Part 3 — Chapter II. Positive Proofs That The Scriptures Are A Divine Revelation.

I. Genuineness of the Christian Documents.

The Genuineness of the Christian Documents, or proof that the books of the Old and New Testaments were written at the age to which they are assigned and by the men or class of men to whom they are ascribed.

Our present discussion comprises the first part, and only the first part, of the doctrine of the Canon (κανών, a measuring-reed; hence, a rule, a standard). It is important to observe that the determination of the Canon, or list of the books of sacred Scripture, is not the work of the church as an organized body. We do not receive these books upon the authority of Fathers or Councils. We receive them, only as the Fathers and Councils received them, because we have evidence that they are the writings of the men, or class of men, whose names they bear, and that they are also credible and inspired. If the previous epistle alluded to in 1 Cor. 5:9 should be discovered and be universally judged authentic, it could be placed with Paul's other letters and could form part of the Canon, even though it has been lost for 1800 years. Bruce, Apologetics, 321—“Abstractly the Canon is an open question. It can never be anything else on the principles of Protestantism which forbid us to accept the decisions of church councils, whether ancient or modern, as final. But practically the question of the Canon is closed.” The Westminster Confession says that the authority of the word of God “does not rest upon historic evidence; it does not rest upon the authority of Councils; it does not rest upon the consent of the past or the excellence of the matter; but it rests upon the Spirit of God bearing witness to our hearts concerning its divine authority.”Clarke, Christian Theology, 24—“The value of the Scriptures to us does not depend upon our knowing who wrote them. In the O. T. half its pages are of uncertain authorship. New dates mean new authorship. Criticism is a duty, for dates of authorship give means of interpretation. The Scriptures have power because God is in them, and because they describe the entrance of God into the life of man.”

Saintine, Picciola, 782—“Has not a feeble reed provided man with his first arrow, his first pen, his first instrument of music?” Hugh Macmillan: “The idea of stringed instruments was first derived from the twang of the well strung bow, as the archer shot his arrows; the lyre and the harp which discourse the sweetest music of peace were invented by those who first heard this inspiring sound in the excitement of battle. And so there is no music so delightful amid the jarring discord of the world, turning everything to music and harmonizing earth and heaven, as when the heart rises out of the gloom of anger and revenge, and converts its bow into a harp, and sings to it the Lord's song of infinite forgiveness.” George Adam Smith, Mod. Criticism and Preaching of O. T., 5—“The church has never renounced her liberty to revise the Canon. The liberty at the beginning cannot be more than the liberty thereafter. The Holy Spirit has not forsaken the leaders of the church. Apostolic writers nowhere define the limits of the Canon, any more than Jesus did. Indeed, they employed extra-canonical writings. Christ and the apostles nowhere bound the church to believe all the teachings of the O. T. Christ discriminates, and forbids the literal interpretation of its contents. Many of the apostolic interpretations challenge our sense of truth. Much of their exegesis was temporary and false. Their judgment was that much in the O. T. was rudimentary. This opens the question of development in revelation, and justifies the attempt to fix the historic order. The N. T. criticism of the O. T. gives the liberty of criticism, and the need, and the obligation of it. O. T. criticism is not, like Baur's of the N. T., the result of a priori Hegelian reasoning. From the time of Samuel we have real history. The prophets do not appeal to miracles. There is more gospel in the book of Jonah, when [pg 146]it is treated as a parable. The O. T. is a gradual ethical revelation of God. Few realize that the church of Christ has a higher warrant for her Canon of the O. T. than she has for her Canon of the N. T. The O. T. was the result of criticism in the widest sense of that word. But what the church thus once achieved, the church may at any time revise.”

We reserve to a point somewhat later the proof of the credibility and the inspiration of the Scriptures. We now show their genuineness, as we would show the genuineness of other religious books, like the Koran, or of secular documents, like Cicero's Orations against Catiline. Genuineness, in the sense in which we use the term, does not necessarily imply authenticity (i. e., truthfulness and authority); see Blunt, Dict. Doct. and Hist. Theol., art.: Authenticity. Documents may be genuine which are written in whole or in part by persons other than they whose names they bear, provided these persons belong to the same class. The Epistle to the Hebrews, though not written by Paul, is genuine, because it proceeds from one of the apostolic class. The addition of Deut. 34, after Moses' death, does not invalidate the genuineness of the Pentateuch; nor would the theory of a later Isaiah, even if it were established, disprove the genuineness of that prophecy; provided, in both cases, that the additions were made by men of the prophetic class. On the general subject of the genuineness of the Scripture documents, see Alexander, McIlvaine, Chalmers, Dodge, and Peabody, on the Evidences of Christianity; also Archibald, The Bible Verified.

1. Genuineness of the Books of the New Testament.

We do not need to adduce proof of the existence of the books of the New Testament as far back as the third century, for we possess manuscripts of them which are at least fourteen hundred years old, and, since the third century, references to them have been inwoven into all history and literature. We begin our proof, therefore, by showing that these documents not only existed, but were generally accepted as genuine, before the close of the second century.

Origen was born as early as 186 A. D.; yet Tregelles tells us that Origen's works contain citations embracing two-thirds of the New Testament. Hatch, Hibbert Lectures, 12—“The early years of Christianity were in some respects like the early years of our lives.... Those early years are the most important in our education. We learn then, we hardly know how, through effort and struggle and innocent mistakes, to use our eyes and ears, to measure distance and direction, by a process which ascends by unconscious steps to the certainty which we feel in our maturity.... It was in some such unconscious way that the Christian thought of the early centuries gradually acquired the form which we find when it emerges as it were into the developed manhood of the fourth century.”

A. All the books of the New Testament, with the single exception of 2 Peter, were not only received as genuine, but were used in more or less collected form, in the latter half of the second century. These collections of writings, so slowly transcribed and distributed, imply the long continued previous existence of the separate books, and forbid us to fix their origin later than the first half of the second century.

(a) Tertullian (160-230) appeals to the “New Testament” as made up of the “Gospels” and “Apostles.” He vouches for the genuineness of the four gospels, the Acts, 1 Peter, 1 John, thirteen epistles of Paul, and the Apocalypse; in short, to twenty-one of the twenty-seven books of our Canon.

Sanday, Bampton Lectures for 1893, is confident that the first three gospels took their present shape before the destruction of Jerusalem. Yet he thinks the first and third gospels of composite origin, and probably the second. Not later than 125 A. D. the four gospels of our Canon had gained a recognized and exceptional authority. Andover Professors, Divinity of Jesus Christ, 40—“The oldest of our gospels was written about the year 70. The earlier one, now lost, a great part of which is preserved in Luke and Matthew, was probably written a few years earlier.”

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(b) The Muratorian Canon in the West and the Peshito Version in the East (having a common date of about 160) in their catalogues of the New Testament writings mutually complement each other's slight deficiencies, and together witness to the fact that at that time every book of our present New Testament, with the exception of 2 Peter, was received as genuine.

Hovey, Manual of Christian Theology, 50—“The fragment on the Canon, discovered by Muratori in 1738, was probably written about 170 A. D., in Greek. It begins with the last words of a sentence which must have referred to the Gospel of Mark, and proceeds to speak of the Third Gospel as written by Luke the physician, who did not see the Lord, and then of the Fourth Gospel as written by John, a disciple of the Lord, at the request of his fellow disciples and his elders.” Bacon, N. T. Introduction, 50, gives the Muratorian Canon in full; 30—“Theophilus of Antioch (181-190) is the first to cite a gospel by name, quoting John 1:1 as from ‘John, one of those who were vessels of the Spirit.’ ” On the Muratorian Canon, see Tregelles, Muratorian Canon. On the Peshito Version, see Schaff, Introd. to Rev. Gk.-Eng. N. T., xxxvii; Smith's Bible Dict., pp. 3388, 3389.

(c) The Canon of Marcion (140), though rejecting all the gospels but that of Luke, and all the epistles but ten of Paul's, shows, nevertheless, that at that early day “apostolic writings were regarded as a complete original rule of doctrine.” Even Marcion, moreover, does not deny the genuineness of those writings which for doctrinal reasons he rejects.

Marcion, the Gnostic, was the enemy of all Judaism, and regarded the God of the O. T. as a restricted divinity, entirely different from the God of the N. T. Marcion was “ipso Paulo paulinior”—“plus loyal que le roi.” He held that Christianity was something entirely new, and that it stood in opposition to all that went before it. His Canon consisted of two parts: the “Gospel” (Luke, with its text curtailed by omission of the Hebraistic elements) and the Apostolicon (the epistles of Paul). The epistle to Diognetus by an unknown author, and the epistle of Barnabas, shared the view of Marcion. The name of the Deity was changed from Jehovah to Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. If Marcion's view had prevailed, the Old Testament would have been lost to the Christian Church. God's revelation would have been deprived of its proof from prophecy. Development from the past, and divine conduct of Jewish history, would have been denied. But without the Old Testament, as H. W. Beecher maintained, the New Testament would lack background; our chief source of knowledge with regard to God's natural attributes of power, wisdom, and truth would be removed: the love and mercy revealed in the New Testament would seem characteristics of a weak being, who could not enforce law or inspire respect. A tree has as much breadth below ground as there is above; so the O. T. roots of God's revelation are as extensive and necessary as are its N. T. trunk and branches and leaves. See Allen, Religious Progress, 81; Westcott, Hist. N. T. Canon, and art.: Canon, in Smith's Bible Dictionary. Also Reuss, History of Canon; Mitchell, Critical Handbook, part I.

B. The Christian and Apostolic Fathers who lived in the first half of the second century not only quote from these books and allude to them, but testify that they were written by the apostles themselves. We are therefore compelled to refer their origin still further back, namely, to the first century, when the apostles lived.

(a) Irenæus (120-200) mentions and quotes the four gospels by name, and among them the gospel according to John: “Afterwards John, the disciple of the Lord, who also leaned upon his breast, he likewise published a gospel, while he dwelt in Ephesus in Asia.” And Irenæus was the disciple and friend of Polycarp (80-166), who was himself a personal acquaintance of the Apostle John. The testimony of Irenæus is virtually the evidence of Polycarp, the contemporary and friend of the Apostle, that each of the gospels was written by the person whose name it bears.

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To this testimony it is objected that Irenæus says there are four gospels because there are four quarters of the world and four living creatures in the cherubim. But we reply that Irenæus is here stating, not his own reason for accepting four and only four gospels, but what he conceives to be God's reason for ordaining that there should be four. We are not warranted in supposing that he accepted the four gospels on any other ground than that of testimony that they were the productions of apostolic men.

