CHAPTER VI
CHAPTER VI
THE MYSTIC GOSPEL
Curistianiry had done its best, as we have seen, to purge itself of the virus of Gnosticism.
But it was too late.
It might cast out its Marcions and Valentines, but it could not undo the work they had wrought.
Gnosticism had become bone of its bone.
To read the pages of what was soon to be known as the New Testament is to come upon these hated doctrines again and again.
They mark especially all the later books, bringing them into vivid contrast with the earlier.
How unlike the Jesus of the Galilean Gospels is the "Christ Jesus, who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: but made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men."!
What place could be found in Matthew 1 Phil. ii. 5-7.
Baur finds in this passage a distinct reminiscence of the Valentinian episode of the Aion Sophia, described p. 170.
(Paulus, ii. 51.)
PAPIAS or Mark for this language?
"Who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature: for by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers.
. .. And he is before all things, and by him all things consist.
. In him dwelleth the whole Pleroma of the Godhead bodily." !
Or where could this come in?
"Who being the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person, and upholding all things by the word of his power, when he had by himself purged our sins, sat
1 Col. i. 15-17; ii. 9.
The moment attention is directed to this point, passages are recalled throughout Paul's Epistles which bear this same stamp, showing how early the vague movement began which received afterwards the name of Gnosticism.
The second chapter of the First Epistle to the Corinthians might stand as the Preface to any Gnostic treatise.
(1 Cor. ii. 6-16.) The Valentinians seem to have found Eph. iii. 14-18 very serviceable for their purposes; and might equally well have quoted Rom. viii. 38, 39. (Hipp. vi. 34.) Sophia and Gnosis figure in r Cor. i. 539 20,030K ii. 4, 6; viii. 1,7; xiv.6; Rom. xv. 14, and elsewhere.
According to Gnostic writers, the familiar benedictions, "To whom be glory for ever and ever," and " World without end," are an avowal of their faith.
These words simply proclaim the glory of the AZons, and should read:
"To whom be glory, unto the AZons of Aons;" or, "To all the generations of the Alon of Aons."
(Iren. i. 3, 1.
Comp. Gal.i. 5; Eph. iii. 21.)
THE MYSTIC GOSPEL
down on the right hand of the Majesty on high ; being made so much better than the angels, as he hath by inheritance obtained a more excellent name than they."!
Or this?
"His name is called The Word of God.
. And he hath on his vesture and on his thigh a name written, King of Kings, and Lord of Lords." 2
Strange reading this, also, for those who know the death and resurrection of the Master only as narrated by the early Gospels : " Put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit : by which also he went and preached unto the spirits in prison; ..
. and is gone into heaven;.
. angels and authorities and powers being made subject unto him." ® It must be confessed, however, that these are but fragmentary and most inadequate tokens of a great spiritual movement.
Is there nothing more to show?
Does nothing remain but these scanty citations, or the recriminations of hostile theologians, to mark an agitation which stirred the young Christian Church so profoundly?
Unfortunate, indeed, for the student of religious history, if this is really so.
Happily, if appearances do not deceive us, we are not so badly off.
Just as the three earlier 1 Heb. i. 3, 42 Rev. xix. 13,15.
8 1 Pet. iii. 18, 19, 223 iv. 6.
Seep. 61 n.
PAPIAS Gospels were assuming their final shape, and receiving the sanction of the churches, a fourth, whose unwonted form betrays a wholly dissimilar origin, is added to the number.
We can only guess at its exact source.
At a time when nearly all Christian writings were virtually anonymous, we cannot complain if this also shows but little trace of its authorship.) From what school of thinkers it comes, however, there can be little question.
Its opening verses reflect familiar meditations, and carry us at once into a religious atmosphere which we have learned to associate with Alexandria.
We cannot be surprised at this.
If the Jewish mind had been so influenced by Greek philosophy, how much more the Christian, with new and strange problems on its hands as to the relation of the human and the divine?
To the Jew, these 1 Except seven Epistles of Paul, there are no New Testament books on whose authorship the majority of critics are agreed.
2 Comp. pp. 178-183.
The indications of Alexandrian influence in the New Testament are obvious, chiefly in the Epistles attributed to Paul, but elsewhere as well.
Comp.
Heb. i. 3-8; xiii. 5; Rev. xix. 13; 1 John; Acts xviii. 243 xix. 1; I Cor. i. 12; iii. 4, 6; Colossians, Ephesians, Philippians, entire.
In Heb. xiii, 5, a Scripture saying is quoted which it is impossible to find exactly in the Old Testament, but which occurs literally in Philo, Confus. Ling., 32.
THE MYSTIC GOSPEL
speculations threw light upon a grand historic past; to the Christian, they offered a splendid interpretation of incidents and truths still fresh in mind.
The eternal Word, the only-begotten Son in the bosom of the Father, whom Philo could depict with the unimpassioned indifference of a philosopher, becomes for the Christian soul a sublime reality.
It has taken flesh, and dwelt among men.
The drama of ages has reached at last its fulfillment.
How inadequate for the portrayal of this celestial scheme must the simple Galilzan chronicles have appeared, with which till then the church had been content.
Plainly, another Gospel must stand by their side, to reveal the divine significance of what they had treated as purely earthly events.
We must not pretend to more knowledge of this unknown writer or his origin than we really possess.1_ It is only conjecture that connects him directly with Alexandria, or indeed with any special locality or circle; and we must rest content with marking the close affinities of thought and expression between the Fourth
1 A second century tradition, not earlier than 175, ascribes this Gospel to the Apostle John; but although accepted by the Christian Church for generations, the tradition can have no other critical weight than belongs to an early conjecture.
This question will come up at a later point.
204, PAPIAS Gospel and the Alexandrian School.
As little do we know how far the author was indebted to the older Gospels for any of his historic material.
There is certainly no sign of antagonism on his part, nor of any conscious purpose to sup- . plement or correct them.
One wonders, indeed, whether he even knew of their existence, so little does he hold to their narrative, or trouble himself to show where he deviates from it. The deviations are profound, and, if reconcilable at all with the primitive accounts, have never yet been reconciled.2
At the same time, the in1 Many interesting indications point to Ephesus as the possible source of the Fourth Gospel; thus taking us back into the regions where Papias was laboring, and_ bringing into immediate contrast the two lines of thought and faith which the Christian Church was following at the same moment,side by side. We have already noted the signs of close relations between Alexandria and Asia Minor at an early period, as shown in Acts xviii. 24-28; xix.1.
Similar tokens are found in the Epistles to Colossians and Ephesians (whether the title is genuine or not) written for Asia Minor communities; also in 1 Tim. i. 3,4; Acts xx. 4.
That Asia Minor was the scene of much spiritual turmoil, and the centre of many of the religious disturbances of the second century, is a well-known fact; and this would certainly make it a natural source for this Gospel, if the historical proofs were
Stronger.
See Weizsiicker, Afos. Age, ii. 169, 170; Harnack, Chron., 661, etc.; Pfleiderer, Urchrist., 778; Jiilicher,
Linlett., 259.
2 Much of the material from which the first three Gospels
THE MYSTIC GOSPEL
genuous and occasionally realistic character of the new narrative is too marked to allow us to suppose that the writer is inventing his story, or even wholly subordinating the outward events to his spiritual theme!
He bases his Gospel upon what he believes to be actual facts; yet he leads us through unfamiliar scenes from beginning to end, and we become aware that he is drawing from some distinct and original historic source.
Wherever this Gospel was written, in Alexandria, or in Asia Minor, a tradition of Jesus had survived as unlike the Palestine picture as Phrygia was unlike Galilee.
It is no longer a Galilzean ministry that we are witnessing.
It is in Judzea that the Messiah begins his earthly work; in Judzea that he chiefly continues it; and in Judzea that he ends it.2.
Instead of lastwere drawn was, of course, common property; and it is a nice problem to decide whether an almost contemporaneous writer is borrowing indirectly from them, or directly from the original source.
Critics who insist that our Gospel was indebted to its three predecessors have to admit that the author took great liberties with those predecessors, and drew equally freely from outside sources.
See Note II.
1 In many details this Gospel is more minute and realistic than its predecessors: vi. 5-13, 15, 22-24; vii. 5; viii. 3-11;
Xo ON XVI 29135) 20 XIX. 21,023,
2 The only association with Galilee is in the passages: i. 45, 46; ii. I-11; iv. 43-54; vi. I-vii.9.
Jesus stays in Galilee, at most (if chronological calculations are to be applied to the
PAPIAS ing but a single year, it goes on from one Passover to another, and still another.)
He has at his side, not the familiar Twelve, but four or five companions hardly known to the other Evangelists.?
He discourses with his disciples or the multitude, not in familiar conversation or parable, but in stately tones of reverie or monologue.
But it is not so much the historic scenery Fourth Gospel at all), but 1+ 3-++6 months; 2. ¢., ten months out of nearly three years.
1 John ii. 13; vi.4; xi. 55. In Matthew, Mark, and Luke, only one Passover is mentioned.
(Matt. xxvi. 2; Mark xiv. 1 ; Luke xxii. 1.) ; ? But for two or three perfunctory allusions to "the Twelve" (vi. 67-71; xx. 24), we should know nothing of a circle of twelve disciples.
Andrew, Philip, and Thomas, who are so conspicuous in this narrative (i. 40, 43-45; vi.
5-8; xii. 22; xiv. 5,8; xx. 24-29), play but an insignificant part in the other Gospels; while Nathaniel, of whom Jesus speaks with such peculiar commendation (i. 45-51), and who is especially named as a disciple (xxi. 2), is absolutely unknown elsewhere.
Commentators make praiseworthy attempts to identify Nathaniel with one or other of the Twelve.
One is sure that his name is Synonymous with Matthew (Weizsicker, Afos. Age, ii. 170; Pfleiderer, Urchrist.,
700 n.); another equally positive that it is the same with Bartholomew.
(Meyer on John, i. 46.) Beside these there is a certain "beloved disciple,' whose name is never disclosed and who is elsewhere unknown, who evidently made part of the local traditions from which our author draws.
(xiii. 23; xix. 26; xxi. 20.)
THE MYSTIC GOSPEL
which distinguishes this Gospel from the others, as the spirit in which the facts are handled.
The writer's interest lies, without concealment, not in the incidents which he is recording, but in their spiritual significance.
Though transacted on earth, it is none the less a heavenly history which he presents.
Indeed, it has no earthly beginning.
There is no birth, not even a miraculous one; still less any Baptism,! or Temptation, or Gethsemane.
We are taken back at the outset to the very beginning, before time was ; into the mysteries of the eternal councils.
The actor in these scenes is not the human Jesus that he seems ; not really he.
It is the very Word, the Logos, which was with God from the beginning and was himself divine.?
He was the agent through whom all 1 John i. 32, 33, is commonly supposed to refer to the baptism of Jesus; but the only ground for the assumption is that in the other Gospels the descent of the Spirit is connected with that event.
The passage itself does not imply that Jesus was baptized.
If our author is acquainted with the tradition, he suppresses it.
2 i. 1: "ad eds jv 6 Adyos."
The absence of the article with @eés makes the translation " The Word was a god," or "was divine," more probable than the common version.
In any case, it hardly appears how the Word could be "with God," and at the same time God himself, in the author's mind.
Philo, in commenting upon an Old Testament passage, recognizes just this distinction between @eés with and
PAPIAS things were created.
He was the only son really born of God; the only begotten ;? and shared the life and light which constitutes the essence of Deity.?
All this time, while the Son rested in the bosom of the Father, the world was lying in darkness, unaware even of the light which was shining upon every soul which came into the world.
In him alone lies the redemption of a world bound in the tragic antithesis of darkness and light, evil and good
Now, at last (we are not told how or when), he has taken the form of flesh; has dwelt among us indeed in an earthly tabernacle, and we have without the article.
"The true God is one, but those loosely called God are many.
The Scriptures therefore indicated the true God by using the article, but the ones improperly so called by omitting the article.
In this way, it calls the most ancient Word god" (without article).
"For it does not belong to the Supreme to be described, but simply to be."
(Som.,i. 39.) Our author is not so exact in this regard as Philo, as he sometimes seems to recognize this distinction (Vili. 54; x. 33-35), but in other cases ignores it.
(i. 6, 12, 13, 18; iii. 2, 21; xix. 7.) The translation above given, however, seems more in accordance with the usage of the times.
(See Meyer's commentary on this passage; Bretschneider, Glaubenslehre, 302.) See Note JJ.
1 John i. 3.
2 i.14,18.
The word here translated « only begotten" means in all other parts of the New Testament simply the only son.
(Luke vii. 12; viii. 42; also, John v. 26.) Scia 4 i. 9. oF Ona
THE MYSTIC GOSPEL
gazed upon his glory, full of grace and truth.1
We have received what Moses and the Law could not give; what he alone who is in the bosom of the Father can declare.2
With the coming of the Christ,? man enters at last upon his divine inheritance, the sonship of God.
With this Prologue, so impressive in its simplicity, and lending celestial dignity to all that follows, the new Gospel opens.
The one connection with the human incidents which elsewhere attend the birth of the Messiah — or his entrance upon his ministry —is offered by the introduction of John the Baptist, "the man sent from God... to bear witness of the Light." * It is not exactly the Baptist we know so well; the gaunt hermit of the wilderness, whose strange mien and attire, and fiery reproof of Pharisees and Sadducees, publicans and sol1 John i. 14. ani, 17, Lo 8 This sharp distinction between the Christian revelation and all that had preceded it, and limitation of Christ's message to those who were able by nature to receive him and share in his sonship (i. 12, 13, 17), corresponds altogether with the Gnostic systems which we have been considering.
Other points of resemblance will appear as we go on.
I have no desire to make this out a Gnostic Gospel in any other sense than as being plainly the product of a movement which was producing at the same time the Gnostic schools.
See Note KK.
4 i. 6, 7, 15, 19-36.
PAPIAS diers, make the most vivid sketch by far in the old Gospel picture ;! not the half-despairing preacher of the kingdom, doubtful to the end
'whether Jesus of Nazareth were really "he that should come.'* This John the Baptist knew the Messiah from the start; had known of him before he came ;* and appears before us but for a moment, to usher in the incarnate Son of God.
The anchorite, the wild reformer, the preacher of righteousness, has become a shadow of himself, a ghostly form which passes for a moment before our eyes, speaks the language of the Alexandrian philosophy,' points dramatically to "the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world," ® and disappears speedily from sight.® In a Gospel thus opened we shall hardly expect much individuality in the various actors, or much definiteness of place or time.
Phrases like "the next day," "the day following," "the third day," "after these things," occur here and .
1 Matt. iii.; Luke iii.
2 Matt. xi. 3.
8 John i. 29, 33.
5h iio):
7 5 0X0).
6 The anly further allusion to John the Baptist is in iii.
23-36, where he still appears as the mystic, Alexandrine philosopher.
(For a striking comparison of the Baptist of our Gospel with the Baptist of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, see F. Tiffany, in Zustitute Essays, 223-226, Boston, 1880.)
THE MYSTIC GOSPEL
there, but have nothing behind to give them meaning, and introduce a chronology which is absolutely vague throughout.1_ Men and women appear ; but we must be prepared to find that they are as shadowy and intangible as the Baptist himself, and with even less part or concern in what occurs; that their conversation and actions are unreal, and that their presence simply affords occasion for the utterance of abstruse thoughts far beyond their comprehension, where speaker, listener, and narrator are forgotten in mystical and exalted monologue.
The Messiah speaks in oracles ; sometimes with no audience before him, and into the empty
_ air; always as if looking beyond his hearers to the generations yet to come?
We are in a shadow world throughout, where the invisible, the ideal, the spiritual alone is real.
1 John i. 29, 35, 43; ti. 1; v.15 vi. 1; vii. 15 viii. 1,2:
Dhe solitary instance of chronological exactness which this Gospel contains (iii. 24.
Comp. Euseb., Hist. Zcc., iii. 24, 7-13) is in flat contradiction of the older tradition.
(Matt. iv. B25) It is often as though the author set historic accuracy at defiance, to emphasize the more his purely spiritual purpose.
The localities are as vague and undefined as the chronology.
Some are otherwise unknown (i. 28; iii. 23); some suggest a possible allegorical significance.
(iii. 23, " ZEnon (Brunnen) verhalt sich zu Salem (Heil) wie die Wassertaufe Johannis zur Geistestaufe Christi."
Pfleiderer, 707 n.) 2 iv. 23, 24; vii. 37, 38; xii. 44-50.
PAPIAS Even the humanities, the tenderest, pass for little here.
At Cana of Galilee, where a marriage feast seems for the moment to lend a pleasant personal touch to the opening narrative, when the mother of Jesus ventures to tell her son that there is no wine for the guests, Jesus replies : " Woman, what have I to do with thee? mine hour is not yet come." ?
Plainly, it is the Logos that speaks here, not the man.
The whole scene indeed vanishes as we read.
It is no real marriage; it is the entry of the Messiah upon his wonder-working career.
It is the "beginning of miracles," in which he "manifested forth his glory." ?
The men and women of the narrative, as has been said, play no essential part in the course of events, but serve for the most part as occasions for philosophic discourse.
At Jerusalem a certain Nicodemus, unknown to the other Gospels, comes stealthily into Jesus' presence
1 John ii. 4.
251lelne 3 Galilee, as has been said, has only an incidental connection with our history throughout.
The Messiah appears there but seldom, never comes to Nazareth, begins his ministry at Jerusalem, and hastens back there at each juncture, as the fittest stage for his messianic activity.
His first coming is heralded by the dramatic Temple incident, which in the other Gospels is placed at the close of his career.
(ii. 1 3-17.
Comp. Matt. xxi. 12, 13.)
THE MYSTIC GOSPEL
at night.
He has no real question of his own to propose ; the conversation, if such it can be called, is carried on on two distinct planes hie shows no understanding of the Master's sententious speech ; he disappears forthwith from the scene, and is forgotten by the narrator before the chapter is finished.1
But meantime his brief remark has afforded an opportunity for the Christ, quite regardless of Nicodemus's presence, to unfold the purely heavenly character of his mission.
In the Gospel of Matthew on a similar occasion, as Jesus enters upon his ministry, we have the fine ethical precepts of the Sermon on the Mount; here we listen instead to an unfathomable utterance upon the radical distinction between things of the flesh and things of the spirit.
It is to the "spiritual" alone that the kingdom of heaven 1 John iii. 1-9.
So unimportant a part does Nicodemus take in this scene that it is impossible to tell just where the conversation ends.
The same is to be said of the words of John the Baptist which follow, and which seem to pass imperceptibly into the language of the Evangelist or of Jesus himself.
(22-36.) Nicodemus appears twice again, once in companionship with Joseph of Arimathza (vii. 50-52; xix.
39) ; yet is nowhere mentioned in the other Gospels.
Baur regards him solely as a type of half-believing Judaism; believing in the miracles, but belonging to the world of darkness, and so not receptive of the higher truth.
(Dze han.
Lvangelien, 143.)
PAPIAS belongs : " Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born from above,! he cannot see the kingdom of God.
. That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit." 2
Christ's coming of itself brought out the vital antagonism between the creatures of darkness and the creatures of light :
"This is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.
For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, ... but he that doeth truth cometh to the light, that his deeds may be made. manifest."?
In these mystic words, hardly more intelligible to us than to Nicodemus himself, the whole mission of Jesus is lifted once for all from earthly to celestial spheres; but before the discourse is ended, the hearer has passed wholly from our thought, and the result, so far as he is concerned, remains an unimportant matter of conjecture.*
1 This word, &yw6ev, may also be translated, as in the common version, "again ;" but the original meaning, "from above"
(as in verse 31), seems more in accord with the writer's thought.
