sal Christian Gospel from Peter and Stephen onwards) the
Kingdom of Heaven can be built up, is wanting, for there
is no allusion to the death of Christ, which gives the needed
driving force and the power. The central and determining
factor which makes the Christian religion is wanting, and
the want of it was not felt by the writer. Jesus meant to
him something markedly different from what He is in all
the Gospels and in the whole New Testament outside of Q.
The question then is, When could such Teaching as this
be written down in a book ? The Author replies that it was
written down shortly before Mark s Gospel, but after Peter
and Stephen and Paul had been preaching the Gospel of
the death of Christ. The type of the Christian Gospel .had
not then been fixed by Mark ; and, in the Author s view,
apparently, the Gospel might be anything that any writer
pleased until Mark had shown what a Gospel ought to be,
after which no writer could do anything except follow the
type as fixed once for all by Mark. He apparently believes
that the other Twelve Apostles preached anything they
found good in the way of teaching from the beginning down
till Mark s publication ; no one perceived what was the
meaning and power of Christ s death until Mark s Gospel,
in accordance with apologetic needs, fixed the type.
The Author s theory mistakes literature for life, and
Written Gospel 87
regards the chance of Mark s publication as determining
the course of subsequent Christianity. He ignores the facts
(as we hold) that Mark was only an accidental agent, who
wrote what the development of Christian teaching forced
him to write ; that it was not apologetic needs, but the force
of inner life and growth, which gave form to the Gospel ;
and that the Gospel existed before Mark and independent
of Mark. He even thinks that Mark, if he had known Q,
would have given a different character to his own Gospel.
It is impossible that any of the disciples could about thirty
years after the Crucifixion picture Jesus simply as the great
living Teacher, or could set forth the way of salvation as
being through the true knowledge which is revealed only by
the Son of God, and yet never in any way allude to His
death as being an essential factor in the process of salvation.
The disciples realised immediately after the Crucifixion
that they had never rightly understood the teaching of Jesus
in His lifetime, because they had missed that cardinal fact of
His death. Here we have an account which sets before us
Jesus as the Saviour without alluding to the cardinal fact.
The writer did not know that fact, which so radically
changed the minds of all. Had he known it, he could not
have been silent about it.
The Author lends plausibility to his view by denying all
credibility to those parts of the Gospels and the Acts which
throw light on the feelings and thoughts of the disciples
during the period between the Resurrection and the writing
of Mark s Gospel. In his view the course of early Christian
history was quite different from what it is described to us ;
a false Pauline-Markan colour has been painted over it all,
and the disciples understood everything quite differently
until Paul through Mark taught them otherwise.
88 II. The Oldest
This is the only way to give a reasonable character to the
Author s dating of Q. Only those who are prepared to go
so far can accept his view. But it seems inconsistent and
incredible that the period of Christ s life and the post-
Markan period should have been pictured to us in such
a fairly trustworthy form as the Author allows, while
the intervening thirty or forty years is so totally misrepre
sented. This is not a reasonable or natural view ; and no
attempt is made to put it on a reasonable basis. The as
sumption is made that the first half of the second book of
Luke s history is utterly untrustworthy ; and an unattested
and unsupported historical sketch is founded on the assump
tion. Here arid everywhere in the study of the New Tes
tament we see the evil consequences of depreciating the
trustworthiness of Luke.
One other explanation can be suggested which would make
the Author s date for Q conceivable ; and that is that the
writer of the lost Source in the first part of his work described
the mind and belief of the disciples as they were while Christ
was still living, and then in the last part described the change
that was produced in them after the death of Christ had re
vealed to them the real truth. But such an artificial explana
tion cannot for a moment be entertained. The Author does
not even think it worthy of notice, but tacitly rejects it and
insists on the simplicity of the lost Source. This explanation
is utterly inconsistent with the possibilities of the situation.
It supposes a straining after dramatic effect which cannot be
reconciled either with the character of early Christianity or
with the habits and established canons of ancient literature.
We conclude, then, that the date assigned by the Author
is impossible in itself and inconsistent with his own views.
The lost Source cannot be placed either between Mark and
Written Gospel 89
Luke, or a little before Mark. It cannot be placed later
than the time when the disciples began, at the first Pente
cost, to understand the true nature of the Gospel, and
Peter began to declare it publicly, establishing it on the firm
foundation of the sacrifice of Christ s death.
A date between the death of Christ and the first Pente
cost is equally impossible; and is not likely even to be
suggested by any one. In that period of gloom and despair,
who would sit down to compose a Gospel in the tone of
Q?
There is only one possibility. The lost Common Source
of Luke and Matthew (to which, as the Author says, Luke
attached even higher value than he did to Mark) was
written while Christ was still living. It gives us the view
which one of His disciples entertained of Him and His
teaching during His lifetime, and may be regarded as
authoritative for the view of the disciples generally. This
extremely early date was what gave the lost Source the
high value that it had in the estimation of Matthew and
Luke, and yet justified the freedom with which they handled
it and modified it by addition and explanation (for the
Author s comparison of the passages as they appear in
Luke and Matthew shows that the lost Common Source
was very freely treated by them). On the one hand, it
was a document practically contemporary with the facts,
and it registered the impression made on eye-witnesses by
the words and acts of Christ. On the other hand, it was
written before those words and acts had begun to be pro
perly understood by even the most intelligent eye-witnesses.
So, for example, John says (ii. 22) that "when He was
risen from the dead, His disciples remembered that He
had said this unto them," and they then comprehended
90 II. The Oldest
the reference to His death which at the time they had not
understood.
The same tone is observable frequently in the Synoptic
Gospels ; so, for example, in Matthew xvi. 2 1 f. : " From
that time began Jesus to show unto His disciples how that
He must . . . suffer many things . . . and be killed and
the third day be raised up. And Peter . . . began to
rebuke Him, saying, Be it far from Thee, Lord ; this shall
never be unto Thee. But He turned and said unto Peter,
Get thee behind Me, Satan; thou art a stumbling-block
unto Me : for thou mindest not the things of God, but the
things of men."
This is found also in Mark ; but Luke omitted the re
ference to Peter, apparently disliking the harshness of the
language.
Then there immediately follows in Matthew a passage
strongly reminiscent of Q as restored by the Author : com
pare xvi. 24 with Q section 46, and xvi. 25 with Q section
57. 1 In fact, xvi. 24, 25, are almost a repetition of x. 38,
39, but the former belongs to the Markan portion of Luke
and Matthew, the latter belongs to Q.
Luke ix. 44 f. : " While all were marvelling at all the
things which He did, He said unto His disciples, Let these
words sink into your ears ; for the Son of Man shall be
delivered up into the hands of men. But they understood
not this saying, and it was concealed from them, that they
should not perceive it : and they were afraid to ask Him
about this saying." This also is common to Mark ix. 31,
32, and Matthew xvii. 23, but the latter gives only the words
of Jesus, without remarking on the ignorance of the disciples.
1 Q 46 is Matthew x. 38, Luke xiv. 27 ; Q 57 is Matthew x. 39, Luke xvii.
33-
Written Gospel 91
Luke ix. 54-56 mentions the rebuke to James and John
on the way towards Jerusalem for their suggestion, which
was so incongruous with the spirit of Christ and the occasion.
This is Lukan only.
Luke xviii. 31-34: "He took unto Him the twelve and
said unto them, Behold we go up to Jerusalem, and all the
things that are written by the prophets shall be accom
plished unto the Son of Man. For He shall be delivered
up ... and the third day He shall rise again. And they
understood none of these things ; and this saying was hid
from them, and they perceived not the things that were
said." Matthew xx. 17-19 and Mark x. 32-34 mention
that Jesus revealed the coming facts to the twelve disciples,
but do not remark on their failure to understand.
The Author, if we do not misunderstand him, takes a
different view of these and similar passages : he regards
them apparently as being of distinctly later origin, barely
of apostolic period, but rather representing the reflections
and moralising of a later generation with regard to the
simpler ideas entertained by ruder minds in an earlier
time, before the later views about the death of Christ
and its meaning had established themselves : see especially
below, pp. 240-2.
We would not affirm that the writers of the canonical
Gospels never added such reflections ; but that tone and
attitude of mind seems to us to have originated in the
period immediately following the Crucifixion, and to be the
inevitable accompaniment or expression of the gradual
realisation by the disciples of their new knowledge that the
death of Christ was a necessary and fundamental part of
His Gospel. In our view, the utmost that can be attri
buted to any of the evangelists is that he gave more sharp
92 II. The Oldest
and emphatic form to those reflections ; we cannot allow
that he created them.
There seems no other supposition but this which would
satisfactorily explain the character of Q. On this view
everything in it becomes clear. According to this view
Jesus stood forth in His lifetime as the great Teacher,
because in that way alone He had as yet become known
even to the most faithful and devoted of His followers.
The way of salvation was the way of right wisdom : know
ledge was what Jesus revealed, viz., the knowledge of God
the Father. But Jesus alone could impart this knowledge.
As He said, " I thank Thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and
earth, that Thou didst hide these things from the wise and
understanding, and didst reveal them unto babes. . . .
All things have been delivered unto Me of My Father ; and
no one knoweth the Father save the Son and he to whom
soever the Son willeth to reveal Him." Such is the original
form (Q), which the Author specifies as lying behind
Matthew xi. 25-27 and Luke x. 21-22. He regards the
omitted part of the last sentence as an interpolation (see
especially pp. 204-6).
The two sentences which immediately follow this passage
in Matthew xi. 28-30 are regarded by the Author as prob
ably truly words of Jesus, taken, however, not from Q but
rather from some other trustworthy Source and placed
wrongly in this situation by Matthew. The passage is the
familiar and frequently quoted one : " Come unto Me, all ye
that labour and are heavily 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 unto your souls.
For My yoke is easy, and My burden is light." The Author
sees and explains admirably the close relationship of thought
Written Gospel 93
and meaning between these two passages. The knowledge
of God in the one case is the intellectual aspect of that which
in the other case is called in its moral aspect the yoke or
burden of duty ; and Jesus describes Himself as at once the
conveyer of the instruction and the imposer of the yoke,
" take My yoke upon you and learn of Me ". This is merely
an enforcement in the imperative mood of the truth stated
as a fact in the preceding verses. Thus the whole passage
runs continuously in perfect sequence.
But the failure in Luke of any parallel to Matthew xi.
28-30 constitutes an argument so serious as to convince the
Author that Luke did not find those last three verses in the
lost Common Source, for it is not easy to understand how
he should have omitted an expression which is so harmonious
with the tone and spirit of his Gospel. It is, of course,
always an uncertain argument to found any inference on
the fact that some saying or event was omitted by Luke out
of the vast number from which he had to select : he certainly
omitted much that we should have been glad to have. But
selection was necessary, and no two persons will select in
exactly the same way: one will mourn the omission of
something which the other suffered to be crowded out. Yet
there is probably no other case where a deliberate omission
by Luke seems so strange as this ; and hence many will
agree with the Author that Matthew took these three verses
from some other Source and placed them here on account
of their intrinsic suitability.
We cannot, however, agree with him when he seeks to
strengthen this argument by the consideration that the
verses common to Luke and Matthew are a statement in
the indicative, while the addition peculiar to Matthew is
an invitation in the imperative, and that there is too much
94 II . The Oldest
change between the situation in the two parts. This reason
ing is founded on the assumption, which the Author makes
throughout, that what is early in the Gospels is necessarily
simpler and more single in tone than what is later. Jesus
was a complex character, and His Teaching had many sides ;
and we ought to find traces of this complexity in the very
earliest faithful presentation of Him. But this is a point
which is too important for us to enter upon at present. . At
present I would only point out the really close philosophic
connection of the two parts in Matthew. The first part, xi.
25-27 (Luke x. 21-22), is the statement that right \ knowledge
of the Divine nature can be acquired by man only through
direct revelation from Jesus. The second part invites man
to come to Jesus and acquire this knowledge, declares His
readiness to reveal the knowledge, mentions that man in
coming must co-operate by "taking on him the yoke of
Jesus," and adds that the yoke is easy. In the two parts of
Matthew s saying we have in embryo the whole philosophy
of history and the history of religious development as Paul
understood it. 1
The Author rightly finds a corroboration of his opinion
that Matthew xi. 28-30 is truly a word of Jesus in 2 Corin
thians x. i : " I entreat you by the meekness and gentleness
of Christ, I who in your presence am lowly among you ". 2
We should also be disposed to think that the expressions
used in Acts xv. 10-11, 28, rose to the mind of Peter and the
Apostles from recollection of -the Saying contained in this
1 Cities of St. Paul, pp. 10-15.
2 In the writer s Cities of St. Paul, p. 38 f., it is argued from this passage,
together" with Ephesians iv. i, 2, and Colossians iii. 12 (juxtaposition of
irpavs and roTretv^s, or irpavrrfs and raireivofypoavvn), that Paul knew this Saying
(whether from the Collection of Sayings or from oral information).
Written Gospel 95
passage of Matthew. 1 Peter in his speech to the Council
said, " Why tempt ye God that ye should put a yoke upon
the neck of the disciples, which neither we nor our fathers
were able to bear ? But we believe that we should be saved
through the grace of the Lord Jesus in like manner as they."
And the Decree of the Council ordained, " it seemed good
... to lay upon you no greater burden than these necessary
things ". Here the yoke and burden of the Jewish Law is
contrasted with the saving grace of Jesus ; and the Author
points out that the yoke and burden which is meant in the
passage of Q just quoted is that which the Pharisees imposed. 2
That the Author is right becomes evident where this passage
is combined with Matthew xxiii. 4 (identical in force with
Luke xi. 46), which is part of Q section 33, "the Pharisees
bind heavy burdens . . . and lay them on men s shoulders ".
The heavy burden was the teaching of the Pharisees and of
the Law ; but the Teaching of Jesus imposed a light burden
and an easy yoke.
But it is hardly necessary to go searching with the Author
for arguments and external proofs that the words of Matthew
xi. 28-30 were in real truth spoken by Jesus, and not in
vented by a later fancy. The practically universal consent
of all subsequent thought has recognised those verses as
among the most characteristic, the most exquisite, and the
most perfectly adapted to the needs of mankind, that have
been preserved to us in the Gospels. No proof can be so
strong as that consent, Securus iudicat orbis terrarum. There
was no second Christ to speak those words.
1 Whether from their own recollection of the words which they had heard
or from their knowledge of the book of the Sayings, or from both.
2 The Author does not mention this analogy ; and on his view of the late
date and spurious character of the Decree, he would explain it in a very dif
ferent way.
96 II. The Oldest
Nor need we restrict their intention so narrowly as the
Author seems to do. They are far wider in application
than he allows as wide as the burden of every trial and
every sorrow that men know ; but they certainly include,
as he says, the contrast between the burden of Pharisaic law
and the freedom of Christ s teaching; they anticipate the
controversy between Paul and the Judaising party ; and
they lead up to the Epistle to the Galatians. And what
a difference in temper and spirit is there between the
Saying of Jesus and the Epistle of Paul, great as the
latter is: all the difference between the Divine and the
human.
It is clearly apparent that Luke treated the text of Q with
considerable freedom, and that the agreement of Matthew
and Luke is in many places confined to small sayings, which
might possibly have come to them from independent sources.
In this respect there is a decided contrast with the triple
agreement (of Matthew and Luke with Mark), where the
likeness generally extends over considerable passages, some
times over long continuous stretches of narrative. This
difference has led some scholars 1 to doubt the existence of
any real single written authority Q behind this double agree
ment (of Matthew and Luke, independent of Mark). They
would rather incline either to a verdict of " Not Proven," or
to a definite opinion that the double agreement rests on
strong general likeness in a widespread oral tradition or in
several different documents.
The Author s answer to this is given in one of the most
striking passages in the whole work, a passage conceived in
a singularly lofty spirit of sympathetic insight and of the
1 Notably my friend, Rev. Willoughby C. Allen, in his edition of the first
Gospel.
Written Gospel 97
highest kind of " Higher Criticism," on p. 162 ff. (though in
it there are passages which do not convince me) :
" The proof that Q is essentially a homogeneous and an
ancient source is ultimately based upon the nature of its
description of the personality of our Lord." 1 We see that
there was an ancient written Common Source, because Q
presents to us so remarkable, individual and unique a con
ception of Jesus. This conception is of inestimable value.
Throughout all subsequent time the value has been acknow
ledged in every attempt made to sum up His personality.
" The portrait of Jesus as given in the sayings of Q has re
mained in the foreground." x
The reason why Luke treats with greater freedom that
old Common Source is complex. Two causes can be
specified forthwith; and there probably are more. In the
first place, a book in which the narrative was slight and the
writer s interest was directed almost entirely to recording
the sayings and teaching of his hero could not be adapted
to a narrative form without some freedom. Secondly, in
the teaching of Christ the same subjects and topics were,
beyond all doubt, insisted on repeatedly. John gives in
different situations a fuller discussion of topics which are
briefly mentioned in the Synoptic Gospels. This is a sub
ject which would require and reward full treatment.
The individualised conception of the Saviour s personality,
which the Author rightly emphasises so strongly, proves also
that it is impossible to regard Q or the original Common
Source as a practical catechetic manual, drawn up about A.D.
60-70 for the use of teachers and pupils in the Christian doc-
1 The translation is Mr. Wilkinson s, which I purposely adopt, partly to
exemplify its excellence, partly to avoid any risk of colouring the Author s
words to suit my point.
7
9 8 II. The Oldest
trine which is the view taken by esteemed friends, especi
ally by Dr. Sanday. In such a manual or handbook how
can we expect to find a human being, portrayed in such
markedly original traits, so unlike the conception that was
current in all other early Christian documents ? The com
pilation of a catechetical manual at any period must not be
assumed without definite proof that the character of that
period is clearly marked in the compilation. Now the
Author rightly emphasises repeatedly as characteristic of Q
that it has no Christological-apologetic interest, that it was
not compiled in the interest of Christological apologetics, and
that it follows no apologetic-Christological aims. 1 In the
assumed period, A.D. 60-70, when Christianity was a mission
ary religion, already for a long time subject to attack and
supported by defensive statements and teaching, such a
document as this is wholly out of place and inconceivable.
We have in it the contemporary notes of a person in im
mediate personal contact with Jesus, fascinated by His per
sonality as a living man and as a great Teacher and Prophet,
not thinking of His death and of what was to ensue thereon.
When we desire to realise the character of the living, man
Jesus, we must go to contemporary record. It would be
vain to seek for Him in the grave of a catechetical manual.
In conclusion, it is perhaps right to refer to an argument
which will weigh with many minds against the date which
we assign for the composition of the lost Common Source
of Luke and Matthew. It is a widespread assumption that
the earliest Christians did not commit to writing any record
of the life or the words of the Saviour ; and that it was only
at a later date, after at least the first Epistles of Paul had
been written, and when the disciples had ceased to expect
1 See pp. 163 and 167.
Written Gospel 99
the immediate Coming of the Lord and the end of the world,
that they began to think of composing accounts of the events
and teaching in which their faith originated. If you ask for
reasons to support this assumption, there are none that seem
to have even the slightest value. It is a pure prepossession,
which has lasted from the time when everybody believed that
the art of writing was a late invention ; that the custom of
writing spread gradually and slowly, and was in ancient times
(as in mediaeval) rare and unusual ; and that the composition
of every document ought always to be assigned on principle
to the latest possible date. This is a prejudice which has
been decisively disproved by recent discovery. The art of
writing is very old. The knowledge of writing was far more
generally diffused in the east Mediterranean lands in ancient
times than it was in mediaeval Europe ; and the strong pre
sumption is that every important event in the early Imperial
period was described in informal or even formal documents,
often by several persons, at the time that it occurred.
Protestantism first supplied the driving force to popularise
reading and writing among the mass of the people in modern
times, and from the Protestant countries the custom spread ;
but still it is only in a few countries that the familiar use
of writing in everyday life is so widely diffused as it was in
the most civilised regions of the Mediterranean world about
the time of Christ. The whole burden of proof lies with
those who maintain that the earliest Christians committed
no record to writing, for that view is quite out of harmony
with the facts and tone of society in that period and
region. 1
1 The reasons for this opinion are stated more fully in the first chapter of
the Letters to the Seven Churches, though even there they are merely given
in outline.
ioo II. The Oldest
There is one word which the Author sometimes uses in a
way which does not convince me the word " legend ".
Wherever it occurs it is a sign of the same old evil which
has long been blocking progress the hard, unsympathetic,
self-satisfied, unresponsive and contemptuous attitude in
cases where the East perplexes the West, where the first
century eludes the comprehension of the nineteenth. In all
such cases the nineteenth century way of thought, its refuge
from the duty of learning to understand what lay outside of
it and beyond its narrow view, was to condemn as " legend "
what it could not understand. The word " legend " was
used in an unintelligent and irrational way. The typical
nineteenth century scholar did not begin by properly con
ceiving what is the nature of " legend ". He started with a
certain fixed standard of instinctive and unreasoning dislike:
whatever he could not comprehend, he condemned as
" legend ". The honest and scientific method in such cases
would have been to say simply, " this I do not understand " ;
it would have been human and pardonable to add, "since I
do not understand it, I am suspicious of it". That the four
Gospels, of which even the earliest is long posterior to the
events it records and was not written by an eye-witness, are
free from " legend " I personally do not maintain ; but that
much which has been called legend is of an altogether
different character and has nothing about it of the nature
of legend, I feel firmly convinced. That the domain ascribed
to "legend" in the Gospels by modern scholars has been
much diminished in recent years is patent to all. It is much
to be desired that those who use the term " legend " in this
connection should begin by understanding clearly what
legend is. Even admitting that some statement or narrative
in a Gospel is not trustworthy, it does not follow that this
Written Gospel 101
statement is legend : it may have originated in some other
way. The Author is not free even now from this loose
and unscientific way of labelling what he dislikes as " legend ".
But this topic is too big to discuss at the end of an
article.
III.
ASIA MINOR: THE COUNTRY AND
ITS RELIGION.
III.
ASIA MINOR: THE COUNTRY AND ITS
RELIGION.
IF geography be regarded as the study of the influence which
the physical features and situation of a country exert on the
people who live in it, then in no country can geography be
studied better than in Asia Minor. The physical features of
the country are strongly marked ; its situation is peculiar and
unique ; its history can be observed over a long series of cen
turies, and amid its infinite variety there is always a strongly
marked unity, with certain clear principles of evolution,
standing in obvious relation to the geographical surroundings.
In the first place, the Anatolian peninsula stretches like a
bridge between Asia and Europe. Owing to the great barrier
of the Caspian, the Caucasus and the Black Sea, all migra
tions between Asia and Europe must either keep the northern
side, through Siberia and Russia, or the southern, along the
Anatolian road. A few of the invasions of Europe by Asiatic
peoples have taken the northern path ; but, generally, west
ward moving migration and invasion have followed the
southern road through Anatolia, and all westward movement
of civilisation which did not travel on shipboard took the
same path.
Of the many invasions in which Europe has retaliated and
sent her armies eastward over Asia, only one of any import
ance has passed north of the Caspian, and that is the great
movement now going on, whereby Russia is throwing her
(105)
io6 III. Asia Minor:
armies, her railways and her peoples over Asia to the shores of
the Pacific. Otherwise, all movements eastward from Europe
in so far as they did not go by sea the movements of armies,
of pilgrims and Crusaders, of state messengers, of merchants
and trade have followed the lines that lead eastwards over
Anatolia.
In the second place, Anatolia is a bridge with lofty parapets.
The roads traverse the high, hollow, central plateau, closed
in by loftier mountain ridges which separate that open plateau
from the sea. The parapet on the south is the vast ridge of
Taurus, stretching back from the western sea into the main
central mass of the great Asiatic continent, only at a few
points traversable by migrations or by armies, or by the
rivers that drain the plateau and flow south in deep chasms
cut through the heart of the mountains. I do not mean that
Taurus was ever absolutely untraversable. Men can traverse
any mountains, and there are ridges far more difficult than
Taurus. But (except for hardy and resolute travellers) it is
practically impassable in unfavourable weather, and during
the months when it is liable to be covered with snow ; l and
at all times elaborate preparation and provision must be
made for the crossing of a body of men, for Taurus is
not a single narrow ridge, but a broad, lofty and much
broken plateau, and the passes that traverse it are seventy or
more miles long. Thus in practice the roadways were few,
and migrations were confined to known lines.
The mountains which form the parapet on the north,
though not so strikingly continuous, and at no period in
history called by one single name, are really almost as serious
1 Of the feeling of the ancients that not merely the mountain-passes, but the
roads across the open plateau, were closed to travellers during the long winter,
examples are quoted in Pauline and other Studies, p. 385 f. See Plate VII.,
P- 139-
PLATE I.
The Pass leading to Dorylaion (from the window ot a Railway Carriage).
PLATE II.
To face p. 106. The Central Trade Route : Sources of the Maeander.
The Country and its Religion 107
a barrier confining the tides of movement to the main
Anatolian east and west roadway.
You enter the roadway at one or other of a few points,
where alone entrance is easy, and you are driven on, east
wards or westwards, according to the temporary direction of
the tide. If you come from the west, you enter with Godfrey
and the Crusaders at Dorylaion, or with Alexander the Great
at Celaenae. 1 Until a few years ago you entered the bridge
on horseback or on foot ; now you enter in a railway carriage.
Plate I. illustrates the way from the coast to Dorylaion,
the great military road of the Byzantine Empire. The spot
chosen is where this road passes through a narrow gorge
between two walls of rock, which leave room only for the
little Black-Water (Kara-Su), a tributary of the Sangarius.
The road has been in great part cut or tunnelled in the rock.
The view is taken from a window of the German railway
train passing through the gorge.
Plate II. shows a scene on the other chief line of approach
to the Plateau, the great Central Trade Route, which led
up the Maeander and the Lycus, past the salt lake Anava
(or Sanaos) and Apameia- Celaenae. This view, with its
open quiet scenery and gently sloping hills, when compared
with Plate I., shows well the contrast between the easy
character of the one great approach which nature has made
to the Plateau and the difficulties that encumber all other
approaches.
The scene is the single head-source of the Maeander river
in all its Apamean branches, Marsyas, Maeander, Obrimas
1 Dorylaion, the modern Eski-Sheher, junction of the German railway
lines to Angora and to Konia (ultimately to Syria, Mecca and Bagdad).
Celaenae, the Seleucid and Roman Apameia, present terminus of the Otto
man Railway from Smyrna : it was one of the most important points on the
great Eastern Trade Route in Hellenistic and Roman times.
io8 III. Asia Minor:
and Therma. It lies in the high valley of Aurokra above
Celaense on the east. The Ottoman railway has not yet
reached it, but will soon do so.
The fountain gushes out from the rocks on the east side
of the valley of Aurokra, and runs down a mile or two to
the west side of the plain, where its waters collect in a
marshy lake against the hills that divide the Aurokra valley
from Celaenae. The water of the lake runs off under the
hills through two holes (which can be clearly seen when the
light falls in the proper direction by any one standing on
the hills above), and emerges on the other side of the
hills at a much lower level in the fountains of the four
streams of Celaenae, which combine to form the river
Maeander. 1
The head-source, in Plate II., was called the fountain
Aurokrene or Aulokrene ; and the latter name, which seemed
in Greek to give the meaning Flute-Fountain, affected the
form of the legends, which connected themselves with this
magnificent spring. 2 Hardly even in Greece itself is there
a spot more sacred in folk-lore and religion. Here Athena
threw aside her flute, and Marsyas picked it up. Here
Marsyas contended with Apollo in music, and on one of J:he
plane-trees beside the spring he was hung up to be flayed.
In the plain below Lityerses was slain by the sickles of the
reapers. The physical features of the plain are so striking
that we need not wonder to find so many legends attached
to it. The myth implies as its scene a place where there
1 There is a fifth stream, Orgas, which rises some miles south-west of
Celaenae in a different range of hills. The whole series of fountains and
names is described in Cities and Bishoprics of Phrygia, chap. xi.
2 The namefontes Rocrenl occurs in Livy, xxxviii., and marks the line of the
robber-raid of the Consul Manlius from Pisidia to Galatia. The initial vowel
has been lost in this form.
The Country and its Religion 109
abounded the reeds, from which the earliest and simplest
kind of flute was made. The lake of Aurokra is in great
part a reedy marsh, though the water lies deep against the
western hills.
On this same road, the white cliffs of Hierapolis (shown
in the Frontispiece) strike the traveller s eye for many miles
of his way through the Maeander and the Lycus valleys.
They are almost literally petrified water, being the white
deposit which the water of the hot springs has left as it
tumbles down over the steep cliffs to the level plain of the
Lycus. In the photograph it is quite impossible to dis
tinguish the flowing water from the petrified incrustation.
The form and colour are so exactly the same that even the
traveller s eye, if he stands a little back from the falls, is
deceived.
After reaching the Plateau by one of the few entrances,
you move on eastwards, and pass off the bridge by one or
other of a few well-marked exits. 1 If you come from Asia,
you follow the same inevitable paths ; nothing differs except
the direction of your motion and the tides or the motives
that impel you.
Thus the history of Anatolia has been one of startling
vicissitudes, of constant variety, of rapid changes in population,
in government, in the trend of development; and yet the
unity amid the variety is so easy to comprehend that it may
fairly be called unmistakable. The development has always
lain in the action and collision of forces moving eastwards or
westwards ; it has rarely been complicated by side influences
J A series of views on the principal exit towards the East through the
Cilician Gates is given in Pauline and other Studies, Plates V.-XXXI. See
also Cities of St. Paul, Plates III.-V.
no III. Asia Minor:
coming in from the sea on the north or on the south ; l it has
been simply the series of phases in the immemorial conflict
between Europe and Asia. The central point of that never-
ending battle varies from age to age. At one time the
Greeks gather to a siege of Troy ; at another the Arabs or
the Egyptian Memluks storm the walls of Tarsus, defended
by Greek fire or by Crusaders axes and lances, or by that
small fraction of the Armenian kingdom of Cilicia who could
be induced to forget their mutual quarrels about points of
ritual and unite to save their own families against the
slaughterers from the East ; at another the Arabs are being
beaten back repeatedly from the ramparts of Constantinople,
or the Turks are pouring in through a breach. As you cast
your eyes back over the past, you see Crcesus crossing the
Halys to destroy a great kingdom, or you watch the younger
Cyrus the Persian leading 10,000 Greeks from Sardis to
Mesopotamia, to show them how easily a vast Persian army
might be scattered by a few trained and disciplined troops.
You may see, on New Year s Day in A.D. 1148, Louis VII.
with his French Crusaders, fording hand-in-hand the unford-
able Maeander, and scattering before their first charge the
Turkish army drawn up on the further bank to prevent their
crossing; 2 or Manuel with his splendid army of mail-clad
warriors, European and Byzantine, jammed against their bag
gage train in that open pass west of Pisidian Antioch, and
slaughtered at will by the Turks charging down from the
1 The influence of the old Ionian colony of Sinope (cp. Strab, p. 540) and
probably also of the old Ionian colony of Tarsus (cp. Cities of St. Paul, p. 113 ff.)
may be quoted as to some degree exceptions.
2 This brilliant feat of arms is wrongly attributed by Gibbon to Conrad,
the German Emperor, who also took part in the second crusade. On the
scene, see Cities and Bishoprics of Phrygia, vol. i., p. 162.
The Country and its Religion in
higher ground on the north. 1 If you want to see what
happened when an army abandoned the few recognised paths,
cast your eyes on the soldiers of the First Crusade, wandering
and perishing amid the mountains of Anti-Taurus, or Frederick
Barbarossa s German Crusaders struggling over the central
Taurus, fed by an Armenian prince in his stronghold among
the mountains, and Barbarossa himself disappearing under
the waters of the Calycadnus so suddenly that his people
could not believe he was dead, and long imagined that he
was only waiting the proper moment to reappear in his
German home. All are but small skirmishes in the great
battle of East and West.
To illustrate this principle fully would be to write the
history of the Anatolian peninsula. In every age, in every
war, in every crisis, the opposing forces may be recognised
as respectively Eastern and Western. Often, where two
rivals contend for the succession to a throne or a tent, one
may be recognised as champion of the East, and the other,
as his opponent, attracts the support of the West; and
probably that was the general rule in such contests, though
we are not always well enough informed of the facts. But
the writer s Historical Geography of Asia Minor, which
has had the honour of being published by the Royal Geo
graphical Society, illustrates on page after page the infinitely
varied forms in which the principle has worked itself out in
history (though, from its extreme brevity, it gives only the
dry bones of history, into which the reader must breathe
life for himself) ; and we pass from it. I may only be
permitted to say, in passing, that the .experience and study
of twelve years since that book was written have amply
1 Studies in the History and Art of the Eastern Roman Provinces, p. 235 if.
ii2 III. Asia Minor:
confirmed the general scheme of topographical history con
tained in it, and also furnished both many corroborations of
details in the application of the general rules and many
improvements or corrections in other details. I do not know
which have given me personally greater pleasure ; it is
pleasant to find that one s instinct or reasoning has been
right, but it is almost more pleasant to find that a mistake
has been put right and a stumbling-block cleared away.
The corroboration gives one confidence to go on in the path
of investigation ; but the correction opens a door, and often
reveals a new chapter in the political or historical geography
of the country. Moreover, most of the corrections have
come from investigators whom I might almost venture to
call pupils of my own, because they made their first essays
in my company or with my advice; and it is always a
peculiar pleasure to learn from men whose early steps one
has helped in some small degree to direct.
One of the omissions in that book was that the importance
of the mountain barriers on the north and south was not
sufficiently worked out, and thus several chapters of history
passed unobserved. To this subject my studies have recently
been directed, and they have been illuminated by explora
tions which, after a long interval of ten years, I was enabled
to resume by a concurrence of favourable circumstances.
One point in this wide subject may detain us for a few
moments.
The great mountain wall of Taurus, on the southern side
of the plateau, has always been the most effectual boundary-
line in the Anatolian peninsula ; and this in spite of the fact
that the plateau has rarely been the seat of a capital, but
has generally been subject to one of the great empires of
the East or the West. Many causes of course contributed to
The Country and its Religion 113
give Taurus this importance as a dividing-line ; but we here
simply assume the fact without analysing the contributory
causes. 1
The ancient records often express the bounds of nations
or of spheres of influence by the phrases " within " or " beyond
the Taurus ". Taurus was the dividing-line between east and
west. Even at the present day, when the whole of Anatolia
outside the walls of Smyrna and the railway-lines is in a
sense distinctly Oriental, one feels that, after crossing
Taurus by the pass of the Cilician Gates and descending
south and east into Cilicia, one has passed a line of demarca
tion and is surrounded by a more Oriental spirit. Cilicia,
as the Romans long arranged it, is more a part of Syria than
of Asia Minor. In it you detect at once the impression of
the Arab and the Ansarieh ; you hear yourself addressed no
longer as Tchelebi, which was practically universal as a title
of respect before you crossed Taurus : the people now style
you Hawaja, as in Syria or Egypt. That single detail is
significant of the changed atmosphere that rules beyond the
Taurus.
In my Historical Geography the contrast between the
^Egean coastlands and the rest of the great peninsula is
described, the former being, as it were, a part of Greece, full
of the light and the variety and the joyous brightness of the
Greek lands ; the rest, including the whole plateau, being,
alike in geographical character and in spirit, part of Asia,
impressive in its immobility, monotony and subdued tone.
1 For example, one may mention the difference of climate between the
plateau north of Taurus (with its long hard winter) and the hot coast-
lands of Cilicia. My friend Mr. Hogarth emphasised this very rightly in the
discussion which ensued after the paper was read. Taurus was a boundary,
not simply because it was Taurus, but because of all the many physical facts
that combined to give it importance. (See p. 139 and Plate VII.)