Chrysostom, in a similar manner, compares the four gospels to a chariot and four: When the King of Glory rides forth in it, he shall receive the triumphal acclamations of all peoples. So Jerome: God rides upon the cherubim, and since there are four cherubim, there must be four gospels. All this however is an early attempt at the philosophy of religion, and not an attempt to demonstrate historical fact. L. L. Paine, Evolution of Trinitarianism, 319-367, presents the radical view of the authorship of the fourth gospel. He holds that John the apostle died A. D. 70, or soon after, and that Irenæus confounded the two Johns whom Papias so clearly distinguished—John the Apostle and John the Elder. With Harnack, Paine supposes the gospel to have been written by John the Elder, a contemporary of Papias. But we reply that the testimony of Irenæus implies a long continued previous tradition. R. W. Dale, Living Christ and Four Gospels, 145—“Religious veneration such as that with which Irenæus regarded these books is of slow growth. They must have held a great place in the Church as far back as the memory of living men extended.” See Hastings' Bible Dictionary, 2:695.

(b) Justin Martyr (died 148) speaks of “memoirs (ἀπομνημονεύματα) of Jesus Christ,” and his quotations, though sometimes made from memory, are evidently cited from our gospels.

To this testimony it is objected: (1) That Justin Martyr uses the term “memoirs”instead of “gospels.” We reply that he elsewhere uses the term “gospels” and identifies the “memoirs” with them: Apol., 1:66—“The apostles, in the memoirs composed by them, which are called gospels,” i. e., not memoirs, but gospels, was the proper title of his written records. In writing his Apology to the heathen Emperors, Marcus Aurelius and Marcus Antoninus, he chooses the term “memoirs”, or “memorabilia”, which Xenophon had used as the title of his account of Socrates, simply in order that he may avoid ecclesiastical expressions unfamiliar to his readers and may commend his writing to lovers of classical literature. Notice that Matthew must be added to John, to justify Justin's repeated statement that there were “memoirs” of our Lord “written by apostles,”and that Mark and Luke must be added to justify his further statement that these memoirs were compiled by “his apostles and those who followed them.” Analogous to Justin's use of the word “memoirs” is his use of the term “Sunday”, instead of Sabbath: Apol. 1:67—“On the day called Sunday, all who live in cities or in the country gather together to one place, and the memoirs of the apostles or the writings of the prophets are read.” Here is the use of our gospels in public worship, as of equal authority with the O. T. Scriptures; in fact, Justin constantly quotes the words and acts of Jesus' life from a written source, using the word γέγραπται. See Morison, Com. on Mat., ix; Hemphill, Literature of Second Century, 234.

To Justin's testimony it is objected: (2) That in quoting the words spoken from heaven at the Savior's baptism, he makes them to be: “My son, this day have I begotten thee,” so quoting Psalm 2:7, and showing that he was ignorant of our present gospel, Mat. 3:17. We reply that this was probably a slip of the memory, quite natural in a day when the gospels existed only in the cumbrous form of manuscript rolls. Justin also refers to the Pentateuch for two facts which it does not contain; but we should not argue from this that he did not possess our present Pentateuch. The plays of Terence are quoted by Cicero and Horace, and we require neither more nor earlier witnesses to their genuineness,—yet Cicero and Horace wrote a hundred years after Terence. It is unfair to refuse similar evidence to the gospels. Justin had a way of combining into one the sayings of the different evangelists—a hint which Tatian, his pupil, probably followed out in composing his Diatessaron. On Justin Martyr's testimony, see Ezra Abbot, Genuineness of the Fourth Gospel, 49, note. B. W. Bacon, Introd. to N. T., speaks of Justin as “writing circa 155 A. D.”

(c) Papias (80-164), whom Irenæus calls a “hearer of John,” testifies that Matthew “wrote in the Hebrew dialect the sacred oracles (τὰ λόγια),” [pg 149] and that “Mark, the interpreter of Peter, wrote after Peter, (ὕστερον Πέτρῳ) [or under Peter's direction], an unsystematic account (οὐ τάξει)” of the same events and discourses.

To this testimony it is objected: (1) That Papias could not have had our gospel of Matthew, for the reason that this is Greek. We reply, either with Bleek, that Papias erroneously supposed a Hebrew translation of Matthew, which he possessed, to be the original; or with Weiss, that the original Matthew was in Hebrew, while our present Matthew is an enlarged version of the same. Palestine, like modern Wales, was bilingual; Matthew, like James, might write both Hebrew and Greek. While B. W. Bacon gives to the writing of Papias a date so late as 145-160 A. D., Lightfoot gives that of 130 A. D. At this latter date Papias could easily remember stories told him so far back as 80 A. D., by men who were youths at the time when our Lord lived, died, rose and ascended. The work of Papias had for its title Λογίων κυριακῶν ἐξήγησις—“Exposition of Oracles relating to the Lord” = Commentaries on the Gospels. Two of these gospels were Matthew and Mark. The view of Weiss mentioned above has been criticized upon the ground that the quotations from the O. T. in Jesus' discourses in Matthew are all taken from the Septuagint and not from the Hebrew. Westcott answers this criticism by suggesting that, in translating his Hebrew gospel into Greek, Matthew substituted for his own oral version of Christ's discourses the version of these already existing in the oral common gospel. There was a common oral basis of true teaching, the “deposit”—τὴν παραθήκην—committed to Timothy (1 Tim. 6:20; 2 Tim. 1:12, 14), the same story told many times and getting to be told in the same way. The narratives of Matthew, Mark and Luke are independent versions of this apostolic testimony. First came belief; secondly, oral teaching; thirdly, written gospels. That the original gospel was in Aramaic seems probable from the fact that the Oriental name for “tares,” zawān, (Mat. 13:25) has been transliterated into Greek, ζιζάνια. Morison, Com. on Mat., thinks that Matthew originally wrote in Hebrew a collection of Sayings of Jesus Christ, which the Nazarenes and Ebionites added to, partly from tradition, and partly from translating his full gospel, till the result was the so-called Gospel of the Hebrews; but that Matthew wrote his own gospel in Greek after he had written the Sayings in Hebrew. Professor W. A. Stevens thinks that Papias probably alluded to the original autograph which Matthew wrote in Aramaic, but which he afterwards enlarged and translated into Greek. See Hemphill, Literature of the Second Century, 267.

To the testimony of Papias it is also objected: (2) That Mark is the most systematic of all evangelists, presenting events as a true annalist, in chronological order. We reply that while, so far as chronological order is concerned, Mark is systematic, so far as logical order is concerned he is the most unsystematic of the evangelists, showing little of the power of historical grouping which is so discernible in Matthew. Matthew aimed to portray a life, rather than to record a chronology. He groups Jesus' teachings in chapters 5, 6, and 7; his miracles in chapters 8 and 9; his directions to the apostles in chapter 10; chapters 11 and 12 describe the growing opposition; chapter 13 meets this opposition with his parables; the remainder of the gospel describes our Lord's preparation for his death, his progress to Jerusalem, the consummation of his work in the Cross and in the resurrection. Here is true system, a philosophical arrangement of material, compared with which the method of Mark is eminently unsystematic. Mark is a Froissart, while Matthew has the spirit of J. R. Green. See Bleek, Introd. to N. T., 1:108, 126; Weiss, Life of Jesus, 1:27-39.

(d) The Apostolic Fathers,—Clement of Rome (died 101), Ignatius of Antioch (martyred 115), and Polycarp (80-166),—companions and friends of the apostles, have left us in their writings over one hundred quotations from or allusions to the New Testament writings, and among these every book, except four minor epistles (2 Peter, Jude, 2 and 3 John) is represented.

Although these are single testimonies, we must remember that they are the testimonies of the chief men of the churches of their day, and that they express the opinion of the churches themselves. “Like banners of a hidden army, or peaks of a distant mountain range, they represent and are sustained by compact, continuous bodies below.” In an article by P. W. Calkins, McClintock and Strong's Encyclopædia, 1:315-317, quotations from the Apostolic Fathers in great numbers are put side by [pg 150]side with the New Testament passages from which they quote or to which they allude. An examination of these quotations and allusions convinces us that these Fathers were in possession of all the principal books of our New Testament. See Ante-Nicene Library of T. and T. Clark; Thayer, in Boston Lectures for 1871:324; Nash, Ethics and Revelation, 11—“Ignatius says to Polycarp: ‘The times call for thee, as the winds call for the pilot.’ So do the times call for reverent, fearless scholarship in the church.”Such scholarship, we are persuaded, has already demonstrated the genuineness of the N. T. documents.

(e) In the synoptic gospels, the omission of all mention of the fulfilment of Christ's prophecies with regard to the destruction of Jerusalem is evidence that these gospels were written before the occurrence of that event. In the Acts of the Apostles, universally attributed to Luke, we have an allusion to “the former treatise”, or the gospel by the same author, which must, therefore, have been written before the end of Paul's first imprisonment at Rome, and probably with the help and sanction of that apostle.

Acts 1:1—“The former treatise I made, O Theophilus, concerning all that Jesus began both to do and to teach.”If the Acts was written A. D. 63, two years after Paul's arrival at Rome, then “the former treatise,” the gospel according to Luke, can hardly be dated later than 60; and since the destruction of Jerusalem took place in 70, Matthew and Mark must have published their gospels at least as early as the year 68, when multitudes of men were still living who had been eye-witnesses of the events of Jesus' life. Fisher, Nature and Method of Revelation, 180—“At any considerably later date [than the capture of Jerusalem] the apparent conjunction of the fall of the city and the temple with the Parousia would have been avoided or explained.... Matthew, in its present form, appeared after the beginning of the mortal struggle of the Romans with the Jews, or between 65 and 70. Mark's gospel was still earlier. The language of the passages relative to the Parousia, in Luke, is consistent with the supposition that he wrote after the fall of Jerusalem, but not with the supposition that it was long after.” See Norton, Genuineness of the Gospels; Alford, Greek Testament, Prolegomena, 30, 31, 36, 45-47.

C. It is to be presumed that this acceptance of the New Testament documents as genuine, on the part of the Fathers of the churches, was for good and sufficient reasons, both internal and external, and this presumption is corroborated by the following considerations:

(a) There is evidence that the early churches took every care to assure themselves of the genuineness of these writings before they accepted them.