For the use of this passage by Justin Martyr, see Note LL.
2 John iii. 3-8.
_ 3 iii, 19-21.
* The Nicodemus passage can be understood only as the
THE MYSTIC GOSPEL
Again, as Jesus passes through Samaria, a woman meets him at a well.
She is a woman of the people; of the lowest ranks of the people; even more impervious than Nicodemus himself to the higher truth.
She can see in the Jewish stranger only a sorcerer, reading the forbidden secrets of her private life; the conversation between them is, as before, on two mutually inaccessible levels ; the woman comes and goes as vaguely as Nicodemus; but none the less has elicited from the Christ the finest message of his Gospel, thrown out upon the air with none but a hardened woman to hear, and none to remember or report.
"Woman, believe me, the hour cometh, when ye shall neither in this mountain, nor yet at Jerusalem, worship the Father.
. .. God is a Spirit: and they that worship most definite expression on the writer's part of his constantly recurring antithesis of flesh and spirit, darkness and light, earth and heaven.
The kingdom of God, according to this chapter, is not for all, but for those only who, through the waters of baptism, have received the spiritual birth.
Christ comes indeed to save the world, but can reach those alone who belong by nature to him.
His coming is itself the saving or condemnation of men; separating at once the lovers of darkness from the lovers of light.
And this distinction is an absolute one, from which there is no escape.
"He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life: and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him."
(John iii. 5, 17-21, 36.)
PAPIAS him must worship him in spirit and in truth." ?
Where else in all literature do the material facts, the well, the water, the thirst, the woman, the husband, melt so completely into thin air, leaving only a spiritual essence behind ??
Once for all, we must take these pages on their own ground, and catch from them the breath of that special age, if we would feel their power.
If we seek here the charm or variety of historic incident, the nature-touch of parable, or even the burning tones of moral indignation or reproof, we look in vain.
This is no chronicle, nor ethical treatise.
In themselves these monologues, returning constantly to the same mystic theme, are strangely monotonous.
It is only as they lift us with them into spiritual 1 John iv. 1-26.
2 J am not, of course, criticising the narrative, so intrinsically beautiful and elevating; but only pointing out its purely symbolic character.
Baur finds in the woman of Samaria a type of receptive heathenism, as opposed to the unreceptive Judaism typified in Nicodemus.
(Zvang., 142147.) Pfleiderer thinks the story an obvious allegory, based on 2 Kings xvii. 24-42; the five husbands symbolizing the five heathen worships in Samaria, the sixth the equally illegitimate Judaism.
(Urchrist., 708.
See Josephus, Azz., ix.
14, 3.) Tome it seems more natural to suppose all these incidents veritable parts of the Gospel tradition, as known to our author, and used as best he can to unfold the character of his ideal Christ.
RHE MYSti€-GOSPEL
reverie that we discover their true force.
This is especially true when familiar scenes from Gospel history pass now and then before us.
The Jewish Sabbath is violated, as in the other Gospels.
In them, as we remember, it calls forth fine moral precepts, and is made to inculcate lessons of beneficence and right.
"The sabbath was made for man, and not man for the sabbath."
"Wherefore it is lawful to do well on the sabbath days."!
Here it serves instead as a text for a theological disquisition, carrying us once again into the deepest mysteries of the Godhead.
The Jews who throng around the Messiah in the streets of Jerusalem listen to a discourse on certain transcendent distinctions between the Father and the Son.
Far from resting on the Sabbath, says the Christ, God works continually ; and the Son also works.2.
The Son reflects the being of the Father: "What things soever the Father doeth, these also doeth the Son likewise."? He is absolutely dependent on the Father: "The Son can do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the 1 Mark ii. 27; Matt. xii. 12.
2 John v.17.
Comp. Philo, Leg. Alleg., i. 3. "God never ceases working; but as it is the nature of fire to burn, and of snow to chill, so also does it belong to God to be doing."
3 v. 19.
PAPIAS Father do."
"I can of mine own self do nothing: ... because I seek not mine own will, but the will of the Father which hath sent me." !
Yet the Son claims equal honor with the Father.2
In his hands, indeed, is the divine judgment ; for his voice calls even the dead to life, and separates forever the believer from the unbeliever, assigning the one to eternal life, the other to "the resurrection of damnation." ® Had the Jews understood their own Scriptures, they would have found all this concealed there; for beneath the letter was a hidden message.
"They testify of me."* All testimony of the past points to the Christ.
The Christ of this Gospel may be of the Jewish race, or he may not; we cannot tell.
He is called "Jesus of Nazareth ;" © he passes as a Jew ;® he is the son of Joseph, whose father and mother all know ;7 he quotes from Jewish Scriptures ;° there is a story that he has come out of Galilee.?
Yet, on the other hand, he speaks of Galilee as if it were not his own country ;2° and throughout the entire Gospel, the Jews are men1 John v. 19, 30.
2 v, 23.
3 v. 29.
4 v. 30, 46.
5 i. 45.
6 iv. 9.
7 vi. 42.
8 v. 30, 46; viii. 56; x. 34, 35; xii. 41.
9 vii. 41.
10 iv. 44.
THE MYSTIC -GOSPEL
tioned as if of a foreign race.
They are always "the Jews." 1
Even the Christ himself, in addressing the Jews, speaks of "your law," and "your father Abraham." 2
He goes still farther: "Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do.
He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him."?
For the Logos, it would seem, the eternal Son of God, all questions of race or fatherhood or nation are of too slight account to be considered.
But other things beside places and individuals melt away under this spiritualizing process. One of the marked peculiarities of our Gospel is its
1 John i. 19; ii. 13, 20; v. I, 10, 18; vi. 41.
CE viiiw5O 3X 949 V2 5.
8 viii. 44.
The last clause of this verse may be read: " He is a liar, and his father also;" thus affording, as many commentators think, a reminiscence of the Gnostic doctrine of Satan as son of the Demiurge.
(Hilgenfeld, Zvang. und Brief Johan., 160; O. Holtzmann, Johan. Evang., 80 n.) In any case, the children of God and the children of the Devil, including the Jews as a whole and the world in general, are placed here in radical contrast.
(Comp. Baur, Zvang., 176; Keim, Jesus of Nazara, i. 151.) The Devil appears in this Gospel as the great foe of the Christ.
He is the " Archon of this world," who is to hold his own till the Logos appears to cast him out.
(xiv. 30; xvi. 11; xii. 31.) This essential antagonism, which runs through all the Gnostic systems, runs through our Gospel as well, and is fundamental to its thought.
PAPIAS strange silence in regard to the Lord's Supper.
It seems at first glance to know nothing of this incident whatever.
The disciples gather at supper, it is true, on the night before the crucifixion ;1 but the evening passes without any allusion to the rite which the Christian Church has ever since associated so closely with those closing hours.
Can it be that the tradition, although so widely known among the churches, had not reached the author of this Gospel??
Or is it left unmentioned because he would have his readers disregard the outward form of this historic rite, and see in it only its latent sense?
If he refers to the Supper at all, this must be the explanation ; and one of the early chapters of the Gospel seems to force us to this conclusion.
No supper is mentioned there, nor any actual bread or wine.
Jesus is in the synagogue at Capernaum.
Below are the Jewish multitudes, with minds still intent upon the miraculous — loaves on which they had been fed, and clamor1 John xiii.—xvii.
2 If the author was familiar with the Epistles of Paul, he must have known of this rite.
(1 Cor. xi. 23-34.) In the Teaching of the Twelve Apostles, the Eucharist appears also as an established rite (9, 10).
There is little to prove that the author was acquainted with Paul; though a few passages look somewhat like it.
(Comp. Rom. vi. 16, and John viii. 34; Jiilicher, Zinleit., 248.)
DHE MYSiiCe GOSPEL
ing for some new sign, like the falling of the manna in the wilderness ; above, the Christ, engaged in lofty speech which even the disciples cannot comprehend.!
In most narratives it would be bewildering to find allusions to a solemn rite like the Eucharist, before its establishment,? and addressed to an assembly for whom the Eucharist could have no meaning ; but here it does not surprise us at all.
Time and place, flesh and blood, bread and wine, are but symbols at best of a diviner reality.
The 1 John vi. 25-59, 60, 66.
2 In these mystic utterances it is, of course, impossible to determine with certainty how much or how little is historic reality.
Many commentators refuse to see any reference whatever to the Eucharist here.
Meyer (in the Commentary on this passage) finds an allusion to the Cross, instead of the Lord's Supper.
Renan regards this discourse as the real origin of the ideas afterwards incorporated in the Eucharist, and thinks this Gospel more historical in this respect than the others.
(Zzfe of Jesus, 442, Boston, 1896.) It seems, on the whole, more probable that the writer has the Eucharist actually in view, and indeed regards both Eucharist and Baptism as rites essential for the communication of the divine spirit, but makes the spiritual import paramount.
(iil.
5; vi. 53-) It is plain from Paul's account how grossly the observance was often practiced.
(1 Cor. xi. 21, 22, 34.) Our Evangelist insists upon a nobler conception.
"One," says Philo, "raises his eyes to heaven, beholding the manna, the divine Logos, the heavenly incorruptible food of the enraptured soul; the other sees only the leeks and onions of Egypt."
(Quis Rer. Her. 15; Leg. Alleg., iil. 59.)
PAPIAS only true manna is the " bread of God ; he which cometh down from heaven, and giveth life unto the world."
"I am that bread of life.
Your fathers did eat manna in the wilderness, and are dead...
. I am the living bread which came down from heaven: if any man eat of this bread, he shall live for ever: and the bread that I will give is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world."
"Verily I say unto you, Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you.
. For my flesh is meat indeed, and my blood is drink indeed."
These forms and words are nothing; it is the spirit alone that tells.
"It is the spirit that quickeneth ; the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life."
Even the miracles of this Gospel, like other outward incidents, lose their verisimilitude, and become themselves but symbols.
They are no less vivid or genuine than elsewhere, they are apparently quite as historical, and are often even more realistic in their details ;2 but while in Matthew, Mark, and Luke the tenderness or beneficence of the act itself challenges our attention, here the act always serves some ulte1 John vi. 33, 48-51, 53-55, 63.
2 Vv. 53, Vi. 5-03; ix. 6,
THE MYSTIC GOSPEL
rior purpose, for which alone it is introduced.
It becomes expository or didactic ; it points a moral ; it affords a starting-point for a theological discourse, or the discussion of abstract and inscrutable truths.
Of what moment is it in such a narrative, the writer seems to say, that the hungry multitudes are fed, or the blind made to see, or even the dead raised to life; it is not the thing itself, but the something symbolized that we are to remember.!_ A man born blind sits by the wayside as Jesus and his disciples pass.
The Master stops, makes clay to anoint the eyes of the sufferer, and bids him "0, wash in the pool of Siloam," and be healed.?
A beautiful act of helpfulness, which touches our deepest sympathies, and on which we would gladly dwell.
But no; it is not the physical blindness that we are to be moved by, but the spiritual.
It is "that the works of God may be manifest in him," that he has been healed.?
The blind man escapes from a lifetime of darkness to proclaim obscure truths, and enunciate the author's dogmas.
The Christ is shown thereby to be "the light of the world."
"As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world."
'For judgment I am come into this 1 John vi. 27; v. 17, 18.
2 ix, I-7.
Jb ee
PAPIAS world, that they which see not might see; and that they which see might be made blind." 1
The passing touch of the human and the real disappears at once in the theological and ideal.
Again, a dear friend of Jesus dies.
The Master's relations with the whole household are peculiarly tender, and as he approaches the bereft home he is deeply moved.
For a moment, one single moment, the stately march of the narrative is disturbed, the Logos is forgotten, and a living man stands before us.
Jesus weeps.
Yet only fora moment.
All has been prearranged, we find at once; the bitter trial was known and intended from the beginning.
"When Jesus heard that, he said, This sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of God, that the Son of God might be glorified thereby."
The Master still tarries two days in the same place, though knowing that his friend's death approaches.
Then he says to his disciples:
"Our friend Lazarus sleepeth ; but I go, that I may awake him out of sleep...
. And I am glad for your sakes that I was not there, to the intent ye may believe; nevertheless let us go unto him."?
When the grave is opened, and the dead comes forth, it is that the people that stand by might "see the glory of God," and 1 John ix. 5, 39.
2 xi. 4, 6, 11-15.
THE MYSTIC-GOSPEL
believe that this was "the Christ, the Son of God, which should come into the world."
It was a token in advance of his own resurrection, which was to overcome death for all who believe!
I am not for a moment criticising this scene.
No interpretation can rob it of its dignity or pathos.
Iam only calling attention to the character of a Gospel in which, even in moments like this, the historic fact loses itself so completely in its speculative import."
Again, false leaders are troubling the church as this Gospel is written; teachers of strange doctrines ; false Messiahs, perhaps, such as were long ago predicted.?
All these, and indeed all previous teachers, says our Gospel, are but thieves and robbers; they are like hireling shepherds, fleeing from danger, and forgetting the safety of their flocks.
" All that ever came before me are thieves and robbers: but the sheep did not hear them. ..
. I am the good shepherd : the good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep. .
Iam the good shepherd and know my sheep, and am known of mine.
As the Father knoweth me, even so know I the Father: and I lay down my life for the sheep." * These are charming human touches, and bring the 1 John xi. 25, 40, 42.
2 Note MM.
3 Matt. xxiv. 24. oot 5.
PAPIAS Christ very near to earth; but only to lift us at once to the clouds again.
The good shepherd is the Logos; clothed with the very power of the Father.
If he lays down his life, he has' power to take it up again when he will.
He can impart to his own eternal life.
He shares in the very essence of the Father.
"My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me.
And I give unto them eternal life... .
My Father, which gave them me, is greater than all...
. I and my Father are one." 1 The Jews, to whom Jesus addressed these words, cry out against such a blasphemous assumption, and take up stones to stone him:
" Fora good work we stone thee not; but for blasphemy ; and because that thou, being a man, makest thyself
God."?
And a vast assumption it was, if this were the Jewish Messiah of the earlier Gospels.
Not so with the Logos; in whose mystic relations with Deity the old messianic notions have been forgotten.
Do not his mighty works prove his supernal nature?
Do not their own Scriptures represent God as surrounded by heavenly hosts, and rank even Jewish and heathen rulers as gods?
How much more could he whom the Father had sent into the world claim to be the very Son of God.8
1 John x. 18; 27-30.
25x33 8 x. 34-38.
THE MYSTIC GOSPEL
In these exalted moods, the imagination rarely concerns itself with precise definitions; and we cannot expect our author to show us the exact relations which this celestial being holds to the Infinite.
Certainly he does not do so.
Perhaps he had not formulated them in his own mind.
These thoughts were still new; and the Christian mind had not yet entered upon those subtler distinctions which afterwards became so familiar, and were supposed to reconcile all contradictions, and remove all impossibilities,
Meantime, so far as this Gospel is concerned, these contradictions stand, in all simplicity, side by side.
The Son once rested in the bosom of the Father, and was with him " before the world was;"1 he was sent down to the earth and became flesh ;? like God, he "had life in himself
;" he hath all judgment committed to him, and "quickeneth whom he will;"? he is of the Father's essencé, and is himself divine ;* yet at the same time, he "can do nothing of himself ;" ® he can do and speak only as the Father has taught him ;® and never ceases to declare his dependence upon the Father who sent him, and whose will alone he has come to perform.?
1 John xvii. 5, 24.
SAU be, 2X5 Sav e20, 21225 £TX;, 30min.
5 v. 19.
Ch vilin 25,020 wexenl Gs T iv. 343 v-19, 30, 36; vi. 38; vii. 16; viii. 28; x. 37; xii. 49.
PAPIAS By and by this will not be enough; and the Son's august relations with the Father must be formally catalogued and established.
As yet they belong to the sphere, not of logic, but of pure spiritual imagination.
But the story is not yet fully told.
Insubstantial as are the scenes of this life in Judza, it has like all others, if not an earthly beginning, at least an earthly close.
Though there is no place in this Gospel for the struggle or agony of Gethsemane, though the cruel end has been foreshadowed from the outset,! though the Son of God need not fear death, but has power even to raise himself from the grave," though he has come into the world simply to manifest, in his coming and going, the divine counsels,® this cannot prevent a certain solemnity gathering over the closing hours, as of souls charged with momentous secrets.
The familiar scenes of the earlier Gospels flit bewilderingly before our eyes ; the same, yet strangely different ; like the broken, inconsequent apparitions of a dream.
Though the Christ has gone daily in and out of Jerusalem during the two or three years of his ministry, he enters now as a stranger, and with the palm branches of a victor.
Though never appearing before as the Jewish Messiah, 1 John ii. 19-22; iii. 14.
2 x. 18.
3 xvi. 28.
THE MYSTIC GOSPEL
he suddenly becomes the "king of Israel," is received with shouts and songs, and seated upon an ass, as in ancient prophecy.!
Though his - death is necessarily but a transient incident, and his burial can be therefore but for a moment, he is none the less anointed for his burial; not, indeed, as in other narratives, by a sinful woman, but by Mary, the loved sister of Lazarus, who wipes his feet with her hair.2 A vague trouble, as of Gethsemane, passes over his soul; yet brings no heart-broken supplication, —"O my
Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me."
No; but a far more triumphant strain:
"Now is my soul troubled; and what shall I say?
Father, save me from this hour? but for this cause came I unto this hour.
Father, glorify thy name." * His life has already reached its predestined close; and what follows has no terror, because no human reality.
"Now is the judgment of this world: now shall the prince of this world be cast out.
And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me.'
He meets his disciples for a final repast ; yet not as in the other Gospels at the Passover, for 1 John xii. 12-15.
2 xii. 1-7; Luke vii. 37, 38.
8 Matt. xxvi. 39.
4 xii. 27, 28.
5 xii. 31, 32.
PAPIAS the real Paschal lamb is to be offered on the morrow ;! nor yet to establish a covenant or initiate a rite.
Beginning with a beautiful symbol of humility, in which the washing of his disciples' feet is sublimated into the tie which binds the Son to the Father, and the disciples to each other, and to their Master,? he fills the hours of the feast with long discourse, in which the mystic speech of the Gospel reaches its height ; culminating in a vision of those whom the Father has given him as with him in heavenly places, and beholding the glory which has been his from the beginning.
~ All this, we feel, is not the work of a falsifier, far though he wanders from the ancient narratives.
It is rather the work of one to whom the facts of the Judzean ministry, as he has learned them, are divinely significant, and to whom the hidden meaning of such events is alone of real account.
It is impressive enough, this fine disdain of the letter which killeth ; this absolute absorption in the spirit which giveth life.
It points us to many deep truths, and gives a sublime interpretation to the story of the Christ.
The process has its perilous side, it must be confessed ; and one who commits himself to 1 John xiii. 1, 2; xviii. 28; xix. 14.
2 xiii. 4-15; xvii. 21.
8 xvii. 24.
THE MYSTIC GOSPEL
it must bid farewell once for all to the historic sense, to which the commonest facts are of infinite worth.
It removes these divine events from the path of human history.
Were this the only record which had survived, we might well deplore its uncompromising mysticism, and long for a touch of the human and the real.
But it is not; and we can enjoy its spiritual interpretations without reserve.
Among many points of resemblance to the earlier Gospels which this writing contains, there is one feature wholly peculiar to itself.
It comes towards the close.
The time approaches when the Son of God must depart.
His earthly work is ended, and his disciples will see him no more.
