GOSPELS

.GOSPELS

( a )

From the statement of Papias given above in

65,

Schleiermacher in 1832 first drew the inference

the apostle Matthew had made

Aramaic

a

collection only of the

sayings of Jesus.

Whether this is

what Papias really meant is question-

able, for undoubtedly he was acquainted with the
canonical Mt. and had every occasion to express
himself with regard to this hook as well as with regard
to

If he was speaking of Mt., then he was as

much in error

as

to its original language as he was

as to its author (see

this, however,

is

con-

ceivable enough. That by his logia Papias intended
the whole gospel of Mt., although this contains not
discourses merely but narratives

as

well,

is

not by any

means impossible (see

65,

n.

3).

In Greek, logia,

it is true, means only things said

the angel

which spake Rom.

32

oracles,’ etc.

)

but if Papias

took fhe word as

a

translation of Heb.

which he

readily have done,

on

his assumption of

a

Semitic original-then for him it meant ‘events in

general.’

( b )

The actual state of the case in Mt. and Lk., how-

ever, furnishes justification for the hypothesis to which
scholars have been led by the words of Papias, even
though perhaps only by

a

false interpretation of them.

A great number, especially of the sayings of Jesus
which are absent from Mk., are found in Mt. and Lk.
in such

a

way that they must be assumed to have come

from a common source.

If these passages were found

in absolute agreement in both gospels it would be
possible to believe that Lk. had taken them
Mt., or Mt. from ‘Lk. ; but in addition to close general
agreement the passages exhibit quite characteristic
divergences.

(c)

I n point of fact the controverted question as to

whether it is Mt. or Lk. who has preserved them in their
more original form must be answered by saying that in
many cases it is- the one, in many other cases the other.

Secondary in Lk for exam le are : 1 2 4 a s against Mt. 10

(prayer for the Holy Spirit), Lk.

against Mt. 2323 (the

generalisation ‘every herb

or 1144 the mis-

understanding that the

are like‘

because

they

not,’ and not because, a s

in

Mt.

23

they are

outwardly beautiful but inwardly noisome.

I n

Lk.

Mt.

5 38-48 Lk. makes love of one’s enemy the chief considera-

tion and introduces it accordinglyat the beginning

H e

betrays his dependence, however, by repeating it in

35 because

in the parallel passage Mt.

in

source), it is met with

in

that position. Cp

a.

On

the other hand

in

1326

(we did eat and

fits better with the

in which Jesus lived

Mt.

(Lord

ord

we not prophesy?).

I n Lk.

the

‘respect the person’

lit. ‘accept

the face ’)is retained, whilst in Mk. 12

22

16

the

changed.

On

Lk. 8

6

(other fell

on

the

rock)

see

end on

a.

I n

the Lord’s Prayer the text of Mt.

has

is distinctly the more original on the other hand

the clauses which are not found in Lk. may have been

afterwards (see

and the maxim in

also

L

ORD

’

S

P

RAYER

).

A

conclusion-the existence of

a

source used

in common by Mt. and Lk. but different from

indicated by the doublets, that is to
say the utterances which either Mt.

or

Lk.,

or

both, give, in two separate

two sources.

( a )

In the majority of cases it can be observed that

in Mt. the one doublet has

a

parallel in Mk. and the

other in Lk. I n these cases it is almost invariably found

I n what follows, we use the word ‘logia’ (because it has

become conventional) in both senses (‘sayings’ alone, and ‘say-
ings and narratives’) throughout, even if the authors to
we have occasion to refer, prefer another word. This is specially
desirable when they simply say ‘the source,’

we must allow

for the possibility of several sources for the synoptic gospels.

In Mk. there are only two passages that can be called

(‘if any man would be first

and

(‘who.

soever would become great

on which see

;

for 9

I

there be some

and

(‘gospel first preached’) can

hardly be so classed.

For

doublets cp Hawkins 64.87, Wernle

(in neither is

the

enumeration complete).

that in the parallel with Mk. not only the occasion b u t
also the text

is

in agreement with

and in the parallel

with Lk. occasion and text are in agreement with Lk.
Similarly,

wherever there is

a

doublet, is found t o

agree in the one case with Mk. and in the other with Mt.

If

it must be conceded that in many cases the agreement

of text is not very manifest, this is easily accounted for
by the consideration that the evangelist (Mt. or Lk.)
in writing the text the second time would naturally
recall the previous occasion

on

which it had been

The passages, however, in which the observation made
above holds good are many

To

account

for

them without the theory of two sources would, even
apart from these special agreements, be extraordinarily
difficult,-indeed possible only where an epigrammatic
saying fits not only the place assigned to it in what is
assumed to be the one and only source, but also the
other situation into which the evangelist without follow-
ing any source will have placed it.

I n some places indeed this would seem to be what we must

suppose to have actually happened, as we are unable to point to
two

different sources.

So

self shall be abased’)

;

or the quotation from

Hos.

66 (mercy n o t

sacrifice) in

(which, moreover ‘is not very ap-

propriate in either case).

It must be with

intention

that the preaching with which, according to Mk.

(the time

;

Jesus began his ministry is in

already

assigned to

Baptist or the binding and loosing

136) to

Peter. On the other hand, the answer

I

know you not’ which

follows the invocation ‘Lord, Lord’ in

(many will

say) and 25

(five virgins) is associated with a different narra-

tive in the two cases and cannot therefore, properly, he regarded
a s an independent

so also

with the threatening

with

fire

But, in other cases, such

a

repetition of

a

saying,

on

the part of a n evangelist, without authority for it in
some source in each case, is all the more improbable
because Lk. often, and frequently also Mt. (see,

or the omission of Mk.

8

38

9

26

after

Mt.

1626

on account of Mt.

1033).

avoids introducing

for

the second time

a

saying previously given, even when

the parallel has it, and thus

a

doublet might have been

expected

as

in the cases adduced a t the beginning

of

this section.

Were this not

so,

we should expect that Lk.,

before him

ex

hypothesi

the same sources as Mt., would

in every case,

or

nearly every case,

a

doublet

wherever Mt. had one and vice

As

a

matter

of

fact only three or

sayings

are

doublets in Mt. as

well

as

in Lk. ; on the other hand, although the

derivation of

a

passage from the logia

is

not always free

from doubt, we are entitled to reckon that Lk. has seven
doublets peculiar to himself, and Mt.

many.

(6)

W e are led

to

the same inference-that two

sources were employed-by those passages common to
the three Gospels in which Mt. and Lk. have in common
certain little insertions not to be found in Mk.

as, for

example, Mt.

as compared

with Mk.

or

Mt.

(baptize with

as

compared with Mk.

at

the close of which

passage both even have in common the words and with
fire

Another very manifest transition from

one source to another is seen in the parable of the mustard
seed. This

is

given in the form of

a

narrative only in

Lk.

in Mk.

on the other hand, in the

form of

a

general statement.

Now, Mt.

has in

For example Lk. 11 33 (lamp under bushel) agrees much

more closely with 8

16

(under bed)

with its proper parallel

in

Mt.

5 1 5 ;

but Lk.

agrees just a s closely with its proper

parallel in Mk.421 as it does with Lk.1133.

C p further,

especially, Mk. 35 (save life, lose

9

24

from

which the other two parallels, Mt.

17

33, are

guised

common

only by the use of

instead of

(whosoever

everyone

Mt.

or

Mk.

(last.

or’

11

:

(faith‘as

17

6

or Mt.

21

Mt.

7

(ask) = Lk. 11

or

Mk. 4

Lk.

12

(covered up

or

Lk.129

(denieth,

1624;

Lk. 1427 (bear

GOSPELS

GOSPELS

the

one half narrative, in the other general state-

ment.

In

short, the so-called theory of two sources,-that is

of the employment by Mt. and Lk. of Mk. (or original
Mk.) on the one hand, and of the logia on the
ranks among those results of gospel criticism which
have met with most general acceptance.

If the original Mk. was more extensive than the

canonical, possibly it contained things which,

on

another assumption, Mt. and Lk.
might he supposed to have taken

from the logia.

In

particular has

this been asserted of the centurion of

Capernaum (Mt.

85-13

Lk.

of the detailed

of the temptation (Mt.

41-13),

and

also of the Baptist's message (Mt.

11

2-19

Lk.

the logia being held to have been merely

a

of

discourses.

At present it

is

almost universally con-

ceded that in any such collection the occasions of the
discourses included must also have been stated in nar-
rative form.

This once granted, it is no longer possible

to deny that, in certain circumstances, even narratives
of some length may have been admitted, if only they
led

up

to

some definite utterance of Jesus.

B. Weiss

and, after him, Resch

have

even carried this thesis

so

far

as

to maintain that the

logia formed

a

complete gospel with approximately

as

many narratives

as

discourses.

A definite separation of the portions derived from the

logia might be expected to result from linguistic investi-
gation.

B.

Weiss has in point of fact sought with

great care to determine the linguistic character of the

logia hut his argument is exposed to a n unavoidable
source of error, namely this, that the vocabulary of the
logia can be held to have been definitely determined

only when we have already, conjecturally, assigned

definite passages to this source.

I n so far

as

this provisional assignment has been a t fault, the
resultant vocabulary will also have to be modified.
Such

a

can never be accepted otherwise

than conditionally-for this reason, besides the reasons
indicated above, that it would be necessary first to de-
termine whether it is Mt. or Lk. that has preserved the
logia most faithfully.

The task, moreover, is rendered

difficult, by the fact that Mt. and Lk. by no

means adopt their sources without modification

they

alter freely and follow their own manner of speaking
instead of that of their source, or allow themselves to
be influenced by Mk. even in pieces borrowed from the
logia and

vice

versa.

It

is specially interesting

to

notice that Titius,

a

disciple of B.

Weiss, expressly acknowledges the unprovahleness of his

master's hypothesis

as

a

He calls it 'an equation with

many unknown quantities. Nevertheless he thinks he

can

prove it 'quite irrefragably' if

it

he restricted

to

the discourses.

This has theappearance

of

sounder method, for greater unanimity

prevails as

to

the extent

of

the discourses which belonged

to

the logia (Wernle,

91 187).

At the same time, even when this

restriction

has

been made, the difficulties that hare been urged

hold good, and

all

the

more

so

since

at

the

outset assigns

too

large

an

extent

to

the logia and also, what

is

more serious,

in

his verbal statistics makes

a

number of assumptions of

a

kind

that are quite usual but

also

quite unjustifiable.

It was

there-

fore

an exceedingly hold step when (amongst others)

B.

Weiss

Wendt

(Die

First

Part,

Resch

(Die

and Blair

Gospel,

1896)

printed the logia,

or a

source

similar to them

Hawkins

came

to

the conclusion that

linguistic methods no trustworthy separation of

the

logia-

portions could

he

made.

T h e divergences between Mt. and Lk. in the

common

to

the two but not shared bv Mk.

See further

.

-

Sp

eci

a

l

(I

a)

are often

so

great that it be-

comes a question whether both have
been drawing. from one and the same

source.

If it be assumed that they were, then one

or

other of them, or both, must have treated the source
with

a

drastic freedom that does not accord well with the

verbal fidelity to their source elsewhere shown by them

I t

is

the Ebionitic passages, chiefly, that

come

into

consideration ,here. According

to

Lk. derived them from some source.

Now, this source

must have had many

in common with the

logia

pre-eminently, the beatitudes,

as

also Lk.

(lend, hoping for nothing again);

1 1 4 1

('give for

alms')

('sell

. . .

and give alms').