Evidences of care are the following:—Paul, in 2 Thess. 2:2, urged the churches to use care, “to the end that ye be not quickly shaken from your mind, nor yet be troubled, either by spirit, or by word, or by epistle as from us”; 1 Cor. 5:9—“I wrote unto you in my epistle to have no company with fornicators”; Col. 4:16—“when this epistle hath been read among you, cause that it be read also in the church of the Laodiceans; and that ye also read the epistle from Laodicea.” Melito (169), Bishop of Sardis, who wrote a treatise on the Revelation of John, went as far as Palestine to ascertain on the spot the facts relating to the Canon of the O. T., and as a result of his investigations excluded the Apocrypha. Ryle, Canon of O. T., 203—“Melito, the Bishop of Sardis, sent to a friend a list of the O. T. Scriptures which he professed to have obtained from accurate inquiry, while traveling in the East, in Syria. Its contents agree with those of the Hebrew Canon, save in the omission of Esther.” Serapion, Bishop of Antioch (191-213, Abbot), says: “We receive Peter and other apostles as Christ, but as skilful men we reject those writings which are falsely ascribed to them.” Geo. H. Ferris, Baptist Congress, 1899:94—“Serapion, after permitting the reading of the Gospel of Peter in public services, finally decided against it, not because he thought there could be no fifth gospel, but because he thought it was not written by Peter.” Tertullian (160-230) gives an example of the deposition of a presbyter in Asia Minor for publishing a pretended work of Paul; see Tertullian, De Baptismo, referred to by Godet on John, Introduction; Lardner, Works, 2:304, 305; McIlvaine, Evidences, 92.

(b) The style of the New Testament writings, and their complete correspondence with all we know of the lands and times in which they profess [pg 151] to have been written, affords convincing proof that they belong to the apostolic age.

Notice the mingling of Latin and Greek, as in σπεκουλάτωρ (Mark 6:27) and κεντυρίων (Mark 15:39); of Greek and Aramæan, as in πρασιαὶ πρασιαί (Mark 6:40) and βδέλυγμα τῆς ἐρημώσεως (Mat. 24:15); this could hardly have occurred after the first century. Compare the anachronisms of style and description in Thackeray's “Henry Esmond,”which, in spite of the author's special studies and his determination to exclude all words and phrases that had originated in his own century, was marred by historical errors that Macaulay in his most remiss moments would hardly have made. James Russell Lowell told Thackeray that “different to” was not a century old. “Hang it, no!”replied Thackeray. In view of this failure, on the part of an author of great literary skill, to construct a story purporting to be written a century before his time and that could stand the test of historical criticism, we may well regard the success of our gospels in standing such tests as a practical demonstration that they were written in, and not after, the apostolic age. See Alexander, Christ and Christianity, 27-37; Blunt, Scriptural Coincidences, 244-354.

(c) The genuineness of the fourth gospel is confirmed by the fact that Tatian (155-170), the Assyrian, a disciple of Justin, repeatedly quoted it without naming the author, and composed a Harmony of our four gospels which he named the Diatessaron; while Basilides (130) and Valentinus (150), the Gnostics, both quote from it.

The sceptical work entitled “Supernatural Religion” said in 1874; “No one seems to have seen Tatian's Harmony, probably for the very simple reason that there was no such work”; and “There is no evidence whatever connecting Tatian's Gospel with those of our Canon.” In 1876, however, there was published in a Latin form in Venice the Commentary of Ephraem Syrus on Tatian, and the commencement of it was: “In the beginning was the Word” (John 1:1). In 1888, the Diatessaron itself was published in Rome in the form of an Arabic translation made in the eleventh century from the Syriac. J. Rendel Harris, in Contemp. Rev., 1893:800 sq., says that the recovery of Tatian's Diatessaron has indefinitely postponed the literary funeral of St. John. Advanced critics, he intimates, are so called, because they run ahead of the facts they discuss. The gospels must have been well established in the Christian church when Tatian undertook to combine them. Mrs. A. S. Lewis, in S. S. Times, Jan. 23, 1904—“The gospels were translated into Syriac before A. D. 160. It follows that the Greek document from which they were translated was older still, and since the one includes the gospel of St. John, so did the other.” Hemphill, Literature of the Second Century, 183-231, gives the birth of Tatian about 120, and the date of his Diatessaron as 172 A. D.

The difference in style between the Revelation and the gospel of John is due to the fact that the Revelation was written during John's exile in Patmos, under Nero, in 67 or 68, soon after John had left Palestine and had taken up his residence at Ephesus. He had hitherto spoken Aramæan, and Greek was comparatively unfamiliar to him. The gospel was written thirty years after, probably about 97, when Greek had become to him like a mother tongue. See Lightfoot on Galatians, 343, 347; per contra, see Milligan, Revelation of St. John. Phrases and ideas which indicate a common authorship of the Revelation and the gospel are the following: “the Lamb of God,” “the Word of God,” “the True”as an epithet applied to Christ, “the Jews” as enemies of God, “manna,” “him whom they pierced”; see Elliott, Horæ Apocalypticæ, 1:4, 5. In the fourth gospel we have ἀμνός, in Apoc. ἀρνίον, perhaps better to distinguish “the Lamb” from the diminutive τὸ θηρίον, “the beast.” Common to both Gospel and Rev. are ποιεῖν, “to do” [the truth]; περιπατεῖν, of moral conduct; ἀληθινός, “genuine”; διψᾷν, πεινᾷν, of the higher wants of the soul; σκηνοῦν ἐν, ποιμαίνειν, ὁδηγεῖν; also “overcome,” “testimony,” “Bridegroom,” “Shepherd,” “Water of life.” In the Revelation there are grammatical solecisms: nominative for genitive, 1:4—ἀπὸ ὁ ὤν; nominative for accusative, 7:9—εἶδον ... ὄχλος πολύς; accusative for nominative, 20:2—τὸν δράκοντα ὁ ὄφις. Similarly we have in Rom. 12:5—τὸ δὲ καθ᾽ εἶς instead of τὸ δὲ καθ᾽ ἕνα, where κατὰ has lost its regimen—a frequent solecism in later Greek writers; see Godet on John, 1:269, 270. Emerson reminded Jones Very that the Holy Ghost surely writes good grammar. The Apocalypse seems to show that Emerson was wrong.

The author of the fourth gospel speaks of John in the third person, “and scorned to blot it with a name.” But so does Cæsar speak of himself in his Commentaries. Harnack [pg 152]regards both the fourth gospel and the Revelation as the work of John the Presbyter or Elder, the former written not later than about 110 A. D.; the latter from 93 to 96, but being a revision of one or more underlying Jewish apocalypses. Vischer has expounded this view of the Revelation; and Porter holds substantially the same, in his article on the Book of Revelation in Hastings' Bible Dictionary, 4:239-266. “It is the obvious advantage of the Vischer-Harnack hypothesis that it places the original work under Nero and its revised and Christianized edition under Domitian.” (Sanday, Inspiration, 371, 372, nevertheless dismisses this hypothesis as raising worse difficulties than it removes. He dates the Apocalypse between the death of Nero and the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus.) Martineau, Seat of Authority, 227, presents the moral objections to the apostolic authorship, and regards the Revelation, from chapter 4:1 to 22:5, as a purely Jewish document of the date 66-70, supplemented and revised by a Christian, and issued not earlier than 136: “How strange that we should ever have thought it possible for a personal attendant upon the ministry of Jesus to write or edit a book mixing up fierce Messianic conflicts, in which, with the sword, the gory garment, the blasting flame, the rod of iron, as his emblems, he leads the war-march, and treads the winepress of the wrath of God until the deluge of blood rises to the horses' bits, with the speculative Christology of the second century, without a memory of his life, a feature of his look, a word from his voice, or a glance back at the hillsides of Galilee, the courts of Jerusalem, the road to Bethany, on which his image must be forever seen!”

The force of this statement, however, is greatly broken if we consider that the apostle John, in his earlier days, was one of the “Boanerges, which is, Sons of thunder” (Mark 3:17), but became in his later years the apostle of love: 1 John 4:7—“Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God.” The likeness of the fourth gospel to the epistle, which latter was undoubtedly the work of John the apostle, indicates the same authorship for the gospel. Thayer remarks that “the discovery of the gospel according to Peter sweeps away half a century of discussion. Brief as is the recovered fragment, it attests indubitably all four of our canonical books.” Riddle, in Popular Com., 1:25—“If a forger wrote the fourth gospel, then Beelzebub has been casting out devils for these eighteen hundred years.” On the genuineness of the fourth gospel, see Bleek, Introd. to N. T., 1:250; Fisher, Essays on Supernat. Origin of Christianity, 33, also Beginnings of Christianity, 320-362, and Grounds of Theistic and Christian Belief, 245-309; Sanday, Authorship of the Fourth Gospel, Gospels in the Second Century, and Criticism of the Fourth Gospel; Ezra Abbott, Genuineness of the Fourth Gospel, 52, 80-87; Row, Bampton Lectures on Christian Evidences, 249-287; British Quarterly, Oct. 1872:216; Godet, in Present Day Tracts, 5: no. 25; Westcott, in Bib. Com. on John's Gospel, Introd., xxviii-xxxii; Watkins, Bampton Lectures for 1890; W. L. Ferguson, in Bib. Sac., 1896:1-27.

(d) The epistle to the Hebrews appears to have been accepted during the first century after it was written (so Clement of Borne, Justin Martyr, and the Peshito Version witness). Then for two centuries, especially in the Roman and North African churches, and probably because its internal characteristics were inconsistent with the tradition of a Pauline authorship, its genuineness was doubted (so Tertullian, Cyprian, Irenæus, Muratorian Canon). At the end of the fourth century, Jerome examined the evidence and decided in its favor; Augustine did the same; the third Council of Carthage formally recognized it (397); from that time the Latin churches united with the East in receiving it, and thus the doubt was finally and forever removed.