"I came forth from the Father," he says, "and am come into the world: again, I leave the world, and go to the Father." !
He speaks of no return upon the clouds, or messianic reign on earth.
Yet he promises the disciples that he will not leave them wholly alone.
The divine resources are infinite; the angelic hosts numberless.
Among them is one whose function it is to take the place of the Logos when he departs.
It is the Paraclete; a celestial being unknown to other writers of the New Testament, but evidently familiar to the 1 John xvi. 28.
PAPIAS readers of this Gospel.t As in other systems of the period, this divine agent has many names.
He is called now the Spirit of truth ; now the Holy Ghost ; now he seems hardly distinguishable from the Logos himself.2,
Yet his character and functions are clearly marked.
He is a direct effluence from the Almighty,? sent to the world to fill the place of the Logos, and able to come only after the Logos has left the earth, but then to remain with the believer forever.
"T will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Helper, that he may abide with you for ever."
"It is expedient for you that I go away: for if I go not away, the Paraclete will not come unto you ; but if I depart, I will send him unto you." * He is to disclose to the disciples the secret meaning of truths which they had been slow to comprehend, and reveal the 1 John xiv. 16.
The name Paraclete, translated in our version " Comforter," is not found elsewhere in the New
Testament, except in 1 John ii. 1, a writing closely related to our Gospel.
Its proper meaning is "helper," or "advocate."
In the writings of Philo, it is one of the epithets of the Logos.
(De Mund. Ofif., 6; Vit. Mos., iii. 14.) In the Gnostic theophanies of the time, the Paraclete is one of the many Eons.
(Iren. i. 1, 2; Hipp. vi. 30.) Origen seems to have been the first to give the word the meaning of Comforter.
(Pyrim., ii. 7.) ab xiv. 75) 20,010:
Sexy 20; * xiv. 16; xvi. 7.
THE MYSTIC GOSPEL
new teachings which till then they nad not been prepared tohear.
"I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now.
. But the Paraclete, the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you." ! The Paraclete has ceased to bea familiar name to our ears, that of Holy Ghost having early superseded it in Christian theology ; but its presence on these pages is an interesting reminiscence of a movement which long agitated the church, and gives them an individuality distinctly their own."
This closing discourse, though so profoundly mystical in its spirit, is not without its touches of deep affection, passing at times, as the highest thought so often does, into tones of passionate tenderness.
He commends to the Father, in words of great sublimity, those whom he has chosen as his own.?
His love for them is even as the Father's love for him, who loved him "before the foundation of the world."
His prayer is for them alone, and such as believed in him through their word.' The world had not listened to him or heard his voice, therefore
1 John xiv. 26; xvi. 4, 12, 13.
2 Note NN.
8 xvii. 1-26.
£ xvii. 6, 9, 20.
PAPIAS could have no place in his remembrance; but all the more are his disciples, sanctified through the truth, and sharing his heavenly glory, to become one in him.
He even declares: "The glory which thou gavest me I have given them ; that they may be one, even as we are one:
I in them, and thou in me, that they may be perfect inone.+ It may seem strange to us that the "love" which so pervades these farewell words, and forms as it were their special note, should not embrace the entire world.
The writer has freed himself wholly from the Jewish limitations which characterize the earlier Gospels ;2 why does he stop short with the little circle of the elect?
We cannot answer this question.
We can only 1 John xvii. 22, 23.
2 x. 16; xi. 52.
Comp. Matt. x. 6,7; xv.24.
As one indication of the wider outlook of this Gospel, it has been calculated that the word kosmos (xécyos) is found in Matthew,
Mark, and Luke fifteen times; in the Fourth Gospel seventyeight times.
(Holtzmann, Zzz/eit., 447.) Now and then this word seems to receive its widest significance (vi 5s) xa
Comp., also, i. 7; xi. 52); but in critical passages it has the limitations given it in xvii.9.
The same uncertain attitude is to be noted in Paul's writings.
(Comp. Rom. xi. 32; 1 Cor. xv. 22, 28; Col. i. 20, with 1 Cor. xv. 23; 2 Thess. i. 7-9; li. 10-12.) See Toy's Judaism, p. 407; Everett's Gospel of Paul, 272,
273.
THE MYSTIC GOSPEL
accept the fact as one illustration the more that the thoughts of one age are not the thoughts of another, and must not be forced upon another.
Many conceptions which eighteen centuries of human activity have made familiar were just suggesting themselves to the second century ; and even the mystic, it seems, could not rise wholly above the horizon of his time In any case, Christendom had still long to wait, as we know, for the thought of God as concerning himself equally for all his creatures.
The closing incidents of the Messiah's life, while following in general the familiar traditions, and adding some important details,? resemble the earlier narratives rather as ghostly forms resemble living figures.
The conversation with Pilate, though addressed to Roman ears, is an echo of the theological discourses which have preceded: "My kingdom is not of this world.
. To this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth.
Every one that is of the 1 This distinction between the elect, or " spiritual," and the non-spiritual is found in all the Gnostic writings of the period.
Comp. pp. 157, 165, 172, 189.
2 John xix. 9,13, 34.
The mystic flow of blood and water has evidently some symbolic significance ; possibly connected with Zech. xii. 10.
Comp. Rev.i. 7.
(Pfleiderer, Urchrist., 773+)
PAPIAS truth heareth my voice."!
The guards who accompany Judas, as they heard the voice of the Christ, " went backward, and fell to the ground."2
There are no human revulsions before the fatal hour, nor any real sufferings at the end.
The ideal death,? not the real, was the supreme hour in this tragedy.
No cries of anguish come from the cross, no despairing words :
"My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?"
The celestial visitor announces with a word the end of his mission, and departs.. "He said, It is finished: and he bowed his head, and gave up the ghost.'
1 John xviii. 36, 37.
Ex vilinOs SEX 23,030 eXvilety 4s £ See Note OO, for these docetic features.
5 xix. 30.
The Gospel has two endings, as though it had circulated in two different forms.
After a formal closing paragraph, stating the theological purpose of the book (XX. 30,
31), another chapter was some time added, which, though found in all the manuscripts, has to be treated as supplementary.
Some explain its singular character by referring it to a time when the claims of the Apostles Peter and John had come into conflict and had to be reconciled.
Peter is restored to the standing he had lost by the touching command (three times repeated, to correspond with the threefold denial), " Feed my sheep;" while the mysterious " disciple whom Jesus loved" is exalted to a still more mystic position by the words, "If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee?"
(xxi.15-22.) See Pfleiderer, Urchrist., 741, etc.; Jiilicher, Zinleit., 240; Weizsicker, Apos. Age, ii.
207.
THE MYSTIC GOSPEL
So, by the middle of the second century, a fourth Gospel takes its place beside the other three, destined, in so far as it is accepted at all, to open wide the doors of the young faith to the entrance of mysticism.t_ It would be impossible to overrate its power, or be blind to the splendid assurance and sustained imaginative force with which it lifts the entire earthly scenery of Christianity into visionary spheres.
The dividing line between the seen and unseen was less sharply drawn then than now, and many questions which force themselves upon our thought were not even asked.
In an age when a human emperor, with more than the foibles of ordinary humanity, could be seriously worshiped after death as a god; when Olympus, a well-known mountain in Greece, had hardly ceased to be regarded as the abode of all the gods, or Jupiter to be revered as the supreme divinity, though sharing the basest human
_ passions, it was quite possible, no doubt, to think of the life in Galilee as real, and yet conceive this sublime dream-world, in which the Logos, the eternal companion of Deity, steps down for the hour, inhabits a human form, allows his enemies to heap upon him indignities which touch him not, then passes back into heavenly
1 Note PP (Fourth Gospel).
PAPIAS realms, leaving a subordinate AZon in his place.
If Paul could imagine the Galilaan preacher, who had died but yesterday, and whose daily companions he had known and talked with, to be the very "Lord from heaven," still more easily, no doubt, could the writer of this Gospel, who had held no such living relations with Master or Apostles, view those sacred hours in their purely celestial aspects.
We cannot quarrel with one who has added so exalted a page to the world's religious literature, or asserted so sublimely the rights of the spirit to claim all things as its own.
Man's spiritual history, Christianity itself, would hardly be complete had this page not been written, and written by one to whom this was the truth of truths.
We must not quarrel, either, with the place he has won for his Gospel in Christian hearts ; or the success with which he has effaced the earlier records, and made his interpretation supreme.
It could hardly be otherwise, perhaps, so long as the love of the marvelous reigns in the human soul, or the pressure of stern spiritual problems drives humanity into the arms of the ideal.
If religious truth is a thing which must never be looked squarely in the face, then indeed these pious endeavors to soften the hard outlines of reality cannot lose their value ; and
THE MYSTIC/GOSPEL
the Fourth Gospel will still hold its place as the consummate flowering of Christian faith.
Among certain schools, as we know, this mystic volume is the saving of Christianity, rescuing its facts from their sordid literalness.
It is the keynote of Christian philosophy.
To them, as to the writer of this Gospel, the unseen alone is real.
According to their faith, the preexistent Logos, eternal effluence from Deity, alone renders possible the communion of the human with the divine.
Without the Logos, ' man and God remain forever apart.
The metaphysical necessities of philosophy dominate the spiritual necessities of the soul, and the Fourth
Gospel becomes in such hands an imperious occultism, summing up once for all God's message to the world.
Fortunately it is not necessary to contest this point here.
In an age when the historic temper and the scientific spirit, unknown in those primeval days, have come at last to their rights, such a question may safely be left for the future to decide.
For those of us who cannot for a moment accept any single writing as the last word of Christianity, the beauty and poetry of this Gospel still retain their charm, and it stands as an eloquent chapter of Christian history.
But it is a chapter only, not the whole.
PAPIAS the mystic interpretation of the life of Jesus was beautiful, that life was also beautiful; the more beautiful, the more distinctly its actual features are seen.
Its secret lies in its reality.
To that earthly life all abstract theories owe whatever significance they possess; and when one speculation after another has had its day and been forgotten, it is the life itself which will remain as the supreme message of Christianity to the race.
Viewed in this light, these four Gospels form a unique record of momentous hours.
Neither can take the place of the other.
Without the Fourth Gospel, we should never have known the rapturous dreams which the young faith could excite, or the daring ideals it could create; with the Fourth Gospel alone, we should never have guessed that Jesus of Nazareth led a human life, ending in a human tragedy.
For this knowledge we must still turn to those homelier chronicles in which facts, too, have their rights, and which claim for themselves no nobler function than to record ingenuously the comings and goings of one sacred year in Galilee.
APPENDIX Note A, p. 4. apias.
All dates of this period have to be given cautiously, as there were no exact records.
The earliest allusions to Papias associate him with Polycarp,? who, according to the latest investigations, died in 155 or 166." This would simply place Papias in the early part of the second century; but a single expression in a fragment of his writings lately discovered enables us to be a little more precise. In speaking of certain persons raised from the dead by Christ, he says, 'they lived until
Hadrian."® As monarchs are not spoken of in this way till after their death, Papias cannot, according to this, have written his work before 138.
Most authorities place it somewhere between 130 and 160.
Harnack .says, 140-160;* Holtzmann says, "after Hadrian ;"*° Hilgenfeld puts Papias's death at 163;° Jiilicher at 165;' Zahn thinks
1 Treneus, Her., v. 33, 4; Eusebius, Hist. Ecc., iii. 36, 1 and 2.
Eusebius is perhaps simply following Irenzus.
2 Harnack, Chronologie der altch. Literatur, i. 335) 342.
8 Neue Fragmente des Papias, etc., C. de Boor, Gebhardt und Harnack, p. 170.
Comp. Euseb., Hist. Ecc., iv. 3, 2.
4 Chron., i. 3575 Finleit. ins WV. Test., p. 94.
6 Hinleit. ins NV. Test., p. 52.
1 Einleit. ins N. Test., p. 189. #
APPENDIX Papias wrote about 125, or, "quite as likely," after 138.1
Note B, p.5.
Eusebius, " Hist. Ecclesiastica," iii.
39, 1, "Aoyiwy Kupiakdy éényjoes."
" Aéoyra,"' as used at this time, differed from "Adyo." very much as "Sayings" differ from mere "words" or "remarks."
They were phrases which had attained some fixed, or perhaps authoritative or ceremonial form.
In our New Testament "ddya" appears but seldom, and exclusively, with perhaps one exception, in the sense of prophetic or divine utterances from the Old Testament.?
The "words of the Lord Jesus," in the New Testament, were always " déyou." ® Clem. Romanus, who wrote about the end of the first century, also contented himself with "Adyo." in referring to the "words of the Lord Jesus," * reserving the more sacred "Adyia" for the venerated Prophets of the ancient times.®
By Papias's time, it would seem, or at least at his hands, the words of Jesus have come to rank with the older prophecies as divine " Sayings." ® See
Thayer's Greek-English Lexicon, " NOyta,"
1 Kanonsgeschichte, i. 801, 867.
2 Rom. iii. 2; Acts vii. 38; Heb. v. 12), t Pets iv. 11.
3 Acts xx. 35; Mark viii. 38; xiii. 31.
4 x Cor. xiii. 1; xlvi. 7.
Cor, xii, 43 xixfa; lil. f, ® Comp. Polycarp, vii. 1; Justin Martyr, Zrypho, 18;
Tren. i. 8, 1; Josephus, Bell. Jud., vi. 5: 4.
APPENDIX
Note C, p. 6.
It is interesting to note that Papias has to do here with a current of tradition otherwise wholly unknown to Christian writers, Aristion and John the Presbyter, such important personages in his eyes, and standing almost on the same footing with the Apostles, are never even mentioned elsewhere.
The group of Presbyters of whom he speaks so familiarly, and to whom he owes so much of his information, remain also a mystery.
Irenzus, to be sure, speaks in much the same way of the " Presbyters," but is apparently drawing at second hand from Papias.!
Possibly, at that time or in this: region, all survivors of the apostolic circle, or apostolic period, were called "elders," as handing down the apostolic tradition.?
Note D, p.9.
This "Gospel according to the Hebrews," of which Eusebius speaks, awakens a curiosity which unfortunately cannot be wholly gratified.
Such a gospel is known to have been in circulation among the Hebrew-speaking Christians for four or five centuries, and apparently to have been the only one used by them ;® it may perhaps have been the oldest Christian Gospel, and ERLE / Git 2 Dubner 27 sek ANC 2 Va bls 3 35138 GON Le 2 Euseb. iii. 3, 1; v. 8, 1; vi. 14, 5; also, Weizsacker,
Apostolic Age, ii. 332; Lightfoot, Lssays on Super. Religion, 145; Harnack, Chrom., i. 333 0.
3 Tren., Her., tii. 1, 1; Clem. Alex., Stvom., ii. 9; Euseb.
MZ SoS 275A; ViVel22, 0.5) Vie 255) 4
APPENDIX the source in some unknown way from which our Matthew was drawn; yet we are little better acquainted with it than if it had never existed.
Its history has been most singular, and possible only under a chaotic condition of Gospel literature quite inconceivable to us.
The extracts from it show that it was of a most archaic type, strangely unlike our Gospels; yet in spite of this, it was unhesitatingly ascribed to Matthew, without any sense of incongruity.
Jerome, in the fourth century, considered it important enough to translate into Greek and Latin, thinking at the time, apparently, that it was the work of Matthew, and half inclined to think so after finishing his translation.?~
The real relation of this primitive Gospel to the canonical Matthew is one of the unsolved problems of criticism.
Harnack declares it wrapped in darkness, and proceeds to give very clearly what we " do not know" about it.
For a reconstruction of the Gospel from the few citations in early writers, see Zahn, " Kanonsgesch.," ii. 686-704. Compare, also,
Handmann, " Hebraer-Evang.," 1888.
Note E, p.9.
Eusebius, "Hist. Ecc.," iii. 39, 6.
It must be remembered that it is Eusebius, not 1 Tren., Her., iii. 1, 1; Origen in Euseb., Hist. Ecc. vi.
25,4.
Comp. Schwegler, Vachapos. Zeitalter,i. 202; Reuss, Lfist. of N. Test.,i. 199; Zahn, Kanonsgesch., ii. 642.
* De Vir. Iil., 2,3.
The whole story appears in Frothingham's translation of De Wette's Jutrod. to NV. Test., §§ 64, 65.
3 Chron., i. 694n.
APPENDIX
Papias, who refers in this passage to the Apocalypse.
The authorship of the book was much questioned in those days, and Eusebius evidently shares in the doubts regarding it.'
Papias has nothing to say about the Apocalypse, but we have reason to infer from his millennial ideas that he was acquainted with it.2
His historian's silence on this point, if he is silent, weakens the argument, no doubt, drawn from his silence as to Luke and John.
This chance remark about the Presbyter John — an altogether tantalizing personality — has given his name great vogue in recent controversies about both Apocalypse and Fourth Gospel.
Note F, p. 20.
This testimony of Papias to our New Testament Gospels, which I have given so briefly, but I trust fairly, has caused more strife among biblical scholars than almost any other' question.
As their opinions are of course far more important than mine, I add here a short statement of them.
Conservative critics in general hold that the omission of Luke and John in these fragmentary accounts was accidental only, and that Papias shows plainly enough his acquaintance with all our four Gospels; yet to deduce this from his language requires various and very conflicting hypotheses on their part.
One claims that our Gospel of Matthew, originally in Greek, was current at this time in a Hebrew translation for Nazarene churches, and that Papias, and Jerome as well, mistook this for the ori2 Comp. vii. 25.
2 iii. 39, 11 and 12.
APPENDIX ginal Matthew.'
Another thinks that the primitive Gospel, as it came from the Apostle Matthew's hands, was a Hebrew collection of the Lord's discourses, as Papias calls it, but that it soon grew into its present form, our Matthew being unquestionably a translation.? Another still that, although our
Matthew cannot be a translation from the Hebrew Matthew described by Papias, nor our Mark the same Mark which he mentions, none the less Matthew and Mark must have reached their present form long before Papias's time.'
Among less traditional commentators, one holds that Papias had no Gospel of Matthew in mind, but only a Hebrew collection of " Sayings," ascribed to Matthew, which has come down to us in the form of our much transformed and enlarged
Greek version.* Another believes the Gospel of the Hebrews to be the original form of Gospel
\ literature out of which the canonical Matthew and, 'ultimately, Mark grew, while the writing of Mark
' described by Papias corresponded probably with the antique Preaching of Peter.
Another that Papias was acquainted with a complete Hebrew Gospel, descending indirectly from the Apostle
Matthew, and becoming afterwards our Matthew, 1 Tischendorf, Orig. of Four Gospels, 182, 184.
2 Meyer on Matt., Kommentar., 3-14.
1853.
| 8 De Wette, Zntrod. to NV. Test., §§ 97-100.
* Schleiermacher, Werke, ii. 361-393.
5 Bauer, Kanon.
LEvang., 535, 5723 also, Schwegler, Nachapos. Zeitalter, i. 457.
APPENDIX
but of which in Papias's time there was no authorized translation.! Another traces by elaborate critical processes a forgotten Matthew and forgotten
Mark hidden under our present Gospels, and believes these the primitive documents to which Papias refers.2
Others still discover as many successive layers over the archaic Mark as Dorpfeld has found at Hissarlik over the original Troy, and arranged somewhat after the following fashion:
1. Primitive notes taken down by Mark.
2. A. finished draft from these notes by another hand and with later additions.
3. A primitive Matthew, corresponding with the "Sayings" of which Papias speaks.
4. A Deutero-Matthew, combining these " Sayings" with Mark's draft.
5. A Trito-Matthew, corresponding with our Matthew.
6. Our Mark, based on all the preceding.
Other discussions of the subject can be found in Renan, " Hist. des Origines," vil. 124; Vv. 79, 120n, 175N; " Supernatural Religion," i. 449, etc.; Keim, " Jesus of Nazara," i. 219; "Urchristenthum,"
221; Jilicher, "inleit. ins Neue Testament," 295; Lightfoot, "Essays on Supernatural Religion."