8
ii4 HI. Asia Minor:
But one feels inclined to draw a further distinction, and to
describe the west coast as Greek, the plateau within Taurus
as the Debatable Land, and the country beyond Taurus as
Eastern and Asiatic. Yet the moment that one has uttered
the words one feels that they are inaccurate. More than any
other city, Tarsus impresses one as the meeting-place of East
and West. And in history what variety is there in the lot
of Cilicia and in the kind of division which Taurus marks !
In the long wars between the Byzantine (or rather the
Roman) Empire and the Saracens, Taurus with Anti-Taurus
divided the Romans from the Arabs for centuries, Tarsus on
the south-west and Melitene on the north-east being the
frontier fortresses on the Arab side. The Arabs twice at
tempted to advance their frontier from Tarsus over Taurus
and to hold Tyana ; but both the Caliphs Harun-al-Rashid
and Al-Mamun, each of whom built a mosque and stationed
a garrison in Tyana, found it necessary to draw back to
Tarsus before two years had elapsed.
For a longer period the Arabs held Caesareia, in their ad
vance from Melitene ; but that also they failed to hold per
manently. They could never establish themselves beyond
Taurus. They crossed that mountain barrier in their annual
raids, often in two raids per annum ; they captured almost
every city in the whole land ; they thrice besieged Constanti
nople; and yet through three long centuries of such war
they never held a foot of land beyond Taurus outside the
range of their weapons at the moment. They conquered
and they passed, and the people of the land recovered from
every blow with marvellous rapidity. In all history there
is probably no other proof so striking of the elasticity and
recuperative power that belongs to the well-knit society of
an organised people, welded together by a long-established
The Country and its Religion 1 1 5
system of reasoned law and by a common religion. Roman
society was too compact for the Arabs to conquer a hundred
battles and a hundred defeats had no serious effect on it.
The lower civilisation of a loosely knit Oriental despotism
could make no permanent impression on the fabric that
Roman* organising genius had created.
But, if the Roman social fabric survived the sufferings of
those terrible centuries, when Arab raids were to be dreaded
every year, the suffering was terrible. The Roman civilisa
tion had weakened the stamina of the nation, and a long
continuance of peace had made the general population feeble,
unwarlike, perfectly content to be defended by a professional
army, which had become almost a caste. When a civilised
people has lost the fighting strength, which must in the last
resort be its defence against the attack of barbarism, it is
always in danger. A large population of traders and artisans,
clergy and schoolmasters, and other peaceful persons, was
powerless before a small force of hardy barbarians, accustomed
to weapons from infancy, regarding war as the one business
of life and the chief duty of religion. Hence the Arab
raiders could go where they pleased, ravage almost any city
they chose, and easily avoid the slower regular armies of
Roman trained soldiers ; but they could hold nothing per
manently beyond the line of Taurus.
The professional army might have found it an easier task
to defend the line of Mount Taurus and keep the Moham
medan wolves from the Roman sheepfold, if the great pass
of the Cilician Gates had been the only way of crossing
Taurus from Cilicia. That pass, an easy road for the most
part to traverse, is also a very easy one to defend at many
points by even a small force. In Byzantine time it was
strongly garrisoned, and a line of beacons flashed the news
n6 III. Asia Minor:
to Constantinople as soon as the Arabs were moving against
it. But the long-continued peace and prosperity of the Roman
Empire had opened other roads. Taurus had never been
an absolutely impassable barrier, and under the Roman peace
many cities had grown and prospered in its highest grounds,
where now no dwelling is known except a few black tents
of nomads in the summer. Those cities, rich and prosperous,
had improved the roads, and made it easy for the light raid
ing armies of the Arabs to cross the mountains.
If, at a later time, the more barbarous Turk achieved what
the more polished and fiery Arabs had failed to do, the
Turkish triumph exemplified the only way in which, apart
from practical extermination, barbarism can conquer a civi
lised and organised society, viz.> by breaking up the fabric
and constitution of society and reducing it once more to an
aggregation of disconnected atoms. The Turkish conquest
was not achieved through pitched battles and victories ; it
was gained by the nomad tribes which spread over the land,
destroyed the bonds of communication which held society
together, and reduced the country from the settled to the
nomadic stage. The Turkish conquest meant the nomadisa-
tion of the country.
But the number of questions which open on every side
when one begins to discuss that great subject of the degener
ation from Roman organisation to the nomadic stage in
Asiatic Turkey is endless ; and we must return to our im
mediate topic, viz., the effect of the Taurus range as a
division between races, as a defence of a settled people
against invasion, and as a limiting wall to determine the lines
of migration or of ecclesiastical organisation.
If Taurus divided Arab and Roman, Mohammedan and
Christian, in the time of the Saracen wars (641-965), it was
PLATE V.
The Rock and Castle of Sivri-Hissar.
PLATE VI.
To face p. 116. Roman Milestone .on the Syrian Route.
Seep. 138.
The Country and its Religion 1 1 7
again the boundary between Christian and Mohammedan in
the early Turkish period for about four centuries beginning
from 1071 A.D. The Turks came in from Central Asia over
Armenia, and held the central Anatolian plateau for centuries
before they gained possession of Cilicia ; they captured Con
stantinople and advanced to Belgrad before they captured
Tarsus. Christian powers Byzantines, Latin Crusaders
and Armenian princes quarrelled with one another for
possession of Cilicia. Taurus saved the land by the sea from
Turkish armies ; but there was no such barrier on the Syrian
side, 1 and the Memluk sultans of Egypt destroyed the
Christian kingdom of Cilicia. Here again the nomad Turk
men tribes, gradually spreading across Taurus and over the
plains, were the true conquerors, sapping and destroying the
links that held together society in the country.
Thus the effect of the Taurus as a division between nations,
as well as in directing and limiting the march of armies,
might in itself furnish a great subject.
Only in one case is there a district of any importance in
the Anatolian peninsula which lies outside of our classifica
tion into central plateau, mountain-rim and coast valleys.
There is one secondary valley on the north, where there
intervenes between the plateau-rim and the sea a second
mountain-ridge. Between these two parallel ridges there
stretches east and west a valley of considerable importance,
forming the most fertile part of the ancient country of
Paphlagonia. That valley has a history which stands
entirely apart from the history of either the plateau on the
one hand or of the sea-coast cities on the other. Just as you
might sail and explore along the coast, and travel extensively
1 The ridge of Amanus, which bounds Cilicia on the east, is easily crossed
by passes about 2,000 ft. high or less.
ii8 III. Asia Minor:
in the northern parts of the plateau itself, yet never enter
the great Paphlagonian valley, so you might write a minute
study of the history of the coast and of the plateau, and
hardly ever have occasion to mention the intermediate
valley. And yet the valley had a great history. It con
tained some powerful cities. The wars of the Mithridatic
dynasty of kings against the Romans and the states of the
West, for the most part, were fought or manoeuvred along
that valley. Some of the most obscure campaigns in the
long wars between the kings of the Romans and the Saracen
invaders seem to have taken place in the valley, and those
campaigns are so obscure because the ordinary data for
interpreting the evidence by the conditions of the plateau or
the coast fail us for the intermediate Paphlagonian valley.
Its cities became even more important, in comparison to the
rest of the country, during the earlier stages of the Turkish
period, and are often mentioned.
But that long history of the Paphlagonian valley has
never been written. 1 Its many ancient towns are for the
most part unknown even by name. Perhaps the task can
not be achieved, because recorded history has kept to the
leading paths, and neglected the secondary roads ; but if the
task is attempted it demands a special historian, who is pre
pared to explore and study it by itself and for itself.
Once you have reached the plateau it is, as a rule, possible
to make a road almost anywhere. Yet even there there are
certain gates towards which many roads must converge, and
through which they must pass. Two zones of mountains,
whose old names are unknown, and which are almost name-
1 M. Theodore Reinach has done all that is possible without long and
methodical exploration to illuminate the bearing of this valley on the Mithrid
atic history; but want of personal knowledge of the localities makes the
geographical side of his excellent study necessarily inadequate.
The Country and its Religion 119
less in modern times, run north and south across central
Phrygia, and roads must keep either to the north or the
south of them. All travellers from Ephesus to the East
passed by the southern end of those mountains; but
travellers from Smyrna and northern Lydia generally went
by the northern end. The routes may be distinguished as
the " Central Trade Route " and the " Royal Road ".* The
two modern railways from Smyrna follow the ancient lines.
The lofty ridge which comes up from the west from
Trojan Ida, called Temnos and Dindymos in parts of its
course, approaches very close to those central Phrygian
mountains ; and a narrow glen, down which flows a tributary
of the Maeander, divides them. That glen forms a funnel, up
or down which roads and travellers going in very diverse
directions must necessarily pass. For about ten or twelve
miles persons going from south to north travel side by side
with others who are going from east to west. Their roads
all converge to one end of the glen, and diverge again at the
other.
Until that glen was noted on the map, and its importance
observed, the march of the Ten Thousand, which Xenophon
has described, was an insoluble riddle. In my earlier years
of exploration, having only the vague, featureless and in
accurate old maps, I found the glen a sore trial and puzzle.
Filled with the desire to be constantly traversing new routes
and to avoid repetition, I found myself in the most annoy
ing way doing the treadmill up and down the steep ascent.
In one year, when thoroughly on my guard against it and
resolved to avoid it, I traversed it three times.
But this repetition only gave proper emphasis to its im
portance. Then it became obvious that the Ten Thousand,
1 On the two routes see " Roads and Travel " (Hastings Diet. Bib., v., 390).
i2o III. Asia Minor:
who had marched from Sardis towards the southern end of
the central Phrygian mountains, as if to follow the southern
route, and had turned backwards towards the north-west,
must have traversed the glen and gone round the northern
end of the mountains. No other way was possible, and when
this observation was applied, it was easy to follow the march
of the Ten Thousand all over Phrygia, and to say at any
point that Xenophon s foot must have trod within a few
hundred yards of where we stood. At the south-western
entrance to the glen stands Keramon Agora, the Market of
Tiles, that " peopled city " ; and after leaving its north
eastern exit, the eastward bound army soon found itself in
the broad plain of Kaystros.
Communication on the coasts, of course, took place mostly
by ship, and lies outside our present subject, except in so far
as it affected or was affected by land conditions. Since the
mountains touched the sea at various points, and the coast
road was tedious and difficult, communication was thrown
more and more completely on to shipboard, and was there
fore for centuries entirely in the hands of the Greeks. Hence
the coast towns, as far east as Tarsus and Trapezus, were
strongly affected by Greek influence, and often even trans
formed into cities of the Greek type, with free institutions and
constitutional government by elected magistrates according
to published law.
Moreover, the sea was dangerous and difficult. On the
north coast, the Black Sea was the most uncertain and
treacherous known to the Greeks : at no period of the year
could the weather be counted on ; in the most settled summer
weather a tempest might occur. Far back, in the beginning
of Greek history, we can dimly trace the immense influence
exerted on the Greek mind by the first experience of that
The Country and its Religion 121
sea with its dangers and its wonders. It is not too much to
say, though here we can only make the strong statement and
pass on, that the discovery of the Black Sea played as im
portant a part in forming and training the Greek mind, in
determining its bent, in moulding its literary expression, as
the discovery of America has played in the modern world.
But the life of a country is always mirrored and idealised
in its religion ; and the religion of the coast cities must neces
sarily have been moulded a great deal by their dependence
on the sea. This we can observe well on the north coast.
The Ruler of the Sea, Achilles Pontarches, was the great
deity of the north coast cities ; an association of cities was
allied in his worship, and the high priest was called by the
same name as the god, the Pontarch. The god had his
chosen home in an island, opposite the mouths of the Danube,
where he dwelt with Helena, the island which occasionally
appeared before the storm-tossed sailor as a haven of quiet.
But he was reverenced also in the cities whose prosperity
depended on his favour, and whose sailors made their vows
to him before they sailed and paid them after their safe re
turn. He was worshipped in all the cities in South Russia
and the Crimea, as well as on the Asia Minor coasts ; but
probably his chief seat was in Sinope, that great harbour of
the early time, on the promontory that juts out far into the
sea. And when a new form of religion required a new ex
pression of the old religious fact, a Christian saint was sub
stituted for the pagan Pontarch Achilles ; and St. Phocas of
Sinope became the sailors god, or at least their patron and
protector.
The severance of the north coast from the plateau is thus
as strongly marked in religion as in history. It would not,
however, be true to say that the severance in religion was
122 III. Asia Minor:
absolute. The mountain-ridges which barred and hemmed
in ordinary communication offered no insuperable barrier to
the spread of religion. The strange fervid cults of the plateau
proved as impressive on the coastlands as they did in the
European lands to which they spread in wave after wave.
Any divergence in the religion of the coast from that of the
plateau took the form of additions such as the cult of
Achilles Pontarches to a common religious stock.
On the south coast less is known of maritime religious
foundations. The existing records show little except gods
of the common Anatolian type. Yet there must have been
others. Especially at Myra in Lycia we may look for some
special sailors cult. Myra was the harbour for the direct
over-sea communication with Syria and with Egypt. 1 This
communication was not old the early ships never ventured
to desert the coast and strike boldly out to sea. But at least
as early as the first century of our era vessels sailed from
Myra straight across to the Syrian and Egyptian coasts ;
and the large ships which carried the Egyptian corn to the
Roman granaries habitually tried to run straight across from
Alexandria to Myra. Westerly winds blow with wonderful
uniformity in the Levant, and those ships could commonly
trust to a good run due north to the Lycian coast. But if
the west wind blew too strong, the ship would make too much
leeway, and find itself unable to clear the western end of
Cyprus ; and then it was obliged to run to the Syrian coast
and keep round the east and the north of Cyprus. In such
circumstances the blessing of the god of Myra would be sought
with special devotion ; and, though this cult is not proven in
its pagan form, which as we have seen was only of quite late
1 S*. Paul the Traveller, p. 298 f. ; " Roads and Travel in N.T. Times " in
Hastings Dictionary of the Bible, v., p. 381.
The Country and its Religion 123
origin, the Christian cult which took its place is well known.
St. Nicholas of Myra played the same part among the sailors
of the Levant as St. Phocas of Sinope did among those of
the Black Sea.
Phocas was a martyr of the reign of Trajan. Nicholas was
Bishop of Myra more than three centuries later. The
Christian form evidently established itself earlier on the north
coast than on the south, and this is in strict accord with other
evidence, which shows that the new religion had taken deep
root in the northern coastlands by the time of Trajan, where
as on the south it was very much later in attaining such
strength.
But it is not merely armies, or migrations of peoples,
which have swept eastwards or westwards across Anatolia.
Art and knowledge, new thoughts and new religions have
trod the same path in either direction ; they, too, move
westwards or eastwards across the bridge, rarely northwards
or southwards. Such movements, though less imposing
and romantic than the march of armies and the combat of
heroes, may justifiably detain our attention longer, precisely
because they are less striking and more easily escape
notice.
There are some apparent exceptions, which, however,
vanish under more careful scrutiny, and therefore only help
to emphasise the general principle. One example may
here be given. The present writer is responsible for the
theory (published in 1882) that the Greek alphabet, after
travelling by ship with the Ionian merchants to Sinope,
penetrated thence southwards across the mountains into the
central plateau, where we find it in use east of the Halys
about the seventh century B.C. But after further study he
retracted this theory, and argued that the Greek alphabet
124 III. Asia Minor:
was carried up eastwards from the west coast, in the ordinary
course of trade and political relations ; and dated that
communication by the recorded fact that a king of Phrygia
was married to a daughter of Agamemnon, King of JEolic
Cyme, about 700 B.C. 1 Historic tradition remembered that
dynastic fact a striking example of the way in which a
royal family embodies and represents the history of its
nation ; and the union of the two royal families stands to
us for the intercommunication between the active Greek
cities of the west coast and the peoples of the plateau, in
the course of which the alphabet and many other ideas
passed eastwards or westwards. That second theory may
now be regarded as the accepted view. Even those English
scholars who accept no historical theory, unless it is printed
in German, may accept this view with easy minds, because
it has been rediscovered independently by a learned and
able young German professor, A. Koerte, who, travelling in
Anatolia about five years after the second view had been
published and republished in the Journal of Hellenic Studies^
soon found out and made known the truth, gently rebuking
the error of the English scholar who had advanced the first
theory.
Such movements of thought and religion are complicated
by another factor, the influence of the land. Those move
ments did not merely sweep across the country like armies
from one side or the other ; sometimes they originated in
the country ; sometimes they were modified, profoundly or
slightly, as the case might be, in their passage. An army
may march across the country, gaining no material strength,
but merely losing part of its force, and exercising no influence
on the population except to impoverish it although some-
1 Journal of Hell. Stud., 1889, p. 186 f.
PLATE VIII.
The Tomb of Midas the King : a Phrygian Holy Place. See p. 139.
PLATE XVIII.
Part of a Monastery above Bin-Bir-Kilisse, showing short zones of brick used as
ornament in a stone building.
To face p. 124. See p. 161.
The Country and its Religion 125
times even an army may learn something in its long travels,
and those who return to their own land may, like the remnant
of the Crusaders, come back wiser and better able to under
stand the world than when they started. On the other hand,
an idea moves over the land by passing from mind to mind ;
it is sensitive and living as it moves.
This geographical influence, the power of the country on
the minds of men, may take one of two forms. In the first
place, it may arise out of the situation of Anatolia as a bridge
and meeting-place between Eastern and Western ideas.
When the thoughts and knowledge of two diverse peoples
meet, either in alliance or in hostility, the result is not to be
represented as a simple addition. Ideas are not like dead
matter to be placed side by side : they unite and are pro
ductive, or they die ; but they cannot remain inert and
unvarying. The result of their meeting may be, and
commonly is, more like a process of multiplication ; occasion
ally, it is a process of division or destruction. For example,
the invention of the art of coinage is attributed to Asia Minor
by Herodotus; and modern opinion agrees unanimously
with him. 1 In the great highway of commerce and inter
course it was natural that this idea of a common measure of
value, guaranteed by a trustworthy authority, should be struck
out. Along with this invention we may refer to the specula
tion of M. Radet 2 in one of the most brilliant pages of his
striking work on Lydia that the organisation of trade and
caravans and bazaars, the typical Oriental method of com
merce, belongs to the same country.
1 It is generally attributed to Lydia ; Professor P. Gardner has recently
maintained that it should be attributed to the Ionian Greek cities.
2 Criticised and accepted with some modification in the writer s Cities and
Bishoprics of Phrygia, vol. ii., p. 416.
126 III. Asia Minor:
Similarly, the development and improvement in practical
working of many ideas springs from the intercourse and
jostling of many men and many minds along the great
bridge. The simplification of chronological reckoning by
the use of a definite era, so that a date can be expressed by
a single number, may belong to Asia Minor ; it became
common, and probably it originated, in the adapting of
Greek ideas to a wider sphere of practical life, which occurred
after Greece went forth under Alexander the Great to con
quer the East, when it settled down under his successors to
the great practical problem of how to rule the conquered
world. The cumbrous method of dating by the annual magis
trates of the city, which commended itself to the patriotism
and pride of the Greek citizen in Greece, became too obviously
unworkable in the wider sphere of the Hellenised East. In
no part of the ancient world is the custom of expressing dates
by counting from a fixed era more firmly established in
common everyday use than in one district of Asia Minor,
embracing the eastern part of Lydia and the western half
of Phrygia.
But, in the second place, there is a growing opinion among
the most recent investigators an opinion strongly held by
the present writer that Anatolia was not merely an inter
mediary, developing foreign ideas in a practical way, but
also played a not unimportant part as an originator. We
are inevitably forced back to a time when Anatolia was not
merely a bridge between opposite lands and great peoples,
but was itself the centre of a great empire exerting an in
fluence on the outer world. The empire is closely connected
with the most fascinating and the most obscure historical
problems which are at the present time under discussion.
Every step that is being made in the rediscovery of the early
The Country and its Religion 127
Greek world, and the history of early intercourse in the
Eastern Mediterranean lands, constitutes at the same time
indirectly an advance in the history of the ancient Anatolian
world, even though the discoverer is not conscious of the side
light which he is throwing on that subject. Twenty years
ago that Anatolian Empire was not even dreamed about by
any one ; even yet it is almost an unknown quantity, which
is to be estimated from its effects more than from direct
evidence about its actual nature. But the direct evidence is
slowly being discovered very slowly, because there is no
organised effort being made to discover it, but mere sporadic
experiments by occasional travellers, generally inexperienced,
who, as soon as they acquire experience and become skilled
and interested in the investigation, are drafted off to other
spheres of life. But still discovery, though slow, does pro
gress ; and what ten years ago was reckoned by many only
a dream, is now admittedly a real factor in history, which
has an acknowledged place in every modern discussion of the
early Mediterranean world, and which, after ten or twenty
years, will occupy far greater space than it does now. 1
An ancient system of writing in hieroglyphics, different
from any other known system of expressing thought by
visible and permanent symbols, is known in Asia Minor
through a long process of development, and is dimly trace
able as an influence on other countries. 2 Characteristic
1 Five years after the forecast in the text was printed, it was justified by
Dr. Winckler s excavations at Boghaz-Keui, which within a few weeks after
their inception demonstrated the existence of this ancient Anatolian Empire.
The excavations were made in the city which already in 1882 the writer de
scribed in the following terms: "There can be no doubt that this was the
capital, or at least one of the strongest cities, of a genuinely oriental power
which ruled over a wide country " (Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society,
1882, p. 4).
2 See below, p. 159.
128 III. Asia Minor:
Anatolian artistic forms have been studied and specified by
several investigators, though still they are chiefly traceable
as the unknown factor needed to explain the development of
the East Mediterranean world.
Most certain and most typical of Anatolia is its religion,
the influence of which on the Greek and Roman world is the
one form in which Anatolian influence has been long recog
nised by modern scholars. This they could hardly fail to do,
seeing that the ancients themselves acknowledge it, describe
it, and inveigh against it ; but still it was left to compara
tively recent scholars to show how far-reaching and long-
continued that influence was ; and among those scholars the
most acute and able has probably been Mr. P. Foucart,
formerly Director of the French School of Athens, 1 who writes
of Anatolian religion entirely from the Greek point of view
as being an outrage on the Greek spirit, saved from being
abominable only by becoming sometimes ridiculous in its
fervour. But at least he established the fact that this influence
spread in wave after wave of a sort of religious revivalism
over the classical world, mostly among the uneducated classes,
but still often affecting the population so profoundly as to
receive State recognition or require State regulation and aven
coercion. For good or for evil, it was at least enormously
powerful.
In all these departments, writing, art, religion (and doubt
less others might be added), there is perceptible a connection
with the geographical character of the country. Elsewhere
I have argued 2 that the hieroglyphics must have been origin
ated on the great central plains ; and I believe that an impor
tant part in the domestication of certain animals must be as-
1 Foucart, Les Associations Religieuses chez les Grecs, 1873.
2 Cities and Bishoprics of Phrygia, vol. i., p. xv.
PLATE IX.
To face p. 128. The Grave of a Phrygian Chief. See p. 139.
The Country and its Religion 129
signed to the same localities. The soil of those now desert
plains is generally highly fertile. Only the application of
water and skill is needed to make them very fruitful ; and
the ruins of large and rich cities are found where now the
country is absolutely barren, and where it is barely possible
for a few families to support life owing to the scarcity of
water. In the most arid parts of the plateau one observes
the remains of great engineering works designed to store
water. On the edge of the mountains, where the torrents at
the present day carry down a great mass of water during
rain and are dry again an hour after the rain has ceased, the
beds were formerly blocked by a series of embankments each
of which held up a body of water and the soil borne down by
the water ; but all are now broken and useless. I have seen
numberless cisterns, some small, some very large, most of
them now always dry ; and I have traced for part of its course
a very large artificial stream winding round the edges of the
Taurus and carrying its water to form a marsh many miles
away from its source, because no one now cultivates the land.
I made a cutting across the top of a large broad embankment,
fully fifty feet high in the middle, and about a quarter of
a mile in length, which crosses a depression in the plain
near Khadyn-Khan : it is evidently a dam intended to store
up water ; but, though it is still as perfect apparently as ever,
it holds up none, because the means of conducting the water
to it from the hills are ruined. Villagers have brought to
me lengths of large terra-cotta channels, which they dug up
on the side of a gentle elevation in the centre of the Axylon,
many miles away from any source. One who is on the out
look will find everywhere numberless examples of skilful
works like these ; and I have been told by engineers of far more
wonderful feats of engineering which I hesitate to describe
9
130 III. Asia Minor:
in the terms of my informants, until I can vouch for them by
personal examination.
All such works have a religious side, because they were not
carried out through the initiative of the ignorant peasantry.
The arts that were needed to make those wide plains pro
ductive and useful to man were all embodied and taught in
the religion of the country. The domesticated animals were
all sacred, and the treatment of them was prescribed as part
of religious ritual. 1
As might be expected, therefore, it is in religion that the
direct influence of geographical features is most obvious.
Ancient religion was far more intimately and universally
associated with social and family life than is the case with
modern European nations. Religion had made and ordered
all social relationships. The individual was bound in the
ties of religion from his cradle to his grave. Every act of
his life, good or bad, joyous or mournful, moral (to our con
ceptions) or immoral, was equally presided over by a divinity,
and, as it were, done under the divine sanction. The early
religion of Anatolia was therefore the outcome of the whole
circumstances and environment that acted on the people.
One feature in the Anatolian religion rises before us pro
minent and impressive at the first glance. The ordinary
and familiar idea is that God is the Father of all mankind
and all life. Such is the almost universal European and
Semitic conception. But it was the motherhood of the
divine nature that was the great feature in the Anatolian
worship. 2 The male element in the divine nature was recog-
1 The Religion of Greece and Asia Minor, p. 1 14 f., in Hastings Dictionary of
the Bible, vol. v.
2 The same idea is widely spread, and found in many primitive forms of
religion ; but on this subject it is not within the scope of this paper to enter.
The Country and its Religion 131
nised only as an occasional and subsidiary actor in the drama
of nature and of life. The life of man came from the Great
Mother ; the heroes of the land were the sons of the goddess,
and at death they returned to the mother who bore them.
In the social customs of Anatolia, even after it was over
spread by Greek manners and Greek ideas, many traces re
main of that primitive idea. Descent was sometimes reckoned
through the mother; women magistrates are frequently
found even in the Hellenised cities of the land. And in its
history the same impression remains : it is everywhere the
most pathetic of histories. Not vigour and initiative, but
receptivity and impressibility, swayed the spirit of the people,
marked their fate, and breathed through the atmosphere that
surrounded them a continuous, barely perceptible force
acting on every new people, and subtly influencing every new
religion, that came into the land. For example, the earliest
known trace of the veneration of the Virgin Mary in the
Christian religion is in a Phrygian inscription of the second
century ; and the earliest example of a holy place consecrated
to the Mother of God as already an almost divine personality
is at Ephesus early in the fifth century. 1
On the great level plains of the central plateau the spirit of
man seems separated from the world by the mountains, and
thrown back on its own nature ; but it is not confined, for the
idea of confinement is absolutely alien to that wide expanse,
where the sole limit to the range of the human eye seems to
be its own weakness of vision, where a remote mountain-peak
only emphasises the sense of vastness because it furnishes a
standard by which to estimate distance. The great eye of
heaven, unwearying, unpitying, inexorable, watches you from
its rising over the level horizon till it sinks below the same
1 This subject is treated more fully in Pauline and other Studies, p. 125-159.
132 III. Asia Minor:
level again. There is a sense of rest, of inevitable acquies
cence in the Infinite, all-pervasive and compelling Power
which surrounds you. The sense of individuality and per
sonal power grows weak and shrinks away, not daring to show
itself in the human consciousness. The phases of the year
co-operate in this effect, with a long severe winter and a shorter
but hot summer. Where water pours forth in one of the
many great springs which give birth to strong- flowing rivers,
the country is a garden ; but otherwise the fertile soil is de
pendent entirely on the chances of an uncertain rainfall. The
north wind tempers the heat, and the harvester trusts to it
entirely to winnow his grain on the threshing-floor. Every
thing impresses on the mind the utter insignificance of man
and his absolute dependence on the Divine power. The
peasant of the present day still as doubtless his remote
ancestors did 2,000 years before Christ calls almost every
great life-giving spring Huda-verdi, " God hath given ".
But the Divine power that was so evident was not the
stern, inexorable power of the hard desert The people saw
the nature of the land, rich and full of good things to those
who accepted the divinely revealed method, and cared for
the holy soil and the sacred animals, as the goddess, their
mother and patron, required. St. Paul, with his usual un
erring insight into the character of his audience, spoke to the
rude Lycaonian peasants about the God " who did good, and
gave rain from heaven, and fruitful seasons, filling the heart
with food and gladness ".
For the student of that country and history, it is always
and everywhere necessary to go back to that religion, to re
cognise it as the originator of all national life and of all social
forms, and as a continuous force acting throughout the later
development of the country.
o
.1
So
e
The Country and its Religion 133
In the exploration of the city of Ephesus an example may
be found of the use that might be made of this principle. Mr.
Wood spent six years searching for the site of the Temple
of Artemis, and at last he found it exactly where it ought to
be, beside the little hill on the top of which was built the
great church of St. John Theologos, and on the lowest slope
of which is the splendid mosque of Isa Bey. The church was
the largest built by the Emperor Justinian, 1 that greatest of
builders with the single exception of the Emperor Hadrian.
The historical process is obvious, since Mr. Wood s dis
covery disclosed it. The Christian religion when it became
dominant had to claim for itself the sanctity attaching to the
ancient site. It did so by building that great church overlook
ing the temple. But Christianity in its turn gave place to
Mohammedanism, and again this new religion made itself
heir to the religious associations and holiness of the locality
by constructing between the two older religious sites one of
the largest and most splendid mosques in the whole country.
The history of Ephesus is an extraordinary series of
vicissitudes, but the religious centre is always the same.
The Greek city was at a distance from the religious centre ;
it aimed at commercial or military advantages, and its site
was changed more than once as the sea-coast receded. The
holy place was the governing centre of the plain before the
Greeks came ; its priests watched the Greek cities grow and
change and decay. The outward form of the religion was
altered, but the old belief was not extirpated, and it took new
root in the heart of the conquering religion, so that in the
fifth century we find the legend of the Virgin Mother of God
firmly established among the Christians of Ephesus, though
1 St. Sophia in Constantinople was larger ; but it was not founded by
Justinian.
134 III. Asia Minor:
it was not strong enough to obliterate the historical fact that
the Holy Theologian had lived many years and died in the
city. But the belief in the old holy place was a force always
attracting the population thither, and growing stronger as the
standard of education in the Eastern Church degenerated,
and at last proving irresistible. Thus the centre of popula
tion was moved back to the old centre of religion. The old
Asiatic paganism had proved too strong alike for the Greek
trade and education and for the Christian teaching. The
Greek spirit had come, and lived for twelve hundred years,
and died of weakness, but the old beliefs continued as strong as
ever. The old goddess had not merely her home in the open
plain among the haunts of men ; she was the goddess of wild
nature and nursing mother of all wild animals, and she had her
other home among the mountains on the south of the plain.
And so among the Christians the home of the Virgin
Mother of God was discovered and made a centre of worship
and pilgrimage near the old mountain house of the Goddess-
Mother.
An apparent exception to the principle that the great
movements of history and thought must either keep to the
coast-lines or to the central bridge, and that no great move
ment on the central plateau ever springs from the northern or
the southern coast, is presented by the enterprise which
carried the first Christian mission from Perga on the
Pamphylian coast to Pisidian Antioch and the neighbouring
towns on the central bridge. The theologians have disputed,
and will doubtless dispute to the end of time, about that
sudden transition ; but the geographer and the historian who
study facts instead of starting from theories can never hesitate
as to this great fact. The first mission movement began to
work its way westward along the sea-route by Cyprus and the
The Country and its Religion 135
Pamphylian coast; but at this point it deserted the coast-
route and transferred itself to the far more fruitful and
important land-route over the central bridge. The impor
tant movements of thought had almost always taken the land-
route, for the coast-route affords only narrow and limited
opportunities along its course. It was easy for the pioneers
of new ideas to carry them by sea from the Syrian shore to
Athens or to Rome ; but by the way they as a rule made no
impression and left no seed. On the other hand, along the
land-route new religious movements worked their way by
conquering the cities and the peoples through which they
passed : they planted themselves firmly at each stage, and
each step was the preparation and the basis for a further
step.
Of the many movements of thought that have occurred
along the great bridge, the only one which can be traced in
any detail is that by which Christianity was diffused over the
country and into Europe; and it would be an instructive
example of the principles which have just been laid down to
study the geographical lines of that important movement.
But it would need a separate article to do so even in the
briefest outline. One may only say here that the current
conception, which indicates the spread of that movement by a
series of lines radiating from Syria across Asia Minor to the
north, north-west, and west, is entirely incorrect. The
movement of thought was along the great bridge, by the
road on the southern side of the plateau, direct west from
Syria to Ephesus, and then back again in return waves along
the north coast by sea, and along the northern roads over the
plateau by land. And probably the older movements, about
whose diffusion we have no information, exemplified equally
the same geographical laws.
136 III. Asia Minor:
In conclusion, two noteworthy features of the old religion
may be noticed and illustrated.
In the first place, the Divine power that resided in, or
brooded over, or sat in state upon 1 prominent peaks and
lofty mountains was everywhere an object of popular vener
ation. Elsewhere the writer has repeatedly alluded to this
subject, 2 and described how certain striking peaks, which
seem to dominate the landscape, and to watch over and
guide and measure the traveller s course, became objects of
worship partly in the higher view as abodes or seats of
the Divine might (which was distinct from the mountain, a
formless guiding power, present anywhere and everywhere
to its worshippers), partly in the lower view as themselves
Divine things, Gods to be worshipped. The two views were
both potentially present in the primitive conception, which
had not yet been fully thought out ; and the future was to
determine whether the early conception should be developed
to the higher stage or degraded to the lower.
Besides the evident value of peaks to the traveller s and
the trader s eye, there are many other considerations which
must have given importance to them. Some of these we can
trace practically in the Byzantine time, and can apply with
suitable modifications to the earliest ages. In the rude war
fare of the Byzantine period it must be observed that it was
no longer possible or safe to trust to the kind of military
strength that depended on artificial fortifications, on well-
trained officers, on a disciplined and obedient soldiery, and
on constant watchfulness and forethought in the highest
ranks of the service. The Byzantine service had degenerated,
and was not kept in a state of preparedness and good discip-
1 See below, p. 160, and Plate XV.
2 See especially the Cities of St. Paul, p. 389, and Plates XL, XV.
PLATE XI.
Rock-tomb in Phrygia : Roman period : Christian Arcosolia of later period in the
rock beneath.
To face p. 136. Seep. 139.
The Country and its Religion 137
line. The Oriental invaders were always ill-organised, and
relied mainly on sudden, unexpected attacks on a peaceful
country. In those circumstances it was inevitable that the
old Hellenistic and Roman style of fortified cities, close to
the roads and convenient for trade and administration, should
give place to fortresses perched high on peaks as nearly in
accessible as possible. These were safe refuges against sud
den attack, and the population could retreat to them when
beacons on peaks beside the Eastern roads gave warning
that a raiding army was crossing the Taurus. They could
not have been defended against a long regular siege owing
to deficiency in the water-supply, but a regular siege was
not to be feared from the raiders of the East.