The Epistle to the Hebrews, the style of which is so unlike that of the Apostle Paul, was possibly written by Apollos, who was an Alexandrian Jew, “a learned man” and “mighty in the Scriptures” (Acts 18:24); but it may notwithstanding have been written at the suggestion and under the direction of Paul, and so be essentially Pauline. A. C. Kendrick, in American Commentary on Hebrews, points out that while the style of Paul is prevailingly dialectic, and only in rapt moments becomes rhetorical or poetic, the style of the Epistle to the Hebrews is prevailingly rhetorical, is free from anacolutha, and is always dominated by emotion. He holds that these characteristics point to Apollos as its author. Contrast also Paul's method of quoting the O. T.: “it is written” (Rom. 11:8; 1 Cor. 1:31; Gal. 3:10) with that of the Hebrews: “he saith” (8:5, 13), “he [pg 153]hath said” (4:4). Paul quotes the O. T. fifty or sixty times, but never in this latter way. Heb. 2:3—“which having at the first been spoken by the Lord, was confirmed unto us by them that heard”—shows that the writer did not receive the gospel at first hand. Luther and Calvin rightly saw in this a decisive proof that Paul was not the author, for he always insisted on the primary and independent character of his gospel. Harnack formerly thought the epistle written by Barnabas to Christians at Rome, A. D. 81-96. More recently however he attributes it to Priscilla, the wife of Aquila, or to their joint authorship. The majesty of its diction, however, seems unfavorable to this view. William T. C. Hanna: “The words of the author ... are marshalled grandly, and move with the tread of an army, or with the swell of a tidal wave”; see Franklin Johnson, Quotations in N. T. from O. T., xii. Plumptre, Introd. to N. T., 37, and in Expositor, Vol. I, regards the author of this epistle as the same with that of the Apocryphal Wisdom of Solomon, the latter being composed before, the former after, the writer's conversion to Christianity. Perhaps our safest conclusion is that of Origen: “God only knows who wrote it.” Harnack however remarks: “The time in which our ancient Christian literature, the N. T. included, was considered as a web of delusions and falsifications, is past. The oldest literature of the church is, in its main points, and in most of its details, true and trustworthy.” See articles on Hebrews, in Smith's and in Hastings' Bible Dictionaries.

(e) As to 2 Peter, Jude, and 2 and 3 John, the epistles most frequently held to be spurious, we may say that, although we have no conclusive external evidence earlier than A. D. 160, and in the case of 2 Peter none earlier than A. D. 230-250, we may fairly urge in favor of their genuineness not only their internal characteristics of literary style and moral value, but also the general acceptance of them all since the third century as the actual productions of the men or class of men whose names they bear.

Firmilianus (250), Bishop of Cæsarea in Cappadocia, is the first clear witness to 2 Peter. Origen (230) names it, but, in naming it, admits that its genuineness is questioned. The Council of Laodicea (372) first received it into the Canon. With this very gradual recognition and acceptance of 2 Peter, compare the loss of the later works of Aristotle for a hundred and fifty years after his death, and their recognition as genuine so soon as they were recovered from the cellar of the family of Neleus in Asia; De Wette's first publication of certain letters of Luther after the lapse of three hundred years, yet without occasioning doubt as to their genuineness; or the concealment of Milton's Treatise on Christian Doctrine, among the lumber of the State Paper Office in London, from 1677 to 1823; see Mair, Christian Evidences, 95. Sir William Hamilton complained that there were treatises of Cudworth, Berkeley and Collier, still lying unpublished and even unknown to their editors, biographers and fellow metaphysicians, but yet of the highest interest and importance; see Mansel, Letters, Lectures and Reviews, 381; Archibald, The Bible Verified, 27. 2 Peter was probably sent from the East shortly before Peter's martyrdom; distance and persecution may have prevented its rapid circulation in other countries. Sagebeer, The Bible in Court, 114—“A ledger may have been lost, or its authenticity for a long time doubted, but when once it is discovered and proved, it is as trustworthy as any other part of the res gestæ.” See Plumptre, Epistles of Peter, Introd., 73-81; Alford on 2 Peter, 4: Prolegomena, 157; Westcott, on Canon, in Smith's Bib. Dict., 1:370, 373; Blunt, Dict. Doct. and Hist. Theol., art.: Canon.

It is urged by those who doubt the genuineness of 2 Peter that the epistle speaks of “your apostles” (3:2), just as Jude 17 speaks of “the apostles,” as if the writer did not number himself among them. But 2 Peter begins with “Simon Peter, a servant and apostle of Jesus Christ,” and Jude, “brother of James” (verse 1) was a brother of our Lord, but not an apostle. Hovey, Introd. to N. T., xxxi—“The earliest passage manifestly based upon 2 Peter appears to be in the so-called Second Epistle of the Roman Clement, 16:3, which however is now understood to be a Christian homily from the middle of the second century.” Origen (born 186) testifies that Peter left one epistle, “and perhaps a second, for that is disputed.” He also says: “John wrote the Apocalypse, and an epistle of very few lines; and, it may be, a second and a third; since all do not admit them to be genuine.” He quotes also from James and from Jude, adding that their canonicity was doubted.

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Harnack regards 1 Peter, 2 Peter, James, and Jude, as written respectively about 160, 170, 130, and 130, but not by the men to whom they are ascribed—the ascriptions to these authors being later additions. Hort remarks: “If I were asked, I should say that the balance of the argument was against 2 Peter, but the moment I had done so I should begin to think I might be in the wrong.” Sanday, Oracles of God, 73 note, considers the arguments in favor of 2 Peter unconvincing, but also the arguments against. He cannot get beyond a non liquet. He refers to Salmon, Introd. to N. T., 529-559, ed. 4, as expressing his own view. But the later conclusions of Sanday are more radical. In his Bampton Lectures on Inspiration, 348, 399, he says: 2 Peter “is probably at least to this extent a counterfeit, that it appears under a name which is not that of its true author.”

Chase, in Hastings' Bib. Dict., 3:806-817, says that “the first piece of certain evidence as to 2 Peter is the passage from Origen quoted by Eusebius, though it hardly admits of doubt that the Epistle was known to Clement of Alexandria.... We find no trace of the epistle in the period when the tradition of apostolic days was still living.... It was not the work of the apostle but of the second century ... put forward without any sinister motive ... the personation of the apostle an obvious literary device rather than a religious or controversial fraud. The adoption of such a verdict can cause perplexity only when the Lord's promise of guidance to his Church is regarded as a charter of infallibility.” Against this verdict we would urge the dignity and spiritual value of 2 Peter—internal evidence which in our judgment causes the balance to incline in favor of its apostolic authorship.

(f) Upon no other hypothesis than that of their genuineness can the general acceptance of these four minor epistles since the third century, and of all the other books of the New Testament since the middle of the second century, be satisfactorily accounted for. If they had been mere collections of floating legends, they could not have secured wide circulation as sacred books for which Christians must answer with their blood. If they had been forgeries, the churches at large could neither have been deceived as to their previous non-existence, nor have been induced unanimously to pretend that they were ancient and genuine. Inasmuch, however, as other accounts of their origin, inconsistent with their genuineness, are now current, we proceed to examine more at length the most important of these opposing views.

The genuineness of the New Testament as a whole would still be demonstrable, even if doubt should still attach to one or two of its books. It does not matter that 2nd Alcibiades was not written by Plato, or Pericles by Shakespeare. The Council of Carthage in 397 gave a place in the Canon to the O. T. Apocrypha, but the Reformers tore it out. Zwingli said of the Revelation: “It is not a Biblical book,” and Luther spoke slightingly of the Epistle of James. The judgment of Christendom at large is more trustworthy than the private impressions of any single Christian scholar. To hold the books of the N. T. to be written in the second century by other than those whose names they bear is to hold, not simply to forgery, but to a conspiracy of forgery. There must have been several forgers at work, and, since their writings wonderfully agree, there must have been collusion among them. Yet these able men have been forgotten, while the names of far feebler writers of the second century have been preserved.

G. F. Wright, Scientific Aspects of Christian Evidences, 343—“In civil law there are ‘statutes of limitations’ which provide that the general acknowledgment of a purported fact for a certain period shall be considered as conclusive evidence of it. If, for example, a man has remained in undisturbed possession of land for a certain number of years, it is presumed that he has a valid claim to it, and no one is allowed to dispute his claim.” Mair, Evidences, 99—“We probably have not a tenth part of the evidence upon which the early churches accepted the N. T. books as the genuine productions of their authors. We have only their verdict.” Wynne, in Literature of the Second Century, 58—“Those who gave up the Scriptures were looked on by their fellow Christians as ‘traditores,’ traitors, who had basely yielded up what they ought to have treasured as dearer than life. But all their books were not equally sacred. Some [pg 155]were essential, and some were non-essential to the faith. Hence arose the distinction between canonical and non-canonical. The general consciousness of Christians grew into a distinct registration.” Such registration is entitled to the highest respect, and lays the burden of proof upon the objector. See Alexander, Christ and Christianity, Introduction; Hovey, General Introduction to American Commentary on N. T.

D. Rationalistic Theories as to the origin of the gospels. These are attempts to eliminate the miraculous element from the New Testament records, and to reconstruct the sacred history upon principles of naturalism.

Against them we urge the general objection that they are unscientific in their principle and method. To set out in an examination of the New Testament documents with the assumption that all history is a mere natural development, and that miracles are therefore impossible, is to make history a matter, not of testimony, but of a priori speculation. It indeed renders any history of Christ and his apostles impossible, since the witnesses whose testimony with regard to miracles is discredited can no longer be considered worthy of credence in their account of Christ's life or doctrine.

In Germany, half a century ago, “a man was famous according as he had lifted up axes upon the thick trees” (Ps. 74:5, A. V.), just as among the American Indians he was not counted a man who could not show his scalps. The critics fortunately scalped each other; see Tyler, Theology of Greek Poets, 79—on Homer. Nicoll, The Church's One Foundation, 15—“Like the mummers of old, sceptical critics send one before them with a broom to sweep the stage clear of everything for their drama. If we assume at the threshold of the gospel study that everything of the nature of miracle is impossible, then the specific questions are decided before the criticism begins to operate in earnest.” Matthew Arnold: “Our popular religion at present conceives the birth, ministry and death of Christ as altogether steeped in prodigy, brimful of miracle,—and miracles do not happen.” This presupposition influences the investigations of Kuenen, and of A. E. Abbott, in his article on the Gospels in the Encyc. Britannica. We give special attention to four of the theories based upon this assumption.

1st. The Myth-theory of Strauss (1808-1874).

According to this view, the gospels are crystallizations into story of Messianic ideas which had for several generations filled the minds of imaginative men in Palestine. The myth is a narrative in which such ideas are unconsciously clothed, and from which the element of intentional and deliberate deception is absent.