In view of these distracting hypotheses, which could be indefinitely multiplied, it would be quite superfluous to attempt any definite conclusion of the matter.
So far as the present treatise is con1 Hilgenfeld, Zimleit., 53-65, 452-520.
2 Holtzmann, Synop. Evang., 128, 248, 270, 368.
8 Scholten, Das dlteste Evangelium, 240-252; Weiffenbach, Die Papias-Fragmente, 112, 116, 120-131.
APPENDIX cerned, it is sufficient to remember that Papias, our earliest authority for Matthew or Mark, declares that Matthew (as was certainly natural) wrote in Hebrew, while our Matthew is in Greek; that Mark reported certain fragmentary discourses of Peter, while our Mark's Gospel is a formal chronicle of the ministry of Jesus; and that if Papias é :
. had any acquaintance whatever with our four Gosne, f , 2 " oy : ,, Pels, jhe attached no final authority to ineMaly ap ee Bey | ye >.
* Ie Tah Baas es RM as t of + rr Ruth MALE AV LAH "EL ayy ¢ Ney pnd Wie : mW TY Note G, p.'22. heares of Rome.
This epistle, Wrebap ov f commonly called the First Epistle of Clement, is »*| headed in the original manuscripts simply: "To 'OW pabrods -the Corinthians."
It is, therefore, an anonymous writing ; but as just such an epistle is known to Irenzeus ? and Clement of Alexandria,? and ascribed by them to Clement of Rome or to the Roman church of his time, the argument for its genuineness becomes very strong.
For historic purposes, it makes little difference whether the otherwise unknown Clement wrote it himself or not, so long as it represents that special epoch; and if we are to hold by any of these early post-apostolic writings, none has greater claim than this.
As it seems hardly probable that all the writings of this period should have been lost, it is easier, on the whole, to suppose the genuine ones to have survived than the fictitious.
Eusebius evidently has little doubt about it himself, though he finds it necessary to Slap oy Sh 2 Strom., i. 7; iv. 17.
APPENDIX
defend its authenticity."
The testimony of Hegesippus and Dionysius is of less account, as we cannot be sure that they are speaking of this Epistle.?
The so-called Second Epistle of Clement to the Corinthians is no longer considered genuine, and belongs to a later period.
The genuineness of the First Epistle is claimed, among many others, by Hilgenfeld, PHeiderer, Weizsdcker, Renan, Harnack, J. Réville.
Schwegler pronounces it spurious, as being Pauline, while the real Clement was a follower of Peter, and as being later than Hebrews.* The author of "Su- ' pernatural Religion " considers the quotation from Judith decisive,* and places it at about a. D, 120.
Neander thinks it "genuine in the main, but not exempt from important interpolations."® Renan says:
"Few writings are equally authentic." ° Lightfoot:
"Very few writings of classical or Christian antiquity are so well authenticated as this letter." "
Note H, p.31.
In this account of the First Epistle of Clement to the Corinthians I have tried to show by a few definite illustrations the character of the New Testament documents which the author had at his disposal.
Widely different inferences are 1 Hist. Ecc., iii. 16; iti. 38, 1.
2 Euseb., Hist. Ecc., iii. 16; iv. 22, 1; iv. 23, 11.
8 Nachapos. Zeitalter, ii. 125-133.
4 Iv. 4.
5 Hist. of Church, i. 658.
6 Aist., Vv. 319n.
1 Epis. of St. Clem, p. 4.
APPENDIX drawn from these facts; and the conclusions of scholars much more competent to judge than the present writer can be found in such works as Jiilicher's and Zahn's "Histories of the Canon," or Jiilicher's "Introduction to the New Testament."
As a tule, the correspondence of a brief phrase in Clement with a phrase in either of our Gospels or Epistles is accepted as proof that the writer had the actual Gospel or Epistle before him.
Zahn finds in Clement's single reference to Paul's First Epistle to the Corinthians proof of an entire collection of Paul's Epistles at this time.!
To my mind, the less constraint is put upon Clement's language, the better; and, taken upon its face, it seems to point to a period in the formation of the Christian
Scriptures when the Old Testament is still of supreme authority, but the Words (or perhaps Discourses) of Jesus, possibly in some collected form, and the writings of Paul, are just beginning' to assert 'their place beside it.
Note I, p. 32.
The Ignatian Epistles.
The question of the Ignatian Epistles is much more complicated than that of the Epistle of Clement, and critical opinions about it are far more conflicting.
Neander thinks the letters much interpolated, and the hierarchic purpose suspicious.
A man in the 1 Kanonsgesch., i. 813, etc.
2 Comp. Weizsiicker, Afos. Age, ii. 38-46; Holtzmann, LEinleit. ins N. Test., 91, 106; Renan, Zés¢., v. 319.
APPENDIX
face of death, he believes, would have more fitting advice to give than obedience to bishops.!.
Schwegler rejects all, as intrinsically improbable, placing them at about 190."
Lightfoot thinks the Martyrdom spurious, but the Epistles genuine, and written soon after 100.2 The author of " Supernatural Religion" pronounces them "a mass of interpolation and fraud."* Renan thinks them too episcopal for any moment short of 200; Romans alone being genuine.'
Harnack believes them genuine, but not earlier, perhaps, than 125.° J. Réville concedes their genuineness, places them at 112-117, and has an ingenious hypothesis to explain their episcopal tone."
Zahn admits them, with the tradition that they belong to the time of Trajan, z. ¢., before 117.°
It will be inferred from the above that the evidence for or against the Epistles is too slight in any case for positive conclusions.
JI have felt justified in classing them as documents of the first half of the century, whether written by Ignatius or not, on the ground that, as letters of Ignatius to eastern churches are distinctly alluded to by Polycarp about 150,° as Irenazus quotes from one of these letters, though giving no name," and Origen quotes from another by name," it is on the whole easier to 1 Hist., 661, 191 n.
2 Nachap. Zeitalter, ii. 160-178.
3 Apos. Fathers, i. 423; ii. 363, etc. sh Aaypte 5 Fiist., v. Int. x-xxxi.
6 Chron., i. 406.
" Orig. de ?Epis., i. 467-408.
8 Kanonsgesch.,i.779- ® Epis. to Phil. xiii.
10 Her., v. 28, 4. ll Hom. on Luke, 6.
APPENDIX accept these particular letters as genuine than to suppose the real letters lost and these invented in their place.
Irenzus's entire silence about Ignatius, while having so much to say of Polycarp, must be taken into account, as Ignatius's importance to the church would seem so much greater ; yet the letters themselves must be old, in any case.
If they are somewhat later than the times of Ignatius, so much the stronger is their evidence as to the unsettled condition of the canon.
Note J, p. 35.
Zvraces of New Testament in Lenatius.
Holtzmann, whose " Introduction to the New Testament" is one of the latest and most competent treatises on these matters, and who places the Epistle of Ignatius at possibly as late as 170-180, holds that Ignatius had some collection of Paul's
Epistles before him, though, as we have seen, never directly quoting from Paul.
Other Epistles, he apparently knows nothing about, nor any of the Gospels except Matthew, and possibly John,
As he seems equally well acquainted, however, with the Gospel to the Hebrews,} Clement of Rome, and "The Shepherd of Hermas," and treats them with equal respect, Holtzmann concludes that his New
Testament, if we suppose him to have one, must include all these writings.
His references to "the Gospel," ? though at first suggesting some specific book, apply equally well, and in some Cases neces1 Smyrn., iii. 2.
2 -Philevane: Smyriy V. 1; viii. 2.
APPENDIX
sarily, to the Christian message as preached ; while as written authority, the Old Testament is still supreme.'
For interpretations of the obscure passage, Philadel. viii. 2, see Harnack, who finds here the embryo of the later distinction of Old Testament and New;? also Zahn, who finds in the same passage a reference to the written Gospels.®
Note K, p. 36.
Zhe Martyrdom of Polycarp ; a Circular Epistle to the Church of Philomelium.
As Trenzeus, who is cited as authority for this Epistle,* had apparently never seen it, or thought it too unimportant to quote,° and as the supplementary paragraphs show that it has passed through many forms,° there seem, apart from its mythical character, ample grounds for suspicion, to be explained only on the assumption of interpolations.
Lightfoot maintains its authenticity."
Renan also defends it.
Also Neander.® Harnack maintains its "genuineness and substantial integrity."
Eusebius knows the Letter well, and quotes from it in full.4
Note L, p. 37. Lolycarp to the Philippians.
Ire1 Eph. v.3; Magnes. xii.; Holtzmann, Zim. ins VV. Test., 102, 103.
2 Chroz., i. 393 0.
8 Kanonsgesch., i. 845.
£1 Ch. xxdiicy 5 Her., iii. 3, 4.
Ob key SO GIL 7 Apos. Fathers, 186.
8 Hist., vi. 462. t) TEU OY 10 Chron., i. 341. ll Hist. Ecc. iv. 15.
APPENDIX nzeus, who writes within a generation after Polycarp's death, speaks of "a very powerful epistle of Polycarp written to the Philippians."!
Eusebius refers to the Epistle repeatedly, though drawing his information apparently wholly from Irenzeus,?
In view of this testimony, is it not easier, as in the case of Ignatius, to think our Epistle essentially genuine, notwithstanding suspicious features,® than to suppose the original to have disappeared and a fictitious letter to the Philippians to have taken its place?
In these survivals from an early time, it is hardly fair to give the fictions all the chances against the realities, Schwegler pronounces the Epistle a shadow of the Pastorals, from a similar source, and quite unworthy of Polycarp in character and style.*
Hilgenfeld accepts the Martyrdom, but rejects the Epistle.
Renan takes virtually the same ground.
J. Réville finds internal and external evidence of authenticity."
Lightfoot defends the Epistle with great research.* Harnack also, though assigning no nearer date than r1o-154,.° This seems, on every ground, as close an approximation to the date as it is possible to get.
Harnack places the li Her., iii. 304:
2 Hist. Ecc., iii. 36, 13; iv. 14, 8; v. 20, 8, " epistles."
8 ix. 1 comp. with xiii. 2; also vii. 1 as compared with dten-aiieans 4 ii. 154.
5 Linleit., 72, 764.
OSES NE Int. xxviii.
" Orig: de ?Epis., 449-4 56.
8 Apos. Fathers, ii.
® Chron., i. 387.
——APPENDIX
exact date of Polycarp's death at February 23, 1 55> or possibly 166.1
Note M, p. 40.
According to Holtzmann, Polycarp holds the same relation to a New Testament canon as Ignatius.?
Paul is referred to in the same way as an authoritative teacher,' while reminiscences, very faint it is true, of the Epistles to Romans, Galatians, Corinthians, Philippians, Ephesians, Thessalonians, and Pastorals, can be traced.
The words of Jesus in the Epistle correspond best with Matthew, if either of our Evangelists.
At | —— the same time Clem. Romanus'? and Hermas come among the author's Scripture authorities.
Note N, p. 40, The genuineness of the Epistle of Barnabas is not seriously defended to-day ; and certainly unless Barnabas had greatly changed since his earlier days,* he could hardly have written so violent a polemic against the Jews as this.
Nor would he have spoken of the Apostles in the manner of v. 9.
Nor is the historic evidence sufficient to save it.
Clem. Alexandrinus is the first to ascribe the Epistle to Barnabas, naturally liking its allegorical character ;" Origen bears the same testimony ;* but Eusebius ranks it unceremoniously 1 Chron. i. 335-355.
2 P. 252.
—Osab 2 pall, eR Coy ty By = 1th By 5 Hinleit., 104.
Sh Gal iiiigem Acts xii. 2). 3 xv. 30:
7 Strom., ii. ©, 7; 20; v. 10, 8; ii. 15, 18.
BN Cels.. 1.103:
APPENDIX among the "spurious."!
Thus there is no positive clue to its date, unless we hold with Renan that iv. 4, 5, points unequivocally to N erva,' or with Miller, that xvi. 3, 4, points unequivocally to Hadrian.*
Accepting the latter passage as the most significant, this would point to about 120 as the most probable date for the Epistle.
Tischendorf Says 117; Renan, 97; Hilgenfeld, 97; " Supernatural Religion," 117-138 ; Julicher;
"i125 seHarnack, 130 or 131; Holtzmann, 96-125.
It is a little curious that a writing which ignores our Gospels more completely than almost any other should be brought forward as the first witness to the existence of a canonical New Testament.
Thus far, as we have seen, no Christian writing has ever been called " Scripture," or introduced by the hieratic phrase, "It is written ;" but in this Epistle occurs the passage, "As has been written, Many called but few chosen." 4
If this really means that the author had the New Testament in official form in his hands, one cannot help asking why he does not avail himself of such sacred documents oftener.
May it not have been merely a slip of memory on his part ; he thinking the passage was from the Old
Testament, or perhaps having some such verse as 2 Esdras viii. 3 in mind?® We need look no further than ch. iv. 3 of this same Epistle, or Eph.
1 Mist. Ece., iti. 2 Bde 4 Last, We Age 8 Erklirung d. Barnabasbriefes, 18.
* Barnabas, iv. 14.
Comp. Matt. xxii. 14.
5 Hilgenfeld, 38.
APPENDIX
v. 14 in the New Testament, to see how easily mistakes of this kind could be made.
Or it may well have been, as has been suggested, that the words of Jesus were treated as holy writ long before Christian Scriptures existed, and we have here the ay Seca ese emis first case in point.?
Note O, p. 54.
Zeaching of the Twelve Apostles, The manuscript of the "Teaching " was found by Bryennios, Metropolitan of Serre in Mesopotamia, in the library of the Most Holy Sepulchre in Constantinople.
It is dated a. D. 1056; and contains, beside this treatise, the Epistle of Barnabas, and Epistles of Clement and Ignatius.
The full title of our work is " Avdayy tdv dddexa 'Aroordédwv."
The historic evidence as to the date of the "Teaching" is slight, as of most of the writings of this period.
The first token of the existence of such a work is found in this passage of Clem. Alexandrinus: " The Scriptures say ; Son be not a liar ; for lying leads to theft."?
As no such saying can be found in either Old Testament or New, the passage has been a puzzle, till it has finally turned up almost literally in the "Teaching."* 'This seems to prove that as early as A. D. 200 this treatise was old enough to be regarded by Clement as Holy
Scripture. The first to mention it by name is Eusebius, who classes among spurious scriptures a certain " Teachings of the Apostles," * which we have
1 Harnack, Hist. of Dogma, ii. 40 n.
2 Strom.,i. 20.
8 iii. line 62.
Sail, 25, 4.
APPENDIX reason to suppose was identical with the present discovery.
Still later, about 367, Athanasius gives a list of uncanonical writings, among which is a "so-called Teaching of the Apostles."?
As writings thus mentioned and discussed in the fourth century must have been long in use, these notices also would refer the "' Teaching " back in all probability to the early second century.
The internal evidence is judged differently by different critics.
Harnack, with exhaustive erudition, declares that it must have followed the Epistle of Barnabas,? and that the condition of the church portrayed in the book points to the period 131-160.'
Réville, with equal erudition, declares that it must have preceded Barnabas, and points to 125 at latest, possibly 100.4
Hitchcock and Brown say 120-160.
By general consent, I think, it would be put in the first half of the century.
Note P, p. 62.
The historic allusions to a Gospel according to Peter, very scanty at best, have been already given.'
These show that Origen had seen and read such a Gospel, but that no other mention appears till the next century.
Eusebius enumerates among the writings of the Apostle Peter two Epistles, a book of Acts, a Gospel, a Preaching of Peter, and an Apocalypse.
Of these he considers the First Epistle alone genuine; by 1 Harnack, Lehre der zwolf Apostel, 8.
eDiets:
3 Chron., 428-438.
* Orig. de ?Epis., i. 243, les GS:
APPENDIX
which he means that neither of the others has been quoted by ecclesiastical writers.1
Still later he pronounces it. distinctly heretical.2
The description of the Gospel which Serapion found in use at Rhosse, the only approach to a description which has come down to us, corresponds sufficiently with our manuscript to create a probability that the two are the same writing, and they are accordingly so accepted.* If this is really a Gospel in use in Asia Minor about 200, and already the source of heretical movements, and if it is quoted without comment by Origen a little later, it must in all probability have been written by the middle of the second century at latest.
If the resemblances to this work traced in Justin justify us, as some think, in assuming that he used it,* this fixes its early date still more positively. Harnack accordingly places it in the first third of the century; °
Swete at about 150.° The frequent resemblances between this fragment and our Four Gospels, accompanied by such violent departures from the Gospels, make the relation of the fragment to those writings highly perplexing, and open up all sorts of conjectures.
Harnack at first concluded that the author showed but faint knowledge of Mark, if acquainted with I ist. £6C., iil. 3, 2:
ANili-125, Os 8 Comp. Harnack ; Swete.
4 Apol., i. 40; i. 35; Dial. cum Trypho, 97.
Comp. Harnack, Bruchstiicke, etc., 38.
5 Pp. 40, 80.
6 [nt., xlv.
APPENDIX him at all, but followed Matthew more closely, or the circle of tradition from which Matthew drew ; while, if he knew Luke and John at all, he took the liberty of correcting them very freely.
" Soviel ist schon gewiss, dass unser Evangelium .
. in eine Zeit gehért, da der evangelische Stoff noch im Fluss war."! Afterwards, on reviewing Schubert's ' Composition des Pseudopetrin. Evang. Frag.," Harnack admitted that all our Gospels were probably known to our author.?. The proofs of this he finds chiefly in chaps. xx.-lvii. of our Gospel ; which show, however, that the writer, if he knows our Gospels at all, recognizes no canonical authority in them, but prefers, even in these most sacred-scenes of Christian history, his own independent traditions.
As Harnack says, the evangelical matter is evidently still in flux.
A seductive hypothesis, which carries us rather too far into the realm of conjecture, connects this
Gospel of Peter with the often-mentioned Gospel according to Hebrews,® which was used exclusively for two or three centuries by the Ebionites or Hebrew-speaking Christians,* and which even before the discovery of the present fragment was imagined
— to be the Gospel of Peter under another name.° t Bruchstiicke, 33-36.
2 Literaturzeitung, No. 1, 19 Jahrgang, p. 17.
Sapeenge 4 Euseb., Hist. Ecc., iil. 27, 4.
5 De Wette, Zntrod. to N. Test. § 65; Renan, ist., v.
111; Schwegler, Wachapos. Zeitalter, i. 234; Reuss, Hist. V.
Test., i. 200.
APPENDIX
It has been suggested, too, that the Gospel to the Egyptians? was probably the same writing, in altered form, perhaps, and for other latitudes.?_
As Stanley, in descending the Congo, found that river assuming many different names before it took the one familiar to the world, so we are to imagine this earliest Gospel becoming Ebionite, Nazarene,
Gospel of Egyptians, Gospel of Peter, Gospel of Matthew, in turn, before losing its identity in the collections which finally prevailed, or being set wholly aside as not satisfying the wants of later generations.
Note Q, p. 64.
Eusebius mentions several writings by Justin, of which the two " Apologies " and the " Dialogue with Trypho " alone survive in any genuine form.'
Eusebius quotes from two Apologies, but as his citations do not always agree with the two as we have them now,°® and as he sometimes speaks simply of "his discourse," ® it is doubtful whether our two are not really part of one
Apology, the other being lost.