Thus the circumstances of the great war against Sassanian
and Arab power tended inevitably to make the minds of the
Anatolian population dwell upon the importance and the sav
ing power of lofty peaks ; while their religion prompted them
to plant churches and monasteries as well as castles on
them, and led them first to wish, thereafter to believe, that
the saints who championed and marshalled the local defence
dwelt permanently on these high hills. 1 The same applies
in some degree to the earliest times.
As examples of those lofty, fortified rocks, which are so
numerous in Asia Minor, take Plates IV. and V. In the
former is shown the rock of Kara-Hissar, the Black For
tress, 2 the ancient Akro^nos, where was won in A.D. 739 the
first great victory in a pitched battle that cheered the
Byzantine Empire in the task of repelling the Arab con-
1 On this subject see the following paper, " The Orthodox Church in the
Byzantine Empire".
2 Kara here means "black" rather in the moral sense of terrible, grim,
strong, than as the colour.
138 III. Asia Minor:
querors. 1 It seems to have been known afterwards as
Nikopolis, the City of Victory, and became a bishopric in the
eighth century. It is now one of the chief cities of the
Plateau, and is distinguished from many other towns of the
same name by the epithet Afion, from the opium which is
extensively cultivated in the plain adjoining.
Here is the meeting (not allowed at present to be prac
tically utilised as a junction) between the German Railway
from the Bosphorus to Konia, and perhaps ultimately to
Bagdad, and the French Railway from Smyrna to Phila
delphia, Ushak and Kara-Hissar.
Plate V. shows the city now called Sivri-Hissar, Pointed
Fortress, one of the centres of the angora-wool trade, the
ancient Justinianopolis, one of the great fortresses on the
Byzantine Military Road by which Justinian tried to protect
the land of Anatolia. Its double peak is one of the most
noteworthy points for surveyors : I have taken readings to it
from very distant points in the Phrygian mountains (one
being the highest point of the Midas-city).
In the second place, almost every seat of ancient life
carries veneration and often religious awe with it : frequently
it is regarded as the seat of Divine power, and a sacred,
place. To illustrate this in detail is the work of a large
book. It has been referred to briefly in a paper on the " Per
manence of Religious Awe in Asia Minor". 2 Some of the
annexed Plates may serve to illustrate it.
Plate VI. shows a Roman milestone standing in its ori
ginal position on the great Central Trade Route, about a mile
west of the important Roman station of Psebila or Pegella
(afterwards renamed Verinopolis from the Empress Verina
1 Studies in the History of the Eastern Provinces, p. 288.
2 Pauline and other Studies, p. 163 ff.
The Country and its Religion 139
in the end of the fifth century), where was a knot of five
great roads, (i) the road from Constantinople, Dorylaion and
Amorion, (2) the Trade Route from the West, (3) the road
connecting the two great Galatian provincial centres Ancyra
and Iconium, (4) the Trade Route from Caesarea and the
East, (5) the Syrian road through the Cilician Gates.
Plates VII. -XI. show a few of the most noteworthy monu
ments of Phrygia. In VII. an archaic sheep, once used as
a sepulchral monument, is seen : a pair of hunters on horse
back are sculptured on the side of the unformed mass, and
on the other side three ibexes of a species still common in
Anatolia. The custom of representing animals on the sides
of the statues of other animals was common in the early
Anatolian or " Hittite " period. The human figure who
stands by, dressed in early November as for the Arctic regions,
affords a practical proof of the severity of the climate on
the Plateau. 1
The Tomb of Midas the King appears in Plate VIII., the
type and best example of a large class of Phrygian sepulchral
monuments (which were at the same time shrines of the
deified dead). The quaint delicate work and the romantic
surroundings make this one of the most beautiful monuments
known to modern times ; and its historical interest even sur
passes its beauty. The two inscriptions, in letters of gigantic
size and archaic Greek form, make the nature of the monu
ment certain ; though some scholars dispute it.
Plate IX. gives another grave-monument of an ancient
Phrygian chief, without inscription and probably older than
the introduction of Greek writing into Phrygia. The
analogy to the famous Lion-Gate at Mycenae lends special
interest to this great tomb. Over the little door leading
1 See above, p. 106, and Pauline and other Studies, p. 385 f.
140 III. Asia Minor: The Country and its Religion
into the plain and small grave-chamber, where the dead was
simply laid on a low couch of rock, stands a column sup
porting a very heavy architrave at the top of the rock. Two
lionesses with a cub beneath each rest their forepaws on the
top of the door.
In Plate X. the broken remains of an even greater monu
ment, close to the last, are seen. The head of the lion on
the left measures seven feet and a half across. It is exe-
ecuted in singularly life-like vigorous style, and the com
plete monument, with three great heads of lions like this,
must have been wonderfully effective. The town or village
beside it was in the fifth century and later called from this
monument Leontoskephalai. It is about six hours north of
Afion - Kara - Hissar and five hours south of the Midas
Tomb.
Plate XL shows a sepulchral monument of the Roman
period, in quite Greek style. The family tomb is here con
ceived as the temple of the deified dead, who lay in chambers
cut in the rock. Before the doors is the portico, supported
by two Doric columns, closely imitating the front of a Greek
temple.
Plate XII. shows the site of the ancient Antioch of.
Pisidia, the southern capital of the Province Galatia, with
the snowy Sultan Dagh behind. The site lies in the middle
distance, on the left-hand side of a break in the ridge of front
hills. Through that break the river Anthios flows in a deep
narrow gorge, close under the city walls. The ridge con
tinues to the right of the gorge, rising much higher than on
the Antiochian side. The faint, hardly distinguishable re
mains contrast with the numerous buildings of Deghile
(Plate XIII.).
IV.
THE ORTHODOX CHURCH IN THE
BYZANTINE EMPIRE.
ADDRESS ON BEHALF OF SECTION VI. (CHURCH HISTORY)
DELIVERED TO THE FINAL GENERAL MEETING
OF THE CONGRESS OF HISTORICAL
SCIENCES, BERLIN, 1908.
IV.
THE ORTHODOX CHURCH IN THE
BYZANTINE EMPIRE. 1
I WILL not fill up the last minutes of the Congress with
minute details of the subject about which I have to speak.
Rather, I shall attempt to show it amid its surroundings as
one aspect of the immemorial struggle between the East
and the West. In the electric contact between Asia and
Europe has been generated the greatest motive power
throughout history ; the impulse is constantly varying in
character from age to age, yet the principle is fundamentally
the same.
In the lands of the Aegean and the Levant the cardinal
fact of history has always been and is now the struggle of
Hellenism to make itself dominant. On the coasts and
islands it rules almost by right of nature ; and it is constantly
striving to force its way inland. As a motive force in the
Levant world it gained strength and direction by being
moulded into the Roman organisation ; and the Roman
Empire was in the East the Hellenic Empire, an invigorated
Hellenism, which lost the charm, the delicacy, the purity
and the aloofness of the unalloyed Greek spirit, but gained
practical and penetrating power.
In one of his most remarkable papers, written in later life,
1 Address on behalf of Section VI. (Church History) delivered to the final
general meeting of the Congress of Historical Sciences, Berlin, i2th August,
1908. It was shortened in delivery by the omission of many sentences
or clauses.
(143)
144 IV. The Orthodox Church
when his genius and historic insight were brightest and most
piercing, because they were guided by longer experience and
by a width of knowledge almost beyond the right of man
kind, Mommsen has described how the Roman Empire, at
the moment when it seemed no longer capable of maintaining
itself, was restored to vigour by the incorporation of a new
idea into its constitution, and became the Christian Empire.
This was only one out of many cases in which by a single
article Mommsen either permanently changed thought re
garding an old branch of study or created an entirely new
one. He has made it impossible for any scholar ever
again to say much of what used to be repeated parrot-like
by generation after generation of writers about the relation
of the Church to the Roman State, 1 and he has made it
urgently necessary that the history of the Roman Empire
should be rewritten from a new point of view.
The new Christian Empire lasted as a power patent to the
eyes of all the world for more than eleven hundred years.
What was the idea, what the new factor in organisation
that recreated and rejuvenated the dying Roman Empire?
It was the Church, the Church as an organised unity, the
Church as a belief, and the Church as a body of ritual.
In this connection we are struck with a certain difference
between the Latin Church and the Greek. The Latin
Church has often been able to maintain its hold on discor
dant nations : many peoples have remained faithful to the
belief and the authority of the Roman Church, while pre
serving their independence, their separation, and their
1 Der Religionsfrevel nach rom. Recht. The legal aspect is restated in his
Strafrecht from a different point of view, and in some details perhaps more
correctly ; but the older paper takes a far wider outlook and a more illumina
tive view than the legal book, which, though published later, stands nearer
the ordinary point of survey, because it is narrower in its range of interest.
in the Byzantine Empire 145
mutual hostility. But the Latin Church could not hold to
gether the Western Empire. It never identified itself with
the Empire. It represented a higher unity than the Roman
Empire : so far as it lowered itself to stand on the same
level as the Empire, it was a rival and an enemy rather than
an ally of the Empire.
But the Orthodox Church in the East cast in its lot with
the Roman Empire; it was conterminous with, and never
permanently wider than the Empire. It did not long at
tempt to stand on a higher level than the State and the
people. It has not been an educating and elevating and
purifying power. It has been content, on the whole, in spite
of some notable and honourable exceptions, to accept the
world as it was ; and it has been too easily satisfied with
mere allegiance and apparent loyalty to the State among all
its adherents. It was the faithful ally of the emperors. In
the controversies of the fifth century it elected to side with
the uneducated masses against the higher thought ; and in
an CEcumenical Council, at which the law of the whole Chris
tian world should be determined, it admitted to its delibera
tions a bishop who could not sign his name because he did
not know letters. But on this lower level it stood closer to
the mass of the people. It lived among them. It moved
the common average man with more penetrating power
than a loftier religion could have done. Accordingly the
Orthodox Church was fitted to be the soul and life of the
Empire, to maintain the Imperial unity, to give form and
direction to every manifestation of national vigour.
Practically the whole of Byzantine art that has lived is
ecclesiastical, being concerned with the building and the
adornment of churches, and of the residences of officials in
Church and State. The subjects of its painting became
10
146 IV. The Orthodox Church
more and more exclusively sacred. Art itself was frowned
upon ; and the controversy between Iconodouloi and Icono-
clastai was to a certain extent a contest as to whether Art
should not be expelled even from churches. Of Byzantine
literature, if you take away what is directly or indirectly
concerned with or originating out of the Church, how little
remains ! To letters the Orthodox Greek Church has never
been very favourable. It has never played the part in pre
serving the ancient classical literature that the Latin Church
has played.
Yet it has always clung to the Hellenic language as
tenaciously as it has allied itself with the Hellenised Empire,
to which it had given new life ; but it did so rather on poli
tical and social and religious grounds than from literary
sympathy. Greek was necessarily the language of Hellenic
civilisation and order ; and it was the language of the sacred
books. Accordingly the Church destroyed the native lan
guages of Asia Minor, 1 and imposed the Greek speech on the
entire population, though it could not do this completely in
Syria or in Egypt. As it identified itself with the Imperial
rule in the State, so it identified itself with Hellenism as a
force in society ; but its Hellenism was a degenerate repre
sentative of the old classical Hellenism, hardened and nar
rowed in its interests, but intense, powerful, strongly alive,
resolute to make the single language, the Hellenic speech,
dominant throughout the Church, yet able in the last resort,
to abandon for the moment, under the pressure of necessity,
or of overpowering national feeling, even the Hellenic speech,
and to leave only the cultus and the hierarchy and the ritual
1 That Christianity, and not the older Greek or Roman civilisation, destroyed
the native languages and imposed Greek on the peoples of Asia Minor, has
often been maintained by the writer. Professor Holl has published a con
vincing argument to this effect in Hermes, 1908, p. 240 ff.
in the Byzantine Empire 147
of the One true Church as the sole living unity in the
Empire.
The rise of every national movement that sought to
develop itself within the Empire was consecrated and vital
ised by the formation of a new Church. In some cases, as
in the Armenian schism, or in the severance between the
two great sections of the original Catholic and Imperial
Church, viz.) the Latin and the Greek, there was some dif
ference of dogma, of creed, or of ritual. But these differ
ences were, in the historian s view, not the essential features
in the quarrels that ensued between the opposing sections
of the Church. Those differences of creed were only the
insignia emblazoned on the standards of forces which were
already arrayed against one another by national and other
deep-lying causes of hostility. Accordingly in the severance
between Slavic and Hellenic nationalities, in the bitter hatred
that has often raged between Slav and Hellene, there is
practically no difference of creed or ritual ; there is only a
difference of ecclesiastical organisation. The separate na
tionality formed for itself a separate ecclesiastical system,
and the two powers, which in truth represented two hostile
races and two different systems of civilisation and thought
and ideals, regarded one another as rival Churches. Where
the historian sees Hellenism in conflict with Slavic society,
the combatants hate each other as ecclesiastical foes, orthodox
on the one hand, schismatic on the other.
Before our eyes, in this present generation, there has oc
curred one of these great national and social struggles, a
struggle still undetermined, between the Bulgarian and the
Hellenic nationality. When the Bulgarian national feeling
was growing sufficiently definite to take separate form and
to disengage itself from the vague formless mass of the
148 IV. The Orthodox Church
Christian subjects of Turkey, it expressed itself first by de
manding and in the year 1870 attaining separate ecclesiastical
standing as the Church of the Exarchate. Since that time
the war to determine the bounds between the spheres of
Hellenism and of Bulgarian nationality has been waged
under the form of a struggle between the adherents of the
Patriarchate and of the Exarchate. We at a distance hardly
^*
comprehend how completely the ecclesiastical question over
powers all else in the popular estimation. It is not blood,
not language, that determines the mind of the masses ; it is
religion and the Church. The Bulgarian born and bred,
who is Mohammedan by religion, sides with the Turks ; the
Bulgarian who is of the Patriarchate chooses Hellenism, and
in ordinary course (if the natural tendency of history is not
forcibly disturbed) his descendants will ultimately become
Hellenes in language also; only in the Exarchate is the
Bulgarian nationality supreme and lasting. Religion and
the Church is the determining principle for the individual.
In the islands and in Asia Minor you find the same con
dition. The Church is the one bond to hold together in
feeling, aspirations and patriotism the scattered Hellenes.
When we began to travel in the country thirty years ao,
there were many cities and villages where the Orthodox
Church claimed the adherence of considerable bodies of
population, yet where the Greek language was neither
spoken nor understood. These people had no common
blood : they were Isaurians, or Cappadocians, or Lycaonians,
men of Pontus or Bithynia or Phrygia. But they were one
people in virtue of their one Church ; they knew themselves
to be Hellenes, because they belonged to the Church of the
Hellenes. The memory of their past lived among these
Hellenes, and as that memory grew stronger it awoke their
in the Byzantine Empire 149
ancient tongue to life ; and now their children all speak the
language of the Eastern Roman Empire, and look forward
to the reawakening of the Christian J unity as a practical
factor in the development of the country. That old Roman
Empire is not dead, but sleeping. It will die only when
Hellenism ceases in the Aegean lands, and when the Church
is no longer a living force among their population.
We see, then, what a power among men this Orthodox
Church has been and still is not a lovable power, not a
beneficent power, but stern, unchanging, not exactly hostile
to, but certainly careless of, literature and art and civilisation,
sufficient for itself, self-contained and self-centred. The
historian must regard with interest this marvellous pheno
menon, and he must try to understand it as it appears in the
centuries.
I set before you a problem and a question. I do not at
tempt to answer it. It is not my province or my work to
propose theories ; but to ask questions, to state problems,
and to observe and register facts, looking at them in the
light of these questions. And during the last seven years,
it has fallen to my lot to study closely the monuments, the
hieratic architecture and the epitaphs which reveal some
thing of the development of the Orthodox Church in the
region of Lycaonia. I have had to copy many hundreds of
Christian inscriptions ranging from the gravestone of a
bishop of the third century to an epitaph dated under the
Seljuk Turks in the years 1160-1169. It would be pedantic
and impossible on this occasion to attempt even an outline
1 It is the only " Christian " Empire to the Hellenes, who call no man
Christian unless he is a member of the Orthodox Church. The old distinction
between Hellenes and Barbaroi is now expressed as a classification into
" Christians " or Orthodox and all others.
150 IV. The Orthodox Church
of the results which follow from the study of these epitaphs,
and of the " thousand-and-one churches " 1 in which the piety
of the inhabitants found expression. I shall restrict myself
to a few general statements, taking first the inscriptions as
beginning earlier than the oldest surviving church-building.
The inscriptions are almost all engraved upon the tomb
stones of the ordinary population of a provincial district.
Even the bishops who are mentioned must, as a rule, be re
garded as mere village-bishops (%a)/>e7Wo7rofc). Similarly,
the ecclesiastical buildings belong not to capitals of pro
vinces or to great cities, but to villages and unimportant
towns, where there was little education but a high standard
of material comfort. Those of which I to-day speak lie in
and around the humble and almost unknown town of Barata.
But in the humbleness of its range lies the real value of this
evidence. Itireveals to us the lower and the middle class of
society ; it sets before us the commonplace individuals who
composed the Imperial State.
The epitaphs help to fill up a gap in the information
which literary authorities furnish about the Christian Empire.
Those authorities give their attention to emperors and
courtiers and generals, to the capital of the Empire with its
mob and its splendours, to bishops and church leaders, to
CEcumenical Councils and the rise of heresies. But the world
is made up of ordinary, commonplace men. The leaders
cannot exist, unless there is a people to be led. There are
indeed scattered about in the literary authorities certain
pieces of evidence about the common world ; and there are
more in the private correspondence of writers and great men.
1 This name (Bin-Bir-Kilisse) is the descriptive appellation given by out
siders to the modern village which occupies part of the site of the ancient
Barata, but not used by the villagers themselves (who call their home Maden-
Sheher).
in the Byzantine Empire 151
But this evidence has never been collected. 1 It is to the
humbler epitaphs that we must look for aid in attempting
to estimate the influence which the Church exerted on the
mass of the people, and to appreciate the standard of edu
cation and life which it produced among the general popula
tion, especially in small towns and villages.
The Lycaonian gravestones will give at least the begin
ning of the material for answering the questions which are
thus raised. Though a few of the epitaphs are earlier and a
moderate number are later, yet the great mass of them belong
to the fourth and fifth centuries (especially the period A.D.
330-450). They set before us, on the whole, the Church as
it was in Asia Minor from the time of Constantine to that
of Theodosius, the Church of Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of
Nazianzus, Gregory of Nyssa, and Amphilochius of Iconium
a great period in ecclesiastical history. I am convinced
that some passages in the literature and many in the letters
written by the contemporary leaders of the Church will
acquire a new and fuller meaning and more living realism
through comparison with these memorials of their humble
followers.
To take just one example. When Gregory of Nyssa
wished about A.D. 380-390 to build a memorial chapel, he
wrote to Amphilochius at Iconium begging him to furnish
workmen capable of executing the work, and he wrote after
wards a very full description of the cruciform church which
he hoped to build. We have now abundant evidence that
the cruciform was in those regions the accepted type for
memorial churches. We find in the country subject to the
1 In a paper printed in Pauline and other Studies, pp. 369-406, a beginning
is made in a small way to exemplify the value of the material for social history
in the letters of Basil. See also Holl, Hermes, 1908, p. 240.
152 IV. The Orthodox Church
metropolitan bishop of Iconium a quite unexpected number
of churches in almost eveiy form known to Byzantine archi
tecture. And we see in the graves throughout the country
north and north-east from Iconium a marked inferiority in
the technique of sculptor and architect, and an equally marked
superiority throughout the hill-country that lies near Iconium
on the south and south-west. The fashionable type of orna
ment on the gravestones of this latter region is architectural,
as if architecture were the dominant art in the district. 1 It
was, therefore, natural that the Bishop of Nyssa should have
recourse to Iconium for artisans able to build and to adorn
the church which he had in mind.
The picture of the Lycaonian Church that we put to
gether from these humble memorials is, on the whole, a very
favourable one. The Church was still the educator of the
people. The Presbyteros is set before us in simple, striking
terms as the helper of the orphan, the widow, the poor and
the stranger. 2 We have little or no trace of alliance with the
State : we have the Church of the people, creator of charit
able and hospitable institutions, the Church as it was in the
mind and the aspirations of Basil.
We find Lycaonia a Christian land in the fourth century.^
It is the one province of Asia Minor whose ecclesiastical
organisation can be traced already perfect and complete in
the councils of the fourth century. This organisation, there
fore, must be in great part older than the persecution of
Diocletian. From the writings of Basil of Caesarea we learn
that as early as A.D. 370 a city church in Cappadocia was
1 On the Isaurian masons see an important paper by Professor Holl in
Hermes, 1908, p. 242, and in this volume XII., No. 10-12.
2 See below, p. 352.
3 The few pagan inscriptions of the period belong, some certainly, some
probably, to the engineered anti-Christian movement under Diocletian and
Maximin, on which see Pauline and other Studies, p. 106 ff.
in the Byzantine Empire 153
already regarded as only one part of a great surrounding
complex of buildings for public utility, which formed a centre
for social and public convenience. The church was already
fully marked as the focus of city life.
This conception of the church building in its relation to
the life of the city is much older than Basil s time. It is the
original idea of the early Christian world, when the Universal
Church, in competition with the Emperor and Father of the
State, raised its claim to be the parent and guide of the
people. Such a Christian ecclesiastical establishment took
the place of the ancient Anatolian hieron as the centre of
social and municipal life. The Greek conception of a free
people governing itself without priestly interference was
dying out, and the Asiatic conception of a religion govern
ing in theocratic fashion the entire life and conduct of men
was reviving. The early Christian inscriptions of Lycaonia
show this old idea as it affected the people before Basil.
I will mention here only one inscription, the epitaph of a
bishop who administered the see of Laodicea about A.D. 315
to 340, a Roman soldier, with the Roman triple name, a
man of good family and wealth and position (like so many
of those who played a prominent part 1 in the history of
Christianity in Asia Minor). In his epitaph he tells how he
rebuilt the church of the city, which evidently had been
destroyed during the persecution of Diocletian. The bishop
enumerates the whole architectural equipment which he had
built, 2 and which he evidently considered as indispensable in
a proper ecclesiastical establishment " rebuilding the whole
church from its foundations and all the equipment around it,
1 Studies in the History and Art of the Eastern Provinces, p. 372 f. ; Pauline
and, other Studies, p. 375.
2 The inscription is published by the discoverer, Mr. Calder, Christ Church,
Oxford, in the Expositor, November, 1908. See below, p. 339.
154 IV. The Orthodox Church
viz., stoai and tetrastoa and paintings and screens of wood
work and a water- tank and an entrance gateway, together
with all the mason-work, and, in a word, putting everything
in place ". While we cannot suppose that the old church,
which had evidently been destroyed to the ground under
Diocletian, was as magnificent in its equipment as the new
one, we can safely infer from this document that the same
idea of a social as well as a religious centre had been em
bodied in it originally, and that the whole establishment was
restored. This idea is apparently presumed in the inscrip
tion, as natural and self-evident.
Some years later the same idea was embodied in Basil s
great foundation at Caesarea of Cappadocia which included
an almshouse, a place of entertainment for strangers, both
those who were on a journey and those who required medical
treatment on account of sickness, and so established a means
of giving these men the comfort they wanted doctors,
means of conveyance and escort. l The church, which
formed part of this establishment, was the indispensable
centre for the whole series of constructions.
Even the cistern or water- tank at Laodicea was intended,
not as a baptistery for hieratic purposes, but simply to afford
a supply of water for public convenience : this is proved by
the cisterns at many establishments similar in character but
smaller in scale, which we have found elsewhere in Lycaonia.
In that waterless region a permanent water-supply was in
dispensable for comfort ; and as running water can very
rarely be supplied, a tank or cistern for storage was used in
stead of the fountain, which would have been employed in a
district where flowing sources were abundant. But at
Laodicea, under the hills, the tank held running water.
1 Pauline and other Studies, p, 385 ; Basil, Epist, xcvi.
in the Byzantine Empire 155
Those who are interested to trace the continuity of
religious custom will not fail to observe that the " Brother
hoods " of the early Turkish time, 1 and the Bektash Dervish
establishments (which have lasted down to the present day),
fulfil under Mohammedan forms many of the purposes which
Basil aimed at in his great foundation. And the fountains
in the courtyard of every mosque and Dervish tekke, though
primarily intended for the religious ablution before prayer,
are used for general purposes of public utility. If we could
trace the character of the ancient Anatolian hiera, we should
probably find in them the type of Basil s establishment.
As to the surviving church-buildings, the most important
among many remarkable groups is a series which we had
the advantage of studying and excavating in company with
Miss Bell in 1907, and by ourselves in 1908 in some small
supplementary work about seventy churches in and around
the Lycaonian city of Barata, fifty miles south-east of
Ikonion, and subject from A.D. 372 onwards to the metro
politan of that city. These churches form a definite group,
possessing a certain unity, revealing to us the history of a
small Lycaonian city from the fifth to the twelfth century.
The memorials of city life were no longer recorded in in
scriptions and the other monuments of the old Greek cities :
they stand before us in the churches built by the piety or the
sense of public duty of the people, often by the piety of
individuals similar to the bishop of Laodicea.
Churches have to be studied by historians as the one
form in which the public spirit and patriotism of the Byzan
tine cities sought expression. The Church was the focus of
the national life, and the ecclesiastical buildings mirrored the
x On these Brotherhoods see the Cities and Bishoprics of Phrygia, vol. i.,
p. 96.
156 IV. The Orthodox Church
fortunes and the sufferings of the people. Such buildings
were generally constructed as the payment of a vow ; and in
the inscriptions which often recorded the name of the
builder the opening formula was gradually established,
" through the vow of ..."
To take one example : the outstanding fact with regard
to the Byzantine Empire as a whole and with regard especi
ally to Asia Minor, is that they were exposed to the full
force of the attack which the barbarism of Asia was con
stantly making on the Roman Empire and the Hellenic
civilisation. 1 The Church of Anatolia, if we rightly estimate
its character, could not remain insensible to the great national
struggle against the Sassanian and Arab invaders, that dread,
ever-present danger. Accordingly, we find that one of the
churches at Barata was the memorion of a citizen who " died
in the war," another of one who " endured many wounds," and
a third was built as the memorial of a general who had led
the Byzantine armies : his name is not given, but only his
position in the Empire, for he was doubtless the only native
of this obscure town that ever attained that high rank in
the army, and hence he is called simply " the Domestikos ".
The largest and probably the most magnificent church !n
the town was decorated with paintings executed by certain
artists, who are named, under the direction of Indakos, monk,
presbyter and eponymous tribune ; and a fifth church was
dedicated according to the vow of Mammas the tribune.
When we see that churches form the angle of the fortifica
tions of the city, that monasteries make part of the walls,
that a small church crowns many a little hill near the line of
the walls as well as every high peak of the mountains
farther away, we realise that the Byzantine Church mar-
1 Studies in the History of the Eastern Provinces, p. 287.
in the Byzantine Empire 157
shalled and inspired the Hellenes of the later Empire to
defend Hellenism against barbarism, and that the tribunes
who built those churches were at once ecclesiastical, muni
cipal and, after a fashion, military officers.
That this Church militant was an effective military leader
cannot for a moment be supposed. There was a vast differ
ence between the military orders of European chivalry, the
Templars or the Knights of St. John, and these monks and
tribunes of places like Barata. But, in the temporary decay
of the Eastern Empire, the Church did undertake the
guidance of local efforts at defence, which the Emperors
had abandoned ; and thus the life of the nation came to be
more and more completely summed up in the Church. And
when the Empire revived in the ninth century, it could not
recover the hold which it had formerly possessed on the
national loyalty. The Church had entirely supplanted it in
the minds of the people.
Hitherto we have been too much disposed to think that,
because the regular army of the Empire was professional
and the soldiers of the later Roman period were almost a
caste and not a truly national army, no power of resistance
and self-defence was developed in the districts that were
most exposed to Arab attack. But the churches of Barata
tell a different tale, and their evidence is confirmed at a
later period by the example of Philadelphia, 1 which main
tained itself by the energy of its own citizens, unaided and
even disowned by the Empire, against the victorious Turks
for a century. Where the people had the army to depend
on, they trusted to it ; but where, as in Barata and Philadel
phia, they were left open to the constant attacks of the
enemy without military protection, they trusted to them-
1 Letters to the Seven Churches, pp. 400, 412.
158 IV. The Orthodox Church
selves and the Saints, but chiefly the Saints. It was Michael,
commander of the hosts of heaven, and the other Saints on
every prominent point of the city and every peak of the
mountain, who marshalled and stimulated the defensive
efforts of the people of Barata. 1
Here, again, we see how close the Imperial Church stood
to the life of the people. But this nearness was bought at
a heavy price, and much of the character of the Orthodox
Church was sacrificed to attain it. If we take the succession
of the ecclesiastical buildings at Barata, ranging from the
fifth to the tenth or the eleventh century, we can trace in
them, especially through their dedications, the change of
feeling: we see the degeneration of the Imperial Church to
the popular level of thought and religion, the revival of the
old pagan religion of Asia Minor, and the resuscitation of
the ancient gods under Christian names.
An example, the most striking out of many, occurs on the
summit of the mountain that overhangs Barata on the south.
Standing on that lofty peak, an island in the Lycaonian
plain, 7,000 feet above sea level, one remembers the ancient
idea, nowhere stronger than in Anatolia, that all lofty peaks
were the chosen home of Divine power, and feels certain that
this was a " High Place " of the old paganism. The proof
is at hand. Although in the change of religion the old
sanctuary has been destroyed, and a monastery, a church and
a memorial chapel (which bears the name of Leo) cover
almost the entire summit, and conceal the earlier features of
the place, yet the traces of the original " High Place " are
not entirely obliterated.
1 On the circumstances and needs of local defence which tended to encourage
among the people this belief in the saving power of high peaks and the abode
of their Saints and champions on high hills, see above, p. 136.
PLATE XIV.
Church and Memorial Chapel of Leo on the Summit ot the Kara-Dagh.
PLATE XV.
Church onithe Summit ol the Kara-Dagh : Apse and South-east Corner.
To face p. 158.
in the Byzantine Empire 159
In the rocks that support the church on the north side is a
passage, partly natural, partly artificial, now to some extent
narrowed by walls of the Byzantine period. On the rock
walls of this passage, perhaps formerly hidden by Byzantine
building, are two inscriptions in the ancient hieroglyphics,
which are now generally called Hittite, but which were pro
bably Anatolian in origin. These put the ancient holy
character of the locality beyond all question. We have here
the first known example of a Hittite " High Place " not en
tirely destroyed ; and we see that its ancient sanctity was
preserved in a Christianised form by the Byzantine Church.
This group of monuments, discovered by Miss Gertrude
Bell in May, 1907, after so many travellers had visited this
ancient city, is one of the best known examples of the general
principle which has often been stated that religious awe in
Anatolia clung permanently to the same localities. 1 There
can be no doubt that the church and monastery were placed
here because of the old sacred character. The new religion
was obliged to satisfy the religious instincts of the popula
tion, which reverenced this ancient seat of worship. The
church and monastery have every appearance of being com
paratively early : at latest the sixth century is the date to
which they should be assigned. The Byzantine type of
architecture with dome standing within a square tower was
already fully developed when the church was built ; hence
one would not be able to date the foundation too early.
The series of monuments on the highest summit of the
mountain would, even if they stood alone, furnish a complete
proof of the very early origin of civilisation at this site.
But it was our good fortune to find a second almost more
striking confirmation of the Hittite occupation. On the
1 See especially Pauline and other Studies, p. 163 ff.
i6o IV. The Orthodox Church
north-west side an outlying hill, called Kizil Dagh, about
eight miles from the city, was made into a fortress to defend
the approach to the central city. The early Anatolian or
Hittite character of this fortress is shown by its style, and by
three hieroglyphic inscriptions, one on a sort of altar at a
gate in the west wall, and two on a " Holy Place," a pinnacle
of rock forty feet high, roughly carved into the shape of a
seat or throne with high back, below the west wall of the
fort. On the throne is incised a figure of the god, sitting,
holding a sceptre in the left hand and a cup in the right. 1
He wears magnificent robes and rests his feet on a footstool.
He is the god who presides over and guards the city of the
mountain, with its bounteous vineyards, its fruit trees, its
riches, and its cool, delightful climate in summer. The dis
covery of this throne would have gladdened the heart of a
scholar, who died too young (the late Dr. Reichel), who wrote
from very slender materials a most suggestive paper on the
importance of the throne in early Anatolian religion. Since
his death his views have been confirmed by the discovery of
several monuments which prove that a throne played a very
important part in the equipment of the primitive cultus in
Anatolia. This "High Place" remains unharmed by any
destroying hand, except that of time and weather. Its
ancient sanctity was forgotten by the Orthodox Church;
and the features of the locality are unchanged since it was
the place of worship for the garrison of the old fortress.
The name of the same priest-king, Tarkuattes, appears in
the inscriptions on both these Hittite sites, as Professor
Sayce informs me. This priest-king must have been the
1 Professor Sayce tells me that he interprets differently the symbol which
I took for a cup ; but this is immaterial for our present purpose. He regards
the seated figure as that of the priest-king ; but in that case, according to the
usual practice, the priest wears the dress and plays the part of the god.
PLATE XVI.
The Throne of the Anatolian God : with Two Hieroglyphic Inscriptions and a Relief.
PLATE XVII.
Church No. 29 at Bin-Bir-Kilisse : Double-arched West Doorway seen irom the inside :
on the left is the Wall of the South Chamber of Narthex.
To face p. 160.
in the Byzantine Empire 161
dynast either of Barata or of some remoter city to which
Barata was subject, and the former seems far the more pro
bable supposition.
We observe three periods in the development of the
churches of Barata and the vicinity. During the fifth to the
seventh century, we have churches in the lower city, and a
group of monasteries high on the hills above the city. From
A.D. 700-850 we trace the destruction of the lower city by
the Arabs, and the formation of the principal group of
monasteries into a fortified town. Between 850 and 1070
occurred the revival of the lower city, as the Arabs were
repelled and the danger which had driven the people of
Barata into the safe obscurity of the mountains diminished
and came to an end. Then the people began to rebuild in
the lower ground the ancient city, which now lies a ruined
town of the period 850-1070. Several of the largest churches
which had fallen into ruins were then restored and remodelled ;
and it is still possible to trace the changes which were made
in order to repair as quickly as possible the shell of the old
buildings. Some of the smaller churches perhaps remained
standing, having survived the destruction wrought by the
Arabs and perhaps by earthquakes. But the majority of the
churches which the traveller surveys were probably built
from the foundations in the ninth or tenth century. The
city was now of smaller extent, and at least one church
seems to have been left unrepaired on the western side of
the town.
A deterioration in the builder s art is now manifest. The
churches were built on good old plans ; but the work was
carried out rudely and probably in great haste ; yet the haste
is rather that of carelessness than of urgent need. There
are no signs of loving desire to make the work as good and
II
1 62 IV. The Orthodox Church
rich as possible. We cannot, indeed, say how far colour may
have been employed to supplement the strictly architectural
work ; but the style is indisputably rather mean in character.
The late churches produce the general impression of a de
generating people, a dying civilisation, an epoch of ignorance,
and an Empire going to ruin.
Yet, with all their faults, even these late buildings retain
for the most part a certain dignity and an effective simplicity.
The tradition of the old Byzantine architecture was preserved
in this sequestered nook, so long as the Imperial government
maintained itself. It was only when the Empire shrank to
narrower limits, and Lycaonia was left to the Turks, that
the dignity of the Imperial Church was lost, and its places
of worship show themselves plainly to be the meeting-
places of a servile population.