In

it has further been shown to he probable that it

was

not Lk. himself who was enamoured of Ebionitic ideas.
All the more must they already have found

place in

the edition of the logia which he had before him.

( b )

The hypothesis of a special source for Lk. must

not, however, be stretched to the extent of assuming
that everything Lk. has from the logia had come to

him only in Ebionitic form.

Much of his logia material

is free from all Ebionitic tendency, yet it is not likely
that the Ebionitic editor who often imported his ideas
into the text

so

strongly would have left other passages

wholly untouched. Slight traces of an Ebionitic

perhaps can be detected in Lk.

whosoever

renounceth not

all'),

(bring in the poor) (cp

13

bid the poor),

6

36

(

merciful,

18

(

sell

all,'

19

8

(half of my goods). But that Lk. had

access to, and made use of, the unrevised logia

also

can hardly be denied.

(c)

All the more pressingly are we confronted with

the question whether

Ebionitic source of Lk. con-

tained also those passages which are peculiar to Lk.
This

is

at once probable

as

regards the parables

in

fact, for the parable of the

Rich Man and Lazarus, a t least

its Ebionitic shape

without the appendix

vv.

27-31

see

it is possible to conjecture a n original form of

a

purely ethical nature which characterised the Rich

Man

as

godless and Lazarus

as

pious, and thus

a

place (along with the beatitudes)

the logia, and

may have come from the mouth of Jesus. On the other
hand, such pieces as the parable of the Prodigal Son

of the Pharisee and the Publican

of

the unprofitable servants

on account of their

wholly different theological complexion, cannot possibly
be attributed to the same Ebionitic source.

For this

reason alone, if for no other, it becomes impossible to
suppose that Lk. had

a

special source for his account

of the journey of Jesus through Samaria

( 9

14)

this narrative, too, has some things in common with
Mk., others with Mt.

W e are

led to the con-

clusion,

so

far

as

Lk. is concerned, that he had various

other sources besides Mk.

(or

original

con-

clusion that is, moreover, in

with his own

preface.

Short

Narratives.

-Going much beyond the

results embodied in the foregoing section

Schleiermacher,

as

early

as

1817, assumed

a

series of quite short notes

on

detailed

events which, founding (incorrectly)

on

Lk.

1

I

n.

he called 'narratives'

On the analogy of

OT

s i n

this might be called the

fragment-hypothesis.' That

present gospels should.

have been directly compiled from such fragmentary
sources, as Schleiermacher supposed, is not conceivable,
when the degree in which they coincide in matter and
arrangement is considered

116

a ) .

As subsidiary

sources, however, or

as

steps in the transition fi-om

merely oral tradition to consecutive written narrative,

The two forms

in

which

these

are found admit

of

explanation

most easily if

we

assume

that

' i n

spirit'

;

Mt.

5

3)

and 'righteousness

Mt.

56)

were

originally

absent. The Ebionitic source-and, with

it,

in

this

case preserved the

tenor

of the

words with the greater fidelity

hut

Mt.,

his insertions, has better preserved the religious and

ethical meaning in which unquestionably Jesus spoke the words

-perhaps also by the addition of unambiguously moral

utter-

ances such as

(pure

in

heart, peacemakers) which with

equal certainty

can

be attributed to Jesus, and

7

(mourn

merciful). Both these

are

wanting in

Lk.,

although they

capable

of

used in

an

Ebionitic sense if he had chosen

to

take meek

in

the sense

of Ps. 37

and

'

merci-

ful

in that

of Lk.

11

41.

1856

[Cp

GOSPELS

the possibility of such brief notes can by no means be

disregarded (see

d ) .

Still,

to

show that they ex-

isted is by no means easy.

(6)

The

'-Nevertheless, the belief

is

continually gaining ground that into Mt.

24,

into

Mk.

13,

and (only with greater alterations) into

Lk.

21

a work often called the 'Little Apocalypse' has been

introduced.

The evidence of this is found

the first instance in

the want of connection.

'These things'

in Mt. 2433

21

coming as the phrase does after 71.31,

refer to the end

of the world; yet originally it must have

the pre-

monitory signs of the approaching end, for it is said that when

the beholders see

'these things,' then they are to know

that

'nigh.

Lk. 21 29-31) is not in its proper place here. On the other hand
Mt.

comes appropriately enough after

Mt.

Mk. 13

speaking as does of a tribulation,' does not come

in well after the discourse about false Messiahs and false prophets
in

Mt.

parallel to which in Lk. is

actually found

another chapter

23

would be ap-

propriate after Mt. 24

13

where

the connection is excellent.

21

occurs also in Mt.

in a form which, a s suiting

Jewish circumstances better

(10

'in their synagogues they will

scourge

must be regarded a s the more original

;

it is to

be regarded a s

of place in chap. 24. On the other hand,

abomination of desolation,' Mt.

comes

fittingly after

7171.

As for

71.

5

it belongs, so far a s itssubstance a t least

concerned, to the passage,

23-28, which we have already

seen isoutofplacehere.

not

fit well with

15

Mk. 13 14) where only a desecration,

not a destruction, of the temple is thought of (otherwise in Lk.

21 20-'when y e shall see Jerusalem compassed'-on which
see

Regarded a s a unity, accordingly, the passage

would consist of Mt.

15-22

14-20

As

adiscourse of Jesus it is prefaced by v.

21

introduction which anticipates v. go-and if

you will h y v .

and

is

brought to a

close in

35 ( = Mk.

21

33).

In contents, however, the passage is quite alien from

Jesus' teaching as recorded elsewhere, whilst on the

hand it

closely related to other apocalypses.

I t will, accordingly, not be unsafe to assume that an
apocalypse which originally had a separate existence
has here been put into the mouth of Jesus and mixed up
with utterances that actually came from him.

The

most appropriate occasion for a prophecy concerning

a n abomination about to be set up in the temple

(24

would be the expressed intention

of

the emperor

in 40

threw the whole Jewish

into the greatest excitement-to cause a statue

of

himself to be erected

The origin of this apoca-

lypse will best be placed somewhere between this date

and'the destruction of Jerusalem, which is not yet pre-
supposed in Mt.

24

Whether it was composed by a

Jew or by a Christian is an unimportant question (see,
however,

( c )

other minor sources that

have been conjectured mention may here be made
of the so-called anonymous gospel found by Scholten
in

19-22

.other words, in the main, the passages mentioned at

the beginning of

of the book which is held

to

be cited by

Lk.

under the title of 'Wisdom'

( d )

Buddhistic

(

1882;

' 8 4 ;

'97) has not actually

attempted to draw

up

a gospel derived from Buddhistic

material

but the parallels he has adduced from the

life of Buddha are in many places very striking, at least
so

far as the story of the childhood of Jesus is

and his proof that the Buddhistic sources are

5 9 ;

10;

8

I.

end, p.

To the

(Mt. 1

IS

), the annunciation to Mary

(1

the star (2

the gifts (2

(Lk.

the incident a t twelve years of age (Lk. 2

must be added

also the presentation in the temple; and here

it

is worthy

of

remark that such a presentation was not actually required either
by the passage

(Ex.

13

cited in Lk. (2 22-24)

or

yet by

t h e

passages Nu. 3

46

18

Ex.

22

See

I

SR

A

EL

96.

older than the Christian must be regarded as irre-
fragable.

The

Problem is

so

complicated that

few students, if any, will now be found who believe a

solution possible by means of any one
of

the hypotheses described above with-

out other aids. The need for combining
several of them is felt more and more.

Most frequently, we find the borrowing-hypothesis com-

bined with the sources-hypothesis in one form or another,
and, over and above, an oral tradition prior to all written
sources assumed. Instead of attempted detailed accounts,
we subjoin graphic representations of some combina-
tions which

are

not too complicated and which bring into

characteristic prominence the variety that exists among
the leading hypotheses.

( a )

Hilgenfeld combines with the

thesis the further assumption of a
original gospel in two successive stages,

Hebrew and Greek

(so

also Holsten, only

with omission of the first stage),

(6)

The simplest form of the

hypothesis was argued for

\

by Weisse in 1838

in

\

an original

Mk.

along with

1856, however, heassumed

Mt

original

Mk.

alongside of the

Z.

Weisse

logia was postulated as

a

source

in

simple form by Holtzmann down to

The borrowing-hypothesis

in its purest state-the theory,
namely, that

one

canonical gospel

had been

used

in the preparation

O f

t h e

-

c

(a).

Holtzmann

was thus

(before 1878).

As

a more complicated

form

we

single out that of

(as

described by Feine,

'85, p.

Inaddition

to Holtzmann's scheme he
assumed a borrowing from

canonical

Mk.

by

and

also an Ebionitic redaction
of the logia

123).

( d )

Weiss reverts al-

most to the hypothesis

of

an original gospel.

He

postulates for the logia
(which he therefore prefers

to call the

ratives as discourses

126

c).

( e ) Simons essentially simplified the

e.

Simons.

sources by (what

Lh

theory of two

all the hypotheses hitherto enu-
merated had avoided doing)

a

borrowing by

Lk.

from

Mt.

Holtzmann from 1878

combined this last with the
hypothesis

of

an original

Mk.

Lh

Holtzmann (1878).

a).

(g) The latest form of the two-source-theory is ihat

propounded by Wernle. Whether Mt. and Lk. severally

Only the parable

of

the Wicked Servant

(Mt.

and,

indirectly, the narrative of the end of the betrayer (Mt. 27 3-10)
are affected

the resemblance to the story of Ahikar; cp

J.

Harris

The

'Did

commit

in

and

see

I

.

1858

GOSPELS

GOSPELS

used one or more subsidiary sources he leaves an open
question. With regard to the logia he assumes that
before they were used by Mt. and Lk. they had under-
gone additions, transpositions, and alterations-yet not
to too great an extent-at the hands of a transcriber
or possessor.

T h e copy which Mt. used had been

worked over in a Judaistic spirit

that used

by Lk. was somewhat shorter.

Mk. was acquainted

with the logia, but did not use them; he merely took
them for granted as already known and on that account
introduced all the fewer discourses (against this see

g.

Wernle.

148).

Our present Mk. is different from that used

by Mt. and Lk. but only by corruption

of

the text,

not by editing.

I t

is

the agreement between Mt. and Lk. as compared

with Mk. that tries any hypothesis most severely, and

it is with reference to this point that
all the most important modifications
in the various theories have been
made.

W e proceed to test the lead-

ing hypotheses by its

on the presupposi-

tion that neither Mt. was acquainted with

nor Lk.

with Mt.

( a )

T h e hypothesis

of

an original Mk. is in

a

general

very well fitted to explain the agreement in question

in so far as canonical Mk. is secondary to Mt. and Lk.

if, on the other hand, our Mk.

has

elements of

originality, as we have seen to be the case with

of his exact details, then one will feel inclined, in

accordance with

3,

to suppose that it was

a

younger

copy of Mk. that Mt. and Lk. had access to.
fact, however, sometimes the one condition holds good,
sometimes the other.

It is in this textual question, over

above the question already

118)

spoken

of

as to

its extent, that the difficulty

of

the original-Mk. -hypo-

thesis in its present form lies.

If

certain passages which are found in Mk.

occurred also in the logia, then Mt. and Lk. may have
derived their representation, in

so

far as it differs from

Mk., from the logia, provided that the logia was unknown
to

Mk.

That there were passages common to Mk. (an

original Mk. is not required when we approach the
question as we do here) and the logia is at least
shown by the doublets, and is by no means excluded
even where there are no doublets (see

6

and

Wernle,

One, however, can hardly help think-

ing that the great degree of verbal coincidence which
nevertheless is seen between Mk. on the one hand and
Mt. and Lk. on the other comes from oral tradition. Thus

a

very high degree of confidence in the fixity of the oral

narrative type

115)

is

required, and this marks one of

the extreme limits to which such hypotheses can be
carried without losing themselves in what wholly eludes
investigation.