As they are generally accepted, however, together with " Trypho," as genuine writings of Justin, this point is of comparatively little consequence.'
As the first " Apology"
1 Clem. Alex., Strom., iii. 9; iii. 13.
2 Renan, H7sz., vi. 185.
8 Hist. Ecc., iv. 18.
4 ij. 13, 2-4; iv. 16, 2-6.
CTH diy Ato 6 iv. 18, 2.
7 Harnack, Chrow., 274; Neander, Hist., i. 661; Keim, Jesus of Nazara, i. 188; Renan, vi. 367.
APPENDIX speaks of the war of Barchochebas as recent, and fixes its own date as about 150,! it is safe to place it at 150-160.
The second, if a distinct writing, was probably later than the First; as was also
"Trypho," which itself cites the '" Apology." ?
Note R, p. 74.
De Wette, after a thorough analysis of Justin's writings, can find only three brief sentences which follow Matthew literally, and only one which follows Luke precisely.
There are three others which vary only by a word ; the rest correspond only in single phrases, or mingle the texts of Matthew and Luke, with foreign matter added.
The four exact passages are the following:
1. " They shall come from the east and west, and shall sit down with Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, in the kingdom of heaven, but the children of the kingdom shall be cast out into outer darkness." ®
2. 'Except your righteousness shall exceed that of the Scribes and Pharisees, ye shall inno case enter into the kingdom of heaven."* 3. " Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down and cast into the fire.">® 4. "Be it unto me according to thy word."® Hilgenfeld, after an 1 Apol., i. 29, 31, 46.
2 Trypho, 120.
For a careful study of these dates, see Harnack, Chron., 276-281.
8 Matt. viii. 11, 12; Zrypho, 76, 120, 140.
4 Matt. v. 20; Zrypho, 105.
5 Matt. vii. 19; Apol,, i. 16.
6 Luke i. 38; Zrypho, 100; Introd. to NV. Test, § 66.
APPENDIX
equally complete examination, finds three cases of exact quotation from Matthew, and four almost exact."
One also from Luke.?
None from Mark or John, though distant resemblances to both.* Note S, p. 83. /ustin's Gospel.
Readers of this volume will not need to be assured that the writer is in no sense a biblical expert or specialist, and that his critical conclusions carry no weight beyond the evidence brought forward in their support.
The exact character of Justin's Memoirs or Gospels has always been the subject of excited controversy, and is no nearer a final solution to-day than ever before.
Some idea of the present state of the question can be obtained from the following summary.
De Wette, in his "Introduction to the New Testament," was one of the first to subject Justin's citations to critical examination ; and arranges the entire material side by side with the corresponding passages from our Gospels.
From this comparison it appears, as we have seen,° that there are only four short sentences where Justin follows exactly the present text of our Gospels, all of which but one are the words of Jesus himself.
In the narrative or historical passages fragments of Matthew and Luke, chiefly Matthew, are freely and very
1 Trypho, 105, 103, 107.
2 Apol.,i. 16; Trypho, 49, 76, 100.
8 Trypho, 105.
4 Evang. Justin's, pp. 139-251.
5 Note R.
APPENDIX loosely combined, with additions of his own or from foreign sources.
Seven cases are given which cannot be found in either Gospel.
One extract vaguely suggests Mark, three resemble John.
From all this De Wette concludes that Justin probably had our four Gospels in his hands, together with some uncanonical writing such as the Gospel of the Hebrews or of Peter.'
Hilgenfeld, after a similar examination, finds three exact quotations," and four almost exact,® all from Matthew.
In the case of Mark and Luke he finds resemblances or reminiscences enough to indicate that Justin must have had before him some primitive form of these Gospels.
As to the Fourth Gospel, the writer of that Gospel and Justin must have been drawing from some common source.
Hilgenfeld's conclusion is that " Justin . | used chiefly the Gospel of Peter (the original of our Mark), together with some revised form of Matthew ; and Luke in very subordinate fashion." *
Schwegler holds that Justin's loose Gospel citations, as compared with his much more precise citations from the Septuagint, prove that he could not | have known even our Matthew, much less the other
| Gospels, but used exclusively some primitive Gospel, apparently that called the Hebrews or Peter.
As 1 §§ 66, 67.
2 Trypho, 105, 103, 107.
8 Apol.i. 16; Trypho, 49, 76, 100.
4 Evang. Justin's und Marcion's, 304.
5 Nachapos. Zeitalter, i. 233.
APPENDIX
Justin was born in Palestine, this Gospel would naturally have fallen into his hands.
Zeller, reviewing Hilgenfeld's conclusions, holds that Justin, while following chiefly some form of Matthew, and using also some uncanonical Gospel, yet drew directly from Luke.
"If Justin had one of our canonical Gospels before him, it could only have been Luke." ?
Holtzmann thinks our Gospels were in Justin's hands, yet not in their canonical fourfold form ; his use of the Fourth Gospel being by no means
'that of a follower of its authority, but rather an independent handling of the same material.?
Zahn, who insists that Justin had all our four Gospels in his hands, in their canonical form, allows that he used great freedom in handling \\ them, as well as in mingling with them the Gospel of Thomas, the Proto-Gospel of James, and other " apocryphal matter.
"Eben diese Freiheit beweist Justin sowohl durch die absichtslose Nachlassigkeit mit welcher er die Ev. Texte anfuhrt, als durch die Kiihnheit mit welcher er Sie nicht selten nach seinen Absichten umgestaltet und erweitert ; endlich auch durch die unbedenkliche Verbindung zweifelhafter Uberlieferungen mit dem Inhalt der
Evangelien." ® The recent discovery of the fragment of the Gospel of Peter' gives new plausibility to the theory
1 Acts of the Apostles, i. 121, 138.
2 Binleit. ins N. Test., 98, 467.
8 Kanonsgesch., i. 558.
4 Note P.
APPENDIX of Justin's use of a primitive Hebrew or Peter Gospel.
There are several striking points of resemblance between the two.'
Swete claims that these are no proof that Justin knew the Gospel of Peter.?
Harnack, on the contrary, believes that such a Gospel was in his hands among others; and that the much contested expression in " Trypho," ® " his
'Memoirs, to this Gospel.* " means "Memoirs of Peter," referring It seems a fair inference from the above that on the strictest construction of the case, and even assuming that Justin had our four Gospels in his hands, those Gospels had not yet assumed such official character that he hesitated to alter or mingle them at will, or to place other Gospel literature on the same level with them. This means, of course, that the Gospel canon was still in the early process
- of formation.
Note T, p.g5.
Reconstructions of Marcion's Gospel, drawn chiefly from the writings of Tertullian and Epiphanius, can be found in De Wette's
"Introduction to the New Testament ;" Hilgenfeld's " Kritische Untersuchungen iiber die Evang. Justin's, der Clem, Hom. und Marcion's," 1850; Volckmar's "Das Evang. Marcion's," 1852.
Zahn, in his "Geschichte des neutestamentlichen Kanons"
(1889-92), gives a complete restoration of both 1 Harnack, Bruchstiicke des Evang. des Petrus, 37-39:
2 Akmim Fragments, xxxv.
3 106.
# Harnack, 39.
APPENDIX
Gospel and " Apostolicon," based on researches of such extraordinary minuteness as to leave apparently but little for future scholars to add.
He has so much to say, however, of the carelessness with which both Tertullian and Epiphanius copied Marcion's text, that we see how hard it is at best to get hold of the actual Marcion.} The conclusions reached by these different authorities may be thus stated : —
De Wette holds that the charges against Marcion were greatly exaggerated ; that the changes which he made in Luke were sincere attempts to purify what he considered an impure text, though he was often influenced, no doubt, by his dogmatic prejudices; that "he was acquainted with the other
Gospels, or some of them: these he at first accepted, but afterwards rejected, as coming from Jewish Apostles and containing Jewish opinions."
Marcion's copy of Luke was not the primitive form from which our Luke was taken, though many of his readings were older and purer than those of his critics.?
Volckmar, a much less conservative critic than De Wette, sums up his study with the words:
'"'Marcion's Gospel cannot be considered a falsification or mutilation of the canonical Gospel, nor yet an older original form of Luke, but rather a Gnostic revision of Luke, consistent and altogether spirited in form, and based upon the oldest codices ;
1 Kanonsgesch., ii. 411, 453.
2 Introd. to N. Test., §§ 70-72.
APPENDIX while our Luke is a much remodeled form, in Pauline spirit, of the original Gospel ; which original is to be traced, if it exists at all, in the Gospel of Mark." 4
Hilgenfeld points out many instances in Marcion's Gospel of more trustworthy readings than those of his opponents, but thinks that the omissions show so obvious a purpose that it must be regarded as a revision of the Luke then current.
It was not our Luke, however, and no more a falsification of it than the later canonical Gospels are falsifications of the earlier.
It was an honest effort to purify the existing text.?
Zahn recognizes Marcion as a genuine reformer, who found the Scripture texts in a corrupt state, and set to work conscientiously to correct them.
He was the first to undertake the establishment of a New Testament canon.
In many cases where Tertullian and Epiphanius charge him with mutilating the established Gospels, his readings were older and purer than theirs.
His own Gospel was the result of these scholarly labors.
From these unpromising facts, by applying his characteristic method, Zahn produces all the results he desires,
© namely:
1. Marcion's Gospel, beside its general resemblance to Luke, shows faint similarities too, in isolated passages, to expressions used by the other Evangelists ; ¢herefore he had all four Gospels
1 Das Evang. Marcion's, 267.
2 Kritische Untersuchungen, 442-47 5 8 Kanonsgesch., i. 620, 632, 650; ii. 411.
APPENDIX
in full form before him.'
2. Marcion, as a partisan of Paul and therefore hostile to the older Apostles, even if he knew that certain Gospels had emanated from those Apostles, would presumably refuse to mention their names ; ¢erefore Marcion knew the true authorship of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.'
3. As some of Marcion's peculiar readings are common to him with several contemporary writers, these must belong, not to an older original, but (by a recognized axiom of textual criticism) to a corrupt form of some older original; therefore our four Gospels must have been current and in public use long enough to have become corrupted, that is, fully half a century.
4. As we know from independent testimony that certain writings of the Apostles were read in public at this time, together | with the Old Testament Prophets,* cherefore our |. four Gospels were so read; and to have secured [!\
AY a) this dignity must have been part of the established | Scriptures from the beginning of the century.°
The above conclusions, however divergent from each other, agree in their testimony that Marcion was engaged in a sincere and intelligent attempt to preserve the purity of the Christian records, and 1 Kanonsgesch., i. 674, 680.
2 i, 663, 676.
8 i, 638, 639.
For a full statement of this ingenious argument, see i. 675.
4 Justin, Afo/., i. 67.
5 i, 534, 557As Clement's and Soter's Epistles to the Corinthians were also read in public, it would seem to follow that these Epistles also were part of the canonical Scriptures.
(Euseb. iii. 16; iv. 23, 11.)
| APPENDIX that he showed, on the whole, a more scholarly acquaintance with the ancient texts than his opponents.
Indeed, the criticisms of Marcion by Tertullian and Epiphanius reveal quite as unsettled a condition of the Christian Scriptures as Marcion's own writings.
What a queer version of Luke, for instance, must have been in Tertullian's hands, if he could find in it, "I came not to destroy but to fulfill ;" 'I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel ;" and " I am not come to send peace but a sword,"— all of which passages are found to-day not in Luke, but in Matthew.)
It should be remembered, also, that if Marcion was really selecting from four existing Gospels the one which would best suit his peculiar doctrines, Matthew or Mark would have served his purpose quite as well as Luke, and John far better.
And why, if he found any recognized apostolic authority to support him, should he have refrained from alluding to it?
Whatever the verdict upon Marcion, the situation is significant as revealing the inevitable changes which the biblical writings were undergoing while awaiting their final revision.
Note U, p. 96.
Beside the writers given in the text, there was a certain Aristides, well known in the time of Eusebius, who is said to have addressed to the Emperor Hadrian or Antoninus Pius a defense of the faith similar to that of Justin.2
It has 1 Tertull. adv. Marc. iv. 7; iv. 29.
2 Hist. Ecc., iv. 3, 33 Jerome, De Vir. Lil, 20.
APPENDIX
been preserved, however, in so imperfect a form, and has so little bearing upon our present inquiry, containing no reference to any New Testament passage, that it calls for no special notice.!
Hegesippus, one of the most voluminous writers of the time, though coming towards the end of the century (173-190), and known only through very brief extracts from his works, has some interest for us as showing how general was the use, for this entire period, of other Gospels than the four which happen to have survived.
One of his authorities, beside the preaching of the Apostles and the unwritten traditions of the Jews, seems to have been the Gospel to the Hebrews."
He preserved many incidents, otherwise unknown, relating to the brothers of Jesus and their descendants, who appeared upon his pages as rulers of the infant churches.®
James, the brother of Jesus, figured there as the Bishop of Jerusalem, devoting himself at the same time to the most rigid observance of the Jewish ceremonial.'
Note V, p. 102.
TZatian's Diatessaron.
Tatian was an Assyrian by birth (ad Gree. xlii.) and came to Rome in Justin's time, becoming his disciple.
His so-called " Diatessaron" would throw much light 1 See Hennecke, Die Apologie des Aristides; Texts and Studies, Camb. i.1; Ante-Nic. Lib., ix. 259, etc.; Kriiger,
Larly Christ. Lit., 101.
2 Euseb. iv. 8, 1 and 2; iv. 22, 8.
8 iii, 20, 1-6; iil. 32.
# ii, 23, 3-18.
APPENDIX on the problem of the early Gospels, if we could judge more accurately of its character; but it is nowhere mentioned until the fourth century,! and survives only in late manuscripts, after passing through many hands.
As the earlier writers know Tatian only as a heretic and ascetic, and make no allusion to his " Diatessaron," it cannot have had great vogue at the time, though in the Syrian churches it seems to have been the only Gospel in use for two centuries.?_ Eusebius and Epiphanius, though mentioning the work, had evidently never seen it.
The term " Diatessaron," according to the usage of the time, may mean simply ar mony,® so that we cannot judge positively how many Gospels he used in constructing his work.
If, however, as is commonly understood, it means strictly a "harmony of four," it serves as evidence of the separation of .our Gospels from the rest by A. D. 175, or thereabouts.
It should be added that the " Diatessaron," as reconstructed by recent scholars, does not correspond very closely with the accounts given of it in ancient times 3 and if this is really Tatian's work, there seems no conceivable reason for the bitter opposition to it, or why Bishop Theodoret should have cast two hun1 Euseb., Hist. Ecc., iv. 29,6.
The Teaching of Addeus the Apostle, which also contains a reference to the Diatessaron, is evidently later than Eusebius.
2 Tren., Her., i. 28, 13 iii. 23,8; Clem. Alex., Strom., iii.
12; Epiphanius, Wer., xlvi. 1; Jerome, De Vir. Zil., 29.
8 Renan, Hist, vi. 503n; Jiilicher, Zin/ect., 301.
APPENDIX
dred of them out of his churches.1_ See Gebh. und Harnack, " Altchrist. Literatur," i. 485-496 ; Kriiger, " History of Early Christian Literature," 120,
36s ; Zahn, " Diatess. Tat.;"
'" Encyclopedia Britannica" (gth ed.), article " Tatian," by Harnack ; G. F. Moore, in "Journal of Bib. Lit.," ix. pt. 2 ;
Hill's "Earliest Life of Christ," 1894; Scholten, " Die altesten Zeugnisse," 93-98.
Note W, p. 104.
Zhe Synoptic Gospels.
If the sketch given in the text is correct, it would follow, of course, that our three earlier Gospels (the socalled
Synoptics), judged by historic evidence, .. e (Th Ae arubles cannot have assumed anything like their present
"Agia wl fat form before the middle of the second century.
Though this conclusion seems to me to follow f oe art OA, ah naturally from the teachings of modern New Tes- , "gate Kiwreaeg © { fevid Thay tu
competent authorities on these points to speak for & J tubes 44 wa pele themselves.
While few critics nowadays assume that these Gospels came directly from the hands of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, yet most of them, on grounds of internal testimony, assign all three to apostolic 1 times, though varying widely as to exact tament criticism, yet I cannot claim that it is generally accepted; and I must leave the more byt flac dk heatafivt rehg ia a der dw wknd Ms.
Reel we ne pido sd whl dates or the order in which the three appeared.
Matthew is generally placed at about A. D. 70, owing mainly to the nature of its allusions to the temple and to the destruction of Jerusalem. It is », noticeable, however, that while some are positive
_ h aadl A hae rete, |. "$ und) tA4, Ww "nad The perms. P Sear 1 Theod., Her. Fab., i. 20. i Asa he bs che be
APPENDIX that it was written before 70,' others are equally positive that it was written after 70."
Critics like Bunsen, Schenkel, B. Weiss, and Holsten place it soon after 70; Réville, Hilgenfeld, Kostlin, Hausrath, put it in the Flavian period, between 70 and 96.2 On similar grounds, Mark is placed by Weiss,
Pfleiderer, Briickner, before 70; by Weizsacker, Beyschlag, Volckmar, Hilgenfeld, Holsten, at different dates between 70 and 80.
MHarnack says 65 to 85.4 As to Luke, there is greater divergence; some placing even this Gospel before the destruction of Jerusalem, the majority putting it as late as 80 or g5.° Even so unconservative a critic as Renan assigns these approximate dates: namely,
Matthew, 85; Mark, 76 ; Luke, 95.° It would be unfair to these critics themselves, however, to assume that these dates, confidently as they appear to be given, are meant to be taken quite in the sense in which dates are affixed to modern writings. Renan, for instance, while speaking after the above fashion in one volume, in another, when speaking of the Gospels in circulation about 150, describes them as "more or less in conformity with what we call the synoptic type.''?
'} And again: "The Gospels remained till towards t 160, or even later, private documents, confined to 1 Matt. xxiv. 2, 29, 34.
2 xxii. 7; xxiv. 48; xxviii. 10.
8 See Holtzmann, Zindett., 373.
* Chron., 653.
5 Holtzmann, as above.
S Hist. Vv. 125, 174M, 254. iSviengitze
APPENDIX
us 7) Thay WA fo mena small circles.
Each locality had its own, and for a long time no one scrupled to fill out or combine "> the texts already accepted."
One cannot help *4"7 % © conjecturing that most modern commentators have !1=* : 'bud similar reservations in mind in assigning early dates )
Xuagre eobh to any of the "'Synoptics."
Harnack, for example, 4) ) fixes Matthew at 70 to 75, as being later than Mark.
In another passage, however, he declares it quite possible that while Matthew belongs for the most \r f part to about 70, the present text was fixed between | fe the times of John the Presbyter and Papias.?
Still other critics of the highest repute place all three Gospels unhesitatingly in the second century.
Pfleiderer puts Matthew at 130 to 140.2 Keim puts Mark at about 100.*.
For Luke, Jiilicher gives us the generous range from 80 to 105 or 120.'
Kriiger says, "All three Gospels were written after the destruction of Jerusalem, and their text can hardly have received its present shape before the second half of the second century." * There is little doubt,
I think, that modern critics in general would allow that the three earlier Gospels have come to their actual form through successive stages of growth, and that any early dates assigned belong properly to the primitive germ.
The amount of change to which that germ has been subjected must be a 1 Fist., vi. 498.
2 Chron., 654, 700 n.
8 Urchrist.. 542.
4 Jesus of Nazara,i. 116; Urchrist., 221, etc.
5 Hinlett., 202, 263.
8 Hist. of Christ. Literature, 49.
APPENDIX matter of pure conjecture.