What was good in the late architecture was traditional,
surviving from an older time. What was bad in it was
contributed by the age when the work was executed. The
decay of true architectural feeling corresponded to decay in
the civilisation of the period. The people were dominated
by ecclesiastical interests. Monasteries multiplied all. over
the mountain ; and much of the land must have belonged
to these foundations, and so been withdrawn from the service
of the State. Patriotism could not survive in such an atmo
sphere; and there is no reason to think that the Imperial
government either tried or deserved to rouse a national and
loyal spirit, for it was becoming steadily more oriental, more
despotic and more rigid. But the major part of the blame
for the national decay must be laid on the Orthodox Church.
The nation had been delivered over to its care. It had
long been supreme and its authority unquestioned. The
result was that art and learning and education were dead,
in the Byzantine Empire 163
and the monasteries were left. The Orthodox Church had
allied itself with autocracy against the people, and with the
superstitious mob against the heretics and the thinkers. Its
triumph meant the ruin of the nation and the degradation
of higher morality and intellect and Christianity and art.
In our excavations, never deep, we never found any article
worth picking up off the ground.
The city lived on its past. All that was good in it was
inherited. The mountains of Barata, now called Kara-Dagh,
the Black-Mountain, must have been in ancient time the
summer sanatorium of the Lycaonian plain. Owing to their
height the climate is delightful. The soil is very fertile,
and, being volcanic, is specially suited for vines. Many
kinds of fruit trees also were cultivated. Water is not
plentiful, but there are several springs of remarkably good
water. The needs of agriculture and viticulture were met
by a wonderfully elaborate system of storing the rain and
the melted snows of winter. The mountain had been won
for the use of man by long labour and by great skill. 1 The
inheritance from past civilisation, the traditional agriculture
and ^industry, was preserved just so far as to maintain the
works of former time; and a high standard of material
comfort still reigned in the mountain. The delightful air
could not be ruined. The water supply, bountifully provided
in early time, was cared for and maintained in good order.
The vines grew generously on the volcanic soil of the hill
sides. Whatever else failed, the wine-presses, which we
found in numbers, were still trodden, the harvests were still
reaped, and the fruit still gathered from the trees.
The site of this ancient city is now the most inhospitable
to travellers in the whole of Lycaonia. There is no water
a On this subject see the following paper.
164 IV. The Orthodox Church
except filthy half-poisonous puddles stored in the ancient
cisterns, and he who drinks runs the risk of death. The
vines have almost entirely disappeared, the orchards remain
only in a few trees run wild. There is hardly any cultiva
tion. The water runs rapidly off the steep slopes of the
mountain, and is of no benefit to agriculture except in the
lowest part of the little sheltered valley where the city was
built. The wealth, the abundance of crops, the fertility of
the soil, the vines that grew rich on the sides of these vol
canic hills, the water stored up by a series of dams in every
ravine and channel, the drinking water brought to the city
from fountains at a distance all these were produced by the
labour of men, guided and ordered by the wisdom of the
Divine power. It was not through the high education of the
individual that those great results in engineering and agri
culture and the use of the earth generally were gained. It
was through the guiding power of their religion. The
Goddess herself, the Mother Earth, taught her children ; as
she gave them birth and life and nourishment, so she showed
them how to use the things that she tendered to the use of
man. The religion was agricultural and economic ; and its
rules and practices were the annual cycle of events in the
industrial year. 1
In this way that ancient religion acquired an extraordinarily
strong hold on the simple minds of a little-educated popula
tion. In their religion lay their sole education ; but it pre
scribed to them all the wisdom and the conduct that they
needed for a prosperous agricultural life. The hold which it
possessed on their minds lasted through the centuries that
followed, when new rulers and strange religions became
dominant in the land. The old holy places, perhaps also
1 On this see the following paper.
PLATE XIX.
Church No. 32 at Deghile, looking from S.E. : North Arcades of the Nave : Chamber,
South Extension of Narthex, on the left : Monastery Halls behind on left.
PLATE XX.
Church No. 5 at Bin-Bir-Kilisse, Apse and South Arcades of the Nave.
To face p. 164. See pp. 155-161.
in the Byzantine Empire 165
the old religious customs to some extent, imposed themselves
on the Christians of the Byzantine time ; and it is not easy
to see any great or deep difference between the Byzantine
saints and the Divine figures who surrounded the principal
deity in the early religion.
Such was the heritage which fell to the lot of the Chris
tian population of Barata. They were heirs to a prosperity
gained by industry and knowledge and science. They were
heirs also to a religious belief deep engrained in their hearts
through generations, a reverence for the religion to whose
teaching they owed the beginning and the foundations of
their prosperity : they owed to it also the conservation of
their prosperity, for those numerous engineering works had
to be kept in good repair, and we must suppose that this
duty also was part of the ritual of the early religion. The
deity who taught them became an inalienable part of the
national mind and temperament ; and the Christians could
not get free from their heritage of belief and reverence, 1 nor
would it have been right to force them to throw off all their
inherited ideas, fixed in their nature through countless
generations.
When the churches and the epitaphs engraved on many of
them are regarded in chronological order, it is apparent that
they show a reversion to the simplest ancient belief about
the grave. Just as the ancient grave was a temple, the home
of the dead, who is a god identified with and partly merged
in the supreme deity, so in this late Christian period the
church is, so to say, the sepulchral monument. The one
great religious duty, alike in this late time and in the oldest
period, was to prepare a grave, and the grave was a sanctuary.
No trace remained, so far as we can observe, of the idea that
1 See Pauline and other Studies, p. 136 ff.
1 66 IV. The Orthodox Church
the church was a place of instruction in moral duty and re
ligious thought ; the church was in itself holy, and it was a
duty supreme above every other so far as remains show-
to build a grave-church.
The history of this city thus seems to end where it began ;
and yet through all the degradation the Orthodox Church is
not dead. It still maintains the Hellenic unity.
The Imperial Church lives, and while it lives the Imperial
unity is not dead, but only asleep. It is like the old German
Kaiser Barbarossa, who led his army of the great Crusade
from the Hellespont to Cilicia, triumphing over every diffi
culty with marvellous skill and tenacity of purpose, to disap
pear from the eyes of men in the waters of the Calycadnos :
but the creative imagination of popular belief knew that he
is not dead, that he waits the moment and the signal to re
appear among men. So it is with Hellenism as a world-
power. It may revive : the Church has always to be
reckoned with as a possibility in the future. Asia has in
store as great issues and as great surprises for the western
world in the future as she has often produced in the past.
And since I have mentioned the Kaiser of romance and
the Crusade that he led across Asia Minor, I may venture,
in the last words addressed to the Historical Congress in the
German Capital, to recall the new German Crusade which is
conducting another march across the same land. It is no
more an army of mail-clad warriors. It is an army of en
gineers and workmen. At Dorylaion, where the first
Crusade fought its first great battle, at Ikonion, where Bar
barossa gained his greatest victory, you find now large German
workshops and German hotels. This new Crusade moves
more slowly than the army of Barbarossa ; but it moves more
surely. It has surmounted difficulties as great as those which
in the Byzantine Empire 167
Kaiser Friederich met. It has yet other even greater diffi
culties to encounter. It has to accommodate its organisation
to the people of the land, and give form to itself as part of
the national resources.
The historian must regard with the keenest attentior.
great historical development. He must admire the fore
thought and the patient tenacity with which every obstacle is
provided for and overcome, and he watches with interest how
the arrangement with the Orthodox Church and the power
of the new Hellenism will be concluded. For myself, as I
have loved on many journeys to trace step by step the vic
torious march of the old German Kaiser, and as I have with
keenest interest and growing admiration watched every stage
from the beginning of this new Crusade, so I look forward
to observing on what terms and in what spirit the new Cru
saders will meet as they must inevitably at some time meet
the force of the old Imperial Church.
NOTE. I take this opportunity of supplying an omis
sion in my Cities of St. Paul, due to lapse of memory in
finishing the book amid the many pressing duties in the
opening month of University classes, October, 1907.
On the native religion of Lystra the published monuments
throw no light They refer only to the religion of the
Roman Colonia, mentioning the worship of Ares and of the
Emperor. Fig. 5, p. 216, sets before us one aspect of the
native religion. It is a very small relief, about eighteen
inches high ; the surface is much broken, and the work, even
if it had been well preserved, is of the rudest character.
Photographs of the worn flat surface taken in 1901 and
1907 are too faint for reproduction. The stone sets before
us the local god, protector of the flocks, which must have
been a chief source of the city s prosperity. The river
1 68 IV. The Orthodox Church
valleys beside the city are rich arable land, but most of the
territory consists of low undulating hilly ground suited for
pasturage. There is therefore a sheep beside the platform
on which the god stands. He is marked by the lustral
branch in his right hand as the god of purification an im
portant and constant feature of the Anatolian god. His
left hand reaches down towards an altar in the shape of a
table (compare the shape of the Hittite Lycaonian altar,
frontispiece to my Studies In the History of the Eastern
Provinces}-, but this part is so broken that the action is
uncertain. The nature of the Anatolian god, as revealer to
men of the ritual that should be observed on his own altar,
is described in the Letters to the Seven Churches, p. 64.
The inscription states the name of the god and the oc
casion of the dedication. It began with the word "con
secrated," now lost. " [Aur. ?] Neon C . . . . onianos, son of
Dionysius, [consecrated] the (statue of) Apollo to the Tribe
(called) Holy Thiasos, a vow ".
The Thiasos was the company of worshippers of the god ;
and the fact that it was one of the city Tribes is highly im
portant. It was, doubtless, a Tribe large in numbers, in
cluding most of the native population. The dedicator bears
a Hellenic (perhaps also a Roman) name, and he applies a
Hellenic name to the god. He therefore belonged to the
Hellenes, who were a part of the Lystran population (as, e.g.,
Timothy s father). The god is here assimilated to Apollo
as the sheep god, and the god of purification ; but the
identification with Zeus as the supreme god was equally
suitable. A similar conception of the divine nature on the
plateau of Asia Minor is elsewhere called Zeus Galaktinos,
the milk-god. He is the Zeus-before-the-city of Lystra.
V.
THE PEASANT GOD :
THE CREATION, DESTRUCTION AND RESTORATION OF
AGRICULTURE IN ASIA MINOR.
V.
THE PEASANT GOD:
THE CREATION, DESTRUCTION AND RESTORATION OF
AGRICULTURE IN ASIA MINOR. 1
[The following words, published a year after this article appeared in the
Contemporary Review, express the central thought of my article so exactly
from a totally different point of view, that I may be permitted to quote them
as a motto :
THUS THE MEN OF INSPIRATION OF THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY, THE
CHAUCERS AND THE LANGLANDS, SAW IN THE TYPICAL AGRICULTURAL
LABOURER THE GREAT MORAL FIGURE OF THEIR WORLD. Rd. Heath in Con-
temp. Rev., Jan., 1907, p. 84.]
WHERE the mountains of Taurus rise sharp and high from
the southern edge of the level plains of the great central
plateau of Asia Minor, and near the point -vague and never
strictly defined on that flat, featureless land where Lycaonia
and Cappadocia meet, there is a narrow well-wooded glen
which runs up two or three miles southwards into the
mountains. It ends in a theatre-shaped hollow, at the back
of which the rocky sides of Taurus tower almost perpendicu
larly for some thousands of feet. At the foot of the cliffs is
the source of a stream which gushes forth in many springs
from the rock with a loud noise that almost drowns the
human voice. Strangers find it difficult there to converse
with one another, and the speaker has to put his mouth near
the ear of his auditor. The people of the tiny village of
Ibriz, near the head of the glen, when they come to the
1 This paper is the enlargement of a lecture delivered before the Geographical
Section of the British Association at York, August, 1906.
(171)
172 V. The Peasant God
springs, talk in a high-pitched voice, which is heard across
the continuous, monotonous roar of the tumbling water.
A river flows rapidly down the steep glen from the source,
and out into the plain, where it transforms this tract of the
arid, bare, burnt-up plateau into a garden, as rills of its water
are diverted into hundreds of little irrigation channels. It
turns north-west and west, watched over by a great ruined
castle perched high on a hill two miles north of the mouth
of the glen, a hill at the western end of a long spur of Taurus.
This is the " strong Castle of Hirakla," as the Arabs called
it, Herakleia of the Greeks, which is described by an Arab
poet, detained or imprisoned in the Byzantine country, as one
of the obstacles that intervene between him and his lady ; " O
thou who art separated from me by the Roman mountains
and their steeps, by the twin fords of the Sarus, by the Pass
(i.e., the Cilician Gates) which interrupts the way, by Tyana
of the frontier, and by Hirakla". Past this great castle
(which, lying off the ordinary road, was never noticed by any
traveller, until in 1891 my wife and I crossed the hills late
one evening and passed close under its walls) the river flows
on five miles, traverses the wretched town of mud-hovels
called Eregli, 1 which has replaced the old city and bishopric
at last about 1060-64 glorified into an archbishopric of
Kybistra, then turns south of west, and after a few miles
more flows into the White Lake, Ak-Giol, a considerable
1 Eregli is now reviving, as it is practically the terminus (for the time) of
the Bagdad Railway: the actual rail-head is out in the plain at Bulgurlar, a
Turkmen hamlet, five kilometres beyond Eregli, and is likely to remain so for
some time [1906 : it remains to be seen whether the agreement concluded in
1908 between the Porte and the association of German Banks which is pushing
the Bagdad Railway will soon begin to be carried into effect. Advance beyond
Bulgurlar implies an energetic effort to carry the railway over or through the
Taurus. Bulgurlar is the point where the connection with Tyana, Nigde,
Kaisari and the north-east generally, is most convenient.]
Agriculture in Asia Minor
body of water in some seasons, in others dwindling to a large
pond bordered by great marshes. The lake at its south
western end approaches the Taurus mountains, and when
the water is high empties itself through a short channel into
a great circular hole under the rock wall of Taurus, and thus
is received back into the divine mountain from which it
came.
The river shadows forth in its course the life of man, as
the old Anatolian religion conceived it ; from God it comes,
and to God it returns in the end. Nature, as that religion
understood it, was in all its various phenomena expressing
over and over again the one great truth the life of God is
the life of nature and the life of man.
The source of this river is still called, like others of the
most strikingly beneficent springs of Asia Minor, by the
expressive name " God has given," Huda-verdi. Never was
a case in which the gift of God was more clearly declared, or
the immediate presence and permanent beneficence of God
more manifest. The river is given to transform this corner
of the dry land into a fertile garden, and as soon as its work
is done, it is received back into the rich bosom of the Great
Mother Earth.
It has never been my good fortune to see the phenomenon
of the disappearance of the river beneath the mountains at
its end. The lake has been too low on the two occasions
when I have passed that way. The main road from the
west by Iconium to the Cilician Gates and Syria crosses the
last part of the river channel by a rickety wooden bridge. 1
The great hole in the ground at the foot of the mountains
gaped close beside us. Tombs cut in the rock walls attested
the desire of the ancient population to lie in death at this
1 The bridge may have been improved since we last saw it in 1891.
174 V. The Peasant God
holy place. But the stream was dry, the graves were empty,
and the country here was uninhabited and desert.
On the rock near the sources of Huda-verdi, on a large
space prepared to receive it, 1 the ancient religion expressed
by the most striking monument in all Anatolia the truth of
life, as it was shown manifestly in this holy place. There on
the rock stands the king of the land, as the representative of
the whole people. He is dressed in magnificent embroidered
robes ; he is wealthy, great and tall (about nine feet in height),
fit representative of a rich and prosperous population ; and he
stands with hands raised in front of his face, adoring the
present god. The god is a gigantic figure, nearly twice as
large as the king. He holds in his hands the gifts which he
offers to men, the corn and the grapes. At his feet is an
implement, which seems to represent a small rude plough.
He is dressed in a short tunic, simple and unadorned, girt
with a broad girdle, with bare knees, his feet covered with
thick-soled boots which reach up the leg far enough to
protect the ankles and the lower part of the calves. The
upper part of the boots consists of two flaps at back and
front, and the fastening is by a string which is twisted a good
many times round to hold the flaps together and keep the
boots in place. Everything is of the plainest kind. The
god wears the minimum of clothing, and that of the simplest.
The belt is worked in zones of simple line-pattern, chiefly
zig-zag ; in that country some simple kind of ornamentation
is and was almost universally used ; even " the coarsest sacks
bear ornamental patterns, and the very paper in which
1 A second monument of the same character and showing the same subject,
in poorer preservation, was discovered by Mrs. Doughty Wylie in 1906. It is
about 300 feet higher up the mountain side, and on a shelf of the steep hillside
close to it stands a Byzantine church, an interesting proof that the pre-
Christianity sanctity lasted through the Christian times : see p. 158.
PLATE XXI.
To face p. 174.
The Peasant-God at Ibriz.
Agriculture in Asia Minor 175
shopkeepers wrap their parcels is often adorned with
coloured patterns ".*
The peasant from the neighbouring village who conducts
the travellers to the Huda-verdi source wears clothing almost
exactly the same in style as the god s, the tunic, the boots
and the belt. Little has changed here. Your guide proves
to you the nature of the god. He is the peasant-god, the
toiling, simple agriculturist, living by the work of his hands,
and making wealth and prosperity for the country and its
kings and great men. The kings have come and gone,
nothing remains of them and their work. The peasant is
eternal and unchangeable. You feel that there was a large
foundation of truth and wisdom in the religion which so
correctly gauged the relative importance of the king and the
peasant, and anticipated Carlyle in his philosophy of clothes,
giving the outward distinction of show and dress to the king,
an ephemeral personage, and assigning to the peasant the
real distinction of work and of service to mankind and of the
gifts which he bestows on the world, the corn and the wine.
One part of the clothing differs. The head-dress marks
the god. He wears authority on his head, just as St. Paul,
in his first letter to the Corinthians xi. 10, says that the veil
on her head is the authority of the woman ; with the veil on
she is in an Oriental land supreme wherever she goes ; with
out the veil she is a thing of nought, whom any one may
insult with impunity. 2 The god shown in the sculpture at
1 Miss Ramsay in Studies in the Art and History of the Eastern Roman
Provinces (Hodder & Stoughton, 1906), p. 21.
2 1 speak of the typical Oriental feeling, where it has not been affected by
knowledge of European customs. Where European ladies have been known,
they are treated respectfully (in some cases with very marked respect in
Turkey); but the earlier missionaries in Turkey found the situation often
very difficult.
176 V. The Peasant God
Ibriz has a high pointed tiara with two horns projecting in
front, the mystic sense and power of which we cannot now
interpret in their full import.
But why is the divine power described on the rock beside
Huda-verdi as the toiling peasant, and not as the joyous river-
god, or as the Goddess-Mother of all life, the Earth herself,
who from her bosom gives forth this bounteous gift to the
world in its need ? The mind of Greece, at such a spot as
this, would have been filled with the gladness of the loud-
laughing water and the promise of fertility and growth and
prosperous husbandry. The Anatolian mind was generally
filled with the thought of the divine Mother, the giver of all
things, the ultimate source of all life ; and surely here, if any
where, her bounty and graciousness are conspicuous. In
her life the god is a mere accidental and secondary personage.
Yet here on the rock the dominant thought is about the
work of men, symbolised by the toiling god, subduer of the
waste and unprofitable places. Not the free gift of the
divine nature, but the labour that must be applied by man
to make that gift profitable, stands graven on that great
monument. The primary personage of the divine nature,
the goddess, is away in the background, and the secondary
personage, the god, monopolises the scene.
Now it is the law of the world that, while the divine power
gives rain and fruitful seasons, there is an annual cycle of
work by the hands of man which must be applied to plough,
to sow and to reap. But that work is always understood as
the ordinary course of life ; it is not a toil, but a pleasure ; it
is the mere effort of raising to the lips the food which the
god has bestowed ; it constitutes the permanent enjoyment
of the bounty of God, extending over the year and the whole
life. The man who regards the regular operations of
Agriculture in Asia Minor 177
husbandry as toil and labour, undertaken solely with a view
to the distant harvest, is not a true agriculturist. The
true agriculturist is he who takes the work of the year as
the cycle of a happy life, and does each part of the year s
duties with a heart full of gratitude to the God who has
permitted him to do this duty. So far as this aspect of
labour is concerned, the rock-sculpture of Ibriz might be
expected to portray the pure bounty of the beneficent god,
who pours forth the life-giving and wealth-producing water
for the happiness of man. A deeper thought lay in the mind
of the sculptor who portrayed^ that scene on the rock at
Ibriz. This is the religious problem of the sculpture; and
the answer to this problem lays open a far deeper view into
the heart of the old Anatolian religion than the writer
ever before was able to attain.
The early religion of Anatolia, often called the Phrygian
religion a name which is historically incorrect, for the
Phrygians were a mere body of intruders from Europe, who
adopted the religion of the land into which they had come
as strangers somewhere about a thousand years before Christ,
that ancient religion which was supreme in the country in
the second and third millenniums B.C., and the date of whose
origin cannot even be guessed at x embodied in a series of
rules and ceremonial practices the past experience and ac
cumulated wisdom of the race. In regard to agriculture, the
domestication and breeding of animals, the cultivation of
valuable trees like the olive and the vine, sanitation, the
rights of society as against the individual, the law of property
and boundaries, the right of free intercourse and markets,
in short, the whole life of society, the customs which had
been approved as salutary by the collective and growing
1 " Religion of Asia Minor " in Hastings Diet. Bib., V., p. no ff.
12
178 V. The Peasant God
wisdom of the race, were taught as obligatory rules and
enforced by religious authority : the offender who trespassed
against any of those rules was chastised by the god. The
divine power tenders to the use of man all its gifts ; but
they must be won by knowledge and by work. The know
ledge, learned slowly by the experience of generations, was
regarded in the religion as revealed by the goddess, the
Great Mother of all life, who bore and nourished, warned
and taught, directed and chastised, all her people, and in the
end receives them all back to her kindly bosom. Her
religion set forth in a body of wise rules and precepts all
the knowledge which was needed in ordinary circumstances.
Her people had only to obey and to be faithful. In excep
tional circumstances the Great Mother was ready to give
special advice through her prophets and in dreams. She
punished inexorably all infractions of her law, by misfortune,
by sickness, and above all by fever, that strange malady
which burns up the strength and the life by direct effort of
the divine power without any definite or visible affection of
any part of the body. Such was the penalty inflicted on
every individual transgressor of the law ; and confessions of
guilt, with warnings as to the penalties that followed g uilt,
were inscribed on tablets and put up publicly at the temples
of the goddess, 1 where the traveller of the present day may
read them and publish them to a wider public than was
dreamed of by the first authors. Not merely was the
individual punished. The community as a whole was
punished by the loss of prosperity, of security and ulti
mately of its very existence, if the law was persistently
broken ; and to safeguard it the religious sanction was strict
and inexorable.
1 Many examples in Cities and Bishoprics of Phrygia, i., pp. 134 ff., 147 if.
Agriculture in Asia Minor 179
Now in the beginning it was the labour of generations of
the working peasants that redeemed the soil from its original
unproductiveness ; and this god on the rock at Ibriz stands
for the work that had given the soil to agriculture. There
is no question in Anatolia of a natural soil which has simply
to be cultivated in order to produce. The soil originally
was waste and valueless. A vast amount of toil and skill
had to be applied before the land could begin to be cultivated.
The rock-sculpture bears witness to one of those great
engineering works that lie away back at the beginning of
agriculture and history. All over the Eastern Mediterranean
lands probably round the Central and Western Mediter
ranean also, if we had any records the reclamation of the
soil from waste to fertility was regarded as the work of
a toiling god, bound to service under a stern master or king,
who has in some way got a hold over him and can compel
him to a labour in itself ungrateful and performed only
under compulsion. Hercules was the commonest name for
that toiling god. Hercules drained the marsh of Lerna with
its fifty heads of water, and gave to men the richest part of
the valley of Argos. Hercules cut the passage through the
mountains by which the lake imprisoned in the land-locked
vale of Stymphalos was enabled to flow away and the fertile
soil was made available for the happy husbandman.
It was the forethought and knowledge displayed in those
great engineering works that seemed to the ancient mind to
be divine. The god condescended to work as a toiling peas
ant and won for the use of men this far-off good, which human
skill alone could not have foreseen, and thus he gave to man
in free gift the soil out of which should come the corn and
the wine. But to understand all that is implied in this, one
has to look at the country as it is at the present day, when
i8o V. The Peasant God
it has to a large extent gone back to the state of nature and
of waste land. How has this come about, and what is the
cure?
Elsewhere the present writer has described the character
of the Mohammedan conquest of Asia Minor. 1 The Saracens,
a congeries of various Asiatic races, led by the Arabs, at
tempted it, and failed completely. During three centuries
of war they never permanently held any land beyond Taurus
except what their armies actually covered. 2 The Turks,
first the Seljuk Turks and afterwards the Osmanli, achieved
what the Saracens could not do ; and they succeeded only
by breaking up the fabric of the superior society and reducing
it to disconnected atoms. This was not done consciously or
intentionally. The Turks did not wish to destroy the in
dustry and wealth of the country ; the intention of the Sul
tans was to profit by its prosperity. The ruin was the work
of the Nomads, who followed close after the irruption of the
Turkish armies.
The distinction between those Nomads Turkmen, Yuruk,
Avshahr, etc., as the traveller still sees them and the Turks
proper, who now call themselves Osmanli, was as evident to
the Byzantine authorities in the twelfth century as it is to
day, or was fifty years ago. But the real nature of the
distinction and the origin of the various tribes are obscure,
and so far as I know uninvestigated. Those tribes are de
scribed under the names of Nomads or Turkmens by Anna
Comnena, Nicetas of Khonai and Joannes Cinnamus. They
evidently followed close on the first Turkish armies of in
vasion ; and their relation to the soldiers of those armies is
1 See especially a paper on the war of Moslem and Christian for the posses
sion of Asia Minor, in Studies in the History and Art of the Eastern Roman
Provinces, p. 281 ff.
2 See in the present volume, p. 116.
Agriculture in Asia Minor 181
difficult to determine. That is one of the many questions
which await the historian of the Turkish conquest of Asia
Minor. Were those Nomads the offspring of the first in
vaders in A.D. 1070, who maintained in Asia Minor their
national way of life as they had led it in Central Asia, while
the Turks of the cities were a people mixed of the old popu
lation turned Moslem with part of the invading armies ?
The story of the Seljuk conquest has still to be written ;
for Gibbon s generalisations are brilliant and unsatisfactory,
while Sir H. Howorth s excellent essay is just sufficient to
make us long for a detailed study according to localities.
It is abundantly clear that, after their first inroads and their
first great victory at Manzikert, the loose and ill-organised
Turkish armies were not able to meet in fair fight and on
even terms a Byzantine army, if the latter was led with any
degree of prudence and skill. 1 Yet the Roman civilisation,
which had resisted three centuries of constant Arab raids
and numerous Arab victories, died out before the undis
ciplined Seljuk power. It was the Nomads who destroyed
it against the wishes and intentions of the Seljuk govern
ment, whose enemies they very quickly became.
The Nomads remain now generally quite apart from the
Osmanli or Turks, though the Osmanli were a mere Nomad
tribe as late as A.D. 1300; and they continued practically
independent of the Turkish rule until late in the nineteenth
century, some of them till the twentieth century. I have in
my own short experience come in contact with several
1 1 speak only of the Seljuks, not of the Osmanli or Ottoman Turks, whose
Janissaries were more dangerous than the best forces in Europe; but the
Janissaries were the tax levied in brain and muscle on the Christians. The
Seljuk victories were gained in the decay of the empire ; but John Comnenus
prepared a revival of Byzantine power, which was wasted by the rash folly of
Manuel in the Pisidian rout (Studies in the History of the Eastern Provinces,
P- 235).
1 82 V- The Peasant God
examples of the recent subjugation of tribes whom travellers
a little older describe as independent. One case only out of
several that have come under my own notice may be described.
In the Ouzoun Yaila, the long high-lying plains between
the south-eastern affluents of the Halys and the most
westerly affluents of the Euphrates (especially the Tokhma-
Su), the nomad Avshahr were supreme and free until about
1866. Then great numbers of Circassian refugees entered
Turkey, at the invitation of the Government, fleeing from
their homes which had been conquered by Russia. The first
act in the new drama was that the Turkish officials, charged
with the duty of settling the immigrants in this sparsely
populated land, plundered those wretched and poverty-
stricken refugees of everything that they had brought with
them. The next was to let them fight with the former in
habitants for land a fight that has been going on in a
smouldering way ever since. A large body of Circassians
was brought to the borders of the Ouzoun Yaila, and en
couraged to take possession of the land. A regular war
ensued. The ill-armed Avshahr were defeated and driven
into the mountains of the Anti-Taurus ; and the plains of the
Ouzoun Yaila are now inhabited by Circassians.
Those Nomads, the real conquerors of the land of Ana
tolia, are still in some respects the most interesting people
in the country, though great efforts have been made in the
last fifteen or twenty years to force them to settle down by
seizing their beasts of burden and preventing their customary
annual migrations. Much suffering has been caused to the
present generation, and much injustice has been done to in
dividuals ; but it must be allowed that the migrations were
not compatible with order and industry. The process has
been an interesting one to watch. Every year I notice new
Agriculture in Asia Minor 183
villages, where formerly were only nomad encampments.
The Peasant-God is slowly beginning to work. It is a hard
task, unwillingly undertaken, at the command of a stern task
master. The life of the nomad, a perpetual holiday, has to
be exchanged for this toil of reclamation ; and it will be a
slow and painful process to bring back the land into its
former state of high cultivation. These amateur agriculturists
have no agricultural tradition, no store of knowledge and
method accumulated through generations and centuries, few
implements and no practice in using them. The women
mainly do the work. If a modern artist arises to express in
sculpture or painting the history of the re-creation of agri
culture, he will have to change the sex of the deity who stands
for the toil expended by mankind in this transformation. 1
It is no longer the goddess who teaches and gives counsel
and practises the household arts, and the god who does the
field labour. The woman works in the field, and there are
no household arts. It was pathetic, when we spent some
nights in nomad Kurd encampments on the central Anatolian
plains, to see the envy and admiration with which the women
looked at and handled the few needles and simple articles
for the household and the toilet which my wife had with her.
As the nomads do not seclude their women, I was a witness
of some interesting scenes and phases of feminine nature.
We were specially struck with what one might almost call
the rage of envy with which one handsome young woman
looked on and refused to touch ; never have I seen such
1 1 speak only of the Turkish and Nomad population. The Circassian
women are not so hard-worked, though Turkish custom is affecting the immi
grants. Among the Christians the women do the house-work and practise the
household arts and go out dressed in their best clothes on Sundays and
holidays, and are free from all but the lighter field-labour. So also among the
Albanians so far as I have seen them.
184 V- The Peasant God
rebelliousness against the tyranny of fate as glittered in her
eyes. She wanted the things for herself: she would not
admire them when they belonged to another. No wonder
that the son of a Kurdish Bey in a village of the Anti-
Taurus once said to us, " all our men are thieves ". Thus
the various races of Nomads stand opposed to the settled
Mohammedan population of the towns and villages at the
present day.
The picture which the Byzantine writers set before us of
the conquest by the nomads has been briefly described else
where by the writer ; J " the nomad Turkmens spread over the
face of the land ; the soil passed out of cultivation ; the
population decreased ; the old Christian cities (which had not
lost their former industries) were isolated from each other
by a sea of wandering tribes ; intercourse, and consequently
trade and manufactures, were to a great extent destroyed. . . .
Thus was accomplished the degeneration from civilised to
barbarian society, a process which it would be instructive to
study in detail, but which can be summed up in one word,
the nomadisation of Asia Minor." The detailed study
which is hinted at in the last sentence would be the work of
a lifetime ; but a sketch of the process, so far as during ten
years of further study it has become clearer to me, may here
be given.
It is almost literally the case that the flood of nomadism
drowned out the old civilised society and submerged the land.
The process was gradual. The cities were first of all isolated
from one another. They remained as islands in the sea of
nomadism, they were still inhabited by a manufacturing and
1 Impressions of Turkey, p. 103 (with some verbal changes). The progress
of the Nomads in the western regions of Asia Minor is described in Cities and
Bishoprics of Phrygia, i., pp. 16 f., 27 ff., 299 ff. ; ii., pp. 372 f., 447, 598, 695.
Agriculture in Asia Minor 185
trading population, which the Seljuk Turks allowed and even
encouraged. But trade implies communication, facilities for
travel, opportunities for exchange. In a civilised society
like that of the Roman Empire no city had been self-suffi
cient, all had depended on one another. The life-blood of a
civilised State must circulate freely through the whole body.
If the circulation is impeded, the body languishes and dies.
That was now the case in Anatolia. The cities were
isolated from one another by the "estranging sea" of
nomadism. Across this sea, slowly and always exposed to
the attacks of the nomads, especially of course at night,
voyaged caravans, seeking to maintain the necessary circula
tion of the life-blood, the communication between city and
city. To make these voyages safer the Seljuk Sultans built
many great khans along the principal roads that radiated
from their capital, Konia ; and those buildings, in many cases
magnificent both in scale and in architecture, rank among
the most impressive features of modern Anatolia, and
deserve notice, along with the beautiful mosques, colleges
(medresse) and tombs, as evidence of the remarkable develop
ment of architectural art in the Seljuk period.
Some recent German travellers have described those great
khans as a proof of the high level of civilisation on which the
Seljuk State stood. One of the latest of them expresses the
opinion that the Seljuk khans have taken the place of similar
large Roman and Byzantine buildings, and conserve in their
plan, which is everywhere practically the same, the accepted
method of those older hotels on the Roman roads. There is
a large element of truth in part of this opinion, but part needs
serious modification. As those same travellers remark, the
large Seljuk khans resemble fortresses, with their massive
walls, unbroken by any opening except slits which are loop-
1 86 V- The Peasant God
holes rather than windows, and their single, well-protected
entrance. If there were similar buildings along the Roman
roads, how comes it that not a trace has ever been found of
them ? The truth is, that such buildings were not wanted
where travelling was fairly safe, as it was in the Roman
Empire. The inns and mansiones of the Empire were build
ings of a humbler and less lasting character. Fortresses
were not needed. Private enterprise was sufficient to main
tain hotels or inns adequate to the needs of travellers. All
that is known of them suggests that they were of a humble
character, squalid, dirty and viqious, 1 and that wealthier
travellers avoided them and took their own equipment In
a few cases, on the summit of high passes across the
mountains, buildings of a more permanent kind were needed,
as, e.g., at the summit of the great Taurus pass just above
the Cilician Gates ; and it is noteworthy that at this point
was the ancient Panhormos, whose name shows it to have
been a large inn. Defensive strength would be of some im
portance here among the mountains, and a guardhouse and
harbour of refuge, Panhormos, was established on the sum
mit, which was often deeply covered with snow in winter.
The Seljuk khans bear witness to the high development
of art, but to a very unsound condition of society and govern
ment, in the Seljuk State. Such great, fortress-like buildings
were not needed on the Roman roads and therefore were not
built then. In the Seljuk time they were necessary, be
cause the caravans, by which alone trade and communication
were kept up between the cities, required shelter at night
and protection from the nomads. The cities were islets in
the ocean of nomadism ; and the khans were harbours of
refuge at short intervals in the dangerous voyage from city
1 Pauline and other Studies, p. 385.
Agriculture in Asia Minor 187
to city. Peace began to reign on the roads only when com
munication ceased, when there were no travellers to rob and
no trade to plunder.