But, moreover, the logia must be con-

ceived of as a complete gospel if we are to suppose that
it contained all the sections in which Mt. and Lk. are
in agreement against Mk.

Hawkins (pp.

reckons that out of

58

sections which almost in their

whole extent are common to the three evangelists there
are only 7 where Mt. and Lk. are not in agreement
against Mk., and in

of

the remaining 51 he finds

agreements which are particularly marked and by no
possibility admit of explanation as being due to
chance.

(c)

According to

B.

Weiss

not

only Mt. and Lk.

but

In actual

also Mk. made use of the logia

over and above,

drew upon the

oral

communications of Peter and was

again in his turn used by Mt. and Lk.

This hypothesis

has the advantage of accounting for the secondary
passages of Mk. as due to a more faithful reproduction
of the logia by Mt. and

and the fresher colours of Mk.

as due to the reminiscences of Peter.

It still remains

surprising, doubtless, that Mt. and Lk. should have
omitted so many of these vivid touches if they lay
before them in Mk.

T h e supposition that they did

not regard Mk. as

of

equal importance with the logia is

not in itself inherently impossible; but it does not
carry

us

far, for they elsewhere take a great deal from

Mk.

Still more remarkable is it that Mk. should have

omitted

so

much from the logia. T h e suggested ex-

planation that in writing down the reminiscences of
Peter he regarded the logia as only

of

secondary value

is, in view of the number of passages which according
to Weiss he took from them, still more improbable
almost than that already mentioned.

As

regards the coincidences between Mt. and Lk.

against Mk., a very simple explanation seems to be
found for them in the hypothesis of Weiss,

that

Mt. and Lk. drew upon the logia with greater fidelity
than Mk. did.

however, can

of

course be

claimed by Weiss only for those sections which he
actually derives from the logia. Yet for one portion of
the sections in which such coincidences occur (see
above,

6 )

he finds himself compelled by his principles to

regard

not the logia, as the source of Mt. and

Lk.

In this way, of the

240

coincidences enumerated by

Hawkins, some

inconsiderable number-remain

unaccounted for.

Nor can we overlook the

ability that the logia, as conceived of by Weiss, should
have contained, as he himself confesses, no account

of

the passion.

In

so

as the various hvuotheses referred to in the

preceding section are found to be in-
sufficient, in the same degree are we
compelled to admit that Llc. must
have been acquainted with Mt. (or
vice

(a)

Each of the two assumptions-partly without any

thorough investigation and partly under the influence of

a

tendency’ criticism-long found support

but the

second

Ai. c)

has at present few to uphold it. T h e

other has for the first time been taken

up

in a thorough-

going manner with use

of

literary critical methods

by

Simons

($125

e).

We begin with arguments of minor weight.

(a)

Out of the selection of specially strong evidences in sup-

port of it given in Hawkins

we have already (#

ointed out that

13

11

Lk. 8

IO

(as

against Mk. 4

and

t. 2668 Lk. 2264 (as against Mk. 1465) admit of another

planation. Similarly, the ‘Bethphage and Bethany’ of Lk.

may be sufficiently explained by assuming that originally

only the first word stood

the text (as in Mt. 21

I

)

or only the

second (as in Mk. 11

I

), and that it was a copyist who, of

own proper motion, introduced the name he found lacking.
Possibly we ought to trace to the source of Mt., rather than to
the canonical Mt., such material divergences as we

in

Mt.

21

17 Lk. 21 37 (that Jesus

the night outside of Jerusalem

a statement not found in Mk. 11

; in Mt. 21 23 Lk. 20

I

Jesus taught in the temple, as against Mk. 11 27 ‘he was walking

in the temple’); in Mt. 2650 Lk. 2248 (that Jesus spoke to the
betrayer in the garden-a statement not found in Mk. 1445); in

288 Lk.

(that

the women reported to the disciples the

angel’s message, whereas according to Mk. 168 they said nothing
to any one ; on this last point however, see

e).

Similarly,

the representation, the

of which has already been

referred to

in

which the

Baptist

is made to address the

penitent crowds flocking to his baptism as a generation of vipers)
is either due to an infelicitous juxtaposition of Mt. 3 5 (where it is
said that the multitudes went out to him) and Mt. 3 (where
the words in question are addressed to the Pharisees and Sad-
ducees); or it may be due to use of

source. Lk. appears

to be dependent at once on Mk. and on

Mt.

(or

source)

when in 4 2-13 h e represents the temptation in the wilderness

during t h e forty days (as in

Mk.

and also

as happening after their expiry

(as

in Mt.

42-11).

In

Lk.537 ‘spilled’

is used of the wine

‘perish’

only of the bottles;

in

Mk.

222 ‘perish’

1860

Greater importance belongs to the verbal agreements.

GOSPELS

GOSPELS

is used of both. I n

9

Lk.

8 44 the woman

touches the hem of the garment of Jesus in Mk. 5 27 simply the
garment. I n Mt.

I

Lk. 9 7 Herod

is

correctly called

tetrarch, in Mk. 614

and also

inexactly

‘king’

Mt. 19 29 Lk. 18 30 have

Mk. 10 30 ‘a hundredfold’

In

Mt. 26 75 Lk. 22

it is said of Peter ‘ h e went out and wept

in

‘ h e began

to

weep’

In

Lk. 2353 it

is

said of Joseph of

‘ h e wrapped it in a linen cloth

. .

.

and laid

.

.

.

Mk.

46

wound him in a linen cloth

. . .

and laid’

Mt. 28

I

Lk. 23 54 have,

as against Mk.

‘it began to dawn’

indeed, in a different connection. In Mt. 28 3 Lk. 244,
Mk. 16

5 ,

the countenanceof the angel, or the apparel of the two

A

material divergence from Mk., but a t the same time an

approach to coincidence of expression is seen in Lk.

where

the answer of Jesus to the high

given in this form : ‘Ye

say that

I

am.’ T h e first two words are a paraphrase of the ‘thou

said’

of Mt. 26 64

;

the remainder of the sentence

is a repetition of the paraphrase in Mk.

For another

material divergence from Mk. see Lk. 11 17

=

12

25

as

against

Mk. 323 (Jesus knowing the thoughts of his enemies).

) Specially important are cases

which a casual expression

of

is laid hold of.

for example, in Lk. 9 34 while he

said these things

as

compared with

17

(‘while be was yet

speaking’), and as against Mk.97. Similarly Lk.

(4

16-30)

was

able to find a justification for his erroneous

that Jesus

had come forward in the synagogue a t Nazareth at the very

of his

activity (cp

39,

in Mt. 4

where it is said that Jesus before coming to Capernaum left
Nazareth (in Lk.

he comes to Capernaum from Nazareth).

The scribe’s question as to the greatest of the commandments is
described not by Mk. (12

but only by Mt. (22 35) as having

been asked for the purpose of ‘tempting’ Jesus.

According to

Lk. 10 25 the questioner asks what he must d o to inherit eternal
life. Nevertheless h e too is represented a s having sought to

‘

tempt’ Jesus.

Lk. 16

would be specially convincing on the

present point if here a sentence had been taken over from the
latest hand of Mt. (5

But the original text of Lk. probably

said the opposite (see

On the other hand, we really

have a sentence by the latest hand in Mt.

with which Lk.

7

I

betrays connection, for with the formula ‘When Jesus had
ended all these words,’ Mt. concludes his

not only here, hut also in four other places (11

I

13 53

I

26

I

).

Moreover, Lk. also shares with

the statement that

the multitude heard the preceding discourse, though this is con-
tradicted by the introduction to it in Lk. 6

as

well a s in

Mt.

Mk. says in 1218 correctly ‘There came unto him Sad-

ducees,

who

well known] say that there

is no resurrection

Mt. 22 23 infelicitously reproduces this as

‘there came unto him Sadducees saying

that etc.

Lk. 2027 seeks to improve this: ‘There came to him

of

the Sadducees, they which say

that there is no

resurrection, and they asked him, saying.

ought

to

have been in the genitive

In the nom.

we seem to have an echo of

Lk. rightly inserts the article missing in Mt.

reference, however, must he to the Sadducees, not to certain

T h e formula, while he was saying these things (see

above, Lk. 9

is met with also in Lk. 11

37,

where Jacohsen

would derive it from Mt. 12 46 as also he would derive the state-
ment in Lk. 12

,‘When the myriads of the multitude

gathered together insomuch that they trode one upon another
(which indeed does not fit well with

immediately follows

:

‘he began to say to his disciples’) from Mt.

considers that when he wrote these passages Lk. had reached, in
taking what he has taken from Mt., exactly the neighbourhood
of the two Mt. passages just cited (1246 13

This, however,

cannot he made evident.

(6)

On

general grounds,

on

the other hand, the

dependence of Lk. on Mt. (and, equally

so,

the con-

verse) is very improbable.

I n each of the two evan-

gelists much material is absent which the other has,
while yet no possible reason can be assigned for the
omission.

Nay, more, the representations given in the

two are often in violent contradiction.

Even agree-

ments in the order, in

so

far as not coming from

almost always can be accounted for as derived from

a

second source-the logia. Simons has, therefore, in
agreement with Holtzmann, put forward his hypothesis
only in the form that Lk. regarded Mt.

as a

subsidiary

source merely, perhaps, in fact, only knew it by frequent
hearing, without giving to it any commanding import-

This is in very deed quite conceivable, if only he

knew the logia, and was in a position to observe how
freely Mt. had dealt with that material.

(c)

Soltau sought to improve the hypothesis of

dependence

on

Mt. by the assumption that it was with

the penultimate form of Mt. that Lk. was acquainted.
That Mt.

was still absent from Mt. when Lk. used

it is an old conjecture. The pieces from the middle cf
the gospel which Soltau reserves for the canonical Mt.
are

of

very opposite character (to it he reckons

the

highly legalistic saying in

and the strongly

Judaistic one in

and are attributed by him

lo

very various motives.

This indicates a great

in his hypothesis. Nevertheless the suggestion is always
worth considering that

O T

citations of the latest hand

which are adduced to prove the Messiahship of Jesus

and perhaps some other portions besides, did

not yet lie before Lk.

That there is

reason to shrink

from a hypothesis of this kind, see

Let

us

now proceed to consider whether the possible

origin from still earlier written sources of those con-

secutive books which were the last to
precede our present gospels can
raised above the level of mere con-

jecture.

This of course can be done, if at all, only at

a

few points.

T o show that it has not

been affirmed, even though no very thoroughgoing con-
sequences were drawn from the affirmation, we shall
begin by giving three examples well known in the litera-
ture of the subject.

(a)

Johannes Weiss (on Lk. 5

17,

in Meyer’s

says

that the exemplar of Mk. used by Lk. underwent, after it had been
so

made use of, another revision, which we have in our Mk. and

that

had been previously made use of by Mt. before

into the hands of Lk. H e r e and in the following paragraphs

let A,

B,

and

C he necessarily different hands, and Aa,

Ac,

on the other hand, be such portions as may perhaps

he due to one and the same hand but perhaps also
from different hands ; similarly also with

Ba,

Bc,

etc. tben

view of Weiss can be stated a s follows. A is a written

source on the healing of the paralytic without mention of the
circumstance that h e was let down through the roof. This
source was drawn upon, on the one hand by Mt., on the other
by B who introduced the new circumstance just mentioned.
was drawn upon on the one hand by Lk on the other by Mk.
It is in this way

at

the same

Weiss explains

also

how Mt. and Lk. coincide in many details as against

Mk. B thus takes the position which original Mk. has in the
usual nomenclature not however-and this is the important
point-being the oldbst writing, but being itself in turn dependent
on a source.