This early view of Strauss, which has become identified with his name, was exchanged in late years for a more advanced view which extended the meaning of the word “myths” so as to include all narratives that spring out of a theological idea, and it admitted the existence of “pious frauds” in the gospels. Baur, he says, first convinced him that the author of the fourth gospel had “not unfrequently composed mere fables, knowing them to be mere fictions.” The animating spirit of both the old view and the new is the same. Strauss says: “We know with certainty what Jesus was not, and what he has not done, namely, nothing superhuman and supernatural.” “No gospel can claim that degree of historic credibility that would be required in order to make us debase our reason to the point of believing miracles.” He calls the resurrection of Christ “ein weltgeschichtlicher Humbug.” “If the gospels are really historical documents, we cannot exclude miracle from the life-story of Jesus;” see Strauss, Life of Jesus, 17; New Life of Jesus, 1: preface, xii. Vatke, Einleitung in A. T., 210, 211, distinguishes the myth from the saga or legend: The criterion of the pure myth is that the experience is impossible, while the saga is a tradition of remote antiquity; the myth has in it the element only of belief, the saga has in it an element of history. Sabatier, Philos. Religion, 37—“A myth is false in appearance only. The divine Spirit can avail himself of the fictions of poetry as well as of logical reasonings. When the heart was pure, the veils of fable always allowed the face of truth to shine through. And does not childhood run on into maturity and old age?”

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It is very certain that childlike love of truth was not the animating spirit of Strauss. On the contrary, his spirit was that of remorseless criticism and of uncompromising hostility to the supernatural. It has been well said that he gathered up all the previous objections of sceptics to the gospel narrative and hurled them in one mass, just as if some Sadducee at the time of Jesus' trial had put all the taunts and gibes, all the buffetings and insults, all the shame and spitting, into one blow delivered straight into the face of the Redeemer. An octogenarian and saintly German lady said unsuspectingly that “somehow she never could get interested” in Strauss's Leben Jesu, which her sceptical son had given her for religious reading. The work was almost altogether destructive, only the last chapter suggesting Strauss's own view of what Jesus was.

If Luther's dictum is true that “the heart is the best theologian,” Strauss must be regarded as destitute of the main qualification for his task. Encyc. Britannica, 22:592—“Strauss's mind was almost exclusively analytical and critical, without depth of religious feeling, or philosophical penetration, or historical sympathy. His work was rarely constructive, and, save when he was dealing with a kindred spirit, he failed as a historian, biographer, and critic, strikingly illustrating Goethe's profoundly true principle that loving sympathy is essential for productive criticism.” Pfleiderer, Strauss's Life of Jesus, xix—“Strauss showed that the church formed the mythical traditions about Jesus out of its faith in him as the Messiah; but he did not show how the church came by the faith that Jesus of Nazareth was the Messiah.” See Carpenter, Mental Physiology, 362; Grote, Plato, 1:249.

We object to the Myth-theory of Strauss, that

(a) The time between the death of Christ and the publication of the gospels was far too short for the growth and consolidation of such mythical histories. Myths, on the contrary, as the Indian, Greek, Roman and Scandinavian instances bear witness, are the slow growth of centuries.

(b) The first century was not a century when such formation of myths was possible. Instead of being a credulous and imaginative age, it was an age of historical inquiry and of Sadduceeism in matters of religion.

Horace, in Odes 1:34 and 3:6, denounces the neglect and squalor of the heathen temples, and Juvenal, Satire 2:150, says that “Esse aliquid manes et subterranea regna Nec pueri credunt.” Arnold of Rugby: “The idea of men writing mythic histories between the times of Livy and of Tacitus, and of St. Paul mistaking them for realities!”Pilate's sceptical inquiry, “What is truth?” (John 18:38), better represented the age. “The mythical age is past when an idea is presented abstractly—apart from narrative.”The Jewish sect of the Sadducees shows that the rationalistic spirit was not confined to Greeks or Romans. The question of John the Baptist, Mat. 11:3—“Art thou he that cometh, or look we for another?” and our Lord's answer, Mat. 11:4, 5—“Go and tell John the thing which ye hear and see: the blind receive their sight ... the dead are raised up,” show that the Jews expected miracles to be wrought by the Messiah; yet John 10:41—“John indeed did no sign” shows also no irresistible inclination to invest popular teachers with miraculous powers; see E. G. Robinson, Christian Evidences, 22; Westcott, Com. on John 10:41; Rogers, Superhuman Origin of the Bible, 61; Cox, Miracles, 50.

(c) The gospels cannot be a mythical outgrowth of Jewish ideas and expectations, because, in their main features, they run directly counter to these ideas and expectations. The sullen and exclusive nationalism of the Jews could not have given rise to a gospel for all nations, nor could their expectations of a temporal monarch have led to the story of a suffering Messiah.

The O. T. Apocrypha shows how narrow was the outlook of the Jews. 2 Esdras 6:55, 56 says the Almighty has made the world “for our sakes”; other peoples, though they “also come from Adam,” to the Eternal “are nothing, but be like unto spittle.”The whole multitude of them are only, before him, “like a single foul drop that oozes out of a cask” (C. Geikie, in S. S. Times). Christ's kingdom differed from that which the Jews expected, both in its spirituality and its universality (Bruce, Apologetics, 3). There was no missionary impulse in the heathen world; on the other hand, [pg 157]it was blasphemy for an ancient tribesman to make known his god to an outsider (Nash, Ethics and Revelation, 106). The Apocryphal gospels show what sort of myths the N. T. age would have elaborated: Out of a demoniac young woman Satan is said to depart in the form of a young man (Bernard, in Literature of the Second Century, 99-136).

(d) The belief and propagation of such myths are inconsistent with what we know of the sober characters and self-sacrificing lives of the apostles.

(e) The mythical theory cannot account for the acceptance of the gospels among the Gentiles, who had none of the Jewish ideas and expectations.

(f) It cannot explain Christianity itself, with its belief in Christ's crucifixion and resurrection, and the ordinances which commemorate these facts.

(d) Witness Thomas's doubting, and Paul's shipwrecks and scourgings. Cf. 2 Pet. 1:16—οὐ γὰρ σεσοφισμένοις μύθοις ἐξακολουθήσαντες = “we have not been on the false track of myths artificially elaborated.” See F. W. Farrar, Witness of History to Christ, 49-88. (e) See the two books entitled: If the Gospel Narratives are Mythical,—What Then? and, But How,—if the Gospels are Historic? (f) As the existence of the American Republic is proof that there was once a Revolutionary War, so the existence of Christianity is proof of the death of Christ. The change from the seventh day to the first, in Sabbath observance, could never have come about in a nation so Sabbatarian, had not the first day been the celebration of an actual resurrection. Like the Jewish Passover and our own Independence Day, Baptism and the Lord's Supper cannot be accounted for, except as monuments and remembrances of historical facts at the beginning of the Christian church. See Muir, on the Lord's Supper an abiding Witness to the Death of Christ, In Present Day Tracts, 6: no. 36. On Strauss and his theory, see Hackett, in Christian Rev., 48; Weiss, Life of Jesus, 155-163; Christlieb, Mod. Doubt and Christ. Belief, 379-425; Maclear, in Strivings for the Faith, 1-136; H. B. Smith, in Faith and Philosophy, 442-468; Bayne, Review of Strauss's New Life, in Theol. Eclectic, 4:74; Row, in Lectures on Modern Scepticism, 305-360; Bibliotheca Sacra, Oct. 1871: art. by Prof. W. A. Stevens; Burgess, Antiquity and Unity of Man, 263, 264; Curtis on Inspiration, 62-67; Alexander, Christ and Christianity, 92-126; A. P. Peabody, in Smith's Bible Dict., 2:954-958.

2nd. The Tendency-theory of Baur (1792-1860).

This maintains that the gospels originated in the middle of the second century, and were written under assumed names as a means of reconciling opposing Jewish and Gentile tendencies in the church. “These great national tendencies find their satisfaction, not in events corresponding to them, but in the elaboration of conscious fictions.”

Baur dates the fourth gospel at 160-170 A. D.; Matthew at 130; Luke at 150; Mark at 150-160. Baur never inquires who Christ was. He turns his attention from the facts to the documents. If the documents be proved unhistorical, there is no need of examining the facts, for there are no facts to examine. He indicates the presupposition of his investigations, when he says: “The principal argument for the later origin of the gospels must forever remain this, that separately, and still more when taken together, they give an account of the life of Jesus which involves impossibilities”—i. e., miracles. He would therefore remove their authorship far enough from Jesus' time to permit regarding the miracles as inventions. Baur holds that in Christ were united the universalistic spirit of the new religion, and the particularistic form of the Jewish Messianic idea; some of his disciples laid emphasis on the one, some on the other; hence first conflict, but finally reconciliation; see statement of the Tübingen theory and of the way in which Baur was led to it, in Bruce, Apologetics, 360. E. G. Robinson interprets Baur as follows: “Paul = Protestant; Peter = sacramentarian; James = ethical; Paul + Peter + James = Christianity. Protestant preaching should dwell more on the ethical—cases of conscience—and less on mere doctrine, such as regeneration and justification.”

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Baur was a stranger to the needs of his own soul, and so to the real character of the gospel. One of his friends and advisers wrote, after his death, in terms that were meant to be laudatory: “His was a completely objective nature. No trace of personal needs or struggles is discernible in connection with his investigations of Christianity.”The estimate of posterity is probably expressed in the judgment with regard to the Tübingen school by Harnack: “The possible picture it sketched was not the real, and the key with which it attempted to solve all problems did not suffice for the most simple.... The Tübingen views have indeed been compelled to undergo very large modifications. As regards the development of the church in the second century, it may safely be said that the hypotheses of the Tübingen school have proved themselves everywhere inadequate, very erroneous, and are to-day held by only a very few scholars.” See Baur, Die kanonischen Evangelien; Canonical Gospels (Eng. transl.), 530; Supernatural Religion, 1:212-444 and vol. 2: Pfleiderer, Hibbert Lectures for 1885. For accounts of Baur's position, see Herzog, Encyclopädie, art.: Baur; Clarke's transl. of Hase's Life of Jesus, 34-36; Farrar, Critical History of Free Thought, 227, 228.

We object to the Tendency-theory of Baur, that

(a) The destructive criticism to which it subjects the gospels, if applied to secular documents, would deprive us of any certain knowledge of the past, and render all history impossible.