For myself, I am quite prepared to accept any of the above critical conclusions, provided they accord with the evidences here adduced of the use of the Gospels by the Church Fathers.
These evidences are historic facts which are perfectly familiar to all students of the subject, and which none deny.
They prove, if nothing more, how long it was before the Gospels bore anything like/canonical or official) authority ; how long, that is, before they were secured against additions, modifications, or corruptions.
As to the authors of these Gospels, it should be borne in mind that neither Matthew, Mark, nor Luke was a personage important enough to have had a Scripture writing assigned to him if he had had nothing to do with its origin.
Of Luke this is , .,\ especially true.
He has absolutely no significance "9
| \to the world except as writer of the third Gospel.
He was simply one of the chance companions of the Apostles,' and if the real author had been casting about for a name, he might quite as well have called it the Gospel of Demas or Tychicus.
The natural inference is, therefore, that there was substantial reason for calling it Luke's; in other words, that the original collection of Christ's words or acts, from which the Gospel has grown, did actually come, in some form, from the hands of Luke.
It is pleasant to think that this was true of each of the Gospels, however little either may have retained of its original character.
It should be added, 1 Colty. 14) 2\0imssiveitae
APPENDIX
too, that the many passages which are common to Matthew, Mark, and Luke imply of themselves a long process of growth, before fitting themselves into such very dissimilar conjunctions.
Indeed, it requires only a moment's thought to conclude that Ay vA ee the sayings of Jesus himself were much more likely |
(Fun My ah to have impressed themselves upon the memory, | lia pla i! and to have been sacredly preserved, than any" ae ke other discourses of the time; and, therefore, we ian dia wer risk little in assuming that our records have really Mw, bos come, in this sense, from the hands of his immediplug ae Gin OA ate followers. bipu uae ( ri a, But for the unauthorized and exaggerated claims ,.", cad uend
'm thre that have been made for our Gospels, the idea here rd Nie n given of a gradual growth out of original oral and » ve ha written traditions would seem the most natural ance et A fv satisfactory explanation of their origin. haa bee For authorities on the above points, see Holtz- """
Ot, mann, " Einleitung," 372, etc. ; Weizsacker, "' Aposfev mA * tolic Age," ii. 32-71; Pfleiderer, "Urchristen- ¢ Hal' te dhs thum," 359-543; Jiilicher, " Einleitung," 207-238 ; OT Stak fala
Reuss, " History of the New Testament,"
1. 175-212 3 gas ry wad the il Hilgenfeld, " Einleitung," 452, 497, 5473 " Encyclowmgy el tas pedia Britannica" (9th ed.), art. "Gospels," by Fay E. A.A.; Westcott's "Canon of the New Testament." i,
'sf pe Note X, p. 128.
Zhe Revelation.
The Book of j ) Revelation has many different titles in different oy iC : pu '9 versions, the oldest being The Revelation of John, Ht me is or simply Revelation.
Others are Revelation of; Nuring John the Theologian, Revelation of John the Di Wh thet
APPENDIX vine, Revelation of St. John the Apostle.
It is to be noted, however, that the book of itself makes no claim of the kind, but simply gives the name John, with nothing further to define itt Moreover, the references to the Apostles throughout are in the third person, and not at all as though the writer were or pretended to be one of them ;" while it is difficult, if not impossible, to conceive of such a passage as xxi. 14 as being written by one of the very Apostles to whom such supreme honor is ascribed.
The first writer, so far as we know, to mention the book is Justin Martyr (about 150), who considers John the Apostle to be the author.?
At the end of the century, it seems to be generally accepted as his work.* By the middle of the third century, it has already begun to be questioned, and a learned bishop of Alexandria (Dionysius) subjects the matter to very close and critical inspection.
He says: "That it is a John who writes these things, we must of course believe, as he says so himself; but what John is not so clear.
For he has not called himself, as so often in the Gospel, the disciple beloved of the Lord, nor the one leaning on his breast. ... That he saw a vision and was endowed with wisdom and prophetic power, I 1 Rev, i. I, 4, 93 xxii. 8.
2 xviii. 20.
8 Trypho, 81.
4 Tren., Her., iv. 20, 11; v. 26, 1; v. 30,1; Clem. Alex., Strom., vi.13; Tertull. adv. Mare. iii.14; iv. 5; Canon Muratori, 3; Origen, as given in Euseb., Hist. Lcc., vi. 25, 9.
APPENDIX
do not gainsay ; but I perceive that his dialect and language are not of the purest Greek, but that he uses barbarous idioms, and at times solecisms."
Dionysius thinks it probably a forgery by the heretic Cerinthus.? Eusebius himself, writing in the next century (about 325), intimates that it was perhaps by the Presbyter John, of whom Papias has so much to say,?—-a conjecture much in favor among the latest critics?
It is plain, therefore, even regarding the work as entirely from one hand, how little ground there has ever been to ascribe it to the Apostle John.
Modern criticism, however, as has been intimated in the text, tends more and more to regard the work as acomposite one.
The fragmentary character of the first three chapters was long ago pointed out, and later commentators have carried this theory much farther: one thinking it a gradual growth from an apostolic original ; another a simple collection of several apocalypses; another a Jewish apocalypse, adapted later to Christian needs ; another still detecting in it a Jewish original of the time of Pompey (8. c. 63), added to in the reign of Caligula (a. D. 40), turned into a Christian revelation twenty years later, and put into its present form about a. D. 100.5
The question of authorship 1 Euseb., Hist. Ecc. vii. 25, 12, 26; iii. 28, 3, 42 Hist. Ecc., iti. 39, 6.
8 Harnack, Chroz., i. 67 5-680.
4 Schwegler, Vachapos. Zeitalter, ii. 256.
5 Comp. Weizsacker, AZos. Age, ii. 173-180; Vischer, Dze Offenbarung Johannis, etc. ; Holtzmann, Z7zzezt., 412.
APPENDIX virtually disappears under these conjectures, or becomes quite subordinate to that of the date of the final revision.
On the question of date there is a more general agreement among critics than in the case of any other New Testament book except certain Epistles of Paul.
The decisive passage is found in the mysterious utterance about the beast,! which, after kindling the imagination of visionaries for centuries, is at last commonly accepted as a reflection of the prophecy of Daniel? and referring to Rome and the early emperors. According to these verses, the sixth emperor is reigning, while a seventh is about to appear, and one of the seven to reappear as the eighth.
As on the one hand the first emperor in this reckoning may be either Augustus or Julius Cesar, and on the other hand Galba, Otho, and Vitellius may be regarded as contemporaneous sovereigns or passed over entirely, the range is considerable here; and the result varies between the reign of Domitian,* of Galba,* and of Vespasian.®
Even these conflicting results, however, offer the limits 68-96 ; a far more definite conclusion than we can count upon, or are accustomed to, in New
Testament criticism.
We are at liberty, therefore, to regard the Revelation either as a Christian work,
1 Rev. xvii. 10, II.
2 vii.
8 Weizsacker, Holtzmann, Harnack.
Comp. Iren., Her., VW. Bey Sh 4 Baur, Renan, Hausrath.
5 Bleek; Mommsen, Prov. of Roman Limpire, ii. 214 n.
APPENDIX
written not later than the beginning of Vespasian's reign,' while Christianity still feels itself a Jewish sect; or as a composite production, half Christian half Jewish, receiving its latest touches towards
A.D. too.
In any case, it heralds the speedy coming of the Lord, and the final establishment of the New Jerusalem.
For a historical sketch of the apocalyptic literature, Jewish and Christian, see Liicke, " Offenbarung des Johannes," i. 40-342.
For the later criticism, see Weizsacker, " Apos. Age," li. 173-205 ; Vischer, "Die Offen. Joh. eine Jiidische Apocalypse; "" Renan, " Hist.," iv. 351-480; Hausrath,
"Time of Apos.," iv. 256-282 ; Meyer's " Exeget.
Handbuch" (Diisterdieck) ; Pfleiderer, " Urchristenthum," 318-356 ; Holtzmann, " Einleitung,"
408— 424.
Note Y, p.131.
In the New Testament itself, the messianic expectation appears under different forms on different pages, showing that the doctrine had assumed at that time no definite shape.
In the Gospel of Matthew, the coming of the Son of man and the final judgment are to occur together, before that generation had passed away." According to Paul, Christ was to appear before all then living ,
; had passed away, and would reign "till he hath put | 4 bLU all enemies under his feet."
After that the end of, ty 4 oe of Fe rf, h the world: "Then cometh, the end; when he shall, :
+ Ma Tens Me Us 1 Rev. xi. I, 2.
Pp ars Pea Ee 2 Matt. xxiv. 3, 6-13, 29-34; XXV. 31-46. mY
ah t ape, é duarenathed, CALLS [ha
APPENDIX _ have delivered up the kingdom to God, even the Father ; when he shall have put down all rule and all authority and power.
. That God may be all in all."* Finally, in Revelation, this indefinite intervening period between the Messiah's coming and the end of his reign has become defined as one thousand years."
Note Z, p. 141.
We need look no further than the Wisdom of Solomon (about B. c. 100, or somewhat later) to see that Greek speculations on divine themes had reached the Jewish schools a century before Paul.
Pfleiderer points out the distinctly Platonic features in Wisdom of Solomon, (esp. i. 13, ete. ; ii, 23-iii. 4 ; iv. 10-v. 3, 6, 18-21; Vili.
13, 17-19), and also the parallelisms between the Wisdom and Paul.
(Wis. ix. 13-17 and 1 Cor. li, 6-16 ; 2 Cor. v. 1, etc.; Wis. xiii, xiv., and Rom. i, 18, etc.; 1 Cor. xii. 2; Gal. iv. 8, etc.; Wis. xv.
7, Xli, 10-12, and Rom. ix.) This apocryphal book thus becomes the link between Platonic idealism and Christianity.?
Compare, also, Hausrath, "Time of Apos.," ili. 20-30, where the same relation is pointed out, though the Book of Wisdom is placed nearer to Paul's own time.
See, also, Toy, " Judaism and Christianity," 60, 251, 278 ; J. H. Allen's "Early Christianity," ch. ii.
1 x Cor. xv. 24-28; 1 Thess. iv. 15.
2 Rev. xx. 4, 6.
3 Pfleiderer, Urchrist., 153-160.
APPENDIX
Note AA, p.149. Zphestans and Colossians.
The Epistles to Ephesians and to Colossians (to a certain extent duplicates the one of the other, and therefore to be considered together) have been held since the days of De Wette and Baur,in ever- /, increasing distrust..
No problem connected with New Testament Criticism is so perplexing, and whatever result is reached must be held with great reserve, as the historic evidence at command is too slight to allow of positive conclusions.
The point most dwelt upon by recent critics is that the historic standpoint revealed by such passages as Eph. ii. 13-22 is altogether later than any possible period of Paul's ministry.
'The letter," says Holtzmann, "solemnizes the victory of a movement of which the Pauline system marks the critical moments of development." 1
' These doctrines," says Weizsadcker, "have their points of contact with the Pauline teaching, but they go beyond it.
Paul had only foreshadowed thoughts like these as the ultimate background ; here Pauline universalism has become a mystical theory.
He had not applied the idea of the all-pervading godhead to the church, but had looked forward to it as belonging to the final state hereafter." ?
"The actual fusing of two distinct messianic circles into one body," says Klopper, " which during Paul's active ministry was only a distant and abstract ideal, appears in the Epistle to Ephesians as nearer by a very noticeable stage to its
1 Eintlett., 259.
2 Apos. Age, li. 242.
APPENDIX realization."+ If the Epistle to Ephesians were a historical sketch, these criticisms would be quite conclusive ; but nothing seems clearer than that the church as present to the writer's mind is an ideal conception.
It is no particular circle of warring or reconciled organizations ; it is the ideal consummation of all things in the messianic future.
A church which is the "body and fullness" of Christ himself, "filling all in all," and which reveals to heavenly powers the hidden mystery of the ages,? is on its own showing a purely mystic notion.
If it is too mystic for Paul, then 2 Cor. lii. 18, and many other passages in Corinthians and Romans, are too mystic for Paul.
As to the strong Gnostic coloring of these two Epistles, pointed out by Baur,? and accepted by almost all later critics, it must be remembered that we can determine the beginnings of Gnosticism only by first determining the age of the documents in which those beginnings appear.
Indeed, if we are to make any positive advance in our knowledge of Christian thought, we must decide once for all whether we will follow primarily historic or @ priori evidence ; in other words, external evidence or internal.
We cannot do both.
We cannot reject Ephesians and Colossians as breathing the thought of a later age than Paul's, and at the same time determine from Romans and Corinthians what Paul's ideas were.
In point of fact, the historic 1 Epheser-Brief, 98.
Cb Fak8. ith TG} 8 Paulus, ii. 3-49.
evidence, slight enough at best, is quite the same for the lesser as for the greater Epistles; in other words, the references to the one in early writers are quite as frequent and early as to the other.
If we reject these Epistles on internal grounds, the authenticity of all Paul's Epistles falls at once into . doubt.
If, therefore, their (mystic character is the ie p ar chief argument against them, we are bound to conStine
Crile a clude, not that they are ungenuine, but that Paul Pel ands vland 7 was more of a mystic than we commonly allow.
P The marked resemblance between the two Epis-, .. . tles (40 out of the 155 verses in Ephesians correSt af bbe sponding closely with Colossians, together with the °°" entire general arrangement), which constituted De
Wette's main indictment against the genuineness of Ephesians,' seems to me sufficiently accounted for, somewhat as Schleiermacher suggested long ago," if Paul, having just written to one congregation, wished to address another on the same theme, leaving it perhaps to an amanuensis to transcribe his former letter.
Evena Paul, under the stress of missionary labor, might well turn one writing to account for a double purpose.
The most serious trouble lies, after all, in the passages ii. 20, iii. 5, and perhaps iv. 11, where the '"' Apostles" are spoken of, not as a body of poe men, of whom the writer is one, but rather
"holy " personalities, to be coupled with the Old Testament Prophets as a historic and sacred
1 Introd. to N. Test., §§ 145-150.
2 Werke, viii. 166 n.
APPENDIX group.
For Paul to have written Eph. ii. 20 seems quite as inconceivable as for John to have written Rev. xxi. 14.
In any case, the juxtaposition of Apostles and Prophets, common enough after the apostolic age, seems to point unequivocally to a later moment and later congregational uses.
Accepting the Epistles as otherwise genuine, we are forced, therefore, to suppose that later copyists have tampered with the text for their own purposes.
The difficulties, then, are great on both sides ; and the best that can be said is that there are fewer objections to considering the Epistles as genuine in the main, than to considering them fraudulent.
Consult, on this subject, Baur, " Paulus," ii. 349 ; Schwegler, " Nachapos. Zeitalter," ii. 325—334;
De Wette, "Introd. to N. Test.," §§ 142-147; Holtzmann, " Einleitung," 254-270; Kldpper, " Brief an d. Epheser ;" Hilgenfeld, " Einleitung," 332-348, 669-680 ; Jiilicher, " Finleitung," 89-97 ; Lightfoot,
"Coloss. and Philemon ;" McGiffert, "Hist. of Apos. Age," 365-385.
Note BB, p. 160.
In Note T will be found an estimate of Marcion's Gospel.
The chief authorities for his theological doctrines are: Tertullian adv. Marcion, i-v.; " Praes.," 303 Justin,
"Apol.," i. 26, 58; Irenzeus, " Heer.," i. 27 Eline polytus, vii. 29-31 ; Epiphanius, " Heer.," 42.
See, also, Baur, "Christ. Gnosis," 240; Neander, " Hist. of Christ. Church," 458-473 ; Hase, " Hist. of
APPENDIX
Christ. Church," 81 ; Harnack, " Hist. of Dogma," i. 266-285 ; "New World" for March, 1898, pp.
84, 85.
Note CC, p. 166. asilides.
The accounts of Basilides reach us through two or three distinct sources, differing greatly according as each interpreter is more or less appreciative of Basilides's idealism, or perhaps as the latest historian mixes the ideas of the disciples with those of the master.
The more transcendental and more detailed version comes from Hippolytus, who wrote about a. D. 222.
See Irenzeus, i. 24 ; ii. 16, 2 ; ii. 35,1; Clem. Alex:, " Stromata," ii. 3 ; ii. 6-8 ; Hippolytus, vii. 14-27 ;
Epiphanius, " Heer.," xxiv.
Note DD, p. 176.
Valentinus.
The Valentinian writings are given most fully by Irenzeus, who records the doctrines of the Valentinians in general, making Ptolomzus their chief spokesman.?
Hippolytus gives virtually the same account, tracing the doctrines back to Pythagoras and Plato.?
Clem, Alexandrinus cites occasional passages from both Valentine and Basilides, commonly with sympathetic recognition of their spiritual meaning.
Tertullian treats the whole subject as a broad joke.® Comp. Epiph., " Her.," xxxi. ; Euseb., " Hist. Ecc.," a2 2 05 - , 1 Her., i. 1-8; i. Yt, I.
2 Refut., Vi. 21-37.
3 Adv. Valentinianos ; also, Pres., 7, 30, 33; Car., 2.
APPENDIX Note EE, p. 183.
%zlo.
Comp. Ritter, " Hist. of Ancient Philosophy," iv. ch. vi. ; Ewald, " Hist. of Israel," vii. 194-235 ; Hausrath, "Time of Apos.," i. 161-189; Harnack, "Hist. of Dogma," i. 109—
116.
Note FF, p. 188.
The name Gnosticism is so loosely used by the earlier writers that it is not easy to determine exactly when it came into vogue as the designation of a sect or sects.
Justin Martyr (150) attacks Marcion with great severity, and denounces Marcionites, Valentinians, Basilidians, and others, under the names of their leaders, but makes no mention whatever of "Gnostics."!
Irenzeus (175) applies the name vaguely to all the heresies of the time, yet uses the word itself but rarely, and resents its appropriation by his opponents.
His book against heresies is entitled " Refutation of the falsely-called Gnosis." ?
Tertullian, who also writes many treatises against Marcionites, Valentinians, and other heretics, and deals constantly with the very themes at issue between himself and them
(Resurrection of the Flesh ; The Soul ; The Flesh of Christ), has hardly a single occasion to use the name
Gnostic.
I can find it but three times, distinguishing each time between Gnostic and Valentinian?
1 Apol., i. 26, 58; Trypho, 35.
2 The word appears, I think, only in i. 11, 1; i. ZB Oe 29, 1; ii. Pref.; ii. 13, 8; ii. 31, r5°di. Bes LRT 17 Thi (Oy
AS ING Bis, 1B WH AO, A
8 Scorpiace, 1; Adv. Valentinianos, 39; De Anima, 18.
APPENDIX
Clem. Alexandrinus (about 200), in the eight books of his "Stromata," uses the word on every page, but only as the best designation he can find for the perfect man and true Christian.
He claims to be as Gnostic as the best ;1 and deals with Basilides and Valentine as fair opponents, who are at worst but chatterers and cavilers,? and altogether too ascetic to satisfy his notion of the requirements of the Gospels.* His opponents are "Gnostics, falsely so-called." * Origen (185-254) treats heresies in general as natural attendants upon Christianity,° but shows a profound aversion to Marcionites and especially Ophites;® and mentions
Basilides and Valentine with little favor."
All this time, however, he says nothing of Gnostics, so far as I see, except in a single case where he speaks of "those who give themselves out as Gnostics
;" 2. ¢., as if they knew more than others.