For our own part we cannot regard this view

as

being sufficiently firmly

since it has been shown in

that

is Mt. who has greatly curtailed the narrative of

death of Herod ; it is therefore conceivable also that

in

the

passage before

he should have left out the detail about the

roof also his interest being merely

miracle itself as prov-

ing the Messiahship of Jesus, not in any special detail of it
such

as

this

Hawkins

and also Wernle,

for

similar passages).

(6)

86-88,

assumes for the narrative of the Mission of

the disciples two sources -one (which we shall call A) relating
to that of the twelve the bther

(B)

to

that of the

Mk.

67-11

and

only from A.

A and B were both

drawn upon by a third document (C) which was used in Lk.

10

as

the sole source, hut in Mt. 10 1-16 along with A. I t

will create no difficulties if we recognise in A an original Mk.
(according to Woods

‘

the

tradition

’),

in

B

logia.

Whilst.

critics as

Bernard Weiss and Holtzmann

10

were drawn direct from the logia

(as

Lk. 9 was from Mk., or original Mk.), Woods has found it

necessary to interpolate an intermediate stage

( C )

in which both

these

were already fused. One might even feel inclined

to

go a step further. Lk. in 107

would certainly not have

given the injunction to ‘eat such things a s are set before you,’
first in speaking of a house, and then in speaking of a city, un-
less the one form had come from one source, the other from
another. I t happens, however, that neither of the

t w o

found either in Mk. or in Lk. 9. Lk.

therefore apart from

the Mk. source

(A),

which

is made use df, for

in 10

I

‘two and two’), would seem to have had two other

sources.

In any case Woods’ observation in correct that

Mt.

has fused together all the sources that can be

in

Mk. or in Lk. Whilst passing over the rest of Lk.
introduces the ‘city‘ into 10

11

at

the place where Mk. 6

The main point

is

not affected if it

be

assumed that

B

also

dealt

the mission of the twelve, and that the seventy were

first introduced by Lk.

a).

1862

GOSPELS

GOSPELS

a n d Lk. 9 4 speak of the ‘house’ ; the ‘house’ he introduces

into 10

in the parallel

to

Lk. 10 5 which is absent from Mk. and

Lk.

9.

In 10 Mt. has ‘silver

with Lk. 3

and also

’

as

(with Mk.

G

8).

Similarly,

with Mk. and Lk. he has ‘twelve’ in 10

I

,

though he had not

hitherto given the number of the twelve and has to enumerate

them for the first time in

The injunction laid on the

missionaries in 10 9 to ‘acquire’

no money is to he

explained from 108 as meaning that they are forbidden

to

take

a n y reward for their

or healing on their journey

(‘freely ye have received, freely give ’), whereas

10

(‘no

the way,’

we are to interpret it as a

on against taking anything with them when they set

(c)

Loman ( Th.

’69,

traces back to one original

parable those of the Tares in the Wheat

Mt.

and of

the Seed growing secretly in Mk.

However different

they may he apparently, he urges, and however possible it
might he to show that even such

in which they agree a s

‘man ‘spring

‘fruit

corn,’

belon ed to two quite

distinct parables, a common original form is

by the

word sleep

Mk. would never have introduced

any touch so self-evident a s that of the man sleeping and rising
night and day had there not lain before him something in which
the sleep was spoken of. By the addition that the man awoke
again daily the original meaning of the sleep is obscured.

If the two parables cannot he supposed to be of independent

origin, it is a t the same time only with great violence that we
could derive

from Mt. or

from Mk.

lacks

the quality of a trne original in

so

far a s it is not a n incident of

ordinary life that any one should

sow tares in another’s

a n d the other parables of Jesus are conspicuously taken from
affairs of every day.

lacks the character of a n original in

so far as its fundamental idea-that the kingdom of God comes
to its realization without the intervention of God or of the
Messiah (in other words, the precept of

quite a modern one, directly inconsistent with the

conceptions of Jesus a s disclosed elsewhere in the gospels.

Loman therefore supposes that

Mt.

13 24 26

alone stood in

a

source A

:

after the seed had been sown, the tares grew up with

i t

and the servants asked their master whence these came. T h e

he takes from Mk. 4

hut in the form : ‘the earth

brings forth the tares of itself,’ With this the parable ended.
That such a saying would be eminently

in the

mouth of Jesus he proves very aptly by Mt.

15

19 (out of the

heart proceed evil thoughts).

An anti-Pauline form of the

parable, however B a took Paul a s the sower of the false
doctrine which

to he denoted by the tares. I t

therefore introduced Mt. 13 25 saying that the enemy (on this
designation for Paul see

had

the tares,

it also, for the conclusion of the parable in A, substituted
Mt. 13

master’s answer that the tares were sown

by the enemy.

then added Mt. 13

that

nevertheless no attempt should be

to

the false

doctrine of

that it should be left to the Final Judg-

ment. The polemic against

here is thus milder than that

of

Paul against his Judaistic adversaries in

Cor. 11 13’15 ;

1

5

Canonical Mk., further, was acquainted

with A and Ba. I n order to avoid the anti-Pauline meaning
of

he left out the whole

of the enemy

and

consequently also the tares. H e had therefore to take the
answer of the master from

A,

not however of course in the form

that the tares sprang up of themselves, hut in the form that i t
was the good seed that did

so.

This last very modern idea

accordingly did not find expression here out of the inde-
pendent conviction of a n ancient author hut arose from the
difficulty in which

Mk.

found himself. The sleep of the master

lost its original

when the daily waking was added.

From 42 it

is

clear that Mk. had also B6 hefore him, for he

speaks

the harvest.

Canonical Mt. expressly says

the

interpretation of the parable attributed to Jesus (13 39) that the
enemy is the devil. Either, therefore, h e no longer perceives
the anti-Pauline tendency of

or like

Mk.

he deliberately

seeks to avoid it, though he takes a

different way to do so.

There remains a possibility that he may have understood the
Pauline doctrine to he meant by the false teaching introduced
by the devil ; but it

is

equally possible that he was thinking of

form of heresy.

This hypothesis of Loman combines with a literary criticism

which has far its object the elucidation of the mutual relations
of the various texts, also a tendency-criticism which postulates

a n

anti-Pauline tendency in B a . Even should one he unable to

adopt the latter criticism, it

is

not necessary on that account to

reject the former

;

it is open to any one to suppose that the

‘enemy’

may have been a t the outset some

form (as already indicated) of heresy.

To

the three examples given above we purpose

to add

a

few others which,

so

far as we are aware, have

not been previously employed in this connection.

In

Lk.

the Unjust Steward is commended.

H e accordingly must be

in the commendatory

clause

(v.

which follows-‘ H e that is faithful

in

a

very little is faithful also in much’- not in the

words of censure

106)

’ h e that is unrighteous in

a

very little

is

unrighteous also in much.’ And yet in

1 6 8 he

is

called ‘ t h e unrighteous steward.’

In

16

we read further If ye

have not been

faithful in the unrighteous mammon and

so

forth. By

the very little’

which one is to show fidelity we

must accordingly understand Mammon. Where then
are we to look for the steward’s fidelity as regards
Mammon? According to the parable, in this-that he
gave it away.

Unfaithfulness accordingly would

manifest itself if one were to keep Mammon to oneself.
T h e steward, however, did not keep Mammon to himself
and yet was called ‘unrighteous’ (which of course

is

not to be distinguished from ‘unfaithful‘).

W e see

accordingly that the terminology in 16

is in direct

opposition to that of the parable itself. Further, the
contrast in the parable

is

not in the least between

fidelity and its opposite.

What

the steward is com-

mended for

is

his cleverness the opposite to this would

be want of cleverness.

Thus

are an appendix

to the parable by another hand. Taken by
their meaning would be simply an exhortation to fidelity
in money matters.

Here, however, they are brought

into connection with the parable of the steward, whose
relation to Mammon

is

represented

as

one of fidelity.

Their fundamental idea accordingly is just as exactly
Ebionitic

as

that of the parable itself.

Thus two

Ebionitic hands can be distinguished, and distinct from
both

is

that of

Lk.

himself who has added yet another

transformation of the

where he

declares the parable to have been directed against the

Pharisees and their covetousness.

( e ) According to

we may t a l e it that the

final redaction of Mt.

was

made in a sense that was

friendly to the Gentiles

thus attached no value to

compliance with the precepts of the Mosaic law.
Unless then Mt.

5

be a marginal gloss (see

it must have been introduced

not

b y the last, but by

the pennltimate hand, and its context comes from

a

source of a n antepenultimate hand.

5

18

itself rests upon, Mt.

or the source in which this

originally stood.

‘till all things he accom-

plished does not amalgamate

with the beginning of the

verse

heaven

earth pass away [one jot or one tittle shall

in

pass away].

Moreover,

is difficult to see why the

law should cease to have validity the moment it is fulfilled

its

entirety. But the closing sentence in 2434 is perfectly intelli-
gible

:

shall not pass away till all these things

he accomplished.’ All these things’means here the premonitory
signs of the

24

35 proceeds

:

‘Heaven

earth shall pass

away; hut my words shall not pass away.

Marcion has the

same thought in his redaction of Lk. 16 17

:

‘ I t is easier that

heaven and earth

pass away than that one tittle should

fall from my words.

For this, canonical Lk. has ‘than for one

tittle

of

the law to fall.’ But this can hardly have been what

Lk. intended to say, for this verse stands between two verses
which accentuate

the greatest possible emphasis the

abolition of the law.

T h e conjecture of

therefore is

very attractive-that Lk. wrote ‘than for one tittle of my law to
fall’

Here on account

of his antipathy to the idea of law, Marcion subdtituted (hut
without altering the sense) ‘words‘ for ‘law’

But a very old transcriber of

Lk.

took

the word ‘my’

for a wrong repetition of the second syllable

of

he therefore omitted it and thereby changed

the meaning of the sentence to its opposite. This

mean-

ing

is

reproduced in Mt. 5

One

sees

how

many the intermediate steps must have

been before these two verses

have received their

present form. Still, as already said,

5

may possibly

be

a

marginal gloss.

In Mk.

and parallels

18

1-6

very diverse things are brought into combination. First,
the account of the disciples disputing with

one

another

to precedence

then the story of Jesus

little child

in

their midst with the exhortation to receive

in his

next, the exhortation

not to forbid other miracle-workers ; further, the promise

that even

a

cup of water given to

a

follower

of

Christ shall by

no

means

lose its

reward; and lastly

the threatening against those who cause any

of

the little

ones

that believe in Christ to stumble.

The close of 5

18

GOSPELS

GOSPELS

The dispute ahout precedence is answered according to Mk.

(v.

35)

by the saying of Jesus

‘

If

man would be first, he

shall be last of all and

all.

This is not found in Lk.

except in the

(22

26)

where it occurs as a parallel to Mk.

in thesameparallel

Mt. has it again, only in a quite different place (23

and yet neither

nor Lk. would have omitted it

the parallel

to

our present passage Mk. 9

35,

had they found it there. For

indeed it is very

to

the matter, whilst the mention

of the child

no means serves to settle the dispute, for the

child is not brought forward a s an example of humility hut as a
person to he ‘received,’ and not for the sake of his

a s

a child but for the sake of the ‘Name of Christ.’ Mt. felt this
want of connection and in order to represent the child a s a n
example he says

v.

that the disciples did not discuss the

question among themselves hut referred it to Jesus who

by

the little child in their midst. Between this act and

the exhortation based upon it he inserts further his third verse,

Except ye be converted and become

little children ye shall

in

no wise enter the kingdom of heaven.