The assumption of artifice is itself unfavorable to a candid examination of the documents. A perverse acuteness can descry evidences of a hidden animus in the most simple and ingenuous literary productions. Instance the philosophical interpretation of “Jack and Jill.”

(b) The antagonistic doctrinal tendencies which it professes to find in the several gospels are more satisfactorily explained as varied but consistent aspects of the one system of truth held by all the apostles.

Baur exaggerates the doctrinal and official differences between the leading apostles. Peter was not simply a Judaizing Christian, but was the first preacher to the Gentiles, and his doctrine appears to have been subsequently influenced to a considerable extent by Paul's (see Plumptre on 1 Pet., 68-69). Paul was not an exclusively Hellenizing Christian, but invariably addressed the gospel to the Jews before he turned to the Gentiles. The evangelists give pictures of Jesus from different points of view. As the Parisian sculptor constructs his bust with the aid of a dozen photographs of his subject, all taken from different points of view, so from the four portraits furnished us by Matthew, Mark, Luke and John we are to construct the solid and symmetrical life of Christ. The deeper reality which makes reconciliation of the different views possible is the actual historical Christ. Marcus Dods, Expositor's Greek Testament, 1:675—“They are not two Christs, but one, which the four Gospels depict: diverse as the profile and front face, but one another's complement rather than contradiction.”

Godet, Introd. to Gospel Collection, 272—Matthew shows the greatness of Jesus—his full-length portrait; Mark his indefatigable activity; Luke his beneficent compassion; John his essential divinity. Matthew first wrote Aramæan Logia. This was translated into Greek and completed by a narrative of the ministry of Jesus for the Greek churches founded by Paul. This translation was not made by Matthew and did not make use of Mark (217-224). E. D. Burton: Matthew = fulfilment of past prophecy; Mark = manifestation of present power. Matthew is argument from prophecy; Mark is argument from miracle. Matthew, as prophecy, made most impression on Jewish readers; Mark, as power, was best adapted to Gentiles. Prof. Burton holds Mark to be based upon oral tradition alone; Matthew upon his Logia (his real earlier Gospel) and other fragmentary notes; while Luke has a fuller origin in manuscripts and in Mark. See Aids to the Study of German Theology, 148-155; F. W. Farrar, Witness of History to Christ, 61.

(c) It is incredible that productions of such literary power and lofty religious teaching as the gospels should have sprung up in the middle of the second century, or that, so springing up, they should have been published under assumed names and for covert ends.

[pg 159]

The general character of the literature of the second century is illustrated by Ignatius's fanatical desire for martyrdom, the value ascribed by Hermas to ascetic rigor, the insipid allegories of Barnabas, Clement of Rome's belief in the phœnix, and the absurdities of the Apocryphal Gospels. The author of the fourth gospel among the writers of the second century would have been a mountain among mole-hills. Wynne, Literature of the Second Century, 60—“The apostolic and the sub-apostolic writers differ from each other as a nugget of pure gold differs from a block of quartz with veins of the precious metal gleaming through it.” Dorner, Hist. Doct. Person Christ, 1:1:92—“Instead of the writers of the second century marking an advance on the apostolic age, or developing the germ given them by the apostles, the second century shows great retrogression,—its writers were not able to retain or comprehend all that had been given them.” Martineau, Seat of Authority, 291—“Writers not only barbarous in speech and rude in art, but too often puerile in conception, passionate in temper, and credulous in belief. The legends of Papias, the visions of Hermas, the imbecility of Irenæus, the fury of Tertullian, the rancor and indelicacy of Jerome, the stormy intolerance of Augustine, cannot fail to startle and repel the student; and, if he turns to the milder Hippolytus, he is introduced to a brood of thirty heresies which sadly dissipate his dream of the unity of the church.” We can apply to the writers of the second century the question of R. G. Ingersoll in the Shakespeare-Bacon controversy: “Is it possible that Bacon left the best children of his brain on Shakespeare's doorstep, and kept only the deformed ones at home?” On the Apocryphal Gospels, see Cowper, in Strivings for the Faith, 73-108.

(d) The theory requires us to believe in a moral anomaly, namely, that a faithful disciple of Christ in the second century could be guilty of fabricating a life of his master, and of claiming authority for it on the ground that the author had been a companion of Christ or his apostles.

“A genial set of Jesuitical religionists”—with mind and heart enough to write the gospel according to John, and who at the same time have cold-blooded sagacity enough to keep out of their writings every trace of the developments of church authority belonging to the second century. The newly discovered “Teaching of the Twelve Apostles,” if dating from the early part of that century, shows that such a combination is impossible. The critical theories assume that one who knew Christ as a man could not possibly also regard him as God. Lowrie, Doctrine of St. John, 12—“If St. John wrote, it is not possible to say that the genius of St. Paul foisted upon the church a conception which was strange to the original apostles.” Fairbairn has well shown that if Christianity had been simply the ethical teaching of the human Jesus, it would have vanished from the earth like the sects of the Pharisees and of the Sadducees; if on the other hand it had been simply the Logos-doctrine, the doctrine of a divine Christ, it would have passed away like the speculations of Plato or Aristotle; because Christianity unites the idea of the eternal Son of God with that of the incarnate Son of man, it is fitted to be and it has become an universal religion; see Fairbairn, Philosophy of the Christian Religion, 4, 15—“Without the personal charm of the historical Jesus, the œcumenical creeds would never have been either formulated or tolerated, and without the metaphysical conception of Christ the Christian religion would long ago have ceased to live.... It is not Jesus of Nazareth who has so powerfully entered into history: it is the deified Christ who has been believed, loved and obeyed as the Savior of the world.... The two parts of Christian doctrine are combined in the one name ‘Jesus Christ.’ ”

(e) This theory cannot account for the universal acceptance of the gospels at the end of the second century, among widely separated communities where reverence for writings of the apostles was a mark of orthodoxy, and where the Gnostic heresies would have made new documents instantly liable to suspicion and searching examination.

Abbot, Genuineness of the Fourth Gospel, 52, 80, 88, 89. The Johannine doctrine of the Logos, if first propounded in the middle of the second century, would have ensured the instant rejection of that gospel by the Gnostics, who ascribed creation, not to the Logos, but to successive “Æons.” How did the Gnostics, without “peep or mutter,”come to accept as genuine what had only in their own time been first sprung upon the [pg 160]churches? While Basilides (130) and Valentinus (150), the Gnostics, both quote from the fourth gospel, they do not dispute its genuineness or suggest that it was of recent origin. Bruce, in his Apologetics, says of Baur “He believed in the all-sufficiency of the Hegelian theory of development through antagonism. He saw tendency everywhere. Anything additional, putting more contents into the person and teaching of Jesus than suits the initial stage of development, must be reckoned spurious. If we find Jesus in any of the gospels claiming to be a supernatural being, such texts can with the utmost confidence be set aside as spurious, for such a thought could not belong to the initial stage of Christianity.” But such a conception certainly existed in the second century, and it directly antagonized the speculations of the Gnostics. F. W. Farrar, on Hebrews 1:2—“The word æon was used by the later Gnostics to describe the various emanations by which they tried at once to widen and to bridge over the gulf between the human and the divine. Over that imaginary chasm John threw the arch of the Incarnation, when he wrote: ‘The Word became flesh’ (John 1:14).” A document which so contradicted the Gnostic teachings could not in the second century have been quoted by the Gnostics themselves without dispute as to its genuineness, if it had not been long recognized in the churches as a work of the apostle John.

(f) The acknowledgment by Baur that the epistles to the Romans, Galatians and Corinthians were written by Paul in the first century is fatal to his theory, since these epistles testify not only to miracles at the period at which they were written, but to the main events of Jesus' life and to the miracle of his resurrection, as facts already long acknowledged in the Christian church.

Baur, Paulus der Apostel, 276—“There never has been the slightest suspicion of unauthenticity cast on these epistles (Gal., 1 and 2 Cor., Rom.), and they bear so incontestably the character of Pauline originality, that there is no conceivable ground for the assertion of critical doubts in their case.” Baur, in discussing the appearance of Christ to Paul on the way to Damascus, explains the outward from the inward: Paul translated intense and sudden conviction of the truth of the Christian religion into an outward scene. But this cannot explain the hearing of the outward sound by Paul's companions. On the evidential value of the epistles here mentioned, see Lorimer, in Strivings for the Faith, 109-144; Howson, in Present Day Tracts, 4: no. 24; Row, Bampton Lectures for 1877:289-356. On Baur and his theory in general, see Weiss, Life of Jesus, 1:157 sq.; Christlieb, Mod. Doubt and Christ. Belief, 504-549; Hutton, Essays, 1:176-215; Theol. Eclectic, 5:1-42; Auberlen, Div. Revelation; Bib. Sac., 19:75; Answers to Supernatural Religion, in Westcott, Hist. N. T. Canon, 4th ed., Introd.; Lightfoot, in Contemporary Rev., Dec. 1874, and Jan. 1875; Salmon, Introd. to N. T., 6-31; A. B. Bruce, in Present Day Tracts, 7: no. 38.

3d. The Romance-theory of Renan (1823-1892).

This theory admits a basis of truth in the gospels and holds that they all belong to the century following Jesus' death. “According to” Matthew, Mark, etc., however, means only that Matthew, Mark, etc., wrote these gospels in substance. Renan claims that the facts of Jesus' life were so sublimated by enthusiasm, and so overlaid with pious fraud, that the gospels in their present form cannot be accepted as genuine,—in short, the gospels are to be regarded as historical romances which have only a foundation in fact.

The animus of this theory is plainly shown in Renan's Life of Jesus, preface to 13th ed.—“If miracles and the inspiration of certain books are realities, my method is detestable. If miracles and the inspiration of books are beliefs without reality, my method is a good one. But the question of the supernatural is decided for us with perfect certainty by the single consideration that there is no room for believing in a thing of which the world offers no experimental trace.” “On the whole,” says Renan, “I admit as authentic the four canonical gospels. All, in my opinion, date from the first century, and the authors are, generally speaking, those to whom they are attributed.”He regards Gal., 1 and 2 Cor., and Rom., as “indisputable and undisputed.” He speaks [pg 161]of them as “being texts of an absolute authenticity, of complete sincerity, and without legends” (Les Apôtres, xxix; Les Évangiles, xi). Yet he denies to Jesus “sincerity with himself”; attributes to him “innocent artifice” and the toleration of pious fraud, as for example in the case of the stories of Lazarus and of his own resurrection. “To conceive the good is not sufficient: it must be made to succeed; to accomplish this, less pure paths must be followed.... Not by any fault of his own, his conscience lost somewhat of its original purity,—his mission overwhelmed him.... Did he regret his too lofty nature, and, victim of his own greatness, mourn that he had not remained a simple artizan?” So Renan “pictures Christ's later life as a misery and a lie, yet he requests us to bow before this sinner and before his superior, Sakya-Mouni, as demigods”(see Nicoll, The Church's One Foundation, 62, 63). Of the highly wrought imagination of Mary Magdalene, he says: “O divine power of love! sacred moments, in which the passion of one whose senses were deceived gives us a resuscitated God!” See Renan, Life of Jesus, 21.