As for the model on which the khans of the Seljuks were
built, I should, like Dr. Sarre, find it in an old Anatolian
style of building ; but not in hotels of the Roman or Byzan
tine time. The model was the old class of buildings called
Tetrapyrgia, whose very name reveals their form. They
were farmstead ings of quadrilateral shape, having at the four
corners, towers, which were connected by walls and inner
chambers, enclosing an open quadrangle. They were so
strong that regular military operations were needed to re
duce them ; x and, given the shape just described, this implies
a construction like the Seljuk khans, with strong outer walls
and a single defensible gateway. The view of Zazadin
Khan 2 near Iconium, given in Plate XV., may serve as a
fair specimen of these buildings.
In those big fortified homesteads lived the large patriarchal
households of the landholders, representatives of the con
quering caste in a subjugated land, a class which is just
beginning in recent investigation to appear before the view
of history. From those landed families came some of the
leading figures in early Church history, such as Basil of
Caesareia and Gregory of Nyssa. Their history may yet be
traced more completely.
The cities of Turkey, isolated from one another and thus
compelled to be each sufficient for itself, dwindled away.
The old manufactures died, some sooner, some as late as the
middle of the nineteenth century. It was my good fortune
1 As Eumenes had to do (Plutarch, Etim. 8 : Studies in the History of the
Eastern Provinces, p. 373).
2 See below, Article XII., No. 17.
1 88 V. The Peasant God
that we began, my wife and I, to travel just at the end of the
period of decay. We saw the end of the old and the begin
ning of the new. I remember riding into Konia, once the
greatest and most splendid city of Turkey of which the
Turkish proverb said, " See all the world, but see Konia" ; it
was as if one were riding through a city of the dead, street
after street seemed empty and solitary, like the enchanted
city in the story of the Arabian Nights. But now Konia is
rising again to be an important, though far from a splendid
city, as the terminus of the Anatolian Railway and beginning
of the Bagdad Railway. Its claims to magnificence are gone ;
the old walls were all torn down about twenty to thirty years
ago ; of the palace only the shapeless core of a tower remains ;
some of the beautiful old mosques are ruinous, some are
patched in the coarsest way, yet even thus many of them
retain enough of the past to be charming. In April, 1904,
we noticed unwonted patches of white colour along the road
from the railway station to the Government house, and on
inquiry learned that the German Ambassador had visited
the city a week before, and the mud walls had all been white
washed along the road by which he drove to call on the Pasha.
That is the cheap magnificence of the twentieth century in
Asia Minor. One week after the gorgeous pageant there
were still a few traces left of it !
Not merely did trade and manufacture die out. The land
passed out of cultivation, except in so far as was necessary to
feed a dwindling population. Nomads do not cultivate the
ground, but live on their flocks, and only the city population
required to be supported from the tillage of the ground.
Thus a land which had been absolutely the richest in the
world became one of the poorest. I have seen, especially in
Palestine, bare hillsides where could be traced the old terraces,
Agriculture in Asia Minor 189
showing that the hills had once been cultivated to the very
summit; but the terraces were neglected and gradually
broken down, the soil was washed off the hillside, and there
remained either bare rock or a uniform slope too steep to
cultivate, if any cultivator appeared. There are many
stretches of land on the edge of the hills which are now
almost covered with stones washed down from above ; yet
round the villages some scanty cultivation exists, and corn
struggles up amid the stones from a soil which is hardly
visible under them, but which is so fertile that even thus it
can grow a wretched crop to make bread for the villagers.
There are vast plains of splendid soil where you could hardly
see a stone in an acre pure, rich soil but absolutely sterile
because the water supply has ceased. Where the land has
become so bare and smooth, the rain runs off as soon as it has
fallen, because there is nothing to detain it. The irrigation
channels in that soft, deep soil efface themselves as soon as they
are neglected. Yet there is abundance of water near at hand,
it only needs to be distributed. Over parts of such plain we
rode once, my wife and I, for more than an hour, through
water over two feet deep : in other years I have ridden
repeatedly over the same road, and found the country hard
and dry as a bone that had lain for years in the sun. 1
I have seen miles and miles and know there are many
hundreds of miles along the coast-land covered with a
growth of wild olive shrubs, where now not a single olive is
produced. All that country was once a great olive garden,
teeming with wealth and population, where now are only a
few black goats -hair tents in the winter, and hardly a living
1 This refers to the road from Konia to Kara-Bunar and the East generally :
the precise part was west of Ismil. The most direct path from Konia to
Ismil is passable only in the driest season of the year : the ordinary path
keeps well to the north to avoid the inundating waters.
190 V. The Peasant God
soul in the heat of summer. The olive dies out where the
population is Mohammedan. It is the tree of civilisation,
which can flourish only where order and security of tenure
exist. Even in a disorderly land one may sow cereals and
vegetables, the fruit of which may with luck be gathered in
a few months ; but the young olive takes fifteen to eighteen
years to bring in any return, and an outlook over that
length of time is too great for any Mohammedan population.
The reason lies, not in any inherent necessity of Moham
medanism, but in the fact that no Mohammedan Govern
ment, except, perhaps, that of the Moors in Spain, has
ever been able to produce the assurance in the minds of
its subjects that property will be secure for so long that
it would be worth while to make an olive plantation.
One example may be given of the contrast between the
wealth of the past and the poverty of recent time. In 1882
I found a column, eleven feet high, covered on one side with
Greek writing, in an upland village near Antioch of Pisidia.
It records a list of subscriptions for patriotic and religious
purposes, made on some occasion about 250 A.D. by a society
which was fighting against Christianity. 1 The subscriptions
amount to several hundred thousand denarii. The denar!us
had considerably depreciated in value at that date since
the time when it was worth a franc; and the exact point
of depreciation which it had reached is uncertain, but it
can hardly have been lower than a thousand to the pound
sterling in amount of metal. The total sum subscribed was
certainly considerable. Twenty years ago you could not find
in the whole village change for a coin of the value of four
shillings. That one example may be taken as a not unfair
measure of the ratio which the wealth of the country in
1 Studies in the History of the Eastern Provinces, pp. 321, 372.
Agriculture in Asia Minor 191
Roman times bears to the wealth of the present day. The
difference is that between a well-cultivated and an ill-culti
vated country. Four thousand years ago the peasant culti
vator made the one ; during the last millennium the soldier
and the fanatic have made the other. The peasant cultivator,
with peace and security of tenure, must be called in once
more to repair through 50 or 100 years of patient labour
the damage wrought by war and misgovernment.
Let me once more guard against a possible misunderstand
ing of my words. There is a considerable amount of land in
Asia Minor which has never passed out of cultivation, and
where the agricultural tradition and experience have been
kept alive. A population of a good many millions had to be
fed out of the produce of the country; and, if the population
is less now, there is more exported than formerly. The best
and most favoured land has remained under cultivation, and
especially near the centres of population. Irrigation has
never ceased and is still practised in certain districts, so that
the essential principles of water-engineering have never been
wholly forgotten. The wheat of the Ushak region is of re
markably fine quality, and I have been told by several in
dependent authorities that it is not inferior to the finest in
the world. In 1906, for example, I travelled for an hour on
the Anatolian Railway with a Belgian gentleman of long
experience in the country, and he mentioned that the Ushak
grain commanded a higher price for certain purposes than
even the best Canadian wheat. The Ushak district may be
taken as a fair specimen of the land of the upper plateau.
The figs of the Maeander valley (commonly known as Smyrna
figs, because Smyrna is the harbour of exportation) have
always been prized in commerce. Many other examples
might be quoted to prove what may be expected from the
192 V. The Peasant God
restoration of agriculture over the vast areas where it has
almost entirely ceased.
But the revivification of this almost dead land has begun.
The cities are becoming busier. Industries are reviving.
The nomad, even, is being changed into the husbandman by
a process that will be long and painful.
The reason for the revivification of the country is not the
beginning of good government, for the government is as bad
as ever it was ; government always lags behind the people,
and is forced onward or dragged onward by the growing
education and insistent demands of the nation. The reason
lies in one phrase the coming of the railways. Communica
tion is now becoming possible and fairly safe ; the life-blood
is beginning to flow in the new veins ; the body that was
dead has begun to live again. Roads are improved though
the traveller fresh from Europe would be puzzled to detect
where the improvement lay and these help to feed the rail
ways and restore circulation. With communication comes
trade and the revival of old industries or the introduction of
new ones. There has been an immense increase in the pro
duction of Turkey carpets, as it has become possible to send
them to the coast at remunerative rates. Towns where hot
a single carpet-loom existed fifteen years ago have now
hundreds of people engaged in the manufacture. Less than
twenty years ago a friend who was engaged in the carpet
trade, going up the Ottoman Railway as soon as it was
extended to the Lycus valley, was struck by the ornamental
possibilities of large, cheap kerchiefs made at the small town
of Bulladann. He sent home a few specimens ; about three
years later he sent home 70,000 in one year, and others were
also sending them to London and New York. The gather
ing and export of liquorice root, begun about sixty years
PLATE XXIII.
Zazadin Khan near Konia.
See pp. 185-7.
PLATE XXIV.
To face p. 192.
The Gate of the Virgin-Goddess : looking over the Limnai.
Agriculture in Asia Minor 193
ago, rapidly became the largest trade in Turkey. For a
long time it has been sent exclusively to America to sweeten
tobacco ; thus the Tobacco Trust became the sole purchaser ;
and it used its position to seize the entire trade a few years
ago.
In the revivification of Asia Minor the land has to be
brought back into a state fit for cultivation by clearance, by
irrigation, by planting and growing of trees. That means
an expenditure of uncounted millions and a long lapse of
time before any return for that vast expenditure can begin.
Commercially, it is an impossibility. No one would risk his
money in schemes which can at the best only begin to pay
his children or his grandchildren when population has multi
plied and there is a home market for produce ; and the cost
would be so tremendous that the money could not be raised.
This work cannot be done by money. It can only be done
by the labour of generations of men working and improving
their own land for the benefit of their own families.
Here again I must guard against misconstruction. I do
not make so foolish a statement as that capital cannot be
judiciously used to supplement, direct and facilitate the re
storation of agriculture, or that capital cannot be used
remuneratively in the districts most favoured by nature,
where irrigation can be restored most easily. In 1891 I saw
a great irrigation channel on the outer sides of Taurus not
very far from Ibriz as the crow flies, but very far distant as
water flows; and we crossed it on horseback, not without
difficulty owing to its depth, at a point high on the hill
underneath the "strong castle of Hirakla". This channel
was constructed, as I believe, several thousand years ago;
and it carried an immense supply of water many miles to be
dissipated at last in uncultivated lands. In 1902 I saw the
13
194 V. The Peasant God
same channel utilised in the middle of its course, but farther
away from its source than the point under Hirakla where
we saw and crossed it in 1891, by the Circassian people of a
new village. The villagers had simply broken down the
channel and turned the whole of the water (far too great a
supply) at random over the country, making it difficult for
waggons to travel on the road at the point where the water
crossed it The waste of abundant water supply at some
points and the dearth generally constitute the problem which
has to be solved. But the elements of a solution are for the
most part present : only one element is entirely wanting, and
that is security of property. There is no guarantee that he
who labours shall profit. Without palace influence and
palace favour no one can gather the fruits of his toil.
It is known, for example, that a good deal is being done
on the soil of Mesopotamia, which has in great part passed
into the possession of the Sultan himself in quite recent
times (as have enormous estates throughout the Turkish
Empire). Here there is security of property. Here the
rapacity of the tax-gatherer does not step in to seize the
fruits of labour, for no taxes are paid on Imperial property :
all the profit belongs to the private revenue of the Sultan,
and the State grows poorer as estate after estate has been
added to his vast possessions. But many exaggerated and
inaccurate reports about the facts in Mesopotamia are current,
and have sometimes found their way into high-class journals
in Europe. The real facts can be learned only by patient
travel in that country, which is unknown to me.
This process of peasant-cultivation has recently been
carried out on a small scale in the neighbourhood of Smyrna,
where European influence is strong, and where the enlightened
administration of Kiamil Pasha has been effective. Plots of
Agriculture in Asia Minor 195
waste land on the hillsides have been given to peasants on
condition that good cultivation is applied to them, and the
result has been a great enlargement of the area of productive
land. This improvement has taken place in spite of the
notorious insecurity of the country, due to the increase of
brigandage caused by the war in Arabia. The soldiers for
that war are drawn mainly from Anatolia. Arabian service
is regarded as equivalent to a sentence of death ; the con
scripts desert in numbers, and all deserters, as outlaws, take
to the mountains, z>., become brigands. A brigand must go
where there is the opportunity of earning a livelihood ;
therefore they abound near Smyrna, where there is industry
and money, while the poverty-stricken inner country is fairly
safe.
Among the creators of those vineyards on the hillsides
near Smyrna there existed a knowledge of method and a
tradition of viticulture. The skill gained through the ex
perience of generations was put into the work of reclamation.
The peasant cultivators in this case were merely the repre
sentatives for the moment of the eternal peasant, the em
bodiment of slowly acquired knowledge. The superhuman
power, which is above and independent of the ephemeral
mortal workman, must be brought to bear on the land.
The old artist at Ibriz tells us so in his sculpture. The
peasant-god, the divine nature, that is what reclaims the
soil for the use of mankind. It is a work of the race, not
of the individual.
To knowledge must be added labour, the toil of genera
tions. Money is here of no avail. This work is antecedent
to money : the foundations have to be made on which
civilised life, with intercommunication, trade, and money as
the common measure of value and the instrument of exchange,
196 V. The Peasant God
may be built up. In the savage state, or to the civilised man
on a desert island, money is valueless, and much building is
needed before it can acquire value.
That truth is sometimes not appreciated in discussions
on this subject. Recently I chanced to read an article in
a popular magazine 1 on the crofters in the Highlands of
Scotland, in which the writer proved that the crofter system
was more expensive than the landlord system. Draining
the croft would cost 150, building a house ^300. The
crofter would have to pay the bank five per cent, for this
money : the landlord could borrow it at four per cent. The
increased annual burden was fatal to the crofter-system.
The draining and irrigation of the land of Anatolia cost no
money : it cost the work of generations : it was paid by the
lives of men, and not by coin of the realm. The restoration
of agriculture can be made and paid for only in the old way.
Unless the crofter can make personal work serve instead of
money, he and his system are certainly doomed. The
peasant-god had no bank from which to borrow at five per
cent.
Thus we have briefly described how the country of Asia
Minor was made by long hard labour suitable for agriculture,
and how the agriculture was destroyed and the land allowed
in great part to relapse into its primitive state. The restora
tion of the Anatolian land to agriculture can take place only
in the same way as the creation of agriculture was originally
achieved, by slow patient labour directed by intelligence
through a succession of generations. The process may be
facilitated by utilising the other natural products of the
country, especially the mineral wealth : an increasing popu
lation will need a larger supply of food. But to the writer
1 Black-wood s Magazine, August, 1906.
Agriculture in Asia Minor 197
the special interest of this investigation lies in the connection
with religion. Religion led the way and fixed the rules for
the creation of agriculture ; and it has degenerated along
with the agriculture and civilisation of the land. The
connection is apt to escape notice among modern scholars,
because in European countries a widening gulf separates
religion from practical life, and there has thus been induced
a habit of thinking that the history of religion proceeds
apart from and unconnected with the development or de
terioration of civilisation. But this is a grave error. The
development of a nation s life is in the long run the history
of its religion.
Note. As bearing on the permanent sanctity attached to
certain sites in Asia Minor through all mutations of the
external form of religion, I use this opportunity of correcting
my description of the sacred place on the Limnai (Cities of
St. Paul, p. 293). This place, still regarded as holy and
made the scene of an annual panegyris in September in
honour of the Virgin Mother of God, was, beyond all
question, once a sanctuary of the Virgin Artemis of the
Limnai. There is at this spot both a small cave high up
in the rock (which here drops steeply down to the lake), and
near it on the shore a very curious great arch of rock,
apparently natural, through which one looks out over the
lake. At the panegyris mass is celebrated in the cave,
which has a rude niche like a roughly hewn apse to the
West, not East ; this apse has been partly destroyed. But
the natural phenomenon of the arch probably originated the
sanctity of the spot.
I am indebted to Miss Gertrude Bell for the description
and for the photograph of the archway, Plate XXIX.
The question arises, whether this natural doorway is the
198 V. The Peasant God
Dipylon, which on one theory was the sacred place of Great
Artemis, the goddess of the Limnai. In the Tekmoreian
inscriptions the sacred ceremony, according to the restoration
of an inscription printed in my paper on the subject, 1 took
place in the Dipylon. Now Dipylon strictly implies two
doors ; but it might indicate a temple like that of Janus, a
gateway with its two faces (as stated in Studies in the History
of the Eastern Provinces, p. 349).
1 Studies in the History of the Eastern Provinces, p. 319: & T]
On p. 349, I mentioned another restoration T]$ 8nr6[pcf> without eV (which
occurred to me too late to be discussed on p. 319). This restoration is ad
vocated by Mr. A. J. Reinach (who does not observe that I suggested it) with
weighty but not quite convincing arguments. Perhaps the photograph here
given may turn the scale in favour of the old reading : though after thinking
of Snrvpy I long preferred it.
VI.
THE RELIGION OF THE HITTITE
SCULPTURES AT BOGHAZ-KEUI.
VI.
THE RELIGION OF THE HITTITE SCULP
TURES AT BOGHAZ-KEUI.
[NOTE. The following paper is left practically as it was
written in the year 1881, with only some slight verbal
changes. The writer had not the opportunity of correcting
the proofs before the paper was published in the Journal of
the Royal Asiatic Society , 1882. The view which is here
taken of the religion of Asia Minor has not been universally
accepted ; and several scholars would reject the idea that so
important a part in the cultus belonged to the feminine ele
ment. On the other hand, those who maintain this view
have developed it in much greater detail than appears in this
short paper. But it seems better to reproduce the original
statement of the writer s views, partly because sentences and
paragraphs from this inaccessible paper have been quoted in
several works, partly because of a recent discovery in Ephesus.
Mr. Cecil Smith, in publishing the remarkable ivory statuettes
found by Mr. Hogarth in the foundations of the ancient temple
of Ephesian Artemis, expresses the opinion x that one of them
represents the Eunuch priest of the goddess ; he compares it
with the priest who so frequently appears in the rock-sculp
tures of Boghaz-Keui, and he supports by new arguments the
interpretation of that figure which is stated in the present
article. The support accorded by so judicious and so com-
1 Archaic Artemisia of Ephesus, p. 173.
(201)
2O2 VI. The Religion of
petent an authority is a sufficient justification for reprinting
a paper written twenty-seven years ago.
This paper contains the germ of many of the writer s
subsequent speculations about early Anatolian religion. It
has been developed, improved, carried out in more detail in
those later speculations ; but it needs no change, for it simply
expresses the facts as they forced themselves once and for
ever on the writer s mind. I do not mean that I would now
maintain in every detail the opinions here expressed ; and I
doubt if I should now have courage to state so positively
the general theory which is here formulated. But at least
nothing has been discovered to make me withdraw from the
rather bold position which I then took up. The paper made
no attempt to explain the sculptures as a whole. Probably,
if it had done so, one would not have been able to reprint it.
But, as that old article was written under the first inspiration
of a visit to the site, and described what I thought I saw in
certain parts of those wonderful sculptures, it may be worth
while to place before the reader the record of the impression
produced by them.
The range of illustration is small, because the writer at
that time had seen hardly any of the Hittite sculptures, and
had had very little practice in estimating the character of
rock-sculpture. The visit to Boghaz-Keui and Euyuk
occurred on the first journey which I made in the interior
of the country, about thirteen months after first landing in
Asia Minor. With twenty-eight years experience I should
now be much better able to profit by studying the rock-
monuments than I was then. I may recall with deepest
gratitude the debt which I owe to the late General Sir
Charles Wilson for having invited me to accompany him on
this journey. But his official duties did not permit him to
the Hittite Sculptures at Boghaz-Keui 203
remain at any place except modern centres of population
and government, hence we had only a hurried view of the
great city and the rock-sanctuary.]
M. Perrot has rightly argued that the wonderful rock-
sculptures near Boghaz-Keui are a series of religious re
presentations. 1 But, while his account is in general accurate
and sympathetic, I believe that further progress in the
interpretation of their meaning is hindered by one misconcep
tion on his part : many of the figures which he considers
male seemed to me undoubtedly female. I came to Boghaz-
Keui fresh from the perusal at Ancyra of the only copy of
M. Perrot s Voyage Archeologique that exists in Asia Minor;
but, after two hours examination, Sir C. Wilson and I
both came independently to the same conclusion, that the
majority of the figures were female. 2 We were fortunately
able to remain a second day, and I spent about five hours
examining every figure in this regard. In many cases the
sex is quite uncertain ; but only a few are certainly male,
and a large number are certainly female. On the whole, I
came to the conclusion that the sculptures were the monu
ment of a religion in which the female sex played a much
more important part than the male, and that in various cases
where the sex was doubtful, the probability lay on the female
1 These notes are printed solely from the wish to call attention to a remark
able series of sculptures, which have as yet been almost completely neglected.
In our hurried visit, 1881, there was no opportunity of examining them
sufficiently. Now Herr Hermann has been charged with the duty of bringing
casts to the Berlin Museum, and there is every reason to hope that the
sculptures will soon be accessible to study. [This hope was only partly
realised.]
2 [I may add that the impression was produced on both of us, quite inde
pendently and unexpectedly, of something characteristically feminine in the
face ; this impression is not conveyed by the photographs, where shadows
and angle of view exercise too strong influence : see also concluding note to
this article.]
204 VI. The Religion of
side. Bachofen (das Mutterrechf), amid many untenable
opinions and crude hypotheses, has shown how great an
influence belonged to the women in Asia Minor, and this
influence is of course creative of or dependent on religious
sanction : and Gelzer has proved that the Lydian religion
attached special importance to the female (Rhein. Mus.,
xxxv., p. 516). The character of the sculptures at Pteria is
therefore in accordance with the analogy of Asia Minor.
Two facts suggest a false idea as to the sex of the figures.
In the first place, the great mass of the figures fall into two
long lines directed towards a central point. The series of
figures on the left is headed by three gods, that on the right
by a goddess ; almost all the figures on the right are clearly
female, several of those on the left are equally clearly male.
Hence the idea arose that the figures of the right are female,
of the left male. But this idea cannot be carried out com
pletely. The goddess who leads the procession on the right
is followed immediately by a youthful god standing on a
leopard ; and in the series to the left there are "several female
figures.
In the second place, the wearing of the short tunic has been
generally regarded as proving that more than half the figures
are male. . Closer examination makes this doubtful. Most
of the figures are armed, and it is obvious that if women are
going to fight they cannot wear long sweeping robes.
Female warriors were one of the most distinctive character
istics of the religion of Asia Minor and particularly of
Cappadocia ; and I should not hesitate to consider the
twelve armed figures * in the narrow passage opposite the
most mysterious and perhaps the most sacred figures of the
whole to be Amazons.
1 Perrot, Voyage Archeologique, pi. 52.
the Hittite Sculptures at Boghaz-Keui 205
All that occurs on earth must have its prototype and its
origin in similar divine phenomena. Accordingly, the idea
of women as fighting and as warlike, finds its religious
justification in the warlike goddess who was one of the chief
manifestations of divinity ; and the masculine air, the short
dress, the flatness of the bosom, are quite in the spirit of a
religion, of which it is characteristic to raise itself above the
distinction of sex. Its essence * lies in the adoration under
various forms of the life of nature, that life subject apparently
to death, yet never dying, but reproducing itself in new forms,
different and yet the same. This perpetual self-identity
under varying forms, this annihilation of death through the
power of self-reproduction, was the object of the enthusiastic
worship of Asia Minor with all its self-abandonment, its
periods of complete immersion in the divine nature and of
superiority to all moral distinctions and human ties, its
mixture of obscene symbolism and the most sublime truths.
The mystery of self-reproduction, of self-identity amid
diversity, is the key to explain all the repulsive legends
that cluster round that worship, and all the manifold
representations or embodiments of the divine life that are
carved on the rocks of Boghaz-Keui [and Frahtin, and the
palace walls of Euyuk]. The parent is the child, the mother
is the daughter, the father the son; they seem to men
different ; religion teaches that they are the same, that death
and birth are only two aspects of one idea, and that the
birth is only the completion of the incomplete apparent
death.
1 1 must here assume unproved that theory of the character of Anatolian
religion which seems required by the facts of its history. [It is stated more
fully in the article of " The Religion of Greece and Asia Minor " in Hastings
Dictionary of the Bible, v., p. no ff.]
206 VI. The Religion of
One of the central ideas in the religion is that the dis
tinction of sex is not ultimate, but only an appearance, and
not a real element of the divine life. In its essence that
life is self-complete, self-sufficient, continually existent ; the
idea of death comes in with the idea of sex, of incomplete
ness, of diversity. The goddess is the earth, the Mother ;
the god is the Heaven, the Father; the ultimate divinity
comprehends both heaven and earth, both god and goddess.
Hence arises the widespread Anatolian idea of the andro
gynous god an idea which appears in Greek art as the
Hermaphrodite merely a rude symbolical expression of the
unreality of sexual distinction. Hence also arises the ten
dency to confuse or to obliterate the distinction of sex in the
gods, to represent the goddess with the character of the
man, the god as womanly and effeminate ; while the priest
of the religion must be neither male nor female.
The wearing of bracelets and earrings is of course not pe
culiar to women, but has been practised in many countries
by men. In the rock-sculpture at Ibriz in southern Cap-
padocia 1 both the husbandman-god and the bearded king
wear earrings ; so also did Lydian men. 2 But in the sculptures
of Boghaz-Keui and Euyuk I could not find them on any
figure certainly male with one exception, and this exception
furnishes a presumption that they were in northern Cap-
padocia a feminine ornament. This is a figure that occurs
three times at Boghaz-Keui, and twice at Euyuk, 3 and M.
Perrot rightly comes to the conclusion that it must repre
sent the high priest ; and we can easily recognise in it the
1 See above, p. 174.
2 Xenophon, Anabasis, iii., i, 31.
3 Perrot, pi. 42, 47, 50, 51, 56. Euyuk is five hours north of Pteria. Here,
out of the side of one of the large artificial "mounds of Semiramis," appear
the doorway and front, covered with sculptures, of some great palace or temple.
the Hittite Sculptures at Boghaz-Keui 207
effeminate character, the soft outlines, the long sweeping
dress, and the ornaments of the eunuch high priest, Archi-
gallos, so well known in the cultus of Cybele. 1 This view,
to which M. Perrot inclines, is made quite certain by the
subject of the following slab at Euyuk, which was not seen
by him : Sir C. Wilson got the villagers to turn over a block,
and disclosed one of the most interesting scenes of the whole
series.
The accompanying plan of the entrance to the palace at
Euyuk shows the position of this slab, which is lettered Z.
It is on the right hand as one enters the great doorway,
guarded by the two Sphinxes, 9 and 10. The two sculptured
blocks on the left side of the entrance, 7 and 8, are each
6 feet 6 inches long ; so that the length
of the entrance way is exactly 13 feet.
Now Z is 7 feet 3 inches long, and the
adjoining block, 1 1, is 5 feet 9 inches long,
so that these two exactly fill up the right 7 | | n
side of the entrance way. It is remark-
riG. I.
able that there is no sculpture on the long
side of block 1 1 ; while on its short end, which forms the first
slab of the series on the right hand front wall, a seated
deity (Perrot, pi. 66) is carved. Both the blocks 7 and 8
on the left side of the entrance way are adorned with
reliefs ; one of those on the right side is carved, and the
other is left plain. I know no explanation of the apparent
anomaly.
At the right hand of the scene on slab Z a deity sits with
the feet resting on a footstool, one in front of the other ; the
figure is much worn, but in all that remains it is exactly the
1 On the Archigallos in Phrygian religion see Studies in the History and Art
of the Eastern Roman Provinces, pp. 246 f., 343.
208
VI. The Religion of
same as the seated goddess on pi. 66, and in the accompanying
drawing it is restored accordingly. Towards this deity a
procession of four figures advances, headed by the priest.
His dress is the same as in all the scenes where Perrot has
engraved him : in his right hand he, as usual, holds the long
curved staff (lituus\ while with the left he pours from an
oinochoe a libation, which falls on the front foot of the
seated deity. Behind him is the priestess, with her hands in
the position that seems to be characteristic of women in the
art of Cappadocia. The right hand holds out some round
object in front of her face, the left hand carries some object
/
FIG. 2.
to her mouth. She is dressed in the same long sweeping
dress which she wears in other scenes on these monuments,
but it is now impossible to tell whether she wore earrings.
Behind her come two other figures, which are much worn ;
they were dressed in short tunics and cloaks which hang
so as to cover one leg and leave the advanced leg bare. The
figures at the extremities of this slab have been injured by
the small stones on which it has fallen ; but fortunately the
two in the middle have not suffered so much. From the
position of these two figures it is not open to doubt that
they are the chief priest and priestess of the cultus.
the Hittite Sculptures at Boghaz-Keui 209
The same view is suggested by the scene on pi. 56
(Perrot), in which also the subject seems to be a procession
approaching the divine presence. An altar of peculiar shape
is placed in front of a small figure of a bull, evidently a
religious symbol, standing on a high pedestal. 1 The same
two priestly figures, wearing the same dress, approach the
altar : the priest carries in his right hand the lituus, and the
priestess wears earrings. [Three altars of this peculiar mush
room form have been discovered at Emir-Ghazi (seventy-five
miles east of Iconium), which is probably the Kases or Kasis
of Byzantine writers, the Khasbia of Ptolemy; but unfortun
ately two of them are much mutilated. An altar of similar
form appears twice in the rock -sculptures at Frahtin ; but here
the circular basis is not plain (as at Euyuk), nor surrounded
with zones of hieroglyphics (as at Emir-Ghazi), but ribbed
obliquely, like the dress of the priestess from the waist
downwards in the two annexed figures.]
At Boghaz-Keui the priest is seen three times (pis. 42, 47,
50, 51, Perrot). 2 In Fig. 3 he is represented walking beside
a tall figure, whose arm is affectionately twined round his
neck. Perrot would fain make this pair a man and woman,
but is obliged to acknowledge that the little figure is clearly
male ; and he suggests that they represent the king and the
priest grouped as a pair. To our eyes the tall figure is as
clearly female as the small figure is male. It is in high
relief, and the face stands out from the rock with an ex
quisitely delicate contour bold, determined, and yet femi
nine. The figure is far the finest of all the series, and looks
1 [Many bronzes representing a bull standing on a raised platform or altar
have been found in other Hittite sites (Chantre, Mission en Cappadoce, and
unpublished examples elsewhere). On Frahtin see the Pre-Hellenic Monu
ments of Cappadocia in Maspero s Recueil de Travaux, etc., vol. xiv.]
2 Perrot, pis. 50, 51.
14
210
VI. The Religion of
almost like the creation of a different art. In the midst of
rude work and inartistic symbolism, it recalled to me the
FIG. 3.
Amazons of the Maussolleum frieze. 1 It is evidently the
Bed of an inscription of Comana (Journ. PhiloL,
who looks at the plates in Perrot, 50 and 51, will at once say that I
am wrong on this point, and that the figure is certainly male. But, before
the Hittite Sculptures at Boghaz-Keui 211
1882, p. 147), the warlike goddess who was characteristic of
the Asia Minor worship. Like the Lydian Omphale, she
bears the weapons, and her male companion is the effeminate
and unwarlike god, Heracles, sunk temporarily to be a
woman.
This companion is Atys, at once her favourite and her
priest, her son and her paramour. The god as the first
priest was the type of all succeeding priests, who at Pessinus
bore his name as an official title : each priest wore the in
signia, and was said to imitate the self-mutilation of the god.
That priests and priestesses should wear the dress, bear the
name, and represent the personality, of the god deity whom
they served, was common in Greek religion also. The priests
of Bacchus were Bacchoi, the female celebrants Bacchai ;
the priests of Sabos or Sabazios were also called Saboi ; and
many other examples may be found.
The frequency with which the priest appears in these
religious sculptures shows how great was his importance in
the religion, and his influence among the people. He was
the embodiment of the god living always among his people
and explaining to them always through the oracle, which
was a never-failing accompaniment of the Anatolian religion,
the will of heaven. This is in complete agreement with
all that we know of political organisation and government
among the people of Asia Minor, before they were affected
by Greek influence. Either the priesthood comprehended
the kinghood in itself and exercised supreme power, or the
priest was at least second to the king in dignity and rank
judging, one should bear in mind that the photograph on pi. 51 is useless, and
that the drawing on pi. 50, being made by one who thought the figure male,
loses all the feminine character.
212 VI. The Religion of
and social powers. 1 The same thought is suggested by
the scene on pi. 47 (Perrot). Here the priest is represented
as of superhuman size, standing with his feet on two large
objects, in shape like cones with rounded points ; these are
quite different in character and shape from the mountains on
which the gods stand. The priest is evidently here portrayed
as the apparent god, co-ordinated with the other manifesta
tions of the divine nature on the rocks around, smaller in
size than the greatest of these, but larger than many of them.
In all the three cases where this figure occurs at Boghaz-
Keui, it is accompanied by a remarkable symbol : this symbol
is not always the same, but the three are only slight modi
fications of one type. The variations are doubtless of great
importance, and will in time perhaps throw much light on
the scenes in which they occur. They are all composed of
symbols, such as occur in the hieroglyphic inscriptions that are
characteristic of the rock-sculptures of Asia Minor, so placed
together as to form something like a naiskos, bounded on
each side by two Ionic columns : the whole being crowned
by the winged solar disk.
[Fig. 4 shows an ivory statuette found under the temple
of Artemis at Ephesus, and beautifully reproduced, both
plain and in colours, in Excavations at Ephesus (Hogarth
and others, 1908), Plates XXI. 2 and XXIV. 7, 11. Mr.
Cecil Smith, on p. 173 of that work, recognises in it the
Megabyzos or Eunuch chief-priest of the goddess. He
mentions that " Newton in his Essays, p. 230, has drawn
attention to the quasi-regal supremacy of" this priest. Of
the ten complete human figures in ivory found under the
temple, "no less than nine are undoubtedly statuettes of
1 Str.,p. 557, 672 [where kinghood and priesthood were united, mutilation
of the priest could only be a fiction ; and there are some traces of such fictions,
as when the Archigallos is distinct from the priest].
the Hittite Sculptures at Boghaz-Keui 213
women ".* The tenth is this figure of the Megabyzos, which
has some male characteristics, while "the sleek, rounded
forms of the face, the arrangement of
the hair, and the long-sleeved chiton,
would naturally suggest a woman ". I
must add that, in spite of the sleek
forms, the type of the face, with its
thick features and "the broad fleshy
nose," seems to me to mark the figure
as male even more clearly than the
delicate and spiritual type of the warrior
figures at Boghaz-Keui stamp them as
female. " The chain which hangs round
his neck is probably his chain of office 2
. . . the curious fez-like cap, the broad
decorated belt and the mode of dress
ing the hair, with a plait looped in
front of each ear, may be regarded as
part of the same ceremonial costume."
The slight maeander ornament on the
lower part of the dress may be com
pared and contrasted with the elabor
ate ornamentation on the priest s dress
at Ibriz.]
It follows from the nature of this
religion that on the rocks of Boghaz-
Keui we must expect to find in the
diversity of divine personages many
various manifestations of the one divine
FIG. 4.
preponderance of the female element in hieratic representations,
alike at Ephesus and at Boghaz-Keui, is noteworthy.]
2 [Mr. Smith compares the position of the hand grasping the chain with a
statuette published by Chantre, Mission en Cappadoce, p. 151.]