This he borrows from

Mk.

10 15, as is made unmistakably clear by the fact that in the

parallel to this passage, viz., in Mt.

19 13-15,

he omits it, so as

to avoid a

183

is

also in substance a very fitting

settlement of the dispute between the disciples, and would not
have

passed over by Lk. had it lain before him. The ex-

hortation to receive such a child

is

in Mt.

185

in the same

degree inappropriate to the context.

Mt.

therefore interpolates

between the two distinct thoughts his fourth verse

:

‘Whoso-

ever shall humble himself like this

child, the same shall he

greatest in the kingdom of heaven.

But even this insertion

does not fill the hiatus between

and

5.

The exhortation in Mt. 185 to receive the little child is

immediately followed

(v.

6)

the

But whoso shall

cause one of these little ones to stumble.

This fits well enough

on the assumption that children are intended by the ‘little

I n

Mk. and Lk., however, the

two

thoughts are separated very

unnaturally by the account of the miracle-worker who followeth
not with us,’ and in Mk., too

by the promise of a reward

for the cup of cold water-a promise which

Mt.

(1042)

gives

in a quite different connection, and there, moreover, using
the expression these little ones,’

whom, however, he

stands (differently from

grown-up persons of low estate.

T o this promise there is appended in Mk.

942

the threatening

against him who shall cause one of these little ones to stumble,
quite fittihgly-only, however,

the assumption that

‘these

little ones’ we are to understand grown-up people of low estate,

children, a s in

Let

us now

endeavour to trace, genetically, the origin

and growth of this remarkably complicated passage.
In

a

source

A

were combined only those two parts which

are common to all three gospels-to wit, the statement
of the dispute among the disciples and of the placing of
a

child in the midst with the exhortation to receive him.

But no connection between them had been

as

yet

established.

This (primitive) form

is

found with least

alteration in Lk.

in Mk. it is represented

Mt. by

added to it the

promise

of

reward for the cup of water to

a

disciple

(Mk.

Bb further added the threatening against

him who shall cause

a

little one to stumble

( M k .

C

interpolated the story of the miracle-worker who

followed not with the disciples.

Its distinctive character

forbids the obvious course of assigning it to Bc.

Now,

in Mk.,

only

938 39n

40

answers to the form of the story

in

T h e form of the whole pericope which

arose through addition of this piece (without Mk.
thus takes the place which in the usual nomenclature is
given to original Mk.

Bot

on

this occasion ‘original

Mk.’ has had not one literary predecessor merely, but
two, or, should

be separated

Bb, three; and

these write not, it is to be noted, independently of each
other the one was continually making use of the other.

Canonical Mt. rests upon

A +

B

(or at least

but

Since Mt.

18

offers parallels only to what we have

to

one might be inclined rather to attribute to

the

addition

Mk.

and to

that of Mk.

If this were

done it would have

to

be presupposed (what was left open, above,

under

a)

that

Ba

and B6 mean two different authors.

We

should then have the advantage of being able to suppose that

was

acquainted with Ba,

hut not with

A t the same

time, however, we should have to attribute Mk.

in that case

rather to

C,

for on the previously mentioned presupposition it

must remain equally possible that

and

B6

together mean

only one author. T h e hypothesis would, therefore, only become
more complicated.

Further, it is not probable that Mk. 9

42

should have been introduced earlier than

I t is simpler,

therefore, to suppose that

knew

other words

Mk.

a s well a s Mk.

but that he dropped

he had himself already reproduced the same thought in 10

42

(cp

1865

surely

also

:

see last footnote). Mt. then, as

above, changed the introduction in

v.

I

,

and added his

own

3

,

so

as to bring into mutual connection the

dispute about precedence and the precept about receiving
the child.

6,

through its direct contiguity with

v.

(instead of with 1042 which here ought to have been

repeated as parallel to

Mk.

underwent a change of

meaning, to the effect that children, not grown-up
persons, were meant.

L k .

rests on

A +

C. H e added

he that is least among you all, the same

is

great.‘

This does not, indeed, come in appropriately after the
precept about receiving

a

child it would have found a

with greater fitness before this precept and after

the statement of the disciples’ dispute, in other words
between

and

v.

a t the very point where

Mk.

v.

35

introduces the same thought.

Mk.

rests

upon

H e adds

on

the one hand his

which Lk. would certainly not have passed over

had he known it, and

on

the other hand his

35,

containing

so

excellent

a

settlement of the

dispute.

Neither Mt. nor Lk. was acquainted with the

verse or

(as

already said) they would not have omitted

it or introduced something like it at

a

later place,

as

in Lk.

I t is certainly worthy of notice that

M k . ,

by the in-

sertion of

35,

has produced the only doublet which he

has

121

a ,

n.

I

).

The circumstance that Jesus calls the

disciples to him in

35

whilst in

he has already

been questioning them, points also to the conclusion that
the passage is composed from various pieces.

The successive contents of

Mk.

4

1-34

and parallels

(Mt.

Lk.

84-18)

cannot possibly have been set

down in any one gospel in their present order a t one
writing.

Let us examine them.

After the parable of

the Sower, Jesus

is

alone with his disciples

( M k .

Mt.

89)

so

also when he explains the par-

able

13

Lk.

8

11-15).

Nor is any

hint given of his again addressing himself to the
people yet we read in

that he spoke openly

to the people

parables

(so

also Mt.

.and

that he gave his explanations to the disciples in private.
There is ground, therefore, for supposing that in one
source,

A,

there stood an uninterrupted series of parables,

all those which have parallels in Mt. (Mk.

26-29 30-32-in

an

older form

as

regards 26-29 see

above,

also the conclusion

33$

Bn, on the

strength of the concluding statement that when they
were alone Jesus expounded all things to his dis-
ciples, introduced Mk.

4

14-20

Bb the

21-25

to the effect that one ought not to keep hack know-
ledge once gained of the meaning of

a

parable, but

ought to spread it freely. C introduced

These

verses to the effect that the parables were interded
to conceal the meaning they contained from the people
are in contradiction

alike

to

v.

and to

21-25,

and are, moreover, impossible in the mouth of Jesus.
What pleasure could he have had in his teaching if
he had to believe

his

God-given task to be that of

hiding from the people the truths of salvation?

It

is,

therefore, utterly futile to make out forced con-

nection between

M k .

and

M k .

4

$ ,

by inter-

preting to the effect that Jesus, when asked

as

to the

meaning of the parables, in the first place, said, b y
way of introduction to his answer, that to the disciples it
was given to apprehend the meaning, and then went

on

to tell them what it was.

Moreover, Mk. 413 does not

fit in with this connection.

T h e verse is clearly

a

question in which Jesus expresses his astonishment a t
the small understanding of the disciples : How?

you

I n

4

IO

the disciples ask concerning ‘the parables.’ T h e

plural carries us back to what is said in Mk. 42 that Jesus spoke
several. The

therefore, can very well he that which Lk.

9)

expresses more clearly though with reference to one parable

only: they asked about the

of these parables. Were

it the intention of Mk. to say like

Mt.

(13

that they asked

about the

of the parables then we must suppose that

only Lk.

rightly preserved

thought of the source

GOSPELS

do not understand this parable; how then shall you
know all the parables?’ This astonishment again is
out of place if Jesus in

has found nothing to be

surprised at in the circumstance that the disciples needed
t o have the meaning first of all imparted to them. T h e
question is appropriate, therefore, only

as

a direct reply

to

v.

I

O

,

and furnishes a aery good occasion for Jesus to

decide to give them the interpretation (cp, further,

129 n.). Here also, as

C takes the position

which elsewhere is appropriate to original

and here

also

there are two or three antecedent literary stages.

D

inserted the

(Mt.

Each of the three canonical gospels then rests upon

Mt., too, upon

D.

Mk. did not

change the extent of

vv.

(perhaps it was he who left

out the

from

cp

RV

with

AV),

on the other

hand he gave to

a form which suits the applica-

tion here made of the saying better than does that of Mt.
and Lk. (see

u).

Mt. and Lk., on the other hand,

in order to be able to retain from

C,

Mk.

deleted

the surprised question of Jesus in Mk.

(from

Ba),

because it was inappropriate after this insertion.

Moreover, Mt. has

also

so

altered the question of the

disciples (who in Mk.

and Lk.

ask as to the

meaning of the parable) as to make it suit the answer
which was first brought in from C : ‘ t o you it is given
t o understand the parables, but to the multitude it is not
given.’ I t now runs in Mt. (13

IO)

:

Why speakest thou

to them in parables?’ But such

a

form of the question

cannot have been the original one-for this reason, if
for no other, that according to it, Jesus would have had
no occasion to expound the parable to the disciples.
Further, Mt. has in

introduced a saying which in

at first came after the interpretation of the first par-

able. W e further see that he must have found difficulty
in the assertion that the purpose

Mk. 412) of the

parables was to conceal the meaning they contained.

H e substitutes therefore : For this cause do

I

speak to

them in parables

they see not and hear

not.’ H e thus puts in the foreground the defective
understanding of the multitude as

a

fact with which

Jesus must reckon.

By what follows, however

(v.

taken from Isaiah, he gives it clearly to be seen that he
had before him an exemplar in which their not being
understood was alleged as the

of the parables

(see the lest perchance,’

in

13

Finally

perhaps it was Mt. himself who added the interpretation

of

the parable of the Tares (not immediately after the

parable, but at the end of the whole section that

is

parallel to

cp

and also the other

parables

1336-52

;

possibly also

35.

Still it is

also permissible to suppose that only Mk. 4

stood in

A

but this makes little change in

our

construction as a

whole ; it bnly becomes necessary in that case to postulate that
Bc added Mk. 4

26-32.

On

the other hand, the mutual relation

of

sources can become

still somewhat more complicated if

hypothesis regarding

26-29

(see above

be combined with what has just been

elahorated about

4

Yet it is possible to do this without

multiplying the number of sources. We therefore refrain from
introducing the hypothesis in question,

all

more because

it

might, as being of the nature of tendency-criticism, call forth
special objections.

( h )

Finally, it has to be pointed out that even the

doublets might be used to give probability to the com-
posite character of the logia.

In

they have heen

employed to show that Mt. and Lk. alike draw from
two sources. For the most part these were, on the one
hand Mk. (or original Mk. and on the other the logia.
Only,

happens by no means infrequently that both

places

which Mt. has the same saying are generally

traced to the logia. What would seem to follow for
this would be that the writer of the logia himself made

tosupposethat

Lk.

may have

because he already had

it

38,

and that Mt. may have omitted all these verses hecause he

also had them all elsewhere in one place

or another ( 5

15

6

last, in particular,

in

the very pericope with which

we are

now

dealing (13 12).

1867

use of two sources. Now, we are not inclined to carry
back Mt.

to two sources from which the logia

drew, but prefer to regard the repetition

as

an express

and deliberate accentuation of the statement upon which
stress is here laid.

But we do in all seriousness adduce

( ‘ m o r e tolerable for

(the tree and its fruits), as well as the utterances of

John which are

also

afterwards put into the mouth of

Jesus

‘ y e offspring of vipers, how shall ye

escape’

‘every tree that bringeth not forth

good

is hewn down and cast into the fire‘).

What has been said above

as

to sources of sources has

far-reaching consequences.