To this Romance-theory of Renan, we object that

(a) It involves an arbitrary and partial treatment of the Christian documents. The claim that one writer not only borrowed from others, but interpolated ad libitum, is contradicted by the essential agreement of the manuscripts as quoted by the Fathers, and as now extant.

Renan, according to Mair, Christian Evidences, 153, dates Matthew at 84 A. D.; Mark at 76; Luke at 94; John at 125. These dates mark a considerable retreat from the advanced positions taken by Baur. Mair, in his chapter on Recent Reverses in Negative Criticism, attributes this result to the late discoveries with regard to the Epistle of Barnabas, Hippolytus's Refutation of all Heresies, the Clementine Homilies, and Tatian's Diatessaron: “According to Baur and his immediate followers, we have less than one quarter of the N. T. belonging to the first century. According to Hilgenfeld, the present head of the Baur school, we have somewhat less than three quarters belonging to the first century, while substantially the same thing may be said with regard to Holzmann. According to Renan, we have distinctly more than three quarters of the N. T. falling within the first century, and therefore within the apostolic age. This surely indicates a very decided and extraordinary retreat since the time of Baur's grand assault, that is, within the last fifty years.” We may add that the concession of authorship within the apostolic age renders nugatory Renan's hypothesis that the N. T. documents have been so enlarged by pious fraud that they cannot be accepted as trustworthy accounts of such events as miracles. The oral tradition itself had attained so fixed a form that the many manuscripts used by the Fathers were in substantial agreement in respect to these very events, and oral tradition in the East hands down without serious alteration much longer narratives than those of our gospels. The Pundita Ramabai can repeat after the lapse of twenty years portions of the Hindu sacred books exceeding in amount the whole contents of our Old Testament. Many cultivated men in Athens knew by heart all the Iliad and the Odyssey of Homer. Memory and reverence alike kept the gospel narratives free from the corruption which Renan supposes.

(b) It attributes to Christ and to the apostles an alternate fervor of romantic enthusiasm and a false pretense of miraculous power which are utterly irreconcilable with the manifest sobriety and holiness of their lives and teachings. If Jesus did not work miracles, he was an impostor.

On Ernest Renan, His Life and the Life of Jesus, see A. H. Strong, Christ in Creation, 332-363, especially 356—“Renan attributes the origin of Christianity to the predominance in Palestine of a constitutional susceptibility to mystic excitements. Christ is to him the incarnation of sympathy and tears, a being of tender impulses and passionate ardors, whose native genius it was to play upon the hearts of men. Truth or falsehood made little difference to him; anything that would comfort the poor, or touch the finer feelings of humanity, he availed himself of; ecstasies, visions, melting moods, these were the secrets of his power. Religion was a beneficent superstition, a sweet delusion—excellent as a balm and solace for the ignorant crowd, who never could be philosophers if they tried. And so the gospel river, as one has said, is traced back to a fountain of weeping men and women whose brains had oozed out at their eyes, and the perfection of spirituality is made to be a sort of maudlin monasticism.... How different [pg 162]from the strong and holy love of Christ, which would save men only by bringing them to the truth, and which claims men's imitation only because, without love for God and for the soul, a man is without truth. How inexplicable from this view the fact that a pure Christianity has everywhere quickened the intellect of the nations, and that every revival of it, as at the Reformation, has been followed by mighty forward leaps of civilization. Was Paul a man carried away by mystic dreams and irrational enthusiasms? Let the keen dialectic skill of his epistles and his profound grasp of the great matters of revelation answer. Has the Christian church been a company of puling sentimentalists? Let the heroic deaths for the truth suffered by the martyrs witness. Nay, he must have a low idea of his kind, and a yet lower idea of the God who made them, who can believe that the noblest spirits of the race have risen to greatness by abnegating will and reason, and have gained influence over all ages by resigning themselves to semi-idiocy.”

(c) It fails to account for the power and progress of the gospel, as a system directly opposed to men's natural tastes and prepossessions—a system which substitutes truth for romance and law for impulse.

A. H. Strong, Christ in Creation, 358—“And if the later triumphs of Christianity are inexplicable upon the theory of Renan, how can we explain its founding? The sweet swain of Galilee, beloved by women for his beauty, fascinating the unlettered crowd by his gentle speech and his poetic ideals, giving comfort to the sorrowing and hope to the poor, credited with supernatural power which at first he thinks it not worth while to deny and finally gratifies the multitude by pretending to exercise, roused by opposition to polemics and invective until the delightful young rabbi becomes a gloomy giant, an intractable fanatic, a fierce revolutionist, whose denunciation of the powers that be brings him to the Cross,—what is there in him to account for the moral wonder which we call Christianity and the beginnings of its empire in the world? Neither delicious pastorals like those of Jesus' first period, nor apocalyptic fevers like those of his second period, according to Renan's gospel, furnish any rational explanation of that mighty movement which has swept through the earth and has revolutionized the faith of mankind.”

Berdoe, Browning, 47—“If Christ were not God, his life at that stage of the world's history could by no possibility have had the vitalizing force and love-compelling power that Renan's pages everywhere disclose. Renan has strengthened faith in Christ's deity while laboring to destroy it.”

Renan, in discussing Christ's appearance to Paul on the way to Damascus, explains the inward from the outward, thus precisely reversing the conclusion of Baur. A sudden storm, a flash of lightning, a sudden attack of ophthalmic fever, Paul took as an appearance from heaven. But we reply that so keen an observer and reasoner could not have been thus deceived. Nothing could have made him the apostle to the Gentiles but a sight of the glorified Christ and the accompanying revelation of the holiness of God, his own sin, the sacrifice of the Son of God, its universal efficacy, the obligation laid upon him to proclaim it to the ends of the earth. For reviews of Renan, see Hutton, Essays, 261-281, and Contemp. Thought and Thinkers, 1:227-234; H. B. Smith, Faith and Philosophy, 401-441; Christlieb, Mod. Doubt, 425-447; Pressensé, in Theol. Eclectic, 1:199; Uhlhorn, Mod. Representations of Life of Jesus, 1-33; Bib. Sac, 22:207; 23:353, 529; Present Day Tracts, 3: no. 16, and 4: no. 21; E. G. Robinson, Christian Evidences, 43-48; A. H. Strong, Sermon before Baptist World Congress, 1905.

4th. The Development-theory of Harnack (born 1851).

This holds Christianity to be a historical development from germs which were devoid of both dogma and miracle. Jesus was a teacher of ethics, and the original gospel is most clearly represented by the Sermon on the Mount. Greek influence, and especially that of the Alexandrian philosophy, added to this gospel a theological and supernatural element, and so changed Christianity from a life into a doctrine.

Harnack dates Matthew at 70-75; Mark at 65-70; Luke at 78-93; the fourth gospel at 80-110. He regards both the fourth gospel and the book of Revelation as the works, not of John the Apostle, but of John the Presbyter. He separates the prologue of the [pg 163]fourth gospel from the gospel itself, and considers the prologue as a preface added after its original composition in order to enable the Hellenistic reader to understand it. “The gospel itself,” says Harnack, “contains no Logos-idea; it did not develop out of a Logos-idea, such as flourished at Alexandria; it only connects itself with such an idea. The gospel itself is based upon the historic Christ; he is the subject of all its statements. This historical trait can in no way be dissolved by any kind of speculation. The memory of what was actually historical was still too powerful to admit at this point any Gnostic influences. The Logos-idea of the prologue is the Logos of Alexandrine Judaism, the Logos of Philo, and it is derived ultimately from the 'Son of man' in the book of Daniel.... The fourth gospel, which does not proceed from the Apostle John and does not so claim, cannot be used as a historical source in the ordinary sense of that word.... The author has managed with sovereign freedom; has transposed occurrences and has put them in a light that is foreign to them; has of his own accord composed the discourses, and has illustrated lofty thoughts by inventing situations for them. Difficult as it is to recognize, an actual tradition in his work is not wholly lacking. For the history of Jesus, however, it can hardly anywhere be taken into account; only little can be taken from it, and that with caution.... On the other hand it is a source of the first rank for the answer of the question what living views of the person of Jesus, what light and what warmth, the gospel has brought into being.” See Harnack's article in Zeitschrift für Theol. u. Kirche, 2:189-231, and his Wesen des Christenthums, 13. Kaftan also, who belongs to the same Ritschlian school with Harnack, tells us in his Truth of the Christian Religion, 1:97, that as the result of the Logos-speculation, “the centre of gravity, instead of being placed in the historical Christ who founded the kingdom of God, is placed in the Christ who as eternal Logos of God was the mediator in the creation of the world.” This view is elaborated by Hatch in his Hibbert Lectures for 1888, on the Influence of Greek Ideas and Usages upon the Christian Church.

We object to the Development-theory of Harnack, that

(a) The Sermon on the Mount is not the sum of the gospel, nor its original form. Mark is the most original of the gospels, yet Mark omits the Sermon on the Mount, and Mark is preëminently the gospel of the miracle-worker.

(b) All four gospels lay the emphasis, not on Jesus' life and ethical teaching, but on his death and resurrection. Matthew implies Christ's deity when it asserts his absolute knowledge of the Father (11:27), his universal judgeship (25:32), his supreme authority (28:18), and his omnipresence (28:20), while the phrase “Son of man” implies that he is also “Son of God.”