214 VI. The Religion of
life. The attempt to explain them must begin by studying
the cases where the same figure is repeated with slight
variations, and must have at its disposal either the original
sculptures or satisfactory representations of them. The
photographs published by M. Perrot, welcome as they are,
cannot be made the basis of a satisfactory discussion.
In every figure I could see numberless details which are
quite invisible on the photographs : the light is very bad
among the rocks, the apparatus often can not be put at the
proper position, and nothing except either a series of careful
drawings, made with the help of photographs and studied
along with photographs, or a complete set of casts, can supply
the place of the originals.
The head of the series of figures on the right is a female
deity standing on a lion, which has its feet placed on four
mountains. On her head is the turreted crown, which was
in Greece the distinguishing mark of the Asian goddess
Cybele, but which, from its frequent occurrence at Pteria,
can hardly be more than the mark of womanhood, of the
female sex in its properly female function and not as setting
aside the distinction between male and female. She holds
her hands in the attitude which is characteristic of women
in the art of Cappadocia ; the right hand raises a symbol in
front of her, the left holds some object towards her mouth.
She is followed by a youthful god standing on a leopard,
whose feet also are planted on mountains. In this pair one
must recognise the mother and son, Cybele and Atys in one
of his manifestations, Demeter and Dionysos. The leopard
on which the god stands is the favourite animal of the Greek
Dionysos. A few other examples of the connection between
the sculptures of Pteria and the religion of Phrygia and
Lydia have been given in Journ. Hell. Stud., 1882, pp. 40-46.
the Hittite Sculptures at Boghaz-Keui 215
But few of the figures on these rocks have their character
so plainly expressed as these examples ; and without better
material for study, the whole set must remain unexplained.
[Note. I have in this reprint avoided using the name
Pteria for the city at Boghaz-Keui, not because I think the
identification (accepted in the article originally and in my
Historical Geography, pp. 29, 31, etc.) wrong, but because
the form of the name is uncertain. Herodotus uses the
expressions rrjv nrepiijv, rrjv Efyeairjv, in adjectival form.
Many others have suggested that Ptara, the Lycian city-
name (Patara in Greek), is the noun ; and this seems highly
probable; but the further suggestion that Ptara means
" city " seems not so acceptable. Perhaps Ptara, like Ptagia
in Pisidia, is connected with the divine name Pta (in Greek
Meter Ipta), which was used in Eastern Lydia : see Studies
in the History of the Eastern Provinces , p. 369.
That Croesus, when he crossed the Halys, would march
direct on the capital of his enemy, may be assumed as
certain. Now Boghaz-Keui is marked by its size and
remains as the capital of a great Anatolian Empire : see
Historical Geography, p. 28, and the first part of the article
here reprinted ; also above, p. 127.]
FIG. 5. The Apollo of Lystra : a third-century votive relief (see p. 167 f.).
VII.
THE MORNING STAR AND THE CHRON
OLOGY OF THE LIFE OF CHRIST.
VII.
THE MORNING STAR AND THE CHRONOLOGY
OF THE LIFE OF CHRIST.
THE connection between the two parts of the above title is
not obvious at first sight. It is the merit of Colonel Mac-
kinlay, in the book which we propose to review, on The
Magi : How they Recognised Christ s Star^ to have shown
that there is a very real connection. His title is, perhaps,
not very well chosen, for it does not allude to any of the
parts and topics which seem to me to be the most important
and interesting in his work, while it emphasises what is
most speculative and least convincing. Although the present
writer has written a brief preface to the book, it seems not
out of place for him to review it ; indeed it appears justifiable,
and almost obligatory, to state more fully than was possible
in the few paragraphs of his preface the reasons which make
him consider that the book deserves careful reading.
That men, when conversing familiarly with one another,
usually draw any figures of speech or any symbolic expres
sions which they may chance to employ from the range of
their own interests and knowledge, is a principle that cannot
be denied, and will be freely admitted by every one. The
lawyer uses legal metaphors, the stockbroker the slang of the
exchange, in explaining his meaning. The contrast in this
respect between St. Paul s language and that of most of the
writers in the Bible is well known, and has often been
1 Hodder & Stoughton, 1907.
(219)
22O VII. The Morning Star
pointed out. He rarely goes to nature, but uses the
language of city life and of education, and, to some ex
tent, of business and trade. On the contrary, the Bible
generally contains a far larger proportion of metaphors and
imagery drawn from the phenomena of nature, the wind, the
rain, the storm, the heavens, sun and stars, the growing and
dying or harvested vegetation of the earth, etc. ; except
Paul the writers whose works are contained in the Bible were
men of the country, not men of the city.
In regard to the imagery of this latter class a second
principle may be observed. Those who live and talk in the
open air tend to draw their illustrations from what is present
and visible to, or in the mind of, their hearers and themselves
at the time. Probably every expositor and preacher has
occasionally drawn his inspiration more or less unconsciously
from this principle, and every careful reader has sometimes
observed particular instances of its application. But the
formal commentators do not make sufficient use of it. It is
not obvious to the secluded scholar in his study amid the
atmosphere of books. You feel it most strongly in the
world of life. Sir Isaac Newton, however, though he was
(so far as I know) unused to life in the open air as well as
unfamiliar with the Mediterranean lands, perceived this
principle, and stated it in a very interesting passage which
is quoted by Colonel Mackinlay. It is not one of the least
of the merits of his book that it gives prominence to this
excellent observation of a great man ; if I may suppose that
the passage is as unfamiliar to the world of scholars as it was
to me. " I observe that Christ and His forerunner John in
their parabolic discourses were wont to allude to things
present. The old prophets, when they would describe things
emphatically, did not only draw parables from things which
Chronology of the Life of Christ 221
offered themselves, as from the rent of a garment (i Sam.
xv. 27, 28) . . . from the vessels of a potter (Jer. xviii. 3-
6) ... but also, when such fit objects were wanting, they
supplied them by their own actions, as by rending a garment
(i Kings xi. 30, 31); by shooting (2 Kings xiii. 17-19), etc.
By such types the prophets loved to speak. And Christ,
being endued with a nobler prophet spirit than the rest,
excelled also in this kind of speaking, yet so as not to speak
by His own actions that were less grave and decent but
to turn into parables such things as offered themselves. On
occasion of the harvest approaching He admonishes His
disciples once and again of the spiritual harvest (John iv. 35 ;
Matt. ix. 37). Seeing the lilies of the field, He admonishes
His disciples about gay clothing (Matt vi. 28). In allusion
to the present season of fruits, He admonishes His disciples
about knowing men by their fruits. In the time of the
Passover, when trees put forth their leaves, He bids His
disciples learn a parable from the fig-tree ; when his branch
is yet tender and putteth forth leaves, ye know that the
summer is nigh ." This admirable passage is quoted from
Newton s Commentary on Daniel, a work which is proverbial
in modern times for fanciful and strained interpretations, and
which I confess that I have never even seen ; but if there is
much more in it like this paragraph, it must be better worth
reading than some modern commentaries, for this is original
and true.
The author mentions several other examples in corro-
boration of Newton s principle. One pair of examples is
peculiarly interesting. In Matthew xx. 1-16 occurs the
parable of the householder, who went out early in the
morning to hire labourers into his vineyard. Every one
who studies ancient literature or life knows the strong
222 VII. The, Morning Star
prejudice that was entertained against hired labourers alike
in Palestine and in Italy in ancient times. The "hireling"
was despised as untrustworthy and idle, an unwilling labourer
who worked for money and not for love of the work or of
the master whom he served. He was always looking for
the reward and the pay for his labour, not aiming at doing
it well for its own sake (Job vii. 2). John x. 12 f. contrasts
the cowardly hireling with the true shepherd ; the former
neglects the sheep, and flees when the wolf approaches,
but the true shepherd defends them to the death. So in
Italy mercennariior free hired labourers were always disliked,
and contempt is often expressed for them. A man who
wanted important or delicate work well done employed the
members of his own family, especially his household slaves. 1
Every person who attempts to explain to pupils the spirit
of ancient Roman life has constant occasion to insist on
this ; and it applies also to Greek life, though it is not there
so strongly forced on one s attention.
Why is it that the Kingdom of Heaven, the prophets and
the servants of God, are compared by Matthew in this pass
age to hirelings, who all receive the same pay at the en$
of the day, whether they have worked in the vineyard one
hour or a whole day ? In Matthew xxi. 28 it is the owner s
son who works in the vineyard ; in John xv. 2 the owner
himself is the workman. What is the reason for this differ
ence? In the first passage there is no stress laid on the
trustworthiness or untrustworthiness of the hired labourers.
The only point of comparison lies in the reward that is
given to all alike: so much is true, but this does not
1 That household slaves were a part of the family, and/egarded as specially
trustworthy servants, is a fact of immense importance in the study of ancient
society.
Chronology of the Life of Christ 223
quite satisfactorily and fully explain the choice of this
parable.
The Author points out that the passage in Matthew xx.
I -1 6 relates a conversation held about midwinter or Janu
ary, whereas Matthew xxi. 28 and John xv. 2 were spoken
in the middle of March. Wherein, then, lies the difference ?
He very aptly quotes Mr. W. Carruthers, F.R.S., who
writes, " For tilling the ground and keeping it free from
weeds in winter, hired labour would be sufficient; but for
cutting off the rapidly growing shoots in March or later,
so as to prevent the energy of the plant from being directed
to mere vegetative development, an intelligent workman
would be needed". The delicate labour of pruning must be
intrusted to one who has both skill and interest in the
result ; but unskilled labour was sufficient to turn over the
soil and to destroy the weeds. Moreover, there is a great
deal more of tedious labour involved in the latter ; and it
must often have been necessary to get in more hands to do
the winter work in the vineyard.
In both cases the illustration was drawn from what was
actually being done at the moment. Speaker and hearers
saw the suggestion of the parable taking place before their
eyes, as the words were spoken. Similarly I have elsewhere
tried to point out 1 how inevitable it is that, when Christ
said to Nicodemus " the wind bloweth where it listeth, and
thou hearest the voice thereof, but knowest not whence it
cometh and whither it goeth," the two were not in some
cellar in Jerusalem, but out on the side of the Mount of Olives,
with the wind of spring moving gently around them. The
character which is impressed on speech and thought by life
in the open air, is apt to escape the reader who is used to live
1 The Education of Christ, p. 74.
224 VII. The Morning Star
and think and study and address audiences in a room ; for
he often assumes unconsciously that scenes must have oc
curred in closed spaces, though something of the vitality is
lost on this assumption. Part of what is called the Oriental
character of the Bible should more correctly be called the
open-air character.
These cases may be generalised as a principle. Those
who live in the open air and draw their imagery from the
visible phenomena of nature must be to a large extent
guided in their choice by the present circumstances. A
man who converses while sitting or walking in the open air
is not likely to talk about the beautiful bloom of the fruit-
trees, if the trees in an orchard close by are bare in the winter
season or loaded with fruit. If he talked of the beautiful
flowers that clothe the trees, you know that the conversation
occurred in the spring-time. The careful reader can tell in
many cases the time of the year when such illustrations were
spoken, and thus a system of annual chronology can be
established. Every reader of literature can illustrate this
from his own experience or study. There are few com
mentators on any ancient author who have not sometimes
employed reasoning of this class. Colonel Mackinlay s merit
lies in employing it more systematically and thoroughly, and
with greater attention to the facts and habits of ancient
Palestinian life and surroundings, than any other person (so
far as the present reviewer s knowledge extends), and in
establishing on this basis, which is theoretically a perfectly
sound one, a complete chronology of the life of Christ. In
doing so he rests his reasoning on many acute and subtle
observations, which are well worth careful reading.
This method of reasoning has, of course, its dangers and
its defects. It is almost inevitable that the reasoner should
Chronology of the Life of Christ 225
press some of his observations too far, and should be too
subtle and too ready to take more from a passage than others
(and especially the hasty reader) think it can stand. But
there is always that danger in the cumulative method of
reasoning : one brings in everything, large or small, that can
add to the pile. I would illustrate this, and explain its limits,
by quoting a parallel case.
Mr. Hobart has been blamed in the same way for bringing
into his proof that the writer of the Acts and the Third
Gospel was a physician many details which add little or
nothing to the strength of his demonstration. This is quite
true, and Mr. Hobart was as fully aware of it as any of his
critics. But when his critics go on to maintain that this
detracts from the strength of his reasoning, they are alto
gether mistaking the character of cumulative evidence.
The valuelessness of one detail, the lightness of one stone,
does not take away from the strength and the weight of the
other details, though it may annoy and mislead the hasty
reader, who judges by a sample and, by chance or design,
takes the poorest. Moreover, the critic who is accustomed
to the more fascinating and brilliant method of deductive
reasoning (in which, however, the weakness of even one link
in the chain is fatal to the strength of the whole) is apt to
forget that cumulative reasoning is not of the same kind.
Each has its distinct character, its own peculiar merits and
defects.
Accordingly, Colonel Mackinlay may lose in the reader s
estimate several of his props, and yet retain enough to sup
port an edifice which continues to stand and to be habit
able. The chronology of the life of Christ is difficult and
obscure; and every attempt to reason out a new line of
proof ought to be heartily welcomed. The reasoning in
15
226 VII. The Morning Star
this case proceeds from a mind which assumes at starting
the complete trustworthiness and perfect accuracy of the
Gospels. This will at once discredit the book with many
of the prejudiced and arbitrary class of scholars, whose mind
is already completely made up and closed to any new evi
dence ; and it may be granted that the prejudice in the
Author s mind does in some cases produce what I must
call a certain weakness in the argument, where he abandons
the cumulative method of observing details and facts, and
proceeds to reason from general principles, as for example
about the character and conduct and past life of the Magi
in his Chapter VI L, in which he no longer stands on what
can be considered firm or safe ground.
While the present reviewer is personally most interested
in the thorough-going chronology of the life of Christ
month by month, or at least season by season and feast by
feast, which the Author works out, it is certain that many,
probably most, readers will follow with more lively interest
his observations on the meaning of particular sayings and
their relation to the surroundings of time, season, atmo
spheric phenomena and the position of the familiar stars.
Although in regard to the phenomena of the heavens al
most all interest inland knowledge of even the more striking
stars has i been lost in Western society, yet the true scholar
must try to place himself in the mental atmosphere of
ancient Palestinian life, when a certain familiarity with
some of the stars was possessed by all and was made an
essential part of their thought and expression and used as
a guide in their ways and times of life. One or two ex
amples may therefore be given of the class of observations
on which the Author s system is founded.
When Christ saw Nathanael under the fig-tree, this may
Chronology of the Life of Christ 227
be regarded as an indication of summer or autumn. In
Matthew xxiv. 32, when the branch of the fig-tree "is now
become tender and putteth forth its leaves, ye know that
the summer is nigh ". The fading of the leaf of the fig-tree
is alluded to by Isaiah xxxiv. 4. Between those limits
lay the scene when Nathanael retired under the fig-tree.
He was astonished that any one could see him, and there
fore he must have been hid from view by the thick foliage.
Moreover, the Author points out that he had evidently gone
there to pray in quiet and secrecy, as " an Israelite without
guile ". This was about the beginning of the Ministry of
Christ; the Baptism and the Temptation had already
occurred ; but there seems to have been no great interval
between them. The Temptation apparently followed the
Baptism immediately, and lasted forty days. The Author
places these events in August and September.
Some time previously occurred the first appearance of
John the Baptist as a teacher. The Author points out
that three expressions in his early teaching refer to the
season: (i) "The axe is laid to the root of the tree": the
decision to cut down a useless tree would be taken later than
the pruning season in March, when it had become evident
that the tree was no longer productive. (2) " Every tree
that bringeth not forth good fruit is cut down." This
emphasises the same allusion. Both point to April. (3)
" Whose fan is in His hand and He will thoroughly cleanse
His threshing-floor ; and He will gather His wheat into the
garner." The season is harvest and the locality was the
deep hot valley of the Jordan, where harvest was very early.
The preaching of John, therefore, began to arrest the atten
tion of the Jews in April and the time immediately following.
The imagery quoted from him belongs to the months April-
228 VII. The Morning Star
June. After a certain interval, a few weeks or months prob
ably, Jesus came to be baptised. As John passed like a
meteor across the sky of Palestine, or rather like the Morn
ing Star heralding the light of day, there is no reason to
place the Baptism in a later year than the first appearance
of John. On this point there is a practically universal
agreement of opinion. All these events belong to the spring
and summer and early autumn of the same year. Since the
Baptist is so consistently spoken of as the Morning Star, it
must have been shining at his appearance and gladden
ing the eyes of the crowd of his followers every morning.
The custom of so designating him arose among those who
saw the Star 1 marking him out as the Herald. The cycle
of appearances of Venus as the Morning Star prove that
this year was A.D. 25.
To take another example of the influence which the seasons
and the state of agriculture exerted on the customs of the
people among whom Christ lived and taught, we take one
from the sphere of action and no longer from that of mere
language. The Author points out on p. 1 20 that at the feed
ing of the five thousand Jesus " commanded the multitude to
sit down on the grass " (Matt. xiv. 19). To us who live in the
moist northern islands this conveys no intimation of the
time of year, but in the dry soil and under the hot sun of
the Levant lands, it means that the season was spring. Only
in spring is there grass, which withers early along with the
flowers under the summer sun. This fact plays an important
part in the economy of farm life ; and the traveller is often
reminded of it, when he seeks to hire horses at that season :
they are all out at grass. A free life on the grass for the
short time during which this food can be got is regarded
a This is emphasised below, p. 231.
Chronology of the Life of Christ 229
as necessary to their health and vigour. Their keep costs
nothing during that time, but they cannot do hard work on
grass. Hence the traveller, if he insists on getting horses in
that season, must tempt the owners by a higher price. Such
are the facts in Asia Minor, and I have no doubt that they
are similar in Palestine.
The brief phrase which Matthew uses may seem to some
especially to those who have not had the opportunity
of familiarising themselves with the kind of thought and
expression which arises from the rarity and value of grass
in such countries to be an insufficient basis to support
the Author s inference as to the season. But, as he points
out, Mark vi. 39 speaks of "the green grass," and John
vi. 10 says, "there was much grass in the place". Moreover
John vi. 4 mentions that the time of the year was just before
Passover. 1 The inference from the scanty phrase of Matthew
is perfectly confirmed.
The Author points out well that this is the season of
the year when bread is scarce and dear for people who live
on the fruits of their own soil and are not affected by im
ported grain. The produce of the last harvest is coming
near an end, and is often exhausted or almost exhausted
by this season, while the new harvest is ripening, but
not ready to eat. People have often to go hungry, and
prices rise high. In this time of dearth the relief which
Christ gave was really needed, for the villages (none of which
were even near) would be also on the verge of scarcity.
1 The inference from Mark and John is, of course, familiar and common,
and has been used as an argument against Hort s unfortunate suggestion that
rb Tldcrxa in John vi. 4 is an interpolation. But my object is to demonstrate
that the brief word of Matthew would alone be sufficient evidence, though I
suppose that some European scholars would have scouted such an assertion,
if it were not supported by the clearer testimony of John and Mark.
230 VII. The Morning Star
While in this case the individual character of the scene
and the suitability of the surrounding conditions are extremely
well marked, one must observe that the details which give
life to the incident are lacking in the story of the feeding of
four thousand (Matt. xv. 32 ff. ; Mark viii. I ff.), except that
there the people sit down on the ground : there was no
longer grass to sit on at this season. But that is the general
state of the soil : the other scene gathers individuality and
life from the unusual character of the circumstances.
When the Author attempts to find an allusion to the vary
ing seasons in Luke x. 3, " Lambs in the midst of wolves "
(dated February or beginning of March), as compared with
Matthew x. 16, "sheep in the midst of wolves" (in harvest-
time, about May, "the young sheep by this time would no
longer be considered lambs"), I do not think his reasoning
can be accepted. In my experience the term "lamb" is
used in Asiatic Turkey for a young sheep at any season of
the year, and any flesh of sheep that is sold as fit to eat is
" lamb ". The flesh of a sheep in its second year is already
coarse, and not considered eatable except by poor and hardy
peasants. 1 Moreover, the Author himself dates the words of
John the Baptist, " Behold the Lamb of God," in the autumn,
whereas his principle would require a date about February to
April. No safe inference, therefore, can be drawn from the
use of the terms "lamb" and "sheep".
The main feature of Colonel Mackinlay s book is its insist
ence on the importance of the Morning Star in the symbol
ism of the Gospels. Some of the references to this Star in
the Gospels are so emphatic and distinct that they cannot be
misunderstood. This species of symbolism was employed
freely, as every reader knows, in the Gospels. The Author,
1 This is mentioned and illustrated in my Impressions of Turkey, p. 17.
Chronology of the Life of Christ 231
however, shows that it was carried very much farther than
has been hitherto observed ; and some of the passages in which
he detects the use of this symbolism gain much effect from his
interpretation. John the Baptist was the Forerunner, the
Morning Star. Christ was the Sun, the Light of the World.
On p. 16 the Author protests against the mistaken idea in
Holman Hunt s picture, " The Light of the World," where
Christ is represented as illuminating the world with a lantern.
It was as the Sun that He illumined the world; and He
used the words about Himself at the end of the Feast of
Tabernacles, which " reminded the Jews of their deliverance
from Egypt and of the Divine leading by the pillar of fire
in the wilderness (Neh. ix. I, 9, 12, 19)". At this Feast
large lamps were " lighted in the Temple court, which were
reminders of the ancient guiding pillar of fire in the wilder
ness ; He said in effect, I am like the sun which gives light
to all in the world, a greater blessing than the Hebrews
had of old, when they followed the pillar of fire".
Similarly in John ix. 5, where "the Light of the World "
is Christ, the allusion must be to the sun, for there is in
the context a contrast between day and night. The Author
also compares xi. 9; xii. 35 f., 46 ; i. 9; I John ii. 8; Luke
i. 78 ; ii. 32 ; Acts xiii. 47, in all of which Christ is the Sun.
The usage persisted as it had been originated ; just as John
the Baptist was always the Morning Star and Forerunner of
the Sun.
In the first chapter the Author is careful to show how
much larger a part the Morning Star plays in the life and
language of the peoples in the Levant lands than it does
among the late-rising nations of the dark North. The
Morning Star begins the day for the nomads and the agri
culturists of those southern regions, and even in the cities
232 VII. The Morning Star
people work at a very early hour; in southern countries
generally people rise very much earlier than they do in
the cold northern lands ; and, where artificial light is scanty
and bad, few sit up long after dark, and there is less dis
position to lie late in the morning. Moreover, where sun
light is abundant, one seems to feel much less need for long
sleep than in dark countries. The Author touches on the
question whether the ancients knew that Venus, the Morning
Star, assumes at times a crescent form (which they probably
did), and how they acquired this knowledge. He is dis
posed to think that they sometimes employed artificial
aids to vision, as a lens was found by Layard at Nemrud ;
and that the naked eye could not discover the crescent form
though people who know what to expect can see it or think
they see it. But one of my friends, a distinguished Professor
of Mathematics, tells me that the crescent form could be
detected by a careful watcher of the skies, if he saw the planet
against the edge of a sharp upright cliff. At any rate it is
certain that the ancients " observed the planet with the
utmost attention" and gave it a prominent place in their
religion under the names Istar and Ashtaroth and Venus
and so on.
Now, just as John the Baptist about May- June A.D. 25
drew his illustrations from the harvest and the threshing-
floors, which were busy at that season, and just as about
December A.D. 27 the sowing which was busily going on
all around suggested the parables in Matthew xiii. 3-32 ;
Mark iv. 26-29, so the Author maintains that, when John
preached " He that cometh after me is mightier than I,"
drawing his idea from the Morning Star, herald of the Sun,
that Star must have been in its morning phase at the time,
guiding the conduct and plain to the eyes and touching
Chronology of the Life of Christ 233
the minds of all his audience every day before dawn, when
they rose at its summons. So with several other expres
sions, as, " he was the lamp that burneth and shineth "
(John v. 35), "behold I send My messenger before thy
face" (quoted in Matt. xi. 10, as people applied to him the
prophecy of Malachi iii. i).
Incidentally we must notice that such accounts as those
mentioned in the beginning of the preceding paragraph
are not to be understood as reports of what John and
Jesus said in one single speech. They should rather be
taken as expressing the gist and marrow of the teaching
at a certain period, as the general purport crystallised in
the memory of certain auditors.
In the Apocalypse xxii. 16 Christ is called the Morning
Star, but in the Gospels He is the Sun, while the Baptist is
His Herald, an image taken from Malachi iii. I ; iv. 2, as seen
in Luke i. 76, 78 ; Mark i. 2 ; Luke i. 17 ; John iii. 28 ; Matthew
xi. 10 ; Luke vii. 27 ; Paul in Acts xiii. 24 ; John i. 7, 8, etc.
The comparison in the Apocalypse belongs to a different
period and another circle of thought. Its meaning may be
illustrated by the expression in the letter to the Church at
Thyatira, " he that overcometh ... I will give him the
Morning Star" (Rev. ii. 28). In this phrase there lies
probably more than is allowed for in the Letters to the Seven
Churches of Asm, p. 334. We must understand that the
Star is the dawn of a brighter day and a new career. To
the victor there shall be given the brightness and splendour
and power that outshine the great Empire, and the promise
of and entrance upon a higher life. It is the same thought
as afterwards suggested the term dies natalis for the day
on which a martyr died : this day was his birthday, on
which he entered into a nobler life. After the same fashion
234 VII. The Morning Star
Christ calls Himself in Revelation xxii. i6the Morning Star,
as the herald and introducer of a new era. In the Gospels
the point of view is so different as to show that they belong
to an earlier age and another style of thought, not con
tradictory, but the result of different surroundings and
conditions.
In Chapter VI. the Author discusses the length of Christ s
Ministry, and concludes that it was three and a half years.
It has long seemed to me that this was the true length;
and the shorter periods assigned by many scholars appeared
to be based on misconceptions. The estimate of one year
(or, more strictly, one year and some months) is due to
misinterpretation of Luke iv. 19, where "the acceptable
year of the Lord " is taken as the period of Christ s Ministry.
This is an almost inexcusable error, for it supposes that the
period of one year and several months could be called one
year by the ancients. This period would have been called
two years, according to the universal rule. 1 Some of the
early Fathers, who were uninterested in and careless of
chronological exactness, are responsible for this misinter
pretation, 2 which ought not to survive when it is recognised
that the Ministry must have lasted over at least two Pass
overs, together with some months before the first.
The Author passes over this estimate as requiring no
notice, and inquires only into the possibility of the middle
estimate that the Ministry lasted two years and a half.
Besides the much debated question of the number of Pass
overs that occurred during the Ministry, he also discusses
the number of Feasts of Tabernacles. In regard to the
1 See the article on " Days, Months, Hours " in Hastings Dictionary of the
Bible, vol. v.
2 Clement of Alexandria and Origen both said so.
Chronology of the Life of Christ 235
former question there is, of course, nothing new to be said.
The arguments have all been already drawn out to endless
length ; and the Author passes over them in a brief paragraph
of seven lines. The latter question opens up a topic of
considerable extent, on which the Author has much that is
quite novel to say, and which he insists upon a great deal
in other chapters also. He points out that the reading
of Isaiah Ixi. by Jesus in the synagogue at Nazareth must
have taken place at the beginning of a year, at the beginning
of a Sabbatic year, and at the Feast of Tabernacles. His
reasoning on this subject is extremely ingenious and inter
esting, and merits the most serious consideration. Chrono
logically, this would settle the question, if it should finally
stand scrutiny. My own impression is that it will establish
itself; but I may be prejudiced, as it confirms my own
chronological views in all except one point, which is of
merely speculative interest, viz., the year of Christ s birth.
The length of Christ s Ministry and the year of His death
are matters of the utmost importance for the right under
standing and for the historical value of the Gospels ; but it
makes little difference in those respects whether He was
born in any year between B.C. 8 and 5. Colonel Mackinlay
has maintained that the Birth was in B.C. 8 at the Feast of
Tabernacles ; and he has advanced distinctly stronger argu
ments for this view than can be brought forward in favour
of any other year. A year later than 5 or earlier than 8
would be fatal to the historicity of Matthew and Luke ; J
beyond that the date is a matter only of chronological im
portance. Incidentally we must here observe, as a conse
quence of the very early date, that the residence of the
1 A date later than B.C. 5 would place the Birth after Herod s death ; a date
earlier than B.C. 8 would put the Ministry too early.
236 VII. The Morning Star
Holy Family in Egypt would have to be longer than is
usually supposed ; but there is absolutely no ground in the
words of Matthew to support an argument that the resi
dence in Egypt could not have lasted so long as five years
and a third, which is the period assigned by the Author.
The Sabbatical year necessarily began in the autumn.
If it had commenced in spring, the beginning would have
occurred after corn had been sowed, and the land could not
have lain fallow for the year. It was inevitably implied in
the idea of a Sabbatical year that it should begin at the
end of the annual cycle of agriculture and before the next
annual cycle opened; i.e., it must begin near the autumn
equinox at the Feast of Tabernacles. This was fixed by
the Law of Moses, whereas the ordinary arrangement of
the Calendar in the South-Syrian lands made the year begin
in spring.
The Author maintains that the Sabbatical year began at
the Feast of Tabernacles in the autumn of A.D. 26. 1 This
then was the time when the scene in the Synagogue at
Nazareth occurred ; and Christ had been speaking in public
previously for some time. The conclusion which I have
reached as to the beginning of the Ministry (Christ Borrt at
Bethlehem, p. 201) is that "in the later months of that year
A.D. 25, John appeared announcing the coming of Christ,
and very shortly thereafter Jesus came and was baptised by
John in the river Jordan. Some months 2 thereafter occurred
the Passover on 2ist March, A.D. 26." Colonel Mackinlay
would place these events earlier by a few months. He leaves
a longer interval between the appearance of John and of
1 There is some controversy as to the incidence of Sabbatical years ; but
the view which Colonel Mackinlay takes seems to be the right one.
2 In the original text I printed "one or two months thereafter," but this
was too precise, and I would substitute the vaguer expression.
Chronology of the Life of Christ 237
Jesus, viz.) about four to five months ; and places the Baptism
about forty-five days before the Feast of Tabernacles A.D. 25.
The preaching of Jesus would then begin about that Feast.
I see no objection to this, though the evidence is too slender
to demonstrate it. Thus he finds the first two occurrences
of this Feast within the Ministry A.D. 25 and 26.
The third Feast he places at the time of Matthew xii. 18-
21 ; the Sabbatic year was now ended, and the period "of
special invitation to the Jewish nation " was past. Now
begins a new period ; and in the words quoted from Isaiah
in this passage of Matthew Christ is twice described as the
Saviour of the Gentiles.
The fourth Feast of Tabernacles, in the Author s scheme,
synchronised with the Transfiguration, which suggested to
Peter s mind the idea of making the three tabernacles. The
ordinary view seems to be that which is stated by Dr.
Plummer in his Commentary on Luke ix., "if they were to
remain there they must have shelter". Why superhuman
personages like Moses and Elias should need the shelter
of booths in order to remain on a mountain does not appear
very clear. But, if the Jews were everywhere making booths
at that very moment in order to spend in them the sacred
week, it seems a not unnatural suggestion of Peter s to con
struct three booths for the three superhuman personages to
keep the Jewish feast : " one for Thee, and one for Moses
and one for Elias ".
The Author s suggestion agrees with the very slight in
dications that can be gathered from the context.
The Transfiguration (Matt. xvii. I ff. ; Mark ix. 2 ff. ;
Luke ix. 28 ff.) occurred later than the Passover of A.D. 28
(about which time, as we have just seen, 1 must have occurred
1 See above, p. 228.
238 VII. The Morning Star
the incident mentioned by Matthew xiv. 14 ff., and John vi.
4 ff ) ; but the visit to the borders of Judaea beyond Jordan
(Matt. xix. i ; John x. 40), the opening of the final period
of the Saviour s life, about the end of 28 and the beginning
of 29, had not yet occurred. This approximate date for the
Transfiguration is, of course, evident and universally accepted ;
but its connection with the Feast of Tabernacles is not a
matter of general agreement.
Now, Jesus spent part of this Feast at Jerusalem (John vii.
14) ; but it is mentioned that He would not go up at the be
ginning of the Feast, but remained some days in Galilee, and
appeared in Jerusalem, " when it was now the middle of the
Feast," the third to the fifth day. On the Author s theory
we have thus a quite remarkable chronological agreement
between John and the Synoptics ; and the agreement is so
striking that it could hardly be purely accidental. On that
theory the Transfiguration occurred at the time when the
Tabernacles were being constructed, /.., either on the day at
whose sunset the Feast began or on the first day of the
Feast. In that event Jesus was manifested as the Son of
God, not publicly, but to three spectators, on a solitary
mountain-top ; and the three were ordered to keep the event
secret until after the Resurrection (as Mark and Matthew
mention, though Luke deliberately omits 1 this sequel to the
event). John vii. 4 mentions that when this " Feast of Taber
nacles was at hand," the brothers of Jesus urged Him to go
up to Jerusalem, to abandon His privacy and secrecy, and
" manifest Thyself to the world ". Jesus refused to go up
at present, on the ground that " My time is not yet come ".
1 This remarkable omission of part of his chief authority must make the
scholar chary of allowing any weight to the argument that Luke knew no
thing about any event or speech, because he does not record it.
Chronology of the Life of Christ 239
When the rest went up to Jerusalem to the Feast, " He abode
still in Galilee ". But afterwards He went up, " not publicly,
but as it were in secret " ; and suddenly, " in the midst of
the Feast," He appeared in the Temple. There He preached
the remarkable discourse, beginning, " I am the light of the
world ".
All that John mentions in this passage fits in so perfectly
in tone and in chronology with the Synoptic record as to
make it evident to any one possessed of the literary and the
historic sense that the two narratives, which complete one
another so remarkably, although neither of them mentions
any detail or any saying that occurs in the other, must be
founded on personal knowledge or first-hand evidence about
actual facts. The only other theory that would account for
such a singular coincidence amid difference is that there has
been deliberate and wonderfully skilful invention of a series
of incidents, and partition of them between two separate
narratives dovetailing perfectly into one another. Such a
theory, whether in the form that the two narratives were
concocted by agreement at the same time, or that one was
invented subsequently to suit the other which was already
in existence, is not likely to be advanced at the present day
by any scholar, for there are too many obvious difficulties
(which it is needless to state here). This agreement of the
two authorities T is so important a point as to deserve fuller
notice.
Take, first of all, the sequence of events.
i. Jesus went forth into the villages of Caesarea Philippi.
He asked His disciples, "Who do men say that I am?"
They answered that He was taken by some for John the
Baptist, by others for Elias or one of the prophets. He then
1 Mark is the authority on whom Luke and Matthew both rely.
240 VII. The Morning Star
asked, "Who say ye that I am?" Peter answered, " Thou
art the Christ ". Thereupon He bade them tell no man of
Him (Mark viii. 27-30).
2. Jesus now began to tell them of His approaching suffer
ings and death and resurrection. This He stated openly.
Peter rebuked Him for speaking thus, and was sharply re
primanded (Mark viii. 3i-ix. i).
3. Now the Feast of Tabernacles was at hand. His
brothers advised Him to go to celebrate it in Jerusalem, and
reveal Himself publicly to the Jewish world for what He
claimed to be ; but He refused, because His time was not yet
fulfilled ; and He abode in Galilee (John vii. 1-9). John s
narrative here presumes as well known the statements made
by the Synoptics about the claims now being advanced both
openly and in private to His disciples (headings I and 2).