(u)

If it holds good even partially, then most of the

hitherto

forward as to the

of the

129.

Inferences

for gospel-

criticism.

gospels can no longer be maintained.

For,

in that case, in original Mk., or

the logia, or whatever be the name
given to the sources immediately pre-

ceding our canonical gospels, we are no longer dealing
with the earliest written compositions each produced
by a writer working independently without written
sources,

the canonical authors were not dependent

(as

used to be supposed) on these writers alone, but

had at their disposal also the

of

these sources.

I t is no longer possible to control them in every detail.

to ask what exemplar they had and why they made this,
that, or the other change.

On the other hand, the

thesis that an ancient-seeming saying if it occurs in a
writing that can be shown to be relatively young can have
no claim to an early origin, must be wholly given up.

(6)

T h e first impression one derives from the new

situation thns created is, that by it the solution of the
synoptical problem which appeared after

so

much toil

to have been brought

so

near, seems suddenly removed

again to an immeasurable distance.

For science, how-

ever, it is not altogether amiss if from time to time it is
compelled to dispense with the lights it had previously
considered clear enough, and to accustom itself to a new

investigation of its objects in the dark.

Possibly it may

then find that it has got rid of certain false appearances
under which things had formerly been viewed.

In this

particular instance, it finds itself no longer under com-
pulsion to assign

a

given passage to no other source

than either to the logia, or to original Mk.,

or

to some

other of the few sources with which it had hitherto
been accustomed to deal. T h e great danger of any
hypothesis lies in this, that it sets

up

a number of quite

general propositions on the basis of

a

limited number

of observations, and then has to find these propositions

justified, come what may.’

(c)

On the other hand, signs have for some consider-

able time not been wanting that scholars were on the
way to recognition of the new situation just described.

I t is not only Scholten and Wittichen who have postu-

lated a tolerably complicated genealogy for the gospels,
with

Deutero-,

and the like even

those critics also who are confident in the adequacy of
the

usual

hypotheses are often found reckoning with the

possibility

-

or even probability

-

that writings

original Mk., or the logia, whether in the course of
transcription, or at the hands of individual owners,

may

have received additions or alterations whenever any one
believed himself to be acquainted with

a

better tradition

upon any point.

T h e possibility is taken into account,

in like manner, that canonical Mk. in particular does
not lie before

us

in the form in which it lay before those

who came immediately after him ; possible corruptions

verse which was

found so helpful

in

regarded by Feine and others a s

an addition by canonical Mk., because it is

in

point of fact

in-

consistent with

and these two verses, since they occur

all three

must he ascribed to the

‘

source

is to

say, to the only

with which one allows oneself to reckon

whether we

it with Feine, ‘original Mk.,’ or, with

Weiss logia.

If one could only tell how

it

was

that canonical

to add this

verse !

Let one example suffice.

1868

GOSPELS

GOSPELS

of the

glosses and the like, have to be

Another element in the reckoning is that already our
oldest MSS of the gospels have latent in them many
examples of transference from the text of one gospel

into that

of

another, examples similar to those which

we can quite distinctly observe in many instances when
the T R

is

confronted with these same witnesses.

I t may be that an older form of Mk.,

or

of original

Mk., or of the logia, whose differences from

our

present gospels are so limited in range and

so

little

intended, can hardly, strictly speaking, deserve the
name of

a

special source, the general contents and

arrangement being

so

much alike yet the effect, in its

bearing on the character of the text in its details, is pre-
cisely the same

as

if we actually were to assume such

a

source. For in particular cases it is not possible for

us

to rely upon

a

text as lying before

us or

as capable

of being more or less easily reconstructed, and

so

to judge

of the changes that have been made by the canonical
evangelists we have to reckon with an immense range
of possibilities and thus security of judgment is lost.

Lastly, scholars are also beginning to remember that the

evangelists did not need to draw their material from books alone,
but that from youth up they were acquainted with it from oral
narration and could easily commit it to writing precisely in this
form in either case-whether they had it before them in no
written form, or whether they had it in different written form.

I n this matter again we are beginning to be on

guard against

the error of supposing that in the synoptical problem we have
to reckon merely with given quantities, or with such a s can he

easily ascertained.

From the point

reached to the recognition of

sources of sources differing not only in text but also in
extent, order, and tendency is always, it is true,

a

real

step.

By

mere additions it is possible to give

a

writing

a

tendency,

which without these does not exist in it

6,

It is essentially by the introduction of additional

touches that, as we have seen in

128

a-g,

the highly-

complicated production, the disentanglement

of

which

now causes

so

much difficulty, was produced out of

a

simple combination

of

related, or at least not mutually

inconsistent, pericopes.

And each intermediate stage in

the process at one time had currency as a gospel writing
and served

as

a

basis for further developments. But if

this consideration is taken seriously, it becomes in-
creasingly impossible to hold-what any one occupying
the standpoint of would wish to hold in spite of every
concession to the actual state of the facts-namely, that
the man to whom, whether by tradition or by

voice

of some scholar, the authorship of the latest recognisable
form of such

a

pre-canonical writing is ascribed, can

also be regarded

as

the author of the earliest of these

forms.

Of the man who has made such manifest

changes in the few places that still allow

us

to follow

him in the process, it will be only safe to assume that
he treated other passages also in the same way, only
that we no longer have the means of detecting it.

In

that case, however, and still more certainly where there is
individual tendency,’ his writing must be regarded

as

a

new work in

so

far as in this class of literature new-

ness’ can be spoken of a t all ; it cannot be treated

as

merely another form of its predecessor.

From

this point of view we shall be able to give its full
force to

prologue, according to which many authors

had already

in an independent way to draw

up

in writing (this is the force of the expression

cp

n.

an account of the life of

Jesus.

But Schleiermacher’s view of the narratives

124

a )

also in this way comes to its rights

for doubtless there must have been quite short notes also
as well as narratives of

a

more comprehensive character

37,

64,

and yet these also can have had their

influence on the subsequent form of individual pericopes.
T h e reconstruction of original Mk. and of the logia, of

Forexample, that Lk.

still read in Mt.

of

present

while Mt. already, on account of this last reading, regarded

M k .

6

16

as a mere repetition and therefore left it out.

1869

Yet. the distinction is after all but a. fluid one.

their arrangement and even

of

their very words-to

which so much acuteness has been devoted-loses
greatly in interest

as

soon

as

these writings are regarded,

not as the earliest, but only

as

intermediate steps. In

the same measure does one gain insight into the diffi-
culty of the problem, and the lesson of caution in dealing
with it. For further reasons for the view here taken of
the situation see

( e ) On the other hand, however, certain difficulties

become easier to deal with.

W e can now, for example,

offer an explanation of the passage in

so

friendly to the Pharisees, and of all the

passages in

a,

which it is impossible to

ascribe to Jesus, and also even, whatever the inter-
mediate stages may have been, of the legalistic Mt.

5

128

e ) they are attributable to a Judaistic redaction

which the logia underwent before they were made use
of, and (according to

altered to an opposite

sense, by Mt.

T h e character of the original logia

becomes in this way more uniform and more in accord-
ance with the free attitude of Jesus towards the law, and
one can understand better how it was that this attitude

of his was successfully transmitted, whereas all record
of it might very easily have dropped out

of

sight had the

first transmitter already been

so

minded.

By way of appendix the question of late

so

keenly

as

to the influence which the undeniable

fact that Jesus spoke Aramaic may have
had upon the formation of the
may here be appropriately considered.

( a )

If

Papias was right in his assertion regarding Mt.

(see

this influence would have been very great.,

But

our

gospels were from the first written in Greek

-even the genealogy in Mt.

1

as well

as

that in

Lk.

323-38,

which contains

36)

the name of

(y.

met with only in the LXX. In fact, even in what

we find reason for tracing back

t o

the logia, the quota-

tions are, at least in a quite preponderating number

of

cases, taken from the

LXX

(cp especially

4 4

where the

original in Dt.

8 3

supplies no basis for

I t is

precisely the author of canonical Mt. who oftenest
gives the quotations from the Hebrew (Hawkins,

and who could not have given such quotations as,.

2

23

after the LXX at all but the.

allegation that his book is

a

translation from a Semitic.

original breaks down on the fact that it also nevertheless
follows the LXX, and that, too, exactly in passages.
which would not have been available had the Hebrew
original been followed.

Only

mistranslation ‘virgin

cp M

ARY

[M

OTHER

OF

made

possible to adduce (in Mt. 1

Is.

the omission of the second member to ‘in the desert’

in the Hebrew parallelism in Is. 403 (@)made it pos-

sible to

these words, in Mt. 33, into relation with what

precedes instead of with what follows and thus to find in the
words a prediction

of

one crying in

wilderness, though in

Isaiah the crier

is of course not in the wilderness where no one

could have heard him but in the midst of

Israelites

in Babylon. In

Ps.

is only the

LXX

that speaks of

‘

praise

in the sense in which Mt. 21

finds it here. Further Hosanna’

in 219 with the dative is regarded as a cry of devotion

-

Praise.’

is not reconcilable with the true

understanding of

original passage (see

H

OSANNA

cp

T h e

of Mk. Hebraizes still

stronelv

man,

does

Nevertheless, the combinations

of

Allen

1900,

1436-443)

do not prove that the

evangelist wrote Aramaic, but only that he wrote a kind
of Jewish Greek that he had derived from a reading of
the LXX.

Lk. also has Hebraisms, not only in chaps.

but elsewhere as well, and not only where he is

dependent on Mk.

or

Mt. but also where he had no

exemplar before him (as, for example, often ‘ a n d it
came to pass,’

see Hawkins,

and yet

no one holds

writing to be

a

translation of a

Semitic original.

Is.

(Mk.

could not possibly

be cited in

an

Aramaic writing (see above,

a).

Against

further

assertion that the genealogy

was

constructed by the author

of the entire Gospel, see, however, M

ARV

(M

OTHER

O

F

JESUS).

See Allen,

’99,

pp.

GOSPELS

GOSPELS

Just

little can the very small number of variants-partly

character-in D and old Latin

translations,

which

Blass

Gospels, ‘98.

pp.

does

not

regard as

traceable

to

transcribers,

he

held

to

show that the

entire

gospel

of

Mk.

was

written

in

Aramaic and translated into Greek

in

different ways, or even-as

Blass

formulates

the

that Luke

the

companion of Paul, himself before he

wrote

the

third gospel, revised and published a bad Greek translation

of

the

Aramaic Mk

on

which account

it was

that afterwards he

omitted much

from his

own

book,

not

wishing to exceed

the

ordinary

limits

of

a

papyrus roll. Elsewhere (see A

CTS

,

$3

it

has been shown with what independence the text has

been

dealt with

in

D

and

its

allied MSS. Least of

all

can

hypothesis seek support

the

that Lk.

shows little verbal coincidence with Mk.

fact (so

far

as it

is

a

fact) can of course

he

sufficiently explained by

the

linguistic

character

of

Mk which Lk. regarded

as

admitting of improve-

ment.

linguistic imperfections

are

due

to

translation from the Aramaic is a quite separate question.

Finally,

there are

no

grounds for the conjecture

of Blass

that

the Aramaic original document dealing with the earliest

his-

tory

of

the church

in

Jerusalem which is held to have heeu used

by Lk.

in

(on this

see A

CTS

,

17

col. 56)

was

written

hy Mark, and that he

will on

this account havewritten

the gospel also

in

Aramaic-notwithstanding that, according

to

Papias, he was Peter’s interpreter and that he has

so

many Latin

words

(c)

A written source still older than the logia or Mk.

