66 greatest outrages that has ever been offered Luke as one regular whole, written, or to that Name which stands upon the title- rather compiled, by a companion of St. page; and surely not less an outrage that Paul; of which the date can be ascertained the buffet on the cheek is only a fillip from with much precision by considerations drawn the glove of a learned professor; that the from the work itself." He knows from the "Away with him!" is a sentimental rhap- 21st chapter that it "was certainly written sody of 460 pages, endurable but for the in- after the siege of Jerusalem, and only a solence of its praise, in which the supposed short time after." The Gospels of St. Matdecadence of a noble moral nature is de-thew and St. Mark have not the same disscribed; that instead of the preference of tinct impress of the author's personality, but Barabbas, we have a patronizing comparison quoting the well known passage of Papias, with Çakya-Mouni. The style is graceful M. Renan infers that in our present gospel and perspicuous; the descriptions of scenery of Mark we have the narrative of facts and are touched with the true hand of an artist. sayings mentioned by Papias, and in our Yet we are able to see why M. Renan's pic- present St. Matthew the collection of sayture can never be accepted by any considerings (2óyta) assigned to him by the same able number of persons in this country as writer. These are important concessions. the true one. Sparks of doubt will be scat- We have narratives that come from the tered into the stubble of many minds, and here and there they will kindle into fresh flame; but this particular torch that scatters them has blazed, and will die out. For us the writer, eloquent and ingenious if you will, aims at too little or too much. If we have here nothing divine, nothing but genius and originality; if he who scattered miracles round him as a sower the seed; who put forth claims such as man never dreamt of before, to be God and the Son of God, be only man, a precursor of Renan, who needs Renan to set him up on the right historical tion of the document itself." basis; and if so much of the Gospel history But these admissions are made to be recallas conflicts with this theory is to be deducted time and circle in which apostles lived. Even the Gospel of St. John is admitted, though with doubt; all of it, says M. Renan, may not have been written by John, but "As a whole this Gospel may have originated towards the close of the first century, from the great school of Asia Minor, which was connected of the life of the Master worthy of high esteem, with John. That it represents to us a version and often to be preferred, is demonstrated, in a manner which leaves us nothing to be desired, both by external evidence and by the examina as pure falsehood, nay, so much of the words ed. With an arbitrary dogmatism he reof Jesus himself, then for a people like us, jects all miracles; that is, he scarcely leaves self-willed indeed and strong, self-indulgent one chapter standing of the very documents yet still at heart veracious, the Bible is closed for ever. Who could spend his heart's best affections upon the fabulous history of a false Messiah? Who could follow out with any real credence the ambidextrous process by which the Christ whom Paul and John preached is here pared down into an ignorant enthusiast of Nazareth, whose strong religious insight does not prevent him from degenerating into an impostor, deceiving and being deceived? on which all his history is to rest. He dismisses at once, in terms which we will spare our readers, all the discourses recorded by John. In order to give a colourable fairness to this treatment of his materials, M. Renan betakes himself to the old theory of a succession of editions of gospels, and that with a heartiness for which, to do him justice, we seldom find a parallel amongst modern writers. The Gospels, he thinks, were at first little cared for, in comparison with oral traditions: In order to arrive at this position, M. Renan is obliged, in the first place, to deal with "There was no scruple about inserting adthe Gospels as no other historical materials ditional matter, about combining them in divers have ever yet been dealt with. He demands ways, and completing the one by the other. from them a firm historical foundation, and The poor man that has but one book wishes it at the same time the utmost plasticity. to contain all that touches his heart. These Strange to say, with M. Renan the Gospels are not regarded as compilations of the second century; they are restored to their place in the first. A certain measure of authority must be re-vindicated to them; otherwise a life of Jesus must be all doubts and negations. The work of Strauss is after all an elaborate attempt to show the life that he did not lead. M. Renan regards St. little books were lent from one to another, each transcribed in the margin