4. Six days later He took Peter and James and John into
a high mountain apart. Here occurred the Transfiguration ;
and the thought of the Feast suggested to Peter that the
three heavenly ones should celebrate the Feast of Taber
nacles, and the three earthly ones should enjoy the spectacle.
Afterwards, as they descended from the mountain, Jesus
again charged them to tell no man until the Son of Mail be
risen from the dead. They questioned one another what
was the meaning of this rising from the dead. A.nd Jesus
explained (Mark ix. 2-13).
5. Jesus then went up secretly to Jerusalem and appeared
in the Temple on the third or fourth day of the Feast, and
taught, so that the people wondered. He asked why they
sought to kill Him. He explained that He would be with
them only a short time, and would then go "unto Him that
sent Me". He publicly offered instruction to all, drink to
any that thirsted. And some said that this was the prophet,
Chronology of the Life of Christ 241
others the Christ But the conclusion was that, since He
was of Galilee, He therefore could not be the Christ ; 1 and
no man laid hands on Him. He declared Himself in ,the
Temple to be the light of the world, to be not of this world,
but sent by His Father. And He went out of the Temple
(John vii. lo-viii. 59). Presumably, John at least accom
panied Him to Jerusalem (probably all the three disciples),
and thus knew what happened there ; but no other person
was informed, and the visit was little talked about in Galilee.
6. They rejoined the disciples, 2 and He travelled in
Galilee, keeping Himself secret ; and He taught the disciples
about the resurrection ; but they understood not the saying
and were afraid to ask Him (Mark ix. 14-32).
Secondly, it is plain that the two accounts are agreed about
the importance of this moment in autumn A.D. 28. Jesus
was now beginning to make His fate known ; in Galilee He
spoke only to His disciples 3 about the coming events ; but
though He told them repeatedly, they failed to understand
the drift of His words. John alone adds that He made a
secret journey to Jerusalem and gave similar teaching in a
guarded symbolic fashion to the Jews in the Temple. Both
accounts agree that His death was now often mentioned by
Him, but that no one realised what He meant
How is this remarkable agreement as to time and subject
to be explained? I cannot see any opening for doubt (i)
that it arises from the personal knowledge and memory of
1 The irony of this conclusion escapes many scholars. Their reasoning
was sound ; and their conclusion was inevitable, if the starting-point was
correct. They thought it was correct ; but they were in error. Hence their
reasoning was really a witness to the truth : Christ must be born in Bethlehem,
and Jesus (unknown to them) was born there. Such is the meaning of the
Fourth Gospel.
2 Luke alone says "on the next day " after the Transfiguration.
8 Except once the expression " openly " : see above, heading 2.
16
242 VII. The Morning Star
John ; and (2) that John knew the Synoptic narrative (not
necessarily all three accounts, of course). It is impossible
that John should so exactly fill up what is omitted by the
Synoptists, without repeating anything that they tell, unless
he was deliberately completing, with full knowledge of the
facts, a narrative which he regarded as incomplete, though
true. The irony of John (which is conspicuous in the touch
regarding the supposed birth of Jesus in Galilee) is seen to
be much more thoroughgoing when his report of the words
in the Temple is taken as a veiled and symbolic statement
to the multitude of the teaching which was given in Galilee
to the disciples alone before and after the Transfiguration,
and which was as little understood by them as it was by the
multitude in the Temple. There is irony in this, but how
much greater is the pathos than the irony ! This is what
the disciples afterwards discussed among themselves and
mourned and marvelled over, in the days that followed the
Resurrection. 1
An agreement of this kind between two documents, lying
so much beneath the surface, yet so complete, would in the
criticism of non-Christian works be regarded as a weighty
proof of trustworthiness and authenticity, unless the suppo
sition of elaborately concocted fraud was established ; but
frauds so elaborate and skilful are unknown in ancient litera
ture.
In favour of this dating Colonel Mackinlay s arguments,
together with the reasons now advanced, seem to be conclu
sive. From it follow several interesting results, which he has
not neglected to observe, and probably many more which fall
outside the scope of his book. One topographical inference
would be that the Mount of the Transfiguration could not
1 See above, p. 89 f.
Chronology of the Life of Christ 243
be Mount Hermon (which always seemed to me very im
probable and incongruous with ancient habits and ideas), but
some mountain farther south and nearer Jerusalem. It
would be impossible without extraordinary exertion (possible
for a trained athlete, but not for ordinary human beings) to
be on the top of Mount Hermon at the beginning of the
Feast and in Jerusalem on the fourth day of the Feast. If
Tabor or some other peak of Galilee were the scene, the
circumstances are quite in accordance with ordinary life.
The Nativity also is placed by the Author at the Feast
of Tabernacles. This seems highly probable, and may even,
I think, be regarded as approximating to certainty. It has
been pointed out frequently that the circumstances of the
Birth are inconsistent with a winter date, for the sheep are
folded at night in winter, whereas they were feeding out on
the upland plains near Bethlehem on the night when Christ
was born : that is the custom only during the hot season of
the year. Considerable part of the summer is required for
the operations of harvest and thrashing in various parts of
Palestine, which take place earlier or later according to the
elevation above the sea ; and it would have been impossible
to order any movement of the people until those operations
were fully completed. Accordingly the conclusion has been
drawn, " we may say with considerable confidence that
August to October is the period within which the numbering
would be fixed" (Christ Born at Bethlehem, p. 193). Now,
at the Feast of Tabernacles there was always a considerable
movement of the Jews from the northern parts towards
Jerusalem ; and it was natural that the king should avoid
the disturbance caused by two movements near the same
time, and should make the numbering coincide with the
Feast, only requiring that all should go up on this occasion
244 VII. The Morning Star
to the town of Judaea, which was their original home. I have
pointed out how necessary it was that the prejudices and
customs of the Jews should not be interfered with; an
Oriental despot may be extremely cruel without offending
public feeling, and indeed may be all the more successful by
virtue of his cruelty ; but he must not run counter to the
national genius and habits, and this Herod seems to have
carefully refrained from doing. The journey to Jerusalem
which many were undertaking at the autumn Feast could
be combined with the enforced repairing of each to his own
city, for it must be remembered that these northern Jews at
this period were of the two tribes, not of the ten.
An interesting discovery has been made in Egypt bearing
on this point : an order dated A.D. 104 that every Egyptian
must repair to his own home in preparation for the number
ing of the households. Mr. Kenyon and Mr. Bell append
the following note to this document : " It is a rescript from
the Prefect requiring all persons who were residing out of
their own homes to return to their homes in view of the
approaching census. The analogy between this order and
Luke ii. 1-3 is obvious." l
This may be taken as a parallel to the similar order at
the first numbering in Palestine ; and it fends to show that
when Herod issued his command, he was acting under Roman
orders, and had no choice but to obey. It was not a device
which he had chosen himself with his skill in kingcraft ;
1 British Museum Papyri, iii., p. 124. I am indebted to Professor J. H.
Moulton for directing my attention to this important document. Previously
I had been inclined to think that the method of carrying out the enumeration
on the principle that each man should be counted in his own city might have
originated from Herod. This possibility is now definitely eliminated. The
method was Roman, and the origin may therefore be assigned with perfect
confidence, as Luke assigns it, to the Emperor. See Moulton in the Exposi
tory Times, 1907, p. 41 (October).
Chronology of the Life of Christ 245
it was one that was forced on him, and which he had to
carry into effect.
It is an unfortunate circumstance for the convincingness
of the Author s argument that he states " harmonies " as
if they were arguments. They are in his estimation and
from his point of view arguments ; but in the modern view
they have no value as proof. It would have been a wiser
plan to separate the " harmonies " from the evidence. The
harmonies are in some cases interesting, but, in view of the
feeling in the Bible, what value could it have (even if proved)
that Christ was baptised at a Full Moon ? Such " harmonies "
are valueless coincidences.
The very idea of "harmonies," as Colonel Mackinlay
works them out, will be found repellent by many minds.
But his system of chronology rests, as I am strongly inclined
to think, on a thoroughly sound basis of reasoning. One
cannot yet say that the basis is certain. The subject is
still too obscure and the evidence too scanty. But, in the
words of Professor J. H. Moulton (in the passage just quoted),
"We are getting on. One of the census papers of the
Nativity year will turn up next." When the chronology is
settled, the " harmonies " come in as very noteworthy coin
cidences, 1 in which there maybe more than can as yet be
comprehended : the whole structure may be compared to
that of the great Pyramid, in the construction of which
astronomical facts certainly played a part, though it is not
easy to determine where design ends and coincidence
begins.
It becomes only more clear to the reader of this book
that the Gospels are a remarkable structure, resting on
fact and observation, and full of the sort of detail which
can originate only in the actual life of a real personage.
246 VII. The Morning Star
Note. I may add that my object in the book, Was Christ
Born at Bethlehem ? was to demonstrate the historical possi
bility of Luke s narrative. I did not try to prove that Christ
was born in B.C. 6 ; but showed that this date offered a per
fectly reasonable and credible historical sequence of events
in perfect harmony with all other evidence, except the testi
mony of Tertullian, who gave the date B.C. 8. The proper
year for the Enrolment was the one mentioned by Tertul-
liani; but I showed that a delay of two years was not incon
ceivable, and in a subsequent article in the Expositor,
November, 1901, p. 321 ff., quoted a parallel case of long
delay. But the testimony of Tertullian is now confirmed
by Colonel Mackinlay s argument that the Enrolment took
place in the proper year B.C. 8 ; and this date may now be
accepted provisionally as the only one which has all the
evidence in its favour.
VIII.
A CRITICISM OF RECENT RESEARCH.
VIII.
A CRITICISM OF RECENT RESEARCH.
A GOOD many years ago I expressed (I think in the Ex
positor) the opinion, forced on one who lived far from
Oxford, that Dr. Sanday was to some degree giving up to a
single University what was meant for mankind. This re
proach if that can be called reproach which was merely
the recognition of a zealous and strict devotion to the im
mediate duty can no longer be uttered in view of the books
with which the Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity has
enriched us in recent years. One perceives that these are
the result of the long period of probation and preparation
to which Dr. Sanday s work has been submitted. The
marked characteristic of his writing is its maturity and
fulness of thought rather than its ingenuity. His books
derive their value, not from bold and brilliant views, which
seem to carry both the writer and the reader away with them
and almost to overmaster the judgment, but from the im
pression they convey of a reserve of power that lies still
unused behind the written word, of a methodical toning
down of expression to the standard that is inevitable and
convincing. He never strikes one as speaking too strongly,
but always as having pondered over the expression of each
opinion till it is the last and completest word that has to be
said from that point of view. There is no modern writer
who more strongly impresses me with the sense of the moral
(249)
250 VIII. A Criticism of
element which is a necessary part of high intellectual power.
It is a truth which one has often to impress on students at
college, that mere cleverness is a poor and even a dangerous
part of a scholar s equipment, adequate by itself only for the
winning of entrance scholarships and class prizes, but having
no staying power in the race of life. One feels in Dr.
Sanday s work that it is founded and built up on the intense
desire to reach the truth, and that this intense desire has
directed the method, and concentrated the faculties in the
path of knowledge.
The book is made up of a series of lectures and reviews
which have no connection with one another except in two
very important respects, they all belong to one stage and
one period in the evolution of the Author s views, and they
to a large extent spring from a single purpose, viz., to sum
up and estimate some leading tendencies and results in the
present stage of scholarship. That the various surveys which
are taken of separate parts of the whole field were worked
up to suit different occasions gives an appearance of dis-
jointedness ; but the appearance is really only superficial,
and might by slight changes have been in great measure
eliminated, if there were anything to gain by eliminating it.
The opening chapter on the Symbolism of the Bible is a
very simple expression of much careful thought : many
problems have been pondered over for a long time before
it was written, yet they hardly appear above the calm sur
face. On p. 14, as we see gladly, Dr. Sanday recognises
that " from the very first sacrifice was expressive of ideas ".
The use of the plural shows that he would not admit the
explanation of the origin of the rite of sacrifice from a single
idea, as some scholars would maintain. Sacrifice is the
expression of the human mind in its relation to God, and
Recent Research
251
is as various as the human mind. The thought of primitive
man was simple, but it can never be reduced to one idea
alone. The man who can explain the origin of sacrifice
from one idea is perilously near the discovery of the key to
all mythology, and he who has found that key is hopelessly
lost. You can with sufficient ingenuity always explain
verbally anything out of anything ; and thus you can draw
out on paper a process of development whereby all
mythology and all sacrifice evolve themselves from a single
origin ; but this process has nothing firmer to rest upon than
the paper on which it is written. Dr. Sanday s words might
easily be taken as indicating the view that there are only
two really primitive ideas in sacrifice, the gift and the sacri
ficial communion ; but I think that this would be a miscon
ception, and that, when he speaks of " two ideas that we can
trace farthest," he does not intend to restrict the number to
two, but merely expresses his conviction as to the reality and
certainty of at least these two.
On the other hand, I confess that I cannot entirely sym
pathise with the point of view expressed in the paragraph at
the foot of p. 9 : " We are not surprised to find that in the
early books of the Bible, where dealings take place between
God and man, the Godhead is represented under human
form. Man was himself the noblest being with which he
was acquainted ; and therefore, in conceiving of a being still
nobler, he necessarily started from his own self-conscious
ness ; he began by magnifying his own qualities, and only
by degrees did he learn, not only to magnify, but to dis
criminate between them."
This is, in a way, perfectly proper and sensible. It is
what every one says perhaps what every one must say
and yet I do not feel that it is vital or illuminative : it seems
252 VIII. A Criticism of
to leave out the true principle. I should not venture to
attempt to define the true principle : the task is above my
power. But I cannot recognise it in this statement, which
is apt to suggest that the conceptions of the Divine nature
current among the Hebrews began by being anthropomorphic.
This does not convince me. I should rather approach the
problem from the point of view that the early Hebrew con
ceptions were undeveloped, vague, and capable of future
growth in more than one direction. They might have de
generated into anthropomorphism, as the Greek conception
did. They were equally capable of development in another
direction ; and they did in fact, under the impulse of a suc
cession of prophets and thinkers, develop in a nobler and
truer way. But how to describe the unformed germ of early
Hebrew thought I know not.
Difficulties of various kinds impede the attempt to express
oneself clearly on this subject. You cannot speak precisely
about what is essentially vague. It is difficult to project
oneself into the mind of primitive man, or to picture to
oneself what was in his mind. It is also hard for us, who
are accustomed to aim at clearness and precision and definite
outlines, to sympathise with or understand the Oriental" ex
pression which rather shrinks from these qualities and prefers
the vague, the allusive and the indirect. The difference
between the European and the Asiatic mind is, to a large
degree, a mere matter of education lasting through genera
tions and centuries, but perhaps it is to a certain extent
due to difference of nature and sympathy and endowment.
Most of what Dr. Sanday says on this hard subject seems
to me excellent, illuminative and suggestive ; but not
all.
I much prefer his other term "indirect description" to
Recent Research 253
the word " symbolism " by which he more frequently desig
nates the Hebrew and Oriental style of expression.
The term " symbolism " which Dr. Sanday prefers, not as
perfect but as the least objectionable, is open to the objection
that the person who speaks symbolically is conscious of the
difference between the symbol and the real thing, and con
sciously employs the one to stand in place of the other.
That is the case with the symbolic actions of the prophets,
described in the first section of this opening chapter of the
book which we are reviewing, as when Agabus took Paul s
girdle and bound himself with it in token that Paul would
be bound if he went to Jerusalem : the symbolism here was
conscious and intended, and Agabus explained its meaning.
But, as the Author himself says on p. II, the earlier
Hebrews often did not regard the " symbol" as different
from the thing symbolised : the " symbol " was the thing
symbolised. How are we to understand or to describe a
stage of thought when ideas are so vague and so unformed
that they thus pass into one another without any conscious
ness of the transition ? Take the genealogical fiction, which
plays so important a part in the early history of many peoples,
not merely of the Jews. It was not a fiction in primitive
thought : it expressed a truth in the simplest and most direct
manner in which the natural mind could express it, though
to us the manner seems indirect. The Rev. Dr. White of
Marsovan gives an admirable example that came within his
own experience, where a wandering dervish used this mode
of expression : " He told me that he was a Shukhbazari ;
and then, to enlighten my ignorance, explained that Arabs,
Circassians and Shukhbazaris are own brothers, children of
one father and one mother. He used a Scripture form of
expression to make me understand that the three peoples
254 VIII. A Criticism of
possessed the same traits of character." The dervish was
merely eager to emphasise the close resemblance in character
between the three peoples. He could think and speak only
in concrete terms : he could not generalise or deal in abstrac
tions. Yet out of his language, in the process and hardening
of thought, there might rise naturally and easily a genea
logical fiction: the common father and mother acquire
names, and the three peoples become three sons.
Nor is it merely real similarity of character that may give
origin to this genealogical expression of history. Geo
graphical contiguity may cause it, or the speaker may express
by it little more than a common diversity from himself. He
looks out over the world, and distinguishes from himself
several peoples of the north-west as being children of one
father different from his father. So in Genesis x. 4 we have
" the sons of Javan : Elishah, and Tarshish, Kittim, and
Dodanim ".
The "genealogical fiction," then, has to be understood
correctly, and it becomes valuable history. Only the un
sympathetic and unintelligent historical criticism of forty or
fifty years ago, the period of Grote and Cornwall Lewis and
the Tubinger^ would be content to regard it simply as legend,
and leave it out of the sphere of history. But, in order to
understand aright any genealogical myth, we must put our
selves at the point of view of the person or people who origin
ated that particular expression. It tells us something about
the peoples whom it correlates to one another : it tells us
more about the person or people who originated it : it tells
us most of all about the standard and range of knowledge,
the limits of geographical outlook, and so on, in the period
when it took the form in which we have it.
Again, what was the conception in the mind of the ancient
Recent Research 255
Hebrew, when he spoke of the messenger (or angel) of the
Lord who conveyed certain knowledge to the mind of a
human being ? Who shall define this conception, or express
exactly the distinction between it and the thought in the
mind of another Hebrew, who used the expression that the
word of the Lord came to a man ? These two phrases belong
to two different stages in the thought of men, who had a
simpler and less clearly defined way of conceiving and ex
pressing their relation to the unseen Divine power which
surrounds and is always pressing upon man. It is not
mine to define these Hebrew ideas. I do not understand
them. But I do at least feel that they are radically different
from the anthropomorphic conception of the Hellenes. And
I feel in a vague way that Luke the Hellene has unconsciously
and unintentionally transfused a Hebrew view into a Greek
view, when he described the angel of the Annunciation.
He seems to have thought of such an appearance as Iris
makes in the Iliad; but I doubt if that was the idea in the
Hebrew mind of her from whom the story came. It is not
to be supposed that Luke added or invented any detail.
The name Gabriel beyond all question comes from the
Hebrew authority and belongs to the obscure later Hebrew
development of the angelic idea, when the power of God,
conceived as acting in different directions, was endowed
with various names ; and in this stage there was certainly a
certain approach to anthropomorphism, as Hebrew thought
was being misdeveloped and clothed with defined but false
form. Luke, however, was simply translating into Greek a
Hebrew narrative, rethinking it and then expressing it, but
in rethinking it he unavoidably gave it a more Hellenic
form.
But here lies the problem that is proposed to the modern
256 VIII. A Criticism of
student of ancient history. He must entirely dissociate
himself from the accepted method of investigating the
ancient documents what is called the " critical " method.
He must forget the modern dichotomy of the world into the
" educated " and the " savage " races. He must separate
the primitive man alike from the " educated " and the
" savages " of modern time ; for men in the early stage
were neither one nor the other, but contained the possibility
of both.
In the second half of this most interesting chapter, Dr.
Sanday proceeds to apply to the Gospels the inferences
which he has drawn from the use of " symbolism " in the Old
Testament The discussion of the Temptation of Jesus
occupies the largest space in this part, and is of peculiar
interest to the present reviewer. The Temptation is in Dr.
Sanday s view entirely a parable (if I am not wholly mis
understanding him). His idea of the Temptation is expressed
in the picture by W. Dyce " a monotonous landscape and
a Figure seated upon a stone, with the hands clasped, and
an expression of intense thought on the beautiful but by no
means effeminate features ".. Not that he regards this as the
only correct representation of the Temptation. As he says,
" it would be a mistake if we were to insist too much upon
this contrast \i.e., the contrast between the subjective
modern view, and that of Tissot with a conventional fiend,
or of mediaeval painters with every detail sharp and definite],
as though the modern presentation were right and true,
and the ancient or mediaeval wrong and untrue. Each is
really right in its place : they mean fundamentally the same
thing, and it is only the symbolical expression that is
different"
With Dr. Sanday s view I find myself on the whole in
Recent Research 257
thorough sympathy. That the story of the Temptation
is largely of the nature of parable seems established by the
Gospels themselves. I venture, as being the briefest way
in which I can express my criticism of the present study,
to quote part, and to abbreviate part, of what I once wrote
on the subject (The Education of Christ \ p. 31 f.): "The
authority obviously is the account given by Himself to His
disciples ; and we are told that without a parable spake He
not to them . How far the details partake of the nature of
parable, intended to make transcendental truth intelligible
to the simple fishermen, we cannot precisely tell, and no man
ought to dogmatise. But no one can doubt as to the essential
truth that lies under the narrative." Jesus counted the
cost before He began His career : He thought of other
possibilities, brilliant and tempting ; and He rejected them
as temptations. It is involved in the Temptation, when He
described it to His disciples, that He was already con
scious of the superhuman powers and opportunities that
were His, if He chose to use them for personal ends. If
you regard the story as anything beyond pure fiction, you
must accept the superhuman consciousness of Him who was
tempted by means such as are here brought to bear on Jesus.
As a whole the temptations are meaningless and absurd, if
applied to an ordinary man. It is mere trifling or sarcasm
to say to a man who is hungry, " command that these stones
become loaves ".
If Jesus could think and speak of this as a temptation, He
must have been conscious of His own superhuman power ;
and at the time when He related the incident to His disciples,
He must have been already regarded by them as possessed
of such power. Even the idea that the Temptation was
either partly parable, or entirely and purely a symbolic way
258 VIII. A Criticism of
of explaining a thought too high for the capacity of simple
uneducated fishermen and rustics to comprehend, implies in
the person who related this story about Himself the con
sciousness of powers and opportunities beyond the range of
mere humanity and the knowledge that His hearers had some
vague sympathetic conception of this nature. Accordingly,
those who hold and carry out logically the theory that Jesus
was a mere human being and that He was during His life
time regarded only as a human being by His associates,
must necessarily dismiss the story of the Temptation as pure
legend, the invention of a later age, and must deny to it the
character of a parable spoken by Jesus.
If I understand Dr. Sanday rightly, there is nothing in
this statement that would disagree with his views. The only
word of question that I would make with regard to his ex
pression of them, is whether in the desire to give clearness to
his lecture (such was the original form of the first chapter)
he has not made it in some parts too clear and sharp and
definite in outline, too strongly modern in tone: though
the quotation which I have extracted from his book attests
his recognition of the fact that every age must and may
look at the Temptation with different eyes, and all perhaps
equally rightly.
Some may probably be afraid that Dr. Sanday s use of
symbolism may, from his premises, be quite logically carried
very far, much farther than he carries it or they would like.
But in an admirable concluding page he sums up the true
attitude of mind and the right temper in which historical
study ought to be carried on. With certain obvious modifi
cations, what he says here is applicable to every department
of ancient history. A certain sympathy for peoples and
times and ideas remote from our own, an intense desire to
Recent Research
259
comprehend them, a determined effort to throw off the fet
ters of nineteenth century views and to rise to a freer outlook,
a contempt for narrow reasoning and hard logicality (which
in these historical problems is often thoroughly illogical in
the higher sense of the term logic), all these are needed in the
reconstruction of ancient history and the interpretation of
ancient literature. But hear how delicately and finely Dr.
Sanday describes this attitude of mind : it "consists mainly
in three things :
" i. In a spirit of reverence for old ideas, which may perhaps
be transcended, but which discharged a very important
function in their day ;
" 2. In a spirit of patience which, because those ideas may
be transcended, does not at once discard and renounce them,
but seeks to extract their full significance ;
" 3. In an open mind for the real extent of this significance. 1
We have our treasure, perhaps, in earthen vessels, but the
vessels are themselves very deserving of study. I would
say rather that, for the purpose before us, we should not
think of them exactly as earthen, but as made of some finer
and more transparent material which permits us to see through
to the light within."
A survey of recent research would be an impertinent and
valueless production if it were simply a cataloguing of faults
and a statement of dissent. One is familiar with the criticism
written by the able young graduate, fresh from the schools,
whose condescending recognition of merit is as rare as a grain
of wheat in a bushel of chaff, whose principal aim seems to
be to show how much better he could have done the work,
1 The mind open to hear evidence is what we all desire, but none of us
fully possesses. We are all to some extent prejudiced by training, predilec
tion, etc. The truest scholar has the most open mind. See above, p. 34 f.
260 VIII. A Criticism of
if he had cared to undertake it, than the author, and who has
evidently never made any serious attempt to understand the
book which he criticises, but merely touched it on the out
side and gone off at a tangent. Criticism of this kind is
unerquicklich wie der Nebelwind.
Totally different is the character of Dr. Sanday s work.
He appreciates thoroughly the high principle that it is
the function of true criticism to find excellences, not
defects. He tells us what he finds that is good in each of
the authors whom he criticises; he expresses his dissent
only where necessary to bring out the state of modern
opinion ; and he expresses it in very gentle and gracious
terms. The sharpest statement of disapproval which I
observe is that on p. 171 \ and yet how much it is qualified
by preceding sentences of genuine hearty praise. I quote
the whole passage : " I have a sincere respect, and even
admiration, for perhaps five-sixths of his work, including
particularly I should like to say in passing his reviews
of the literature of Patristics, in which he has been at once
just and generous to some of my friends here in Oxford.
I repeat that the pamphlet from which I started is not only
good but in many ways very good. One may go on for
wide stretches in his books and find only occasion to admire.
And yet every now and then one is pulled up sharp by
passages like those of which I have been speaking, which, I
confess, move me to indignation, so narrow are they, and so
hard, so deficient in sympathy and in intelligence for the
difference between one age and another."
A quality in Dr. Sanday which strikes me as peculiarly
admirable perhaps because I lack it too much is his
power of learning from writers who are so antipathetic to him.
If a commentator is devoid of sympathy for the ancient
Recent Research 261
author about whom he is writing, or lacks insight into the
more delicate and subtle aspects of the text which he is
discussing, I can hardly force myself to read him ; he has
nothing for me; and I neither learn from him (except that
he sometimes makes me understand through antagonism
passages which I might otherwise have failed to comprehend)
nor criticise him. But we have just seen how Dr. Sanday
can respect and admire five-sixths of an author whose re
maining sixth part moves him to indignation.
Now let us see how he expresses himself about another
writer, who " has directness and ability, and never minces
matters ; as I have said, he belongs to no school, and repeats
the formulae of no school. But he writes in the style of a
Prussian official. He has all the arrogance of a certain kind
of common sense. His mind is mathematical, with something
of the stiffness of mathematics a mind of the type which
is supposed to ask of everything, What does it prove?
It is a mind that applies the standards to which it is accus
tomed with very little play of historical imagination. If
it cannot at once see the connection of cause and effect,
it assumes that there is no connection. It makes no allow
ance for deficiencies of knowledge, for scantiness of sources
and scantiness of detail contained in the sources, for the very
imperfect reconstruction of the background that alone is
possible to us. If there is upon the surface some appearance
of incoherence or inconsequence, it is at once inferred that
there is real incoherence and inconsequence. And the
narrative is straightway rejected as history ; though a
little reflection would show that life is full of these seeming
inconsistencies, and would be fuller still if our knowledge of
the events going on around us did not supply us with the
links of connection which make them intelligible. He argues
262 VIII. A Criticism of
as though we could exhaust the motives of the actors in
events that happened nearly nineteen hundred years ago,
whereas nothing is more certain than that we cannot in the
least come near exhausting them."
On one somewhat important matter I find myself, to my
great regret, distinctly in opposition to my friend the
Author (to whose counsel and help and never-failing en
couragement I owe so much). He seems to me to estimate
too highly the possibilities of discovery which purely literary
criticism offers : while I seem to him to undervalue them.
This is a question that requires more space than can here
be given to it; but my impression is that the great and
epoch-making steps in advance come from non-literary,
external, objective discovery, and that, the literary critics
adopt these with admirable and praiseworthy facility as soon
as the facts are established, and quickly forget that they
themselves (or their predecessors) used to think otherwise,
and would still be thinking otherwise, if new facts had not
been supplied to them. Nothing gives me such interest, and
so illustrates human nature, as to observe how principles of
literary criticism of the Old Testament, which were accepted
as self-evident when I was studying the subject under
Robertson Smith s guidance about 1878, are now scorned
and set aside as quite absurd and outworn by the modern
literary critics. But it was not literary criticism that made
the advance: it was hard external facts that turned the
literary critics from their old path, and they have utterly
forgotten how the change came about.
Moreover, it sometimes seems to my humble judgment
that Dr. Sanday is unconsciously guided by the prepossession
that there must be a certain residuum of truth in some
clever treatise which he has been reading; and he finds
Recent Research 263
this residuum by dividing the writer s total estimated result
by 10 or by 100.
He finds the English scholars on the whole to be nearer
the truth, the Germans to be more educative and suggestive.
I agree with him to a certain extent. I owe to the Germans
almost all the stimulus of my early years, and I owe to
several of them also almost all the encouragement which
I received at the beginning when I needed it most, and for
which I can never be sufficiently grateful to them. But now
I find the English most useful, because they often give me
facts without views, while the majority of the German writers
start from a definite and fixed theory, which one may almost
call a prejudice. They assume many of them the whole
in the opening paragraph of the book ; and often it seems
as if one could draw out the whole reasoning of a treatise
in inexorable logic after reading the opening assumptions.
I must find room for another saying, which seems pro
foundly true and far too generally neglected : " The fact
is that the Judaism of the time of Christ had a wider and
more open horizon than that of a hundred years later. The
result of the terrific and almost superhuman efforts that
the Jews made to throw off the Roman yoke was a long
reaction that has lasted almost to our own time. When
the great effort failed, Judaism withdrew into its shell :
it contracted its outlook and turned in upon itself. It gave
up the hope of Divine intervention that had at one time
seemed so near, and was content to brood upon its past."
Several times, in a quite different line of thought, I have had
to protest against the prejudice that the later Jewish customs
and thought can be regarded as the norm according to
which we must judge about Jewish practice and views in
the first century before and after Christ. Dr. Sanday
264 VIII. A Criticism of
here states the true historical principle in a direct and
uncompromising fashion ; and the passage from which
I have quoted a few words is as well worth study as any
thing in the whole space of these carefully thought-out
lectures.
In the style one is often also struck by an apparently
unconscious tendency on Dr. Sanday s part to use military
metaphors, to think like a soldier, and to count and marshal
his thoughts as methodically as a general estimates and orders
his force, not after the bold and creative fashion of a Caesar,
who discomfits his opponent by sheer audacity and almost
superhuman rapidity, and who imbues his army with some
thing of his own genius and resourcefulness, but after the
fashion of a capable leader, trained to make the best use of
the forces that are placed at his disposal. So, for example,
" exactly five-sixths of Julicher s work is good and even admir
able " ; and " the histories of Elijah and Elisha are much nearer
indeed quite near to the events ".
Other examples of similar character are :
" Weinel s book is up to a good average, and Steinmann s
perhaps somewhat above it " (p. 44).
" I welcome much of his criticism both on the right hand
and on the left " (p. 44).
" With us dashing and desultory raids are apt to take the
place of what is in Germany the steady disciplined advance
of a regularly mobilised army " (p. 42).
" Whatever advance is made is made all along the line "
(P- 4i).
Taken in conjunction with what is said in the opening
paragraph of the present article, these extracts seem to be
indicative of the methodical character of the Author s mind
and the orderly progress of his studies. The development
Recent Research 265
of a scholar is always an interesting study, certainly to other
scholars, and probably also to the world at large ; and this
quality seems to lie at the basis of the Author s intellectual
power. In this connection I need make no apology for
another observation, even though it may perhaps seem to
some people to savour of a too personal scrutiny.
In this book which now lies before us I am struck with
one difference, and, as I venture to think, improvement
in the style from his earlier writings I am not referring
to English composition but to scientific exposition of opinion.
Dr. Sanday uses the simple first person singular more
frequently than he did in an earlier period of his work.
This usage is not necessarily egotistic ; in scientific work
it is rarely egotistic ; it is the briefest and most direct way
of calling attention to the subjectivity, and therefore neces
sarily the uncertainty, of a statement : it is a danger flag, not
a claim of personal ownership. When a view seems to be
proved and trustworthy, one states it in the impersonal
language of science ; when it is advisable to call attention
to the subjective element in a view, and to warn the reader
that it is as yet only opinion (as one believes, true opinion),
but not thoroughly reasoned and assured knowledge, 1 one
uses the personal form.
1 In Platonic language, it is dArj0V 5<$a, but not
IX.
HISTORICAL GEOGRAPHY OF THE
HOLY LAND.
IX.
HISTORICAL GEOGRAPHY OF THE
HOLY LAND.
IN venturing to write a review of Professor G. A. Smith s
Historical Geography of the Holy Land, I feel somewhat like
" the man in the street " attempting to criticise a work of
fine scholarship. But the wish that I should do so has been
expressed by those whom I am unwilling to disobey ; and
perhaps the impression made by the book on a bystander,
who is interested in the game of Old Testament study,
though not himself able to play, may possess some slight
interest, and warrant the following paragraphs in appearing
before the public. Besides having myself studied with some
minuteness the Historical Geography of another part of
Western Asia, I have had the advantage of frequently talk
ing about the early history of the Hebrew people with my
friend Professor Robertson Smith, and of reading under his
guidance in 1878 everything that he thought most valuable
on the criticism and interpretation of the Mosaic books and
the historical books of the Old Testament a long piece of
work which afterwards proved a most valuable education for
the problems that face the historical investigator in Asia
Minor. Naturally, after such a course as was marked out
by Robertson Smith, one retains a permanent interest in
the subject; and this interest has made me welcome most
heartily a book which attacks that fascinating problem in a
(269)
270 IX. Historical Geography
new way, bringing new methods of analysis to the investiga
tion, and applying them with a union of boldness and caution
and free, wide view that is most refreshing after the niggling
way in which many of the recent investigations about Asia
Minor (over which I have had to spend too much time) are
composed. Here we have an investigator who sets himself
to master the problem as a whole, who tries to conceive
clearly the general disposition and character of the land
about which he is to treat, to view it always in association
with man and with history, and to understand the interrela
tion of its parts, and then proceeds to take his readers along
the same path that he has trod. He has seen the places
with the reconstructive eye and the warm, creative imagina
tion of the historian; he has inhaled the atmosphere with
the love and enthusiasm that breathe through his pages, and
make the reader fancy that he can catch the same breath.
A writer on Historical Geography could get nowhere
else so favourable a field as Professor G. A. Smith has found.
Not only does an eternal interest cling to it ; it is also a land
of singularly well-marked features, easy to understand and
easy to bring home to the reader s understanding; and
further, it is a small land, which can be pictured with that
breadth and fulness of treatment that are necessary to make
the scenes and facts live before the reader and yet within
reasonable compass. And, having a good subject, the author
uses his advantage to the full, giving us a book which is of
the first importance as opening up a fresh path of study. It
applies the modern methods of united historical and geo
graphical investigation to the department where preposses
sions and inherited prejudices were strongest, and where
methods too purely literary absorbed the energy of the more
free and unprejudiced scholars. It applies them, too, with
of the Holy Land 271
a spirit of free, lofty and generous enthusiasm, that makes
it fascinating from the first to the last page. It is, of course,
far from completing its task ; it is really only the first open
ing up of what will hereafter prove a fruitful field of study.