(or original Mk.

:

148, end) may have been

written in Aramaic.

A writing in Hebrew

117) is

not wholly impossible but certainly quite improbable.
There seems to have been

a

Hebrew original in the

case of the Psalms of Solomon (see

A

POCALYPTIC

,

83).

But here the ruling pattern may have been

that

of

the O T psalms, and perhaps also in Pompey’s

time Hebrew was somewhat more generally in use than
it came to be

years afterwards.

I t is not very

helpful to suggest that people would have been
naturally inclined to treat of the sacred subjects of
the gospel history in the sacred language.

The masses

did not understand Hebrew (see

A

RAMAIC

,

and

yet gospel writings,

they were to miss the purpose

for which they were written, had to be adapted to the

even of the least instructed.

(d) T h e gain from recourse to the theory of such an

original is in the first place this, that certain Greek
expressions will then admit of explanation as being
errors of translation.

Once made, such errors could

very well pass on without change from one Greek
writing to

a

second and to

a

third. But it will be at

once obvious that such an explanation can have im-
portance only in regard to particular passages, not in
regard to the origin

of

the

gospels

as

complete books.

Nor

even for

this purpose is

it

necessary

to

aim

at

of whole sentences

a

process which

will

always offer

room

for

new

error; all h a t will be required

will

he that

we

should discover

the

individual words

or

expressions from which

the error can possibly have

As

a n

instance

we

may

to Wellhausen’s

(Lk.

11

which may equally

as

well

mean

‘give alms,’

the

sense

will

then

he

the same as in

Lk.

11

39,

and

in

the parallel Mt.

and thus the character given to the passage in

will be

changed.

( e ) Another advantage will be that the consideration

of a n Aramaic or Hebrew original will aid in determining
as to the meaning and use of important

or

difficult

words and ideas in the

NT. A

very familiar example

occurs in the

which Jerome found in the gospel of

the Hebrews for

in

6 1 1 ,

and which

is

assuredly right (see

16,

3

6 ;

and c p

L

ORD

’

S

P

RAYER

).

But it must be said that the recent recourse

had to Aramaic in this field of research has already had
some very infelicitous results.

Thus

Wellhansen

3

and others assert that Jesus

used the word

‘

sob

of

Man’

in

sense

of man

(cp

$3,

hut did

not

apply it to himself in

that of

Messiah

in this

last sense,

they

maintain,

it was only

taken

by the evangelists

from

the Apocalyptic literature, and

so

came

Cp Wellh. in

Nachr.

Wissensch.

pp.

I

T

;

Arnold Meyer,

Nestle

’96.

96‘

also

aus

neue Folge Hft.

’99.

381

and

u.

6,

1871

to be introduced into the gospel

But Dalman

in

his

turn

disputes

the

of

the words

‘not

the

son

but only

the

Father’

cp

on

the ground

that in the

time of

Jesus these expressions

were not

customary

without additions such as

‘my

‘of God

‘ m y

[Father].

As

if the meaning they express could not

nevertheless

have

come

from

Jesus, and only the form of expression

t o

the later use assumed

by

Dalman (cp

111.

C

REDIBILITY

O

F

THE

S

YNOPTICS

.

T h e investigation of the

relationships between

the synoptic gospels has in itself

a

scientific interest

and can therefore be carried on with
interest even by the student for whom
the credibility

of

the gospels is a matter

comparative indifference. Still, in

the end the answer to this question is the goal

of

every

research in this field. T h e question is often, however,
still handled

unscientifically. Thus, many still

think themselves entitled to accept as historically true
everything written in the gospels which cannot be
shown by explicit testimony to be false. Others pay
deference a t least to the opinion that a narrative gains
in credibility

if

found in all three gospels (as if in such

a

case all were not drawing from one source)

and

with very few exceptions all critics fall into the very
grave error of immediately accepting a thing as true

as

soon

as

they have found themselves able to trace it to

source.’

Once we have freed ourselves from the dominion of

such fallacies it cannot but seem unfortunate that the
decision

as

to the credibility of the gospel narratives

should be made to depend upon the determination of

a

problem

so

difficult and perhaps insoluble as the

synaptical is.

It would accordingly be a very im-

portant gain if we could find some means of making it
in some

a t least independent of this.

Such

means have already been hinted a t above

27,

n.

I

,

and 34, n.

T h e examination of the credibility must from the

beginning be set about from two opposite points of
view.

On the one hand, we must set on one side every-

thing which for any reason arising either from the

substance or from considerations of literary criticism
has to be regarded as doubtful or as wrong; on the
other hand, one must make search for all such data,

as

from the nature of their contents cannot possibly
any account be regarded as inventions.

When a profane historian finds before him

a

historical

document which testifies to the worship of a hero un-
known to other sources, he attaches

and fore-

most importance to those features which cannot be
deduced merely from the fact of this worship, and he
does

so

on the simple and sufficient ground that they

woiild not be found in this source unless the author had
met with them as fixed data of tradition.

The same

fundamental principle may safely be applied in the case
of the gospels, for they also are all of them written by
worshippers of Jesus.

W e now have accordingly the

advantage-which cannot be appreciated too
of being in

a

position to recognise something as being

worthy of belief even without being able to say, or even
being called on to inquire, whether it comes from
original Mk., from logia, from oral tradition, or from
any other quarter that may be alleged.

The relative

priority becomes

a

matter of indifference, because the

absolute priority-that is, the origin in real tradition-

is

certain.

In such points

question as to credi-

bility becomes independent of the synoptical question.

Here the clearest cases are those in which only one
evangelist, or two, have data of this class, and the
second, or third, or both, are found to have
occasion to alter these in the interests of the reverence
due to Jesus.

If we discover any such points-even if only

a

See on the other

side

Schmiedel, Prof.

pp.

Nov.

62-65

Dalman,

1

1872

GOSPELS

GOSPELS

they guarantee not only their own contents, but also
much more.

For in that

also hold

as

credible

else which agrees in character with these,

and

is

in other respects not open to suspicion.

the thoroughly disinterested historian must recognise it
as his duty to investigate the grounds for this so great
reverence for himself which Jesus was able to call forth
and he will then, first and foremost, find himself

to

recognise as true the two great facts that Jesus had
compassion for the multitude and that he preached with
power, not as the scribes (Mt.

Let us, then,

proceed to test in the two ways indicated some of the
leading points in the synoptic gospels.

The chronological framework must be classed among

the most untrustworthy elemerits in the gospels.

Not

only are the data often quite vague-a
defect for which we conld not blame the

evangelists if they had no precise in-
formation; often also it

is

impossible

to

have any confidence, when Mt.

so

frequently says

' t h e n '

'on that d a y '

or the

like, or when Mk. says straightway'

that the

event really followed on what immediately precedes it
in the narrative.

Were we to take the evangelists

literally, a n enormous number of events would have
to be compressed within the limits of certain days
Mt. 1 2

and there would be only

a

very

moderate number of days of the public ministry of Jesus
with regard to which any events are recorded a t all.

Of

the six time-determinations in Lk.

3

I

-manifestly

brought together with great care-only the first three
can be regarded

as

free from exception.

Philip ruled

over Trachonitis and other territories, but only over

a

portion of

T h e office of high priest was

never filled by two persons a t the same time; it is
Caiaphas who ought to have been named, whilst Annas
held the office from

6

to

15

A

.

On

see that

article. The statement about the census of

21

is quite erroneous (see

also above,

22,

last footnote). But the

data

are

often even in direct contradiction to each other.

8-12

especially, matters stand i n a quite different

chronological connection from that which they have in
Mk. and Lk.

116

a ) .

Or the mother and brethren of

Jesus come, in Mk.

331

and Mt. 1246, after the discourse

about Beelzebub, in Lk.

after the great parable-

discourse (see further

$ 18,

begin.).

The case is no better with the order of the narratives.

( a )

A

large number of sayings of Jesus have been placed

together by Mt. in

five

courses which on each occasion he
closes with the formula referred to in

127

(a,

Among these are included, for example,

a

series

of

seven woes upon the Pharisees,

a

series of seven parables,

a

series of six

theses in correction of the law

34,

I

Hawkins,

Lk.

has arranged in two similar

large groups-the so-called small and large interpola-
tions,

and 951-1814-material partly the same

as,

and partly different from, that of Mt.

The

greater

interpolation-the narrative

of

what

is

known as

the Samaritan journey-can

make n o

claim to historicity. In the

midst

of

it

we

find

and

the mission

of

the

seventy and

their

return,

the warning against the plots

of

Herod

who ruled over Galilee only, not Samaria,

a feast

in

the

house

of a

Pharisee, who can hardly have lived in

Samaria, and

(17

the

statement that Jesus was on the

borders

of Galilee

and Samaria, which yet he had already

passed

in

his journey

to

Jerusalem.

But even outside of these compiled discourses the

order of narration is often such as to suggest the sus-
picion that it has been determined by the nature of
the contents. The rubbing of the ears of corn and
the healing of the man with the withered hand (Mk.
223-36) are related the one immediately after the
other, only because both occurrences showed Jesus in
conflict with the law of the Sabbath.

Or are we to

believe that the

or three men-the whole number

recorded in the gospels (Mt.

Lk.

asked of Jesus

to

be admitted to the number of his

disciples, all presented themselves at one and the same

when he was about to take ship across

the Sea of Galilee, or, according to Lk., at one and
the same point in the journey through Samaria?

Coni-

pare, further, the wholly different

in which t h e

events in Mt.

8-12

given as compared with

Mk. and

with the result that

)

the choice of the

apostles comes

to

be placed immediately before their

sending-out

and the series of miracles before

the arrival of the messengers from the Baptist

a).

(c)

In many cases

it

is not

so

much for the sake of

the order, but simply for the sake of a word, that
certain sayings of Jesus are brought into contiguity with
others thus, Mk.

are brought together only by

the idea of

stumbling-block'

48.

and

only by that of fire,

496 and

only by that

of salt,

only by that of light,

only b y

that of the door.

But what

is

with regard

these things is in each case quite different, and he does
no honour to Jesus who believes himself in duty bound
to prove that the Master gave forth in one breath utter-
ances

so

utterly disconnected.

( d ) In other places there is manifest lack of clear

appreciation of the situation.

The prohibition-which

certainly comes from Jesus himself and is no mere in-
vention of the evangelists-against making known

a

deed of healing wrought by him,

a

prohibition still

found in Mt. 84 930, wbuld be utterly futile if, previously

)

and simultaneously

Jesus had healed whole

crowds of sick persons.

In

1 2

the prohibition is

even upon a

multitude of persons healed at one and

the same time.

But we find

same thing also in the

parallel Mk. 3

and even in

1 3 4

Lk. 4

41

and here

also follows the same prohibition laid upon individuals

Mk.826).

( e ) In

Mk.

one is very willingly disposed to recognise

a n appropriate arrangement of the events of the public
ministry of Jesus as a whole.

It

is

certainly the fact

that his first chapter gives the impression that the public
activity of Jesus may actually have

in the manner

here related.

But so far as the rest of the gospel

is

concerned, little confidence can be placed even in
order.

In saying this, we lay no stress on the assertion

of Papias (see

65)

that he set down the deeds and

words of Jesus without order for Papias may very
have been judging of that order with Mt.

as

his standard.

Nor can we accept the view of B. Weiss, that Mk. in-
tended by his frequent use of the imperfect to convey
that he is narrating not individual deeds of Jesus but
only the sort of things that he

in the habit of doing,

as

for example in

T h e whole sum, however,

of

separate events in Galilee (miracles, discourses, and the
like) has

so

comparatively little that

is

characteristic,

and their order-for

a

writer who wrote only for the

glorification of Jesus and not for

a

laboriously exact

account of his biography-was of

so

comparatively

little importance, that it would not be safe for

us

to rely

on them with

confidence whatever.