of his copy the words and parables which he found elsewhere, and which touched him. And so the most beautiful thing in the world has issued from an obscure and entirely popular process of elaboration" (p. 22). Has M. Renan ever considered what it is which he here asks us to believe? A com "The date of this Gospel can be determined with much exactness by considerations drawn inseparable from the rest of the work, was cerfrom the book itself. The 21st chapter of Luke, tainly written after the siege of Jerusalem, and only a little after. Here then we are upon solid ground, for we are dealing with a work written wholly by the same hand, and of a most perfect unity." A few references to verses in the 21st munity that cared little about books, be- been written at a particular date is comcause the world was coming to an end, pressed into the following sentence :— occupies itself in an incessant labour of borrowing, copying, collating, altering, and mending its books. A community which, even from the first, erred in excess of personal attachment to a leader, and pushed it on to party spirit, took the "things said and done" which bore St. Mark's name, and the Logia which bore St. Matthew's, and without scruple, assimilated, altered, added to them, and forgetful of any claim of Matthew or Mark, made each his little gospel of what touched his own heart most. Was this state chapter are given in the notes, and one to of things possible? There is no kind of the 22d chapter, and from these we dimly record of it; we confess ourselves unable discern an objection to admit that any proto conceive it clearly, even as one supposi phecy of our Lord had really been uttered tion. It is quite opposite to what Papias de- before the event. We wronged the subtlety scribes. The Hebrew Matthew, interpreted of the argument. Thanks to a writer whom into Greek by different readers and instruc- M. Renan quotes elsewhere with approbators, has nothing to do with this incessant tion, M. Nicolas,* we discover that the tampering with and obliteration of an apos- St. Matthew, which describe in one grand words of our Lord, yes, of our Lord, in tle's undoubted work. But give M. Renan all he asks; attribute, and without a smile, cluster of images the national judgment of all this strange literary activity, this free the Jews and the general judgment of the handling of apostolic writings, to the simple, world, show an erroneous belief that these unlettered, reverent Christians of the first two judgments would be contemporaneous, and therefore must have been written before age, and two questions will still need an answer,-How comes it that all the earliest the destruction of Jerusalem, before events records of the formation of the canon give had proved that the two judgments were to us our four Gospels and no more, after be distinct; and yet not much before, for process that must have tended either to we are not to attribute them to prophecy. form a multitude of gospels, or to assimilate In Luke, M. Nicolas finds that the two all to each other, and so merge them into events are distinguished, which shows that one? and secondly, Why, in this supposed but on the other hand, the fresh expectation one of them must have occurred already; age of free gospellers, did not many a variation of the text disappear, which has since that the second would follow directly upon perplexed the minds of harmonists from the it, belongs, as M. Nicolas thinks, to a.time days of Ammonius of Alexandria? When just after the fall of the holy city. Observe the Gospels emerge into the period of writ- the assumptions to which M. Renan does ten Church history, they are the Gospels not even deign to call attention, in his dogthat we have at present; and such difficul. matic self-confidence; there can be no proties as the two genealogies, which even the phecy, the evangelist shaped even the words dullest editor could have removed by a few of the Lord to suit current facts, and the strokes of the pen, are at least a testimony omitting to distinguish as clearly as an to a certain reverence which withheld the almanac the day and hour which no man was hands of editors, if that race existed. But a these considerations trouble M. Renan but little. His purpose requires two things, and he secures them both. There must be some historical basis for his romance; and as the history that is available abounds with mira. cles, is intractably interwoven with miracles, he submerges it a little in a sea of popular editing and copying, in the hope of being able decently to avoid reading what he does not desire to read, in their stained and altered pages. This is not the only instance of unfair dealing with the reader. The argument by which the Gospel of Luke is proved to have| to know, could only proceed from ignorance! Grant these postulates, and we will give you in return the exact date of St. Luke's Gospel "from internal