Mat. 11:27—“All things have been delivered unto me of my Father: and no one knoweth the Son, save the Father; neither doth any know the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son willeth to reveal him”; 25:32—“and before him shall be gathered all the nations: and he shall separate them one from another, as the shepherd separateth the sheep from the goats”; 28:18—“All authority hath been given unto me in heaven and on earth”; 28:20—“lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world.” These sayings of Jesus in Matthew's gospel show that the conception of Christ's greatness was not peculiar to John: “I am” transcends time; “with you” transcends space. Jesus speaks “sub specie eternitatis”; his utterance is equivalent to that of John 8:58—“Before Abraham was born, I am,” and to that of Hebrews 13:8—“Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and to-day, yea and for ever.” He is, as Paul declares in Eph. 1:23, one “that filleth all in all,” that is, who is omnipresent.

A. H. Strong, Philos. and Religion, 206—The phrase “Son of man” intimates that Christ was more than man: “Suppose I were to go about proclaiming myself ‘Son of man.’ Who does not see that it would be mere impertinence, unless I claimed to be something more. ‘Son of Man? But what of that? Cannot every human being call himself the same?’ When one takes the title ‘Son of man’ for his characteristic designation, as Jesus did, he implies that there is something strange in his being Son of man; that this is not his original condition and dignity; that it is condescension on his part to be Son of man. In short, when Christ calls himself Son of man, it implies that he has come from a higher level of being to inhabit this low earth of ours. And so, when we are asked ‘What think ye of the Christ? whose son is he?’ we must answer, not [pg 164]simply, He is Son of man, but also, He is Son of God.” On Son of man, see Driver; on Son of God, see Sanday; both in Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible. Sanday: “The Son is so called primarily as incarnate. But that which is the essence of the Incarnation must needs be also larger than the Incarnation. It must needs have its roots in the eternity of Godhead.” Gore, Incarnation, 65, 73—“Christ, the final Judge, of the synoptics, is not dissociable from the divine, eternal Being, of the fourth gospel.”

(c) The preëxistence and atonement of Christ cannot be regarded as accretions upon the original gospel, since these find expression in Paul who wrote before any of our evangelists, and in his epistles anticipated the Logos-doctrine of John.

(d) We may grant that Greek influence, through the Alexandrian philosophy, helped the New Testament writers to discern what was already present in the life and work and teaching of Jesus; but, like the microscope which discovers but does not create, it added nothing to the substance of the faith.

Gore, Incarnation, 62—“The divinity, incarnation, resurrection of Christ were not an accretion upon the original belief of the apostles and their first disciples, for these are all recognized as uncontroverted matters of faith in the four great epistles of Paul, written at a date when the greater part of those who had seen the risen Christ were still alive.” The Alexandrian philosophy was not the source of apostolic doctrine, but only the form in which that doctrine was cast, the light thrown upon it which brought out its meaning. A. H. Strong, Christ in Creation, 146—“When we come to John's gospel, therefore, we find in it the mere unfolding of truth that for substance had been in the world for at least sixty years.... If the Platonizing philosophy of Alexandria assisted in this genuine development of Christian doctrine, then the Alexandrian philosophy was a providential help to inspiration. The microscope does not invent; it only discovers. Paul and John did not add to the truth of Christ; their philosophical equipment was only a microscope which brought into clear view the truth that was there already.”

Pfleiderer, Philos. Religion, 1:126—“The metaphysical conception of the Logos, as immanent in the world and ordering it according to law, was filled with religious and moral contents. In Jesus the cosmical principle of nature became a religious principle of salvation.” See Kilpatrick's article on Philosophy, in Hastings' Bible Dictionary. Kilpatrick holds that Harnack ignores the self-consciousness of Jesus; does not fairly interpret the Acts in its mention of the early worship of Jesus by the church before Greek philosophy had influenced it; refers to the intellectual peculiarities of the N. T. writers conceptions which Paul insists are simply the faith of all Christian people as such; forgets that the Christian idea of union with God secured through the atoning and reconciling work of a personal Redeemer utterly transcended Greek thought, and furnished the solution of the problem after which Greek philosophy was vainly groping.

(e) Though Mark says nothing of the virgin-birth because his story is limited to what the apostles had witnessed of Jesus' deeds, Matthew apparently gives us Joseph's story and Luke gives Mary's story—both stories naturally published only after Jesus' resurrection.

(f) The larger understanding of doctrine after Jesus' death was itself predicted by our Lord (John 16:12). The Holy Spirit was to bring his teachings to remembrance, and to guide into all the truth (16:13), and the apostles were to continue the work of teaching which he had begun (Acts 1:1).

John 16:12, 13—“I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now. Howbeit, when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he shall guide you into all the truth”; Acts 1:1—“The former treatise I made, O Theophilus, concerning all that Jesus began to do and to teach.” A. H. Strong, Christ in Creation, 146—“That the beloved disciple, after a half century of meditation upon what he had seen and heard of God manifest in the flesh, should have penetrated more deeply into the meaning of that wonderful revelation is not only not surprising,—it is precisely what Jesus [pg 165]himself foretold. Our Lord had many things to say to his disciples, but then they could not bear them. He promised that the Holy Spirit should bring to their remembrance both himself and his words, and should lead them into all the truth. And this is the whole secret of what are called accretions to original Christianity. So far as they are contained in Scripture, they are inspired discoveries and unfoldings, not mere speculations and inventions. They are not additions, but elucidations, not vain imaginings, but correct interpretations.... When the later theology, then, throws out the supernatural and dogmatic, as coming not from Jesus but from Paul's epistles and from the fourth gospel, our claim is that Paul and John are only inspired and authoritative interpreters of Jesus, seeing themselves and making us see the fulness of the Godhead that dwelt in him.”

While Harnack, in our judgment, errs in his view that Paul contributed to the gospel elements which it did not originally possess, he shows us very clearly many of the elements in that gospel which he was the first to recognize. In his Wesen des Christenthums, 111, he tells us that a few years ago a celebrated Protestant theologian declared that Paul, with his Rabbinical theology, was the destroyer of the Christian religion. Others have regarded him as the founder of that religion. But the majority have seen in him the apostle who best understood his Lord and did most to continue his work. Paul, as Harnack maintains, first comprehended the gospel definitely: (1) as an accomplished redemption and a present salvation—the crucified and risen Christ as giving access to God and righteousness and peace therewith; (2) as something new, which does away with the religion of the law; (3) as meant for all, and therefore for Gentiles also, indeed, as superseding Judaism; (4) as expressed in terms which are not simply Greek but also human,—Paul made the gospel comprehensible to the world. Islam, rising in Arabia, is an Arabian religion still. Buddhism remains an Indian religion. Christianity is at home in all lands. Paul put new life into the Roman empire, and inaugurated the Christian culture of the West. He turned a local into a universal religion. His influence however, according to Harnack, tended to the undue exaltation of organization and dogma and O. T. inspiration—points in which, in our judgment, Paul took sober middle ground and saved Christian truth for the world.

2. Genuineness of the Books of the Old Testament.

Since nearly one half of the Old Testament is of anonymous authorship and certain of its books may be attributed to definite historic characters only by way of convenient classification or of literary personification, we here mean by genuineness honesty of purpose and freedom from anything counterfeit or intentionally deceptive so far as respects the age or the authorship of the documents.

We show the genuineness of the Old Testament books:

(a) From the witness of the New Testament, in which all but six books of the Old Testament are either quoted or alluded to as genuine.

The N. T. shows coincidences of language with the O. T. Apocryphal books, but it contains only one direct quotation from them; while, with the exception of Judges, Ecclesiastes, Canticles, Esther, Ezra, and Nehemiah, every book in the Hebrew canon is used either for illustration or proof. The single Apocryphal quotation is found in Jude 14and is in all probability taken from the book of Enoch. Although Volkmar puts the date of this book at 132 A. D., and although some critics hold that Jude quoted only the same primitive tradition of which the author of the book of Enoch afterwards made use, the weight of modern scholarship inclines to the opinion that the book itself was written as early as 170-70 B. C., and that Jude quoted from it; see Hastings' Bible Dictionary: Book of Enoch; Sanday, Bampton Lect. on Inspiration, 95. “If Paul could quote from Gentile poets (Acts 17:28; Titus 1:12), it is hard to understand why Jude could not cite a work which was certainly in high standing among the faithful”; see Schodde, Book of Enoch, 41, with the Introd. by Ezra Abbot. While Jude 14 gives us the only direct and express quotation from an Apocryphal book, Jude 6 and 9 contain allusions to the Book of Enoch and to the Assumption of Moses; see Charles, Assumption of Moses, 62. In Hebrews 1:3, we have words taken from Wisdom 7:26; and Hebrews 11:34-38 is a reminiscence of 1 Maccabees.

[pg 166]

(b) From the testimony of Jewish authorities, ancient and modern, who declare the same books to be sacred, and only the same books, that are now comprised in our Old Testament Scriptures.

Josephus enumerates twenty-two of these books “which are justly accredited” (omit θεῖα—Niese, and Hastings' Dict., 3:607). Our present Hebrew Bible makes twenty-four, by separating Ruth from Judges, and Lamentations from Jeremiah. See Josephus, Against Apion, 1:8; Smith's Bible Dictionary, article on the Canon, 1:359, 360. Philo (born 20 B. C.) never quotes an Apocryphal book, although he does quote from nearly all the books of the O. T.; see Ryle, Philo and Holy Scripture. George Adam Smith, Modern Criticism and Preaching, 7—“The theory which ascribed the Canon of the O. T. to a single decision of the Jewish church in the days of its inspiration is not a theory supported by facts. The growth of the O. T. Canon was very gradual. Virtually it began in 621 B. C., with the acceptance by all Judah of Deuteronomy, and the adoption of the whole Law, or first five books of the O. T., under Nehemiah in 445 B. C. Then came the prophets before 200 B. C., and the Hagiographa from a century to two centuries later. The strict definition of the last division was not complete by the time of Christ. Christ seems to testify to the Law, the Prophets, and the Psalms; yet neither Christ nor his apostles make any quotation from Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther, Canticles, or Ecclesiastes, the last of which books were not yet recognized by all the Jewish schools. But while Christ is the chief authority for the O. T., he was also its first critic. He rejected some parts of the Law and was indifferent to many others. He enlarged the sixth and seventh commandments, and reversed the eye for an eye, and the permission of divorce; touched the leper, and reckoned all foods lawful; broke away from literal observance of the Sabbath-day; left no commands about sacrifice, temple-worship, circumcision, but, by institution of the New Covenant, abrogated these sacraments of the Old. The apostles appealed to extra-canonical writings.”Gladden, Seven Puzzling Bible Books, 68-96—“Doubts were entertained in our Lord's day as to the canonicity of several parts of the O. T., especially Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon, Esther.”