Hippolytus, in his ten books of " Refutation of all Heresies," uses the name Gnostic very rarely,® applying it distinctly to the Naaseni.
Epiphanius (toward 400) takes quite a different view, declaring that all after one Nicolaus, including Valentinians, called themselves Gnostics.
Plotinus (205-270), writing as a 1 Strom., ii. 11.
BR Oe Oiy lle TOs ails Ally. Q.
8 iii. 1, 4, etc.; vil. 17.
4 iii. 4.
5 Cels., iii. 12.
8 Prin. il. 5, 1-4; vii. 1; Ces. vi. 24; Vi. 28; vi. 30; Vi. 53.
1 Prin, ii. 9, 5; ii. 7,1; Cels., vi. se vip hin 8 Cels.,v. 61.
DAR Wa OB Wo 23h 10 Her., XXVi.; XXXi. I.
APPENDIX philosopher against the false Platonists of his day, uses no names, and leaves it uncertain whether he has Christians or Gnostics in mind.
His disciple Porphyry, however, in editing the treatise, entitles it " Against the Gnostics," but claims at the same time that the Gnostics were Christians.1_
Eusebius (about 320), following Irenzeus, fathers Gnosticism upon Carpocrates only, and mentions Basilides as the leader of a distinct heresy.2
Philaster (about 350) enumerates 156 heresies, using the name Gnostic but four times, distinguishing them from Valentinians, and coupling them each time with Manicheans.® Augustine (354-430) gives 88 heresies; among them: i. Simonians; iv. Basilides; vi. Gnostics ; xi. Valentine; xvii. Ophites; xxii.
Marcionites.4
If nothing else is clear from the above, it is plain that no two of these early authorities use the term Gnostic in the same sense, and that it was long fought for by both sides, before being surrendered to the heretics.
Compare Anz,° who traces all the Gnostic schools back to an early Babylonian gnomic system.
Renan holds that the doctrines common to Basilides, Valentine, and Saturninus, no less than to Philo and Paul, point to some common source behind them
1 Vit. Plotin., 16; Select Works of Plotinus, Bohn, 44 ty, 257.
2 Hist. Ecc., iv. 7,8 and On 8 Phil. de Her., ch. 84, 88, 100, 130.
4 Ofera, viii.
5 Zur Frage nach d. Ursprung d. Gnosticismus.
APPENDIX
all."
Matter, in his " Histoire Critique," among 43 Gnostic sects, gives one (No. 43) specifically called Gnostics.
Note GG, p. 195.
Pastis Sophia.
See "Uber das gnostische Buch Pistis-Sophia."
Harnack, "Texte und Untersuchungen," etc., 1890.
Also, Westcott's " Canon of New Testament," p. 404.
This writing is part of a Coptic document found about 1851, and is considered by Harnack to belong to the latter part of the third century.
As it is almost the only Gnostic treatise which has survived, it is interesting to observe that it is based upon the Old Testament and New Testament Scriptures.
It represents Jesus conversing with his disciples on the Mount of Olives eleven years after his ascension, and revealing to them the mysteries which during his ministry he had hidden under his parables.
He calls himself "that great Mystery," ? and treats both the Scriptures as "veiled truth " now first revealed.
The writer, without mentioning the Evangelists, evidently has some version of the four Gospels, with some apocryphal sources, before him, and cites also freely from the Psalms, adding five unknown " Psalms of Solomon," together with Gnostichymns.
Christ appears as the highest Aon, and describes his descending to earth and gazing upon Mary before his human birth.
Mary Magdalen is a prominent figure throughout; and the presence of the women on the scene causes no 1 Fist., vi. 148.
2 Pistis Sophia, 230, 231.
' APPENDIX
little altercation among the disciples.
Peter especially complains to the Master of their loquacity.?
An extraordinary scene occurs where Christ stands with his disciples on the seashore, uttering a series of unintelligible sounds, the AZons and Powers all listening.
The writer takes this quite seriously, and explains the meaning of the mouthings; though, so far as we can judge, it is simply a convulsive sequence of alliterative and explosive syllables
(caw, aw, Oepvwy, etc.), perhaps a genuine case of the gift of tongues, as described by Paul.?
Note HH, p. 198.
Gwosticism.
If any of my readers feel that I have dealt too lightly with the solemn problem of Gnosticism, or for any reason care to follow the subject further, they will find all needed help in the following works.
Baur's "Christliche Gnosis "' is still one of the most exhaustive and important treatises on the subject, though importing into it a little too much of the idealism of his own century.
He finds the first elements of Gnosticism in the contact of Jewish and pagan thought ; especially in Philo, though also in the Old Testament Apocrypha, the Therapeut, and Essenes.
He classifies the Gnostic sects according to their relation to paganism, Judaism, and Christianity.
Neander* takes up the several leading schools 1 Pistis Sophia, 161, 382.
2 1 Cor. xiv. 9, 11, 14, 19, 23.
3 Hist. of Christian Church, i. 366-478.
APPENDIX
in a comprehensive and thoroughly appreciative spirit, if only the work were more readable, either in the original or the translation.
Matter? writes with full research and in great detail.
He divides the Gnostic sects in large measure geographically, viz.: i. Cerinth and Simon; ii. Syrian schools ; iii. Egypt, chief schools ; iv. Egypt, lesser schools; v. Marcion ; vi. Clementines.
Anz, "Zur Frage nach d. Ursprung d. Gnosticismus," 1897,? is an interesting monograph, tracing
Gnosticism back to an early Babylonian cult.
See, also, Hilgenfeld, " Einleitung ins Neue Testament," 45, etc. ; Herzog, " Encyklopadie" (article by Jacobi) ; Harnack, "History of Dogma," i, 222-366; Renan, " Hist.," vi. 140-185, 350363; Mansel, "Gnostic Heresies," London, 1875.
See, also, Toy, " Judaism and Christianity," 257, 431, etc.; J. H. Allen, " Early Christianity," ch. iii,
Note II, p. 205.
For the parallelisms between the Fourth Gospel and the others, see De Wette, "Tntroduction to New Testament," §§ 103-107.
De Wette gives also an exact arrangement of the Gospel as compared with Matthew, which he considered as probably its basis. Other commentators think it draws chiefly from Luke, though there is little agreement and much guesswork upon this point.
From a rough comparison, such as any one 1 [iistoive Critique du Gnosticisme.
1843.
2 Gebh. und Harnack, Zexde, etc.
APPENDIX can make, I should say that the passages of our Gospel which run at all parallel with the others constitute about roo out of nearly goo verses, all of them quite vague and inexact, if considered as quotations.
Exact quotations, or direct acknowledgment of the source borrowed from, we should not of course expect from this writer more than from others of that period; but it would not be too much to look for some slight consciousness of the existence of other authorities, if they had any recognized position.
See Keim, " Jesus of Nazara," i. 160-166 ; Holtzmann, " Einleitung," 440; Jiulicher, " Einleitung," 247; Pfleiderer,
'' Urchristenthum," 695. Pfleiderer holds that the author shows special dependence upon Luke; but that, beside
Mark and Luke, he drew also from some unknown third source ; not Matthew, but probably the Gospel to Hebrews.
Note JJ, p. 208.
Zhe Logos.
In comparing the Logos of the Fourth Gospel with that of Philo, which it so closely resembles," it is not necessary to assume that the one is drawn directly from the other.
It may be or may not be.
Philo is of importance to us, not so much for himself as for the contact of Greek and Jewish thought which he represents, and for the general religious movement of which he happens to be the only writer whose works have survived.
What Philo was thinking just then no doubt others were thinking also, and 1 Exactly 118 out of 879.
Zea Lous
<a APPENDIX
the use which he made of Old Testament material was open to other enlightened Jews as well.
But whether drawn from Philo or not, our Gospel unquestionably reflects the same ideals as held by another mind and applied to another order of events.
What Philo conceived metaphysically, our author presents to us incarnated in the living Jesus.
The ideal has become real. mee) Keim, Jesusof«Nazara,''L. 153, 276, etc.; Harnack, " History of Dogma," i. 109-114; Holtzmann, '" Die Gnosis und Johan. Evang.," 117; O.
Holtzmann, " Johannes Evangelium," 80-86; Hilgenfeld, "' Evang. Justin's und Marcion's," 294.
Note KK, p. 209. ourth Gospel and Gnosticism.
The Gnostic affinities of this Gospel, partly cloaked by our English version, are perfectly evident and have been often dwelt upon.
One commentator finds the entire Valentinian Ogdoad in the Prologue; its Pleroma, its Monogenes, its Arche, Logos, Zoe, Charis, and Aletheia corresponding closely if not exactly with the Valentinian fEons.
The "bosom of the Father" and light as the essence of Deity are also Valentinian.'
According to Irenzeus, the Valentinians themselves claimed the first chapter of John as authority for their system."
The recognized earmarks of Gnosticism, Dualism, Docetism, with the A'ons and Demiurge, in reality if not in name, are certainly found
1 Hilgenfeld, Zvang. und Briefe Johan., 19-46.
2 Her.,i. 8, 5. Comp. iii. 11, 1.
APPENDIX in our Gospel, together with the allegory, the occultism, and the radical distinction between spiritual and unspiritual which characterize all Gnostic systems.
At the same time, it is noticeably free from all the eccentricities and extravagancies which we associate with the name, and is the evident product of a mind which can use its
Gnostic training for the highest religious ends and definitely Christian purposes.
See Holtzmann, " Die Gnosis," etc. ; " Einleit.,"
457; Weizdcker, " Apos. Age," ii. 239.
Note LL, p. 214.
The verses, John iii. 3, 4, appear in nearly the same form in the writings of Justin Martyr,' both these writers apparently drawing from some common ulterior source.?
Interesting parallels, showing that these ideas were familiar in Alexandrine circles, have been cited from Wisdom of Solomon, ix. 17,18, and from Philo.
"Is it possible for one who pursues sensual objects to inherit incorporeal and divine things?
. He alone deserves those rewards who is inspired from above." 8
"The Words of God move upwards and downwards through the soul incessantly ; when they soar upward dragging it aloft, separating it from all that is mortal, and revealing to its sight those things alone worthy to be seen." 4
1 Apol., i. 61.
2 Comp. p. 80.
8 Quis Rer. Her., 13, 38, kvwbev.
4 Som., i. 23.
APPENDIX
Note MM, p. 225.
The episode of the raising of Lazarus is the most signal instance of the independent sources from which our Gospel was drawn
(unless, indeed, the narrative is accepted as purely imaginary).
Not onlv is it peculiar to this Gospel, it is impossible to find a place for it in the others.
Had a man been raised from the dead " fifteen furlongs from Jerusalem" immediately before the Passover, leading the authorities to "take counsel together for to put him to death," some allusion to the incident, or faint trace of it, at least, would necessarily be found in the closing chapters of Matthew, Mark, or Luke.
This has very naturally led many commentators to reject the incident wholly as history, and give it an allegorical interpretation based upon the Lazarus story in Luke.?
According to their view, the return of Lazarus from the grave, which is prayed for in Luke, comes actually to pass in our Gospel.
The mention of Caiaphas as high priest for that year® is also noted as an unhistorical feature, pointing to an Ephesian origin for the tradition. The Jewish high priesthood never changed yearly, as is here assumed ; but that custom did prevail for the Roman high priests in Asia
Minor.* Notwithstanding these historical difficulties, however, the ingenuousness of the narrative
1 John xi. 18, 53, 56.
2 Luke vi. 20-31; also, x. 38-42.
8 John xi. 49.
4 Pfleiderer, Urchrist., 721, 722; also, Baur, Zvang., 192, etc.; Mommsen, Provinces of Roman Empire, i. 374.
APPENDIX and its realistic touches seem to me to stamp it as quite as genuine as any of the New Testament miracles.
It must take its place with the rest, as the mythical reflection of some actual incident preserved in Alexandrian or Ephesian tradition and made the vehicle for the author's central theme.
Note NN, p. 233.
John xiv. 16, 26.
The Holy Ghost as member of the Christian Trinity, as indeed the philosophical formula of the Trinity itself, belongs to a still later date than the Fourth Gospel; but these passages show that the separate personifications which are by and by to produce that formula are already becoming familiar.
In this distinction between the Son and the Holy Spirit, which he sends after his departure under the name of Paraclete, lies perhaps the first step towards the final distinction of the second and third persons of the Trinity.
Tertullian seems to claim that he learned this doctrine from his Montanistic faith,t in which case it would follow that this important step in Christian theology was first taken by Montanism.
Schwegler, " Nachapos. Zeitalter," ii. 338, 369 ; Pfleiderer, " Urchristenthum," 728, 766; O. Holtzmann, " Johannes Evangelium," 79.
Note OO, p. 236.
Docetism.
The writer of the Fourth Gospel does not tell us in what sense he 1 Prax. 2.
APPENDIX
regards Jesus as a man.
The phrase "the Word became flesh " does not mean necessarily " became man."
It may mean simply that the Logos assumed temporarily a bodily form for the purposes of his earthly mission, to surrender it as soon as that mission was ended.
There is nothing in the entire Gospel to suggest an actual blending of the divine and human natures.
We might even suppose that this question had not yet suggested itself, and that the writer was quite unaware of any difficulties in the matter.
No human birth is mentioned or assumed; and although the Logos takes human form, he continues to act as a celestial being throughout.
He not only performs miracles and raises the dead to life, he is represented as knowing all things, as seeing into the hearts of men, and as foreseeing from the beginning all that was to occur.
In a word, the human is so completely subordinated to the divine that it can hardly be said to exist except in outward form.
This relation of the divine to the human was soon to become a burning question in the churches ; and the commonest solution of the enigma was to consider the human body of Jesus a mere semblance of flesh and blood, like the angel-forms in the Old Testament.?
This idea was strengthened by the prevailing philosophical notion of the inherent evil or sinfulness of the flesh ; making it impossible to suppose a divine being taking upon himself
POM iid) 25). Gi TAs) Vi. 04's 11, 1,22.
2 Gen, xviii. I, 2; xix. I-3.
APPENDIX an actual body.' In due time this was pronounced a heresy ; and as every heresy must have a name, this was styled Docetism.
The Docetse (Aoxyraé) were those who regarded Christ's body as apparent, not real.
How serious this struggle was, in other words, how near this doctrine came to being accepted as the true explanation of this great mystery, appears from the extraordinary pains taken by all writers of this period to refute it ;? none the less because they were so liable themselves to fall into the same error.'
Tertullian has this heresy constantly on his mind.* Irenzus hardly less.> Clemens Alexandrinus, while repudiating the name, advances views of his own hardly to be distinguished from Docetism.® Origen was scarcely more successful in escaping the heresy."
According to some accounts, the Docetz constituted a distinct sect.
Clem. Alexandrinus traces it to Julius Cassianus as the founder,® while Irenxus seems to think it originated with Saturninus.®
Hippolytus, without naming any founder or source, at1 Philo, De Mund. Opif.,24; Sac. A bel, 28; Fragmenta Ex., xxiv. 13, 17; Ofera, vi. 245.
2 Polycarp, vii. 1; Ignat. adv. Smyrn. 2, 3.
8 Barnabas, xii. 10, " manifested figuratively in the flesh."
Pn Ca7GL 775 wae 9; Prax., 27, 30; Marc. v. 14.
5 iii, 11, 35 iii. 16, 63 iii. 19, 3; V. 14, 33 v. 1, 2.
6 Strom., iii. 13.
Comp. vi. 9.
SPA Hihy te OBS soy, 1,31; Cels., i. 32, 333 ii. 9, 233 iv. 15; vi. 77.
8 Strom., iii. 13.
® i. 24,2.
Comp. Hipp. vii. 28.
APPENDIX
tributes to the Docete a profoundly metaphysical and abstruse system.!
Whether a sect or not, however, its chief interest for us is simply as one of the most familiar phases under which the Gnostic thought of the day appeared.
It must be confessed that to the ordinary reader of the Fourth Gospel or of Paul's Epistles, Docetism offers the most obvious escape from the zmpasse in which these writings find themselves, by presenting a purely celestial being under the guise of humanity.
Christian theologians of later days have invented various metaphysical deliverances from the dilemma; but the early Christians were not metaphysicians, and can hardly be blamed for understanding language in its plain meaning.
One who could say that "God sent his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh" has no reason to be surprised if his readers understood him as meaning
"the semblance of sinful flesh; " that is, the appearance, not the reality.2, The Docete might fairly be described as those who took the Epistles of Paul and the Fourth Gospel at their word.
Baur, " Christenthum," i. 205-213 ; Hilgenfeld, 'Evang. und Briefe Johan.," 222-248 ; Weizsacker,
" Apos. Age," i. 143; ii. 238; Réville, "Orig. de l'Episcopat," i. 451.
Note PP, p. 237.
Date and Authorship of Fourth Gospel.
The origin of the Fourth Gospel 1 Hipp. viii. 8, etc.; x. 16.
Comp. Baur, Christenthum, i.
205-207.
2 Rom. viii. 3; also, Phil. ii. 7, 8.
APPENDIX is as obscure as that of the other three. For years, as is well known, it was regarded as the work of the Apostle John; but the moment the question began to be critically studied, this tradition was found to be merely a second century conjecture, with little internal or external evidence to support it.
That the Apostle John, as represented in the New Testament, calling down fire from heaven upon the Messiah's foes and asking for a place of authority in the Messiah's kingdom,! should in advancing years become a speculative theologian, versed in the Alexandrine philosophy, has always seemed so intrinsically improbable as to require strong historical proofs to support it, especially as the little that is known of his after career indicates that he continued violently hostile to the ideas represented by the Fourth Gospel.
One early writer represents him as wearing the diadem of a high priest ; another as rushing out of a bathhouse without bathing because he found the heretic
Cerinthus within.?
Strangely enough, this same Cerinthus was supposed, in certain quarters, to have been the true author of both Gospel and Revelation ; so little reason was there for John, if really the author of either, to have considered him a heretic.?
The reasons for believing that if John wrote the Revelation he could not have written the Fourth Gospel also were so clearly stated by 1 Luke ix. 49-54; Mark x. 35-37.
2 Euseb., Hist. Lcc., iii. 31, 3; Iren. iii. Bh dlp 8 Euseb., Hist. Ecc., vii. 25, 2; Epiph., Her., li. 2:
APPENDIX
Dionysius 1600 years ago that they need hardly be urged afresh.1
As it happens, the external evidence is as little favorable to the apostolic authorship of the book as the internal.
If really written by John, the beloved disciple, we should naturally look for a frequent use of it by Christian writers from the earliest time, and expect to find it treated with the special reverence or confidence due to so high a source.
So far is this from being the case, however, that the earlier writers known to us might have written exactly as they have, had this Gospel been wholly unknown to them, or its authorship at least unguessed. Neither Clemens Romanus, Polycarp, Ignatius, Barnabas, the author of the " Shepherd of Hermas," or of "The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles," once mentions the Fourth Gospel or its author, or once makes a clear citation from it.
There are vague resemblances of word or phrase, it is true, but nothing that might not have been drawn from the prevailing thought or phraseology of the time, and no single quotation which claims the Apostle John as its authority."
Turning to the writers of the middle of the century, Papias, as will be remembered,®? makes no reference to our Gospel, so far as his writings are known to us, though mentioning Mark and Mat1 Euseb. vii. 25.
2 For passages from these writers resembling the Fourth Gospel, see Holtzmann, Z7z/ezt., 465, 406.
3 Pp. 8-17.
304, APPENDIX thew, and perhaps quoting from the First Epistle of John.2
Marcion is equally silent; though the Fourth Gospel, had he known it and known it as the work of an Apostle, would have served his purposes far better, and given higher sanction to his doctrines, than the Gospel of Luke which he uses."