evidence." Meanwhile we have been always taught that the internal evidences led to a concluof the Acts and of the Gospel are the same; sion quite different from this. The author M. Renan admits it. The Gospel, which he admits to be a complete whole, was written before the Acts; the inspired author says so. If then, the Acts ends abruptly with * Etudes Critiques sur la Bible, p. 10. tions. Not more ingenuous is the treatment of the well-known testimony of Papias. We shall be pardoned by some readers if we translate here the whole of it : St. Paul's imprisonment at Rome, because | Matthew, as Papias knew it, was wholly comSt. Luke was writing at that very time, and posed of discourses in Hebrew, of which there so the facts of the history were all told out, were various (assez diverses) translations in cir then the Gospel must have been written be is that neither of Matthew nor of Mark have we culation. . . . That which appears most likely fore the end of Paul's imprisonment; and the exact original editions; that our two first no writer places this so late as the destruc- Gospels are already arrangements in which attion of Jerusalem, or indeed later than A.D. tempts have been made to supply the defects of 65. Not a word does M. Renan say of all one text by the other. Every one wished, in this; these tame facts are overruled by the fact, to possess a complete copy. He who had necessity that there should be no prophecy; only discourses in his copy wished to have the verse, Luke xxi. 24, must have been narrati es also, and the opposite. It is true written after the event. On M. Renan's found to have incorporated almost all the aneothat the Gospel according to St. Matthew is own principles the Gospel was written dotes of Mark, and that the Gospel according about six years before the event. On our to Mark' contains at present many features principles, we would rather consider that taken from the Logia of Matthew."* words ascribed to Jesus were spoken by Here we have a fair example of the way him, than bow to M. Renan's misconcep- in which our author tampers with his materials. This particular passage has been the subject of much controversy. From the days of Schleiermacher every German writer on the Gospels has had his theory about it. And among the opinions that now command "This also," wrote Papias, "the elder said. respectful attention at least is this, that the Mark being the interpreter of Peter, wrote accu- passage gives no ground at all for the sup rately whatever he remembered, yet not in the position that Matthew wrote all the disorder in which Christ either spake or did them. courses and Mark all the Acts of our Lord. For he was neither a hearer of the Lord nor a Logia mean divine utterances, whether of follower. But, as I said, he was afterwards the history or discourse; when the apostle companion of Peter, who preached the gospel speaks of the Jews as having committed to with a view to the profit of his hearers, and not them "the oracles (logia) of God," the with the intention of giving a continuous history Mosaic history cannot be excluded, although of the oracles of the Lord (τῶν κυριακῶν λογίων). Wherefore Mark committed no error in that he" the lively oracles," given to the fathers, wrote some things as they came into his mem- may refer more to the utterances of God ory. For it was his chief aim to omit none of than to the history with which they are enthe things that he had heard, and to deliver twined. As in the Old, so in the New Tes nothing that was false therein. Thus much tament, such a distinction of facts and teachPapias relates concerning Mark. Concerning ings is almost impossible to maintain. Act Matthew he says, Matthew composed his Divine becomes doctrine and doctrine act. oracles (26ya) in the Hebrew tongue, and every Lord answers his own question not by a one interpreted them as he was able." word but a deed: "Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath day? . . . He took him, and healed him, and let him go." The real contrast between the two Evangelists, intended by Papias, consists probably not in "Papias mentions two writings on the acts and words of Christ: (1) a writing of Mark the one recording Logia and the other not; but interpreter, brief, incomplete, not arranged in in Matthew's account being more orderly chronological order, comprising narratives and in arrangement than that of Mark. discourses (exévτan Qaxoévтa) composed after Renan gives no hint of this flaw in his argu the instructions and reminiscences of the apos- ment, which every writer has been aware tle Peter; (2) a collection of sentences (oyia) of. Minor inaccuracies are of less account, written in Hebrew by Matthew. It is certain but that they all look one way; the author that these two descriptions answer tolerably needs for his romance to show that the well to the general features of the two books M. Renan lays great stress upon this