In one point

M k .

has

a

superiority over Mt. and Lk.

in

24 31

h e

records

a

journey of Jesus to Tyre and

in other

words,

a

distance abroad.

So

also the journey t o

Philippi recorded by him

( 8 2 7 )

in common

with Mt.

signifies for him

a

noteworthy epoch

in the public life of Jesus

The alleged situations in which the recorded

ances of

were spoken can by no means be implicitly

See further

the Lord's Prayer

given

the Sermon on the Mount (Mt.

69-13), or at the

request of the

11

Did

de-

liver the Sermon on

Mount to his disciples (Mt.

5

As

this view

of

B.

Weiss see

'87,

pp.

45-57,

88,

pp.

Holtzmann, ibid.,

78,

with

reply, pp.

GOSPELS

GOSPELS

or was it heard by the multitudes (Mt.

Lk.

For

a

whole series of utterances of Jesus Lk. has

assigned occasions of which Mk. and Mt.

nothing

918

37

1 9

Even where a n utterance of Jesus recurs more

than once in the gospels-and we may be certain that
he repeated himself much oftener than

is

recorded

145 a)-they yet afford

us

not the slightest guarantee

that the repetition took place precisely at the point a t
which they place

it.

The

about the light under

a

bushel

is

found in

three

different connections. In Mk.

4

and Lk. 8

16

t h e

light is

t h e

interpretation of the parables Jesus had spoken (see

manifestly

a

very

special application

of a

thought

of

very much

wider scope. In Lk.

11 33

the saying comes after the sentence

which affirms that in the person of Jesus

a greater

than Jonah is

present; here, then, the light can

only

be Jesus himself.

I n

this

connection.

however. it is

to

carrv

the

most obvious meaning

the

that one

the light under a

Moreover we

in

11 34

a

saying

added only on account

of

the verbal suggestion

the light of the body is the eye. Once more, then,

it

is

not

likely that the saying belongs to this place. In Mt.

5 14-16

two

different representations are

the disciples

are

ex-

to let their light shine, the city

on the hill

on

the other

hand shines

of

itself.

By the

the disciples are here

meant

hut the opening words, ‘ye

are

the light of the world,’ can

have been framed

on

the model of the preceding sentence,

ye

are the salt of the earth,’ and that, too, for the first time by Mt.,

for the two sentences can hardly have stood together in one

source since

in

Mk. and in Lk. they are given in

two

quite dis-

tinct places. Thus in

no

one passage have

we

any security that

we are

in

possession

of

the original connection

of

the saying,

and

it

would be just

as

conceivable that it

may

have been spoken by

Jesus

when one of his followers, concerned about

his

safety, had

besought

him,

as Peter

on

one occasion (Mt.

16

did,

to spare

himself and not expose himself to danger-in fact

very

much

as

i n Jn.

only without the specifically Johannine meaning of

the word.

In the case

of

an eye-witness the recollection of an

event associates itself readily with that of

a

definite

place, but for those who are not eye-
witnesses this has much less interest.

I n

Lk.

9

Peter’s confession is not made at

Philippi indeed, the evangelist knows nothing

about

a

journey thither a t all

end).

T h e

leper was cleansed according to Mt.

8

after Jesus had

finished his Sermon on the Mount, but according to

Lk.

a

considerable time before that, when Jesus

was ‘in one of the cities,’ similarly

as

in Mk.

140.

On

the return from his

first

journey

(to Tyre and

Sidon) esus, according to Mk.

31,

arrives

at

the eastern shore

of the

of

Galilee according

to

Mt.

15

(if

we are

to take

the most obvious meaning

of

the words),

at

the

western.

After

the feeding of the

4000

evangelists agree in saying that he

crossed

the

lake

;

hut according

to

Mk.

8

the

crossing

is to

the

west shore according to Mt.

15

it is to the

east.

Then follows

a

new

after which the apprehension

ahout want

of

bread arises

in

Mk. 8

on

the

eastern

shore,

in

Mt.

16 5

on

the

western. The two

coalesce according to Mk. 827 Mt.

only when

is reached-unless

we

are to

assume

that Mt., in what precedes,

means

the same localities

as

Mk.

and has only expressed himself misleadingly (cp

a).

As for persons-neither the names

of

the women a t

the cross (see

nor even the names of the

twelve disciples (Mt.

Mk.

Lk. 6

are

given in two places alike (see A

POSTLE

).

On the

divergence between Mt.

on the one hand and Mk. 2

a n d Lk.

on the other, see

and M

ATTHEW

.

Several

of

the reported sayings of Jesus clearly bear

the impress of

a

time which he did not live to see. T h e

precept ahout taking up one’s cross
and following Jesus (Mt.

1624)

is

certainly not to be explained by

pointing out that the sight of con-

demned persons carrying their crosses to the place of

execution was a familiar one for in that spectacle the

most important element of all was wanting-that of
innocence.

T h e words in question cannot have taken

their present shape till after the death of Jesus.

Ex-

hortations as to how to behave in times of persecution
(Mk.

he can hardly have found it necessary to

give

so

early, for, however numerous his followers may

have been, he formed in his lifetime no definite com-

munity outside the bonds of the Jewish religion, and

See, further, Hawkins,

Wernle,

still less

a

church.

It was therefore also in the lifetime

of Jesus hardly possible that his followers should be
expelled from the synagogue in the manner spoken of in
Lk.

and still less

so

that they should be expelled on

account of the name of Christian’ (see C

HRISTIAN

,

I

).

The graduated order of procedure against an erring
brother (Mt.

is much more easily explained

when transplanted to a later time.

In the

of

Jesus it is, a t all events, intelligible only if by

we understand not the Christian but the

Jewish local community. But also the authority con-
ferred in the verse immediately following

‘Whatsoever ye shall bind on earth shall be bound in

heaven, and whatsoever ye shall loose on earth shall be
loosed in heaven,’ could never have been given by Jesus
either to the apostles or, what the context leaves open,
t o his followers in general, still less to Peter to whom it

is

limited in

(cp B

INDING

A N D

L

OOSING

).

Still

more 1618

is

open to serious question, quite apart from

other reasons, on account of the word

and

because the verse is wanting in Tatian’s
Into the discourse on the occasion of the mission of the
disciples special precepts have been introduced, of a sort
which canonlyowe their origin to later missionarypractice
taught by painful experience

Mt.

10

13). T h e

baptismal precept to baptize in the name of the Father,
the Son, and the Holy Spirit (Mt.

is

questionable,

not only because, according to the older accounts, the
risen Jesus was only seen, not heard

138

d),

but also

because, according to the N T throughout, baptism was
only in. the name of Jesus (Rom.

6 3

Gal. 327 Acts 238

816

1048

even in

also;

Vis.

7

3).

The Trinitarian formula is met with first

in Justin

and in the

So

also,

if Jesus had enjoined the mission to the Gentiles

the

original apostles, as is stated in Mt.

it would be a

practical impossibility to understand, how they, or their
followers, could have withstood Paul so hotly upon this
very point.

I t would clearly be wrong, in a n investigation such as

the present, to start from any such postulate or axiom

as

that ‘miracles’ are impossible.

At

the same time, on the other hand, some
doubt

as

to the accuracy of the accounts

cannot fail to arise in the mind even of

the stoutest believer

miracles when he observes snch

points as the following :-(a) How contradictory they
are.

In Mk.

1 3 2 34

the sick were brought to Jesus

and he healed

some;

in Mt.

8

they brought many and

he healed

in Lk.

they brought

and he healed

as also in Mt.

In Mk.

I

O

a great

multi-

tude followed him and he healed many; in Mt.
many followed and he healed

According to this the

view of the evangelist must have been that he was
followed exclusively by sick persons.

According to

what is said in

d

not

only the early date but the

historicity altogether of those healings en

masse

must be

held to be doubtful.

Before the feeding

of

the

in Mk. (634) Jesus teaches the multitude in

Mt.

he heals their sick; in Lk.

he does

both.

At the beginning of his journey to Jerusalem,

according to Mk.

Jesus teaches the multitude;

according to Mt.

he

them.

According to

Lk.

Jesus heals

a

number of

and blind-in the presence of the messengers of the
Baptist, and immediately before this he raises the
widow’s son a t Nain

Mt. knows nothing

of

this,

Mk. as little (the message of the Baptist is

wholly wanting in Mk.).

But on the other hand Mt.

records as before this date not only the healing of a
leper

and of

a

paralytic

as

does Mk.

2 = Lk.

5

12-26,

also the raising of the daughter of

Jairus

and the healing of two

men

and of a dumb man possessed with

a

devil

:

which in

are all brought in as

having been wrought after the message of the Baptist

1876

GOSPELS

GOSPELS

1835-43

Thus each of the two evan-

gelists secured that the messengers of the Baptist should
be able to hear of miracles of

various kinds as

wrought by Jesus (Mt.

but each has

done

so

in a djfferent way. After the cleansing of the

temple, Jesus, according to Mt.

heals blind

and lame there; of this Mk. and Lk. know nothing.
Similarly in

he alone reports the resurrection of

many dead persons on the death of Jesus.

On the

other hand, Mt.

describes the preparation of

the Passover meal without presupposing any super-
natural knowledge

on

the part of Jesus

as

is done in

Mk.

and Lk.

Lk. alone knows not

only of the miracles reported

but also of

the healing of the woman with the spirit of infirmity,

of

the man with the dropsy, of the ten lepers, and of the
high priest’s servant’s ear, as also of the fact of
Peter’s miraculous draft
51-11). In the last two cases the silence

of

Mt. and

Mk. is all the more significant as they give a quite
precise account of the very occurrences in the midst
of which a miracle, according to Lk., was wrought,

and in Gethsemane all the apostles, and at the call
of Peter at least he and some others, were present
(Mk.

Mk.

cp

32,

n.

Only Mk., again, knows of the

healing

of

a blind man in two successive stages, by

application

of

spittle and by laying on of hands

(8

22-26).

Instead of the one man, deaf and with an impediment
in his speech, who is healed by Jesus in Mk.

by

the same means,

a wholemultitude

blind, and dumb are healed. At Gerasa Mk.

(5

and Lk.

(827) make mention

of

one demoniac, Mt.

(828)

of two,

and that too

with clear divergence from

Mk.

and dependence on the words of the

demoniac in the synagogue at Capernaum (Mk.

Lk. 4

all mention of which has been wholly omitted

by

At Jericho Mk. (1046) mentions one blind man

as Jesus was leaving

Lk.

1 8 3 5

one as he was

entering,

two as he was leaving. T h e man

who in Lk.

is dumb is

also

blind in Mt.

According to Mk.

5

23

the daughter of Jairus is a t the

point of death, according to Lk. 842 she is a-dying in
Mt.

9

18

the father’s statement

my daughter is

even now dead,’ whilst in Mk. 535 and Lk.

849

this

announcement

is

brought to Jesus only after the healing

of the woman with the issue of blood which has been
wrought in the interval.

T o the number

as well

as to the 4000 of those

were miraculously fed Mt.

adds in each case

‘besides women and

children.’

In Mk.

the fig tree

is

found to be

withered away on the morning after the curse has been
pronounced

according to Mt. 21

it withered away

immediately. Whilst in Mk.

1

it is Jesus who sees

the heaven opened and the spirit descending and hears
the voice,

so

that one