Chapter XIV · ORTHODOXY AND THE “ORAL” HYPOTHESIS
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Mr. Wright’s theory, in brief, is that the Gospels, one and all, represent the late consignment to paper of matter preserved from the first in the Christian catechetical schools, given by the apostles and preserved by their pupils in the Rabbinical fashion. As Matthew divides plausibly into fifty-one lessons, and Mark in the Westcott and Hort text into forty-eight paragraphs, it is suggested that the plan in both cases had been to attain to a set of fifty-one or fifty-two; and
Was it humility that made him deliberately omit them as too good for so insignificant a creature as himself to record? Or was it a conscious or unconscious feeling that they were unsuited to his readers? A man with such preposterous humility was ill-equipped for the work of an evangelist. Readers so unchristian would not value a Gospel.
What now becomes of the two presentments of James and John? Both must presumably have known most that was to be known, ex hypothesi. Yet James has not a word of specifically Christian doctrine, and, save in two sentences, one of which has every appearance of interpolation, while the other is only less suspicious, no mention of Jesus. John, on the other hand, as an apostle (whether or not the beloved one), must on the theory have heard many of the sayings given in the synoptics, which he does not report. Why does he not? Had he never heard of the “Come unto me” allocution? Could he conceivably have put it aside from a preposterous humility? If he had not heard that, had he not heard the Sermon on the Mount, or any of the parable-solutions given in the synoptics as specially addressed to the twelve disciples? Can Mr. Wright, holding by the central tradition of Jesus and the twelve, believe that John had heard none of the teachings which he does not repeat? If, on the other hand, he admits wholesale suppression in John’s case, what becomes of the argument above cited?
It matters little that Mr. Wright credits John with evolving the Logos doctrine out of his own profound meditation, and with having “remoulded” the sayings of Jesus which he does give. That is a standing device of exegesis, Unitarian and Trinitarian alike; and by his account the general oral tradition did the same thing indefinitely. But all the while Mr. Wright is going a great deal further. He alternately insists that every evangelist told all he knew, and assumes that the two evangelists who are alleged to have been apostles did not. If, he writes—
If, as becomes increasingly probable, a Johannine course of teaching was extant in comparatively early times, it is not strange that, as S. John dealt chiefly with the Judæan ministry, S. Peter should have refused to intrude into his brother Apostle’s domain. They may have agreed at the outset to divide the work thus between them.
It is impossible to reconcile this with Mr. Wright’s theory of the inclusiveness of the evangelists. Why should not Mark do what Matthew and John did in the terms of the case?
When therefore the Lord knew that the Pharisees had heard that Jesus was making and baptizing more disciples than John (although Jesus himself baptized not, but his disciples), he left Judæa, and departed again into Galilee.
His handling of the problems of the date of the crucifixion and the duration of the Ministry is a warning to every student who desires to be loyal to critical principle. By his final admission, no one can tell whether the Ministry lasted one, two, three, four, ten, or twenty years. He frankly rejects Sir William Ramsay’s attempt to salve as history Luke’s story of the census. The alleged procedure, he sees, is simply impossible—“S. Luke evidently has somewhat misunderstood the situation”—and he solves the problem by throwing over Luke’s opening chapters as late accretions. But the question of the duration of the Ministry, which is bound up with that of the date of the crucifixion, and thus lies at the very centre of the whole historic problem, he is content to leave as insoluble, yet without a misgiving as to the historicity of the record.
It is hardly necessary to point out that the “oral” hypothesis, like the “documentary” and that of scattered logia, is more compatible with the negative than with the affirmative answer on the question of historicity. Contradictions and anomalies irreconcilable with the assumption of a real historical process present not difficulty but confirmation to the theory of a fictitious production, whether documentary or oral, to establish a transforming cult, supplying a quasi-historical basis where none such existed. Contradictory episodes and dicta stand for diverging sects and movements. Save for incidental concessions, all the traditionist schools alike ignore the grounds for inferring a long-continued modification of the Gospels at many hands; though, when Celsus late in the second century alleged the common practice of interpolation, Origen could only explain that it was the work of heretics. Such a procedure is for the rational critic only the natural continuance of the method of formation.
Over the point upon which Mr. Wright most completely diverges from the various Unitarian schools—his acceptance of the Fourth Gospel as essentially historical—we need not here concern ourselves. Those who can accept the Fourth and the Synoptics cannot be supposed to admit the application of criticism to fundamentals at all, however critically they may handle secondary issues. And they have their defence. The liberalizers who see that the Fourth as a whole is a work of invention, making free play with previous material, and yet cannot conceive that the synoptics had beforehand followed a similar method, can make no claim to critical consistency. They merely realize that the Fourth and the Synoptics cannot all be records of a real Life and Teaching, and they decide to reject the last rather than the prior documents. The argument from “vividness” and lifelike detail simply goes by the board. In the fourth Gospel there are many more lifelike details than in the second; but that is not allowed to count.