passage, as others have done before him. He says: Our M. now called 'Gospel according to Matthew' and Gospels have been altered. The opinion Gospel according to Mark;' the first character- which M. Renan assigns to Papias is not his ized by its long discourses, the second full of at all, but one quoted by him from an older anecdotes, brief even to dryness, barren of dis- source Aristion or John the Presbyter. courses, and somewhat faulty in style. That Mark is not said to have written "briefly," these two works, as we now read them, are ab- nor "incompletely;" on the contrary, he solutely similar to those which Papias read, can-made it his aim to omit nothing." Papias not be maintained; first, because the writing of * Eusebius, Hist. iii. 39. * Pp. 18-20. + Rom. iii. 2. *Acts vii. 38. does not say that the two were "profoundly withheld, has deprived us of the original distinct, and written without any knowledge Gospels? One strong bias sways every of each other." With this supposed original page in the book--the determination that contrast between the two, the subsequent there shall be nothing miraculous in the life approximation also falls to the ground. If of the Lord. This beautiful volume with M. Renan's theory of "every man his own its bursts of family affection, its idyllic deevangelist" be true, and every one who scriptions, its occasional appreciation of what could lay hold upon copies of the two Gos- is good, is tainted by the fixed idea that pels proceeded without scruple to assimilate there shall be no miracle. No bigot for them, the process, we must say, was con- tradition ever held his dogma firmer through ducted with great carelessness and marvel- every inconsistency than does our author lous ill success. The vivid description of the his theory that no miracle is admissible. one demoniac in St. Mark still stands par- A miracle, according to him, has no worth allel with the more succinct account of the until it has been reported upon by a comtwo in Matthew; the first impulse of the mittee of savans appointed by the Governcompilers would have been to remove at ment, who shall have it repeated for them a stroke the seeming discrepancy, and to under new combinations of circumstances, add the colouring of St. Mark to the outline that make delusion and imposture impossiof St. Matthew. On the other hand, St. ble. Right, M. Renan, if the miracle be of Mark still is silent on the greatest of those the nineteenth century, wrought by some discourses which St. Matthew records. What hysterical village girl, with no purpose, were the persons about "who wished to have bound up with no doctrine. But the miracles a complete copy" out of the two, and yet which John and Matthew witnessed, which forgot to adopt the Sermon on the Mount? Paul had experience of, are not such aimless Two very small books, subjected to this wonders. They are the footprints of Him process of active assimilation, still show who has since marched down the high road marks of independence in every chapter, of history with the gospel of love and peace and the background of resemblances throws in his hands. Surely the first of anything out the differences into stronger relief. Had is always a miracle; the first plant is a the object been to produce one gospel out of breach of all previous laws; and the first two,any unskilful hand used freely for a couple animal, and the first man. But it is justified of days, would have produced a more success by its successors: it passes from an outful result than a whole community, work- standing exception to be the first link in a ing as M. Renan supposes, has done. But chain. These gospel miracles are the firstwe repeat that of this process going on in lings of a new order of things. To us, and the earliest time there is not a trace. The we wish we could add to our author, the descriptions of the two eyangelists in this intrinsic purpose of the Lord makes possimuch-vexed passage are such as correspond ble, nay probable, nay passing easy, the exsufficiently with the Gospels as we have trinsic signs and wonders that fell from it: them. The statement as to the want of the food multiplied, the palsied nerves reorder in St. Mark is no more than a criti- stored, even the dead recalled to life, all cism, with which some later harmonists are suit with a scheme for man's uplifting and disposed to agree, and some to differ. The restoration and eternal wellbeing. Withtestimony is very ancient; for Papias him- out the Word of Christ, the acts of Christ self was Bishop of Hierapolis in the first had been hard to comprehend; but with balf of the second century, and the person the Gospels as they are, word and act fortify whom he quotes is older still. We agree each other. Committees of French Philoswith Hilgenfeld, that in calling them "dis-ophers may blunder; we have read the disciples of the Lord," Papias does not neces- cussions about the jawbone at Abbeville, and sarily mean immediate personal disciples. the flint-axes of all too modern make. They But Aristion and John the Presbyter (clear- really could not help us; neither with them ly not identical with the apostle), standing nor without them could we venture an upon the threshold of the second century, opinion upon an isolated marvel. But here, knew of these two Gospels, with distinct the lives and words and works of the characters of their own, already existing. apostles of Christianity go together, and We thank M. Renan for the prominent place proclaim that miracles were possible. he gives to this witness of Papias, for it Was the gospel successful? Did it convert goes far to prove the authority of these two thousands? It carried with it always the accounts of our Lord's earthly life. tidings of a miracle; it never preached anyWhy, then, does our author strive to where but it preached Jesus and the reblunt the force of his own admission by in-surrection. sisting that a process of free alteration, long The author nowhere cautions his readers that the problem of the Gospels is of all lit- tholdt forgot to answer, Where is this book erary questions the most difficult, and most gone, so unique in its authority, so highly needing a circumspect and delicate treat- honoured in the earliest age of our rement. As regards the "synoptic" Gospels, ligion? And upon the whole, nothing is no other books are so like without being perhaps more clear than that there was no identical. Intentional resemblances with such book; for if there had been, would not variations that must equally be intentional Papias have rather told us about that, than meet us on the same page, nay, sometimes about the Gospels of Matthew and Mark ? even in the same verse. Minute peculiari- The way out of this new difficulty Gieseler ties of expression are common to all three. pointed out; the common source to which The diminutive form of a substantive,* the the Gospels owed their resemblance was an double augment, an unusual form of a oral, and not a written work. It was the tense. a peculiar combination of parti- form into which the preaching of the facts cles,§ run through the parallel places in all of the life of our Lord had gradually settled three Evangelists. So far there is no won- during the first few years after the resurder. But that these minute and delicate rection. As the aim of the apostles would coincidences should be found with variations be to preach everywhere one gospel, they equally marked, that three writers who would seek rather than avoid the same take such pains (so to speak) to be at one, modes of expression, and thus the very should so constantly assert their independ- words of their teaching would gradually beence of expression, and of selection of come everywhere the same. The list of events, is a problem that has been found theories would not be complete if we did hard to solve. We have got beyond the not mention the theory of tendency, which day when such theories as those of M. attributed to each Gospel a special party Renan will go down. Scores of critics have aim and bias, turning the simplest and most made the attempt at the solution, and candid history into a covert polemic, now amongst them the theory of two gospels, in favour of Judaic, now in favour of Pauone of discourses and one of facts, assimi-line or universal ideas, and torturing the lated by a perpetual and unlimited trans- most colourless expression into a party infusion, will hardly now find favour. Per- nuendo. One would have thought that critihaps the chief lesson of this great contro- cal perversity could hardly have gone further; versy is one of diffidence. For when men came to account for these striking resemblances by ascertaining the order in which the Evangelists wrote, there was no possible arrangement which did not find a loud advocate. Luke, whom M. Renan ranks without hesitation as one who writes from former materials, selecting and combining them, has been held by no mean authorities to have furnished the original from whence the other two have drawn; but whether Matthew or Mark was the third in the series, on this the authorities differ. The Gospel of Mark has been held up now as the original germ of the two others, now as the latest epitome of them. Even when this line of argument was exhausted, Eichhorn proposed to find the original source common to all three, in some distinct document, now lost. And through twenty critics this hypothesis ripened, until with Bertholdt we are supposed almost to see the little historical manual or text-book, drawn up by authority of all the Apostles at Jerusalem, in the Aramaic language, a copy of which was given to each apostle and teacher as he went forth on his mission; but there will lurk in our mind the distressing question which Ber but a greater refinement was behind. As *Ex. gr. Holtzmann, Synoptischen Evangelien. As |