No one appreciates that fact better than Professor Smith
himself; and when the critic tries to estimate the future that
is opened up before us by this book in other words, the
problems that it leaves unattempted or unsolved, he feels
that the author himself would be best able to look out over
the vista in front.
There remain many sites which have to be localised
much more precisely before the full bearing of the incidents
connected with them becomes plain. This important part of
the subject Professor Smith has avoided wisely and rightly
for his immediate purpose but it must be faced hereafter
either by him or by others. See, for example, pages 221, 222,
where Professor Smith brings out very clearly both the local
character and vividness of the tale of Samson, and also the
obscurity in which it must remain involved until the localities
are more fully identified.
Book II., Western Palestine, nearly 400 pages in length,
is the main part of the volume, and shows Professor Smith at
his best. He is most familiar with this part of the country,
and he has put forth all his strength on the elucidation of
the many incidents which he has to introduce. Every page,
almost, seems more interesting than the preceding ; one
must go through it steadily with the map and the authorities
by one s side in order to appreciate the character of the
book. The only criticism which one can make on it in
reasonable compass is read it.
Book III., on Eastern Palestine, seemed to me less satis
factory than any other part of the book. The questions
272 IX. Historical Geography
which have to be treated here are not so purely Hebrew,
but take us into a wider range of history. Perhaps it is
due to the necessity of bringing the book, already a long
one, to an end ; perhaps it arises from the fact that much of
the history of the East country appeals to a different class
of readers ; but the treatment as a whole is thinner in this
part ; the subject has not naturally the same interest as
that of Book II., and is, I think, not handled with so sure a
touch as the main part of the work. To take one example :
there are on page 635 several statements from which I must
express dissent. Professor Smith is here giving examples
of the difference of tone between Christian and pagan epi
taphs in the Hauran ; and contrasts the hopelessness of the
latter with the " quiet confidence " of the former. Such a
contrast is often obvious in literature ; but I doubt whether
it can fairly be traced in the epitaphs of either the Hauran
or of Asia Minor.
He says "teal o-v, Even thou, is a common memento mori".
I have always thought that this is the supposed reply of the
deceased to the greeting presumed to be uttered by the
passer-by ; it occurs sometimes in the fully expressed form,
%at/oe x a W Ka ^ "", i.e., "Farewell," " Fare-thou-well
also". Again we read that " * thou hast finished is a com
mon epitaph ". But the verb reXeu raw had come to be used
regularly in the sense of "to die" from the fifth century
B.C. downwards ; and no such connotation as Professor Smith
supposes could, I think, have been present to the epitaph-
writers of the Hauran. Hence the epitaph which he next
quotes must be translated, " Titus, Malchus son, farewell !
Thou hast died ere thy prime (at the age) of twelve years-
Farewell." The last word is the reply of Titus to the
greeting, and the epitaph is far from favouring the contrast
of the Holy Land 273
which Professor Smith draws. Still less do his next examples
support his case: "the dead are told that theirs is the in
evitable fate, no one is immortal". But the formula on
which he relies, ouSet? aOdvaros, is very often Christian,
and not, as Professor Smith argues, pagan. Once or twice it
occurs in doubtful cases, but Waddington 2032, 2050, and
Ewing I63, 1 are epitaphs containing the common and typical
Christian formula, eV#aSe /celrai, Here lies ; while
Waddington 2459 ls > as tne editor remarks, clearly Christian
(being one of the most interesting Christian epitaphs of
Eastern Palestine, belonging probably to the third century,
and being engraved while Christian formulae were still fluid,
and had not yet become fixed and stereotyped). Wadding
ton 1 897 is also almost certainly Christian ; the name Domi-
tilla is one of the most interesting of early Christian names.
The formula Odpaei,, Be of good cheer, which often precedes
ovSels dOdvaros, would alone be almost sufficient to mark
the whole as Christian, and to show that the hopelessness
which Professor Smith finds in the phrase is not really there :
the precise sense in which the words should be taken is " no
one is free from death," rather than, as he maintains, "no
one is immortal ". 2 It is quite probable that the phrase was
adopted from pagan epitaphs 3 by the Christians, as many
1 Mr. Ewing s inscriptions will be published in the ensuing Quarterly
Statement of the Palestine Exploration Fund by Mr. A. A. G. Wright and
Mr. A. Souter, two of my recent pupils in Aberdeen.
2 In n. 4 he quotes Wadd. 1986 as pagan, but Waddington considers it
as Christian (in my opinion rightly). In n. 5 " Wadd. 2429 " seems to be a
wrong reference.
3 [Examples probably pagan occur in Bulletin de Corr. Hell., 1902, pp.
175, 186 ; but it is elsewhere usually Christian (see Studies in the Eastern
Roman Provinces, 1906, p. 129). Fourteen years further experience has shown
how frequently the exclamations, which are treated in the text, occur in
Christian inscriptions.]
18
274 IX. Historical Geography
other forms were, but most of the cases in which it occurs are
clearly Christian, and the contrast which Professor Smith
founds on it cannot be maintained.
In another interesting little inscription, mentioned on the
same page, Professor Smith restores /juera Trdvra ra((/>o9),
After all things a tomb; but on the analogy of common
formulae, such as o /3to? ravra, Life is this, I should prefer
fiera Trdvra ra(vra), After all this. 1
I have dwelt on this page at some length, because the
line of demarcation between Christian and non-Christian
epitaphs is a very delicate one, and there is no point in
antiquity on which more mistakes are made, while it is of
peculiar interest and even of importance to notice the gradual
steps by which the Christians separated themselves from the
customs and ways of ordinary society around them, and
created a code of manners and forms distinctive of them
selves. 2
Perhaps some readers may find the discussion of general
principles contained in Book I., The Land as a Whole, the
least interesting part of this fascinating volume ; but for my
own part, it appeals to me with almost greater interest than
Books II. or III. The descriptive part of Book I. is lumin
ous and most successful, but I confess to being rather dis-
1 An excellent parallel in thought and in expression occurs in an inscrip
tion of the Phrygian Hierapolis, which seems to Waddington No. 1687 (as
well as to myself) to be Christian, etS&s 6n rb re\os v/u.jv rov fiiov ravra. It
is given more accurately in many points as No. 28 in my forthcoming Cities
and Bishoprics of Phrygia. In Bulletin de Corr. Hell., iii., p. 144, a long
metrical epitaph and curse ends with raura in a line by itself: " So much ".
2 1 notice also that on p. 544 Professor Smith remarks that Tacitus (whom
I had quoted on my side in a discussion of the name Iturasi) is against me : he
must have made some mistake, for the MSS. and all good editions are with
me. Some school editions and English translations use the term Ituraea as
a noun, which is unknown (as I have proved) to the ancients.
of the Holy Land 275
appointed with the general reflections on the bearing which
Historical Geography has on the criticism of the Hebrew
authorities. These are rather vaguely and slightly indicated ;
they seem to express the general ideas with which one might
approach the subject for the first time rather than the cream
of the results which one gathers from the doing of the work ;
and I should imagine that chapter v., in which they are
contained, was written before Book II., and did not spring
from a mind filled with the facts and the method applied in
that part.
The first four chapters of Book I. deal with " the place
of Syria in the world s history," and with the form, climate
and scenery of the land ; and, finally, chapter vi. places the
reader at two points of view from which to acquire a general
idea of the effect produced by the characteristics described
in the preceding chapters, viz., on the deck of a steamer 1
and on the top of Mount Ebal beside Shechem. The rela
tion of Arabia to Syria (including Palestine) and of Syria
to the outer world are set before us very suggestively in
chapter i. The Arabian tribes, always in process of growing
too numerous for their bare and barren land, are ever also in
process of forcing themselves into the surrounding countries,
sometimes in peaceful emigration, generally in the guise of
marauders or conquerors ; but of the four paths open to them,
the path of Syria is the easiest, and the one most trodden
by them throughout history. The frontier tribes of the
Arabian wilderness have been constantly pressing in on the
fertile lands of Syria. So long as Syria has been held by
strong, energetic rulers the nomads are kept back, or are
1 On p. 119 there is a harshness of expression. The steamer is sailing
north from Jaffa, but the places seen are enumerated as going south. Yet we
cannot read south for north.
276 IX. Historical Geography
allowed to enter only as peaceful emigrants or as useful
mercenaries in the service of the Syrian Government ; for,
while their warlike and restless character makes them a
terror to the settled Syrian peoples, who become steadily
less fit for war by continuance of peace, it also makes them
excellent soldiers to recruit the Syrian armies. Thus it is
impossible for any Arabian tribe to continue very long a
frontier-tribe ; an unvarying law pushes on each in succes
sion towards and over the frontier ; and this constant immi
gration tends to invigorate the Syrian population and keep
it from stagnating in Oriental peasant life. So the Hebrews
forced their way into Canaan. So also the Ituraeans, whom
we first hear about in the late period when Chronicles was
composed x as warring on the eastern frontier against Reuben,
Gad and Manasseh, gradually forced their way on towards
Anti-Lebanon (in the position where they are represented in
the maps attached to Professor Smith s work) and even
penetrated in part across Anti-Lebanon into the fertile valley
of " Hollow Syria," taking advantage of the disorganisation
caused by the decay of the Seleucid Empire after B.C. 190.
Had not the Seleucid power been soon replaced by the
strong hand of Rome, in all probability the Ituraei would
have overrun Syria entirely, in pursuance of that eternal law
of succession by which the effete dynasties and peoples of
the East are swept away by fresh vigorous conquerors, a
process which the support of Europe, propping up the worn-
out stock of Turkish or Hindu or other dynasties, has some
times stopped, always to the great detriment of their subjects.
There seems to be a curious and deep-seated variation
1 While these wars are projected into a remoter period by the writer, it is
probable that he took the name of this nomad tribe from the facts of his own
time. The Septuagint reads Irovpaioi in i Chron. v. 19.
of the Holy Land 277
between two different points of view as regards the religion
and development of Israel. We read, e.g., " Monotheism
was born, not, as M. Renan says, in Arabia, but in Syria "
(p. 113) ; and Professor Smith goes on to argue that, as the
character of Syria and its peoples is so opposed to mono
theism, we are driven to " the belief that the monotheism
which appeared upon it was ultimately due to direct super
human revelation". So also on page 90, " those spiritual
forces which, in spite of the opposition of nature, did create
upon Syria the monotheistic creed of Israel ".
Such passages as these are quite in accordance with that
view of Hebrew history which sees in it a gradual rise to
wards a loftier and purer conception of God and of the
Divine nature, as the people under the guidance of its
prophets disengaged itself step by step from the grosser
religion which was once shared by the Hebrews with the
other Semitic races. On that theory it would be quite
natural to assert positively that the Hebrew monotheism
arose in Syria, not in Arabia. But alongside of this view,
sometimes even in the same paragraph with it, we find
another, which seems so far as I can venture to judge-
to be inconsistent with it, and to involve an opposite view
of the character of Hebrew history, viz., the traditional
view that the lofty character of Hebrew religion was im
pressed on it, once for all, in Arabia, not in Syria, that
constant lapses from the purity of this religion occurred
amid the seductions and temptations of Syrian surround
ings, that the prophets resisted these lapses and recalled
the people to the original purity of their faith, expounding
and unfolding in detail the character of that faith, and
applying it to each new political and social situation that
arose, but not making it loftier or purer, for it was abso-
278 IX. Historical Geography
lutely lofty and pure from the first. Take, for example,
the words on page 89: "the conception of Israel s early
history which prevails in Deuteronomy, viz., that the nation
suffered a declension from a pure and simple estate of life
and religion to one which was gross and sensuous, from the
worship of their own deity to the worship of many local
gods, is justified in the main I do not say in details, but in
the main by the geographical data, and by what we know
to have been the influence of these at all periods in history ".
But, in truth, what are called the moderate critics seem
all in the rough judgment of ignorant outsiders, such as
the present writer to be involved in the same double point
of view, and to be attempting to combine two different (and
I would add irreconcilable) theories in their attitude towards
the history of Israel. I am, of course, not speaking about
the recognition of the composite nature of the law-books
and the older class of historical records : those who do not
recognise that fact occupy a position so diametrically oppo
site to mine that we can see nothing alike, and there can be
no profitable discussion between us. But to those who
recognise that fact there remains a further, and, I think;
far more important question, viz., as to the relation between
the various component parts of these books one might say
between the different strata, were it not that the very word
strata implies and presupposes a settled opinion in regard
to the question which is put before us for settlement. That
question has been answered by almost all critics in one way,
viz., the relation between the components is one of time, and
the differences between them are due to gradual develop
ment of religious feeling and organisation in the nation.
Those critics who carry out that principle logically and con
sistently form the extreme critical school ; those who accept
of the Holy Land 279
it, but shrink with wise caution from the full consequences of
their own position, are the moderate critics. Professor Driver
puts the point in his usual clear, well-defined and unmistak
able way, in his Introduction^ page 80 : " Can any one read
the injunctions respecting sacrifices and feasts in Exodtis
xxiii. 14-19 beside those in P (Lev. i.-vii., Num. xxviii.-
xxix., for instance), and not feel that some centuries must
have intervened between the simplicity which marks the one
and the minute specialisation which is the mark of the other ? "
Any one who feels compelled to give to that question the
answer that Dr. Driver desires is making the assumption
that the principle of the extreme critical school is right,
though his natural practical sense makes him shrink from
carrying it out with ruthless logic. Neither the wise states
man nor the wise scholar can permit himself to be thoroughly
consistent in carrying into practice the one-sided and in
complete principles which occasionally he does not shrink
from enunciating in theory. It is a fair answer to Dr.
Driver s question to say that other reasons besides lapse of
time have been found sufficient to cause differences of this
class, 1 and that no sufficient reasons have yet been brought
forward to prove that no other cause except progressive
development can account for the great difference which all
J For example, if in A.D. 1860 two able American statesmen, deep in
practical politics, but of opposite parties, had been set separately to the task
of formulating the principles of the American constitution, they would have
produced very different books, at variance on many most fundamental points.
Of course the many centuries of organised civilisation that lay behind them
would have forced on them a great amount of similarity in other points;
whereas no causes existed to produce such similarity in the case of the
Hebrew tribes, who brought with them into Palestine, as we assume, a lofty
religion and moral law, which none of them had fully comprehended and
worked into their nature, much less developed into a practical working
system of ritual and life.
280 IX. Historical Geography
of us wish to understand. I entertain no opinion on the
point : I am merely seeking for information ; and I do not
find any one who faces fairly the question as a whole. All
seem to me to start with their faces set determinedly
towards one side of it alone.
When I say "no sufficient reasons" for the answer ex
pected have been given as yet, it is necessary to except the
thorough and "advanced" critics, whose position is quite
logical and complete. They carry out thoroughly their
view that a gradual, progressive and perfectly natural de
velopment took place on the soil of Syria, and infer that
those parts of the Hebrew documents which imply a de
clension from a primitive revelation spring from a late mis
representation of early history, in which the steps of ascent
were described as successive recoveries from lapses and
errors. Professor Smith seems in some places to use this
principle, and yet on the whole to declare that geographical
study is opposed to it. But it would lead us too far to ex
emplify and make clear the results which, if I may venture
to criticise his method, seem to me to spring from this
unconscious inconsistency in principle. 1 I may however say
that, if a fuller discussion of the subject were possible, I
should take exception to Professor Smith s fundamental con-
1 A few slips of expression may be noticed here, which it would be well
to correct in a later edition: p. 25, 1. 5, Africa was not made a Roman pro
vince till B.C. 146 ; pp. 22-23, note, read Kronos for Chronos, and ftairv\oi for
/3eruAai (a form which is not given in the Thesaurus of Stephanus) twice ; p.
17, note, it is too vague to quote " Porphyry in the Ada Sanctorum," for
there are over sixty folio volumes of tha work; p. 35, 1. 13, the number fif
teen is too small (I notice often a tendency to state numbers rather low),
Nazareth is decidedly more than that from Csesarea, and is not within fif
teen miles of any point on the coast, if the maps are right. The accentuation
of Greek words is often incorrect or wholly wanting (see, e.g., pp. 4, 22, 23,
356, 406, 415, 442, 455, 483).
of the Holy Land 281
trast between most of the Semitic religions on the one hand
as being purely polytheistic, and, on the other hand, the three 1
monotheistic religions, which arose among the Semites. I
cannot agree with the view that the character of the other
Semitic religions is adequately expressed by calling them
"polytheistic": the term " multiplicity-in-unity " seems to
express their nature better. 2
1 " Three " on p. 28, " two " on p. 29, by a natural variation in the
thought.
2 See above, pp. 12 f. and 200. The present article (published in 1894) is
reprinted mainly in order to illustrate the difficulty that we of the West
experience in attempting to understand the Semitic and Oriental ideas of
religion ; and to show how they have been turned over in the writer s mind
year after year with a growing appreciation of the difficulty. Much that we
call " Oriental " in religion is really only early and undeveloped, and our
difficulty is to project ourselves into a primitive period and to sympathise
with inchoate thought.
X.
ST. PAUL S USE OF METAPHORS FROM
GREEK AND ROMAN LIFE.
X.
ST. PAUL S USE OF METAPHORS FROM
GREEK AND ROMAN LIFE.
THE late Dean Howson, in an interesting little book on the
Metaphors of St. Paul, well described the difference between
the Old and the New Testaments in regard to the range and
character of figurative language. In the New Testament
" we find ourselves in contact with circumstances far more
nearly resembling those which surround us in modern life ;
we are on the borders or in the heart of Greek civilisation
and we are always in the midst of the Roman Empire".
Especially is this the case with St. Paul. He was a master
of all the education and the opportunities of his time. He
turned to his profit and to the advancement of his great
purpose all the resources of civilisation. He draws his
illustrations from a certain range of thought and know
ledge, and this reveals the scope of his education and his
interests.
Dean Howson points out that " his metaphors are usually
drawn, not from the operations and phenomena of the natural
world, but from the activities and the outward manifestations
of human life," and that in this respect he stands in marked
contrast with most of the writers in the Bible. " The vapour,
the wind, the fountain, beasts and birds and serpents, the
flower of the grass, the waves of the sea, the early and latter
rain, the sun risen with a burning heat these are like the
figures of the ancient prophets, and there is more imagery
(285)
286 X. St. Paul s
of this kind in the one short Epistle of St. James than in all
the speeches and letters of St. Paul put together." x
Paul s favourite figures are taken from the midst of the
busiest human society and city life, e.g., from the market
"Owe no man anything but to love one another" (Rom.
xiii. 8), " I am debtor both to Greeks and to Barbarians "
(Rom. i. 14), "Make your market to the full of the oppor
tunity" 2 (which the world offers, Eph. v. 16 ; Col. iv. 5),
" wages " (Rom. vi. 23) and the word " riches " is a specially
characteristic mark of his style. Another metaphor of this
class is " I count," \oyiofjLai ; but this word, though strictly
it was a figure taken from the keeping of accounts, was in
such familiar and habitual use that Paul may often have em
ployed it without any clear consciousness of the metaphor,
simply adopting it from ordinary semi-philosophic language.
The Romans were particularly methodical accountants, and
it is noteworthy that Paul uses this and other terms of the
same kind 3 more frequently in writing to the Romans than
anywhere else, as if unconsciously his mind was thinking in
a more Roman fashion. But the idea is Greek, although
such metaphors were less frequently used by the Greeks
than by the pragmatic and methodical Romans ; and Paul
of course had no need to go to Roman life in search of it.
Still the fact remains that the Romans make much more
frequent use of the metaphor, " enter in the account-book,"
than the Greeks. In Cicero s letters this metaphor is ex
tremely frequent.
The Romans also carefully distinguish between entering
on the credit and on the debit side of the account-book
(ferre expensum and acceptum referre\ whereas \oyi^o^aL is
1 Howson, p. 131. * St. Paul the Traveller, p. 149.
3 o<j>i\eTr]s, o^eiAT^uo, four times in Romans, once in Gal., not elsewhere.
Greek and Roman Metaphors 287
used for both. In Rom. ii. 26, iv. 3, 4, 5, 6, 9, n, 22, 24,
ix. 8 ; 2 Cor. v. 19, xii. 6 ; 2 Tim. iv. 16, \o^L^ofjuai means
"reckon to the credit of". It means " reckon to the debit"
(TraX.iv, per contra, on the opposite page) in 2 Cor. x. 7.
It means simply " enter in your accounts " in Phil. iv. 8, iii.
13 ; Rom. viii. 18, iii. 28, vi. n ; Hebr. xi. I9. 1
Paul is rarely interested in the phenomena of nature or the
scenery of country life. Where he draws his illustrations
from the country and from agriculture, he chiefly " deals with
human labour and its useful results ". There are, of course,
some isolated exceptions, as when he spoke to the unedu
cated rustic mob of Lystra, a small town dependent on
agriculture and pasturage, not on commerce and exchange,
about the " rain from heaven and fruitful seasons ".
Yet the idea of fruit which occurs in this Lystran address
is peculiarly characteristic of Paul. The idea of develop
ment, of growth culminating in fruit, a process leading to an
end in riches and usefulness this always appeals strongly
to him. It occurs, e.g., in Philippians i. n, 22, iv. 17;
Galatians v. 19-23; Colossians i. 6, 10; Ephesians v. 8, 9,
ii ; Romans i. 13, vi. 21-23, y ii- 4> 5> xv * 2 ^ > 2 Corinthians
ix. 10 ; Titus iii. 14, etc. His philosophy rests mainly on
this idea of growth and development. He looks on the
world as the development of a purpose ; the world is to him
always fluid and changing, never stationary ; but the change
is the purpose of God, working itself out amid the errors and
the wickedness, the deliberate sin, of men. 2
He is specially fond of expressing this idea of the Divine
power making and moulding the mind of man through a
1 See Rev. Griffith Thomas in Expository Times, 1906, p. 211 ; Sanday and
Headlam on Romans iv. 3.
2 See Cities of St. Paul, Pt. I., II., where this idea was worked out sub
sequently in a fuller way.
288 X. St. Pants
metaphor taken from the stadium. The person in whom
the purpose of God works, redeeming him from his sin and
setting him in the Divine path, fulfils the course marked out
for him and runs the proper race. He uses this figure very
often about the word of the Lord (2 Thess. iii. I ; compare
Heb. xii. i) ; about John the Baptist (Acts xiii. 25) ; about
himself (Acts xx. 24, 2 Tim. iv. 7, Phil. ii. 16, Gal. ii. 2) ;
and in a general way, Romans ix. 16 ; 2 Corinthians ix. 24,
26 ; Galatians v. 7, etc. This figure of the runner in the foot
race is peculiar in the New Testament to him and the writer
of the Epistle to the Hebrews (who was certainly a Hellen
istic Jew). A strait and narrow Hebrew, hating all things
Greek and Western, could never have compared the Divine
life to the course in the stadium : still less could he have
done this so persistently as to show that the thought lay in
the very fabric of his mind (see Note, p. 298).
Again, the general terms connected with the athletic
ground are frequent in Paul, and in him alone in the New
Testament These terms (derived from d<yd)v and a0Xe o>)
might refer to any common athletic sport, but are probably
to be generally understood of the race-course : J sometimes
the context makes this certain.
In 2 Timothy iv. 7-8, " I have fought the good fight "
is not a military, but an athletic metaphor : " I have played
a good game " is the correspondent in modern slang. The
whole sentence is literally, " I have competed in the honour
able contest, I have run the race to the finish, 2 I have ob
served (the rules of) the faith ". Similarly in I Timothy vi.
1 2, there is no reference to fighting (as the Authorised and
1 There is one exception : see following page.
z rl>vKa\bv aywva ^ycSvtayiCu rbv Spdjjiov Tere\fKa r^v irlffnv TtT^prj/ca, where
the last three words mean, " I have observed the rules which are laid down
for this race-course of faith." (See p. 290.)
Greek and Roman Metaphors 289
Revised Versions have it) ; but the instructions to Timothy
are, " Compete in the honourable contest of faith," 1 a more
compressed expression of the same comparison as in 2
Timothy iv. 7.
The race in this honourable contest is described most
fully in Philippians iii. 12-14, " It ls not as if I na d already got
the prize or finished the race, but I am rushing on hard, to see
if I may seize that for which I was actually seized by Christ ;
brethren, I do not count myself yet to have seized (the prize) ;
but this one thing only, forgetting everything that lies behind,
and straining forward to what is in front, I rush on with the
goal in my view so as to reach the prize " ; and the prize is
defined by the following words, " of the summons on high of
God in Christ Jesus ". The metaphor is concealed in several
other cases in the English Version under the term " conten
tion" (i Thess. ii. 2) or "striving" (Col. iv. 12).
In this respect we must class with him the other great
Hellenist of the New Testament, the writer of the Epistle
to the Hebrews, who uses the word atfX^crt? (see p. 291).
Some of the latter s metaphors seem almost to depend for
intelligibility on the familiarity of the readers with Paul s
metaphors from athletics. As this writer was addressing Jews, 2
he cannot have depended on his readers familiarity with
games. He used the metaphors because they rose naturally
to his mind.
It was chiefly the race-course that furnished St. Paul
with these metaphors ; but the boxing contest also suggested
itself to his mind in one case at least. " I so box as one
that does not beat the air " (with his fists : I Cor. ix. 26) :
my effort is really effective.
KaX bv ayuva rr)v irlffreoas.
2 1 assume here the point touched on in the following paper,
* 9
290 X. St. Paul s
The prize in the foot-race and other athletic contests was
the crown ; and the person who thinks of the Divine life as
a race towards a goal must think of the culmination of the
Divine life as the gaining of the victor s garland. But there
are two important differences: (i) in the games only one
can obtain the prize, whereas every runner in the Divine race
of life may gain it ; (2) the crown in the one case is an eva
nescent garland, which soon withers, whereas in the other it
is permanent and unfading (i Cor. ix. 24-27).
The analogy which Paul has in his thought is not confined
to the eagerness of spirit and concentration of purpose and
to the prize which is aimed at. The athletic competitor
must live a life of training and strict discipline before the
actual competition begins. So for the Divine race, " I keep
my body under and bring it into subjection," to avoid the
danger of being led away and shipwrecked by passion and
self-indulgence. This training was guided by certain rules
and instructions.
The athlete must "strive lawfully" and observe all the
rules laid down by the trainers and the guardians of the
course, not merely for conduct in the course, but also during
the preparation for it (2 Tim. ii. 5) ; and similarly in the
Christian life it is Faith, like the arbiter, who lays down the
laws of the competition (2 Tim. iv. 8 : p. 288, note 2).
The metaphors of this class are confined almost exclu
sively to St. Paul in the whole range of the Bible, and with
him they are extremely frequent. The Paulinistic author
of the letter to the Hebrews is almost the only other writer
who uses such figures, and with him they are only few.
The author of Revelation ii. 10 is hardly an exception :
" The crown of life," which in that passage is the reward of
the victor, is in a sense the garland of victory ; but the
Greek and Roman Metaphors 291
crown was suggested to the writer s mind rather by " the
crown of Smyrna" than by the garland of the games ; 1 and
the idea of victory which so often occurs in the Seven Letters
seems hardly to be consciously connected in the writer s
thought with the games, but rather with war. The crown
was not peculiar to the Greeks nor was it restricted among
them to athletic contests ; and, before assuming the connec
tion, in any case, it is necessary to prove that the idea of
athletics lies in the passage as a whole. That is not the
case in any of the non-Pauline passages where the crown is
mentioned, except in Hebrews.
St. Paul stands alone in this respect; and his language
came to him because of his early training. It is quite im
possible to suppose that a method of illustration which is so
frequent and characteristic was deliberately chosen, contrary
to the Apostle s nature and convictions, in order to suit
his readers in Gentile Churches. The Hellenist who wrote
to the Hebrews used metaphors of this class once or twice
in spite of the prejudice of his readers against those pagan
habits. See final note, p. 298.
St. Paul was free from the prejudice ; he found that
the keenness and enthusiastic, passionate attention, which
were lavished on athletic contests in the world where he
had been brought up, furnished the best illustration for
the spirit in which the Divine life must be lived. He could
not have appreciated this fact unless he had been brought
up amid those surroundings and had experienced the strength
of those feelings. If he had been educated in the same way
as the narrow strait-laced Jews, to whom such things were
an abomination, it is impossible to suppose that he could
have used these comparisons.
1 Letters to the Seven Churches, p. 275.
292 X. St. Paul s
The frequency of these gymnastic metaphors, with the
depth of feeling shown in them, is a striking fact. They
show real understanding of the intensity of feeling that the
competition rouses in the athlete. It is only in youth, and
especially in boyhood, that this can be learned. A Jew
brought up in Palestine to abhor such sports, which were
conducted by Gentiles in the Greek fashion of nudity,
could never come to understand this intense feeling, if he
merely saw the games in later life while living as a preacher
in Greek cities. Paul had been educated in a Hellenic city
where he had seen for himself that athletic sports are not
wrong or abominable ; x he had understood sympathetically
the feeling of the competitors; he knew that this feeling
contained an element of nobleness and self-sacrifice, and he
utilised it to express the intensity of the religious life. There
certainly was no idea in his mind that such comparisons de
graded religion. The narrow Jew could not free himself
from that idea ; but it evidently had no place in Paul s mind,
which had been formed in other surroundings than those of
Palestine. He sympathised with the Gentile ; he had learned
from the Gentile ; he was a debtor to the Gentile. 2
We must infer that this department of Paul s vocabulary
and thought originated in his early experiences as a child,
brought up amid the surroundings of a Hellenistic city and
familiarised with the conduct of the race-course. The spirit
1 The Jews of Jerusalem had begun to learn this fact early in the second
century B.C. ; and the building of a gymnasium (to which the priests hastened
after service in the Temple), with the spread of Greek fashions and increase
of heathenish manners in Jerusalem (especially the wearing of hats by the
young men) which were not forced on the people by the tyrant Antiochus
(as modern writers often assume), but suggested to him by the " progressive "
party among the Jews themselves are mentioned as having provoked the
Maccabaean rebellion (2 Macc.iv. 12-14).
3 Compare Rom^ i. 14.
Greek and Roman Metaphors 293
of the competitors in the course was, on the whole, one of
the best and healthiest facts of Greek city life. Paul had
learned this from participating in the life of a Hellenic city
as a boy ; there is no other way in which the lesson can be
learned so thoroughly as to sink into the man s nature and
guide his thought and language as this topic guides Paul s.
When Ignatius compares the Christian life to a religious
procession, with a long train of rejoicing devotees clad in the
appropriate garments, bearing their religious symbols and
holy things through the public streets, we see that he was at
times ruled insensibly by old ideas and scenes familiar to him
in earlier life. As a general rule, he regarded his old pagan
life with shame as a cause of humiliation ; yet thoughts and
associations connected with it directed his mind and his ex
pression. No Jew brought up from the beginning to regard
pagan ceremonial as simply hateful could have used the
comparison.
Just as the experience of Ignatius in the Pagan Mysteries,
and his understanding of the intense religious feeling which
they roused in their votaries, coloured and formed his lan
guage in describing the deepest and most mystic elements
in the Christian faith, l so Paul s language was coloured and
formed by his experience in Tarsus. A man whose mind
was thus moulded could not long have remained in sympathy
with the Jews of Jerusalem. A common hatred for Him
whom they thought an impostor united them all for a time
to resist the religion of Christ. But his nature had been
formed in a freer fashion than the Palestinian, and he soon
burst their narrow bonds. His nature drove and goaded
him on into a wider field, and he found it hard to "kick
against the goads ".
1 Letters to the Seven Churches, ch. xiii.
294 X. St. Paul s
It would be useful to compare the Pauline metaphors with
the language of Philo, who was born and brought up in the
Hellenic city of Alexandria. In him also illustrations taken
from the stadium and the palaestra are verytfrequent, though
they are (I think) more common in the form of similes than
of metaphors, and are therefore not so wrought into the
fabric of the thought as is the case with Paul s metaphorical
language.
But it is easy to carry this method to an extreme which
lands it in absurdity. Dean Howson, in his Metaphors oj
St. Paul) the last chapter of which we praised and freely used
in the preceding pages, devotes two chapters to the military
metaphors and the architectural metaphors in the Apostle s
letters. If his estimate of these is as reasonable as we con
sider his account of the athletic metaphors to be, then, by
the same train of argument, Paul must have been as familiar
with and interested in Roman military methods and Greek
architectural details as with the spirit and eagerness of the
victorious athlete ; which is absurd.
But, when you look at the military and architectural meta
phors, there is hardly one which is not of a quite vague and
general kind. Wherever Dean Howson finds the word
" fight " or " build," he detects an allusion to a Roman army
or a Greek temple. But there were soldiers before Rome
was heard of, and houses were built before the form of the
Greek temple had been evolved. The most pacific and un-
military of mortals will often use the word " fight ". Persons
absolutely ignorant of the shape of a Greek temple may
habitually use the word " build ". Even Hellenes were not
always thinking of a temple when they employed that meta
phor.
These and many similar words have passed into the uni-
Greek and Roman Metaphors 295
versal language of mankind, and are constantly used without
any distinct thought of the original department of life from
which they are adopted. They are not peculiar to St. Paul
in the New Testament. The verb " to build " occurs there
thirty-one times outside of his writings and ten times in
them: the word c< builder" once outside, while he never uses
it. 1 The noun "building" is not so unfavourable to the
Dean s view: it is found four times outside the Pauline
letters, and fifteen times in them ; moreover Paul shows a
marked tendency to employ the word in the moral sphere
to describe the building up of character and holiness. But
this peculiarity is not favourable to the supposition of archi
tectural experience and training, for in comparison with
other writers in the New Testament he displays less familiar
ity with the original process, and inclines to use the word
only in the transferred sense, which implies that he was not
consciously thinking of the metaphor, nor making the meta
phor for the first time, but was adopting a previously exist
ing mode of expressing the moral fact a mode which had
been long familiar to him.
It is different in the case of the athletic metaphors. In
many of them it is quite clear from the passage that Paul
was consciously and deliberately using the metaphor as
such ; and it is highly probable that he was the first to strike
out this Christian use of the words. The Greek language of
Christian theology was created by him, and never wholly
lost the character he had impressed on it : so Tertullian was
mainly influential in devising a Latin expression for the
Greek Christian theology.
The whole of Dean Howson s discussion of architectural
1 The statistics refer to the Greek words ot/coS^uos and olKoSopew. He uses
once the word apxtre/crwy, which is rendered " builder " (i Cor. iii. 10).
296 X. St. Paul s
Pauline metaphors comes to practically nothing, so far as
concerns his thesis that the Apostle was thinking in them of
the classical Greek temple. In so far as Paul was conscious
of his architectural metaphors and in some places he was
clearly conscious he was generally thinking rather of the
house than of the temple. It is a necessary rule in estimat
ing the nature of metaphor that it must be presumed (apart
from any special reason) to be drawn from the realm that is
most familiar to the writer. Now Paul was certainly quite
familiar with the process of building a house ; but he may
never actually have seen a Greek temple in building. Yet
Dean Howson is convinced that it was the classical temple,
resting on columns and splendidly decorated, that floated
always before Paul s mind and determined his expression.
The degree to which the Dean presses his statistics is
shown by the following : on page 47 he says that the verb
" edify " and its substantive " edification " occur about twenty
times in the New Testament, and are with one exception
used by St. Paul alone, and the o