Still more significant is the silence of Justin Martyr.* Here is a writer who has in his hands certain
"Memoirs of the Apostles," which must have included whatever Gospel records were in common vogue at that time, and who cites from these freely, yet who never mentions the Fourth Gospel nor quotes from it, nor once appeals to the Apostle
John as his authority.
One or two passages suggest the Fourth Gospel dimly ; but they are not given as quotations, and may equally well be taken from other sources, or may be original with Justin himself.
The passage concerning regeneration, already quoted,' certainly bears a strong resemblance to our Gospel,® but on careful examination, as we have seen, the differences are quite as striking, supposing that Justin had the Gospel passage before him or in his mind.
Commentators who compare these extracts confess themselves in doubt which writer is borrowing from the other, or whether both are not drawing from some older original.
In any other case we should say at once that both writers probably have some familiar say1 Euseb., Hist. Ecc., iii. 39, 17.
2 Pp. 92-94.
8 Pp. 70-81.
4 Apol.,i. 5; Trypho, 88. eee So:
6 John iii. 3-5.
APPENDIX
ing of Jesus in mind which was circulating in different forms, or to which each gives the shape best suited to his special purposes.
That a writer like Justin, if able to fortify his teachings by the firsthand authority of an Apostle of the Lord, should hesitate for any reason to do so seems the least likely supposition of all.
He repeatedly refers, as occasion demands, to the " Apostles of the Lord ;" why should he forget in the present case to tell us that he is using the very language of the beloved disciple?
If there is any instance in literature where an author's silence is conclusive, it is here.
If it does not prove that the Fourth Gospel was still unwritten, it shows clearly that it was current at best as a private document in limited circles, and was either unknown to writers like Marcion and Justin, or thought not important enough to be quoted.
The Gnostic writers of the century, especially Basilides and Valentine, are often cited as using
John's Gospel freely ; but they lose all weight as witnesses, as the works of master and disciple are in each case avowedly mixed by the Fathers who quote them."
1 See Hipp., Phzlos., vii. 22, 27, where are citations from John i. 9; ii. 4, ascribed to Basilides ; while vii. 20 shows that Basilides and Isidorus his scholar, with others of the sect, are quoted by Hippolytus indiscriminately.
Pz/os., vi. 35, compared with vi. 21, 29, 32, 34, show that the same is true of the references to Valentine. Comp. Scholten, Dze
Gltesten Zeugnisse, 65-68; Martineau, Seat of A uthority, 196, 197-
APPENDIX The first mention of our Gospel is found in the following passage from Irenzus, written not before the year 175.'
"Afterwards (Matthew, Mark, and Luke having written their Gospels), John the disciple of the Lord, the same that had leaned upon his breast, himself published the Gospel while living at Ephesus in Asia."?
Almost contemporaneously with this, Theophilus, Bishop of Antioch, in a treatise written for a personal friend, quotes the verse, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God," * as written by "John ;" and although he does not say what John, and there were other ancient authorities of the same name, we have little reason to doubt that he means here John the Apostle.* About the same time, or somewhat later, the ancient canon of Scripture, called the Muratori
Fragment,' describes the Fourth Gospel as " that of John, one of the disciples."
John is described as repeating the entire narrative to the " disciples and bishops," who had entreated him for his personal recollections.° Tatian may also be mentioned here,' who attempted to bring the various fugitive
Gospels into a single narrative, and seems to have 1 Harnack, after a very exhaustive examination, fixes the date at 181-189.
Chron., i, 320.
2277. Bh 7.
3 John i. 1.
4 Autolycus, ii. 22.
> Various dates assigned, from 170 to 210.
6 Canon Muratori, i.
™ Probably between 160 and 180; Harnack, Chron., i.
289.
APPENDIX
included the Fourth Gospel among his authorities.1
The most important of these witnesses is, of course, Irenzeus ; and as he more than once speaks of the Apostle John as author of our Gospel, without intimating any doubts in the matter, this would show that by 175 a. D. the Gospel had been known long enough, in that circle of churches, at least, for its authorship to have passed beyond the stage of controversy.
It has been urged, also, that Irenzus's personal acquaintance with Polycarp, who had himself been instructed by John and other disciples of the Lord," makes his testimony almost decisive in the matter, as if coming to us from the very inner circle of the Apostles.
When we consider, however, that his intercourse with Polycarp was that of a young boy with an aged man, and that he has trusted wholly to his memory for his reminiscences,® and, moreover, that Irenaeus nowhere intimates that his ideas about the Fourth
Gospel come from Polycarp, but suggests a very different source,' we see plainly how much weight is to be ascribed to this testimony.
It is from precisely the same source, we must remember, that Irenzeus reports the strange saying of Jesus previously quoted,® together with another still more startling fact that Jesus lived to be more than forty years of age, and indeed quite into old age.® When we 1 See p. 102.
2 Tren. iii. 3, 4; Euseb. v. 20, 5-7.
3 Euseb. v. 20, 7. se UBL, GUI Cos DAE, Tei te 9 tty By Gp
APPENDIX think for a moment of the effect upon Christian chronology or upon the narratives of Acts of supposing Jesus to have survived beyond the middle of the century, we can estimate the exact value to be attached to Irenzeus's reminiscence of Polycarp and his companions.
All we can fairly say is that at that date (175) our Gospel was ascribed to John, and must have been written long enough to have made this belief seem credible.?
It should be said that the account given in this volume of the character and origin of our Gospel would accord quite as well with the earlier years of the second century, when Gnostic ideas were still fresh and undefined, as with any later period; if only there were any signs of its being in vogue at that time.
The result of such investigations as the above seems to me to be, not necessarily to fix a very late date for the Gospel, but rather to show the futility of trying to fix any year or decade for writings of this kind.
Modern critics, while on the whole inclining to place the Gospel early in the century, yet vary very largely in the dates which they assign.
Weizsacker, while pronouncing it impossible for any Apostle to have written the Gospel, substituting for the living Jesus he had known
1 In Asia Minor the point seems to have been still a mooted one, as one body of Christians, the Alogi, believed the Gospel to have been written by Cerinthus, an early Gnostic.
Epiph. li. 3.
The opinions which prevailed on this point in the fourth century can be inferred from Euseb., Hist. Ece., ill. 23, 24.
APPENDIX
the incarnate Logos, yet thinks it written soon after John's death, by some disciple of John, eager to _ vindicate that Apostle's authority.'
Pfleiderer holds that it was written between the time of BarCochba? and that of Justin.*?
Hilgenfeld thinks the author stood midway between Valentine and Marcion, receiving his doctrine of the Paraclete from the agitation which was soon to produce Montanism, 7. ¢., about 150.4.
O. Holtzmann puts the date at 1oo-135.5
Schwegler, 125-150.° Jiilicher places it before Justin, too-125.".
Weiss thinks the writer a contemporary of Clemens Romanus, go-100.° The most elaborate attempt among recent critics to fix the exact date of our Gospel is by Harnack, who believes the author to have been not the Apostle, but the Presbyter John mentioned by Papias, who became early confused with the Apostle.° From the fact that Papias makes use of z /ofn, which Harnack regards as virtually a companionpiece of the Fourth Gospel," and that Irenzeus gives a quotation from the Gospel as if coming from "the Presbyters," " he assigns both Gospel
1 Apos. Age, ii. 206-214.
2 John v. 43; xi. 48.
8 Apol., i. 61.
A.D. 135-150.
Urchrist., 777:
4 Evang. und Briefe Fohan., 321.
5 Yohan. Evang., 75) 79:
6 Nachapos. Zeitalter, ii. 3451 Einleit., 247, 250.
8 Lehrbuch, etc. 29, 5879 Euseb., Ast. Ecc., iil. 39, 4-710 Euseb. iii. 39, 1711 Tren. v. 36, 2.
APPENDIX and Epistles to the time of the " Presbyters," 2. ¢., 110-117.1
This involves many assumptions: as that Papias actually cites z /ohn by name, which Eusebius does not assert, and that Irenzeus is always citing Papias when he seems to be giving his own reminiscences from the Presbyters.
But even if we allow that John xiv. 2 was actually cited as a saying of the Lord, in the year 110," it is hardly necessary to call an entire Gospel into being to account for this single verse.
That many of these " Sayings" of the Lord must have circulated long before they were collected into' books is too obvious to be insisted upon.
To assume, when a single verse or single idea is found corresponding with some passage in one or the other of our four Gospels, that it could have come only from those Gospels seems to me a singular reflection upon the mental capacity of the early
Christians.
Why should not men have had their own ideas on religious matters then as well as now?
If certain notions as to the nature of Christ or the character of his mission were afloat, why should we not look for traces of them in various quarters, and thought out on different lines? Take, for instance, the question of the Logos, any mention of which in the second century is commonly supposed to prove an acquaintance with the Fourth
Gospel.
Putting that Gospel from our thoughts, and looking over the writings of the second century, we find many minds at work upon this philo1 Chron., i. 333 0; 655-680.
2 Tren. v. 36, 2.
APPENDIX
sophic theme in many individual ways.
It is not unknown to Christian thinkers of the first century.
Traces of it, in inchoate form, are found in Clemens Romanus.?
The unknown author of the Epistle of Barnabas, though not familiar with the term " Logos," is yet full of the cognate Gnostic ideas,® and sees in Jesus the celestial Son of God, who visits the earth with the preordained purpose to suffer and die, and who must not be ranked as son of David or son of man.* Curious traces of the peculiar phraseology which this theme called into being appear in so dry and circumstantial a treatise as the "Teaching of the Twelve."> The "Shepherd of Hermas " touches the doctrine in a highly mystic and sentimental vein ; declaring that "The Son of God is older than any of his creatures ; so that he was the counselor of the Father in his creation." ° Justin Martyr conceives of the theme in very much the same manner as the Fourth Gospel, yet with marked differences of terminology and thought.
He dwells more on the humanity of the Christ ;" and instead of assigning the Logos abso1 Heb. i. 1-8; iv. 12, 13; Rev. xix. 13.
2 xxvii. 4.
Gi55 Vi.
O3 xX. EO:
* v. 5, 9,10; vi. 7; xii.to.
See Keim, Fesus of Nazara, i.
192.
® ix.,x.
Harnack finds in these chapters no less than twelve reminiscences of the language of the Fourth Gospel.
Lexie, t€., i. 79; © Citity the, 597; 98 the: TL, 9B ibe IY Op 1 Trypho, 100; Apol., i. 35.
APPENDIX lute preéminence, introduces it as only one of several designations of the Son of God, and couples with the Son many " other good angels."*
Athenagoras, writing some time after our Gospel was in circulation (176-180), yet quite unconscious of its existence, deals with the same thought on an even more transcendental plane; conceiving the divine
Logos hardly as a person, rather as an " energizing power in all things," or as simply God's thought in calling matter into life.
Tatian, Justin's scholar, finds the Logos the best term for that "light of God," or "spiritual emanation from the Father," of which he speaks to the Greeks ; ® and is at pains to show that though issuing from God at God's simple will, the Logos yet remains part of God ; that it existed beforehand as Logos-power in Deity, and went forth not by "separation," but by " distribution." * Tatian introduces two or three " Sayings " of Jesus similar to those in the Fourth Gospel, yet nowhere mentions that Gospel, or the Apostle John, and shows no consciousness that a high apostolic authority has been following the same thoughts.
Clem. Alexandrinus, still later, is familiar enough with our Gospel, citing it freely, and mentioning once or twice John the Apostle ;° but goes his own way, and thinks his own thoughts of o
Logos and Gnosis.
1 Apol., i. 6, 63; Trypho, 61, 128.
2 Supplic., 4, 10, 24.
8 Orat. ad Gr@c., 7, 13:
Oe i (0) 6 Strom., v.12; Vi. 15; De Div. Serv., 8,
APPENDIX
Are all these utterances, as we are told, echoes of one single writing, which must be held sacred at any cost, though at the expense of all the thinking of a century; or are they, as they seem, the spontaneous efforts of many thoughtful souls to grasp one of the loftiest ideals which had yet presented itself to the Christian mind?
In the one case, the second century is shown to be alive to the new thought of the hour and receptive of its best truths ; in the other, it is more barren of intellectual and spiritual activity than the twelfth century, or the much maligned eighteenth.
In any case, we may well ask what dignity a Scripture writing gains by having an early date assigned to it, if at the same time it remained for two or three generations unknown or unprized?
In what sense is a book extant before it is read?
If the Fourth Gospel existed at all before the middle of the second century, it could only have been as Shakespeare or Goethe exists to-day for the Khalifa of the Soudan; or as Wheaton and Phillimore exist for the Congress of the United
States.
For a complete résumé of the course of criticism on the Fourth Gospel from the beginning, see Holtzmann, " Einleitung ins N. Test.," 427-475.
Holtzmann himself claims that the Gospel mirrors on its pages the entire century between John the Baptist and the writer, 7 ¢, A. D. 30-130.1
See, also, Baur, "Kanon. Evangelien," 77-389 ; Hilgenfeld, 1 Hinleit. ins N. Test. 451.
APPENDIX " Evang. und Briefe Johannes ; " also, " Die Gnosis und das Johan. Evang. ;" O. Holtzmann, "Johan.
Evangelium ;" Weizsacker, " Apos. Age," ii. 206226; Pfleiderer, " Urchristenthum," 695-786 ; Jiilicher, " Einleitung ins N. Test.," 238-250; Harnack, "Chron.," i. 656-680; Renan, "Life of Jesus," Boston, 1896, pp. 423-478 ; " Authorship of Fourth Gospel," Ezra Abbot, Boston, 1880 $
"Institute Essays," Boston, 1880 (F. Tiffany on Gospel of John) ; J. J. Taylor's "Fourth Gospel,"
London, 1867; Martineau's " Authority in Religion," pp. 189-236; Sanday's " Authorship and Hist. Character of Fourth Gospel," 1872.
INDEX | Ephesus, 3, 4, 204 n.-
ABRAXAS, 163 n.
Acts of Pilate, 74. fons, 170.
Alexandrine Philosophy, 140, 202.
Allegory, 41, 44, 162, 174, 180.
Apocalypse.
See Revelation.
Apologies of Justin, 64, 261.
Aristides, 270.
Aristion, 6, 243.
Eucharist, 52, 220-222.
Eusebius, 9, 18.
Fourth Gospel, 17, 202-240; authenticity, 203, 301-314 ; its relation to Alexandrine School, 202, 295; to Justin Martyr, 80; to Synoptics, 204, 240, 293+ ' Gnosticism, 117-193, 2923 and ChrisBarnabas, Epistle of, 40-43, 49n., tianity, r90-192, r95n.; and Fourth Gospel, 209n., 295; and New Testament, 199-201; name of, 288.
Gospel, first use of name, 47, 50, 77n.; of Egyptians, 48, 49n., 53 0.3 of Hebrews, 9, 10, 81n., 243, 2603 of John, see Fourth Gospel; of Justin, 71-81; Luke, 17,92; Marcion, 92-95; Mark, 11, 12, 13, 175
255.
Basilides, 161-167, 287Bishop, position of in early church, 23, 50.
Canon, 100.
Catholic Church, 193 n.
Christ and God, according to Fourth Gospel, 227Christianity and Judaism, 65, 85 Clement of Alexandria, 189, 287.
Clement of Rome, 21-31; First Epis1g; Matthew, 14-17, 19, 53, 793 Peter, 55-62, 258-261.
Gospels, formation of, 13, 16, 17, 30, 39) 5%> 54 61, 78, 81, 92,973 Synoptic, 273-277; compared with Epistles of Paul, 139; why only four? 103. tle of, 22-30, 248, 249; Second Epistle of, 46-49.
Colossians, Epistle to, 283-286.
Comforter, 181, 232 0.
Hebdomad, 163.
Hebrews, Epistle to, 27, 91 ; Gospel Demiurge, 155, 171, 219 n.
Devil, 171, 219 n.
Diatessaron of Tatian, ror, 271.
Docetism, 58n., 90, 158, 166, 236, of, 9, 10, 81 0., 243, 260.
Hegesippus, 271Hermas, Shepherd of, 43-46.
Hierapolis, 3, 8.
Holy Spirit, 233, 298.
298-302.
Dualism, 87, 1570.
Egyptians, Gospel of, 48, 49 n., 53 0.
Encratites, 159.
Ephesians, Epistle of, 91, 283-286.
Ignatius, Epistles of, 32-35, 250252; Martyrdom of, 31, 32.
INDEX Immortality, 116, r30n.
Irenzus, 103, 307, 117.
Old Testament the only Scriptures, 26, 31.
Oral Tradition, 6, 7.
Jehovah, an inferior God, 87-89, 154.
John the Apostle, First Epistle of, Papias, as Scripture investigator, 320, 241, 245-248; his belief in millennium, 106-123.
Paraclete, 192n., 231-233.
Paul, his conversion, 145; Epistles, 9; Gospel of, see Fourth Gospel; Revelation of, 9, 79n., 123-128, 245, 277-281.
John the Baptist, 209, 210.
John the Presbyter, 6, rr, 243, 245.
Justin Martyr, 63-83, 261; and Fourth Gospel, 80; Conversion of, 64; his Memoirs of Apostles, 77, 262, 263-266.
17, 18, 28, 39, 81n., 91, 138; view of Christ, 139, 148-152, 282.
Peter, First Epistle of, 9; Gospel of, 55-62, 258-261; Preaching of, 13.
Philo, 179-183, 288.
Pistis Sophia, 291.
Pleroma, 170, 175.
Plotinus, 184.
Polycarp, Epistle of, 37, 253-255; Lazarus, 224, 297.
Logia, 5, 14, 15, 16, 98n., 242.
Logos, in Christian writers, 310; Fourth Gospel, 207, 294; Philo, 181.
Lord's Supper, 220-222, Luke, Gospel of, 17, 92.
Martyrdom of, 36, 253.
Presbyters, 6, 8, 24, 243.
Regeneration, in Fourth Gospel, 80, 296, 304.
Resurrection, 116, 145.3 of flesh, 115-121; of Jesus, 145, 1470, Revelation, book of, 9, 79n., 9x, 123Marcion,
83-95, 138, 186n.; his church, 95, 160; Gospel, 92-95, 266-270; Theology, 153-158.
Mark, Gospel of, 11-13, 17, 19.
Matthew, Gospel of, 14-17, 19, 53, 128, 245, 277-281.
Sayings of Jesus, 5, 14, 15, 16, 26, 79° Memoirs of Apostles, 77.
Messianic Kingdom, in New Testa30, 98 n., 242.
Scriptures, Christian, 7, 35, 39, 961043 Jewish, 26, 40, 68, 75, 85.
Sermon on Mount, 79.
Sophia, 170.
Sunday Observances, 82.
Synoptic Gospels, 273-277ment, 111-115, 281; Jewish conception of, 108-110; Paul's view of, 142,144; strange prediction of, I2I.
Millennium, as held by Papias, 106123; general belief of second century, 131 ; origin of belief, 107-110.
Miracles of Fourth Gospel, 222.
Montanism, 192 n.
Muratori Fragment, roo.
Tatian, ror, 271, 306.
Teaching of Twelve Apostles, 49-54, 257.
Tertullian, 86, r18, rox.
Trances, 146, 183.
Transmigration, 119.
Trypho, Dialogue with, 64.
Neo-Platonism, 184.
New Testament, formation of, 100, Nicodemus, 80, 212-214.
Valentine, 167-177, 287.
Ogdoad, 163.
Woman of Samaria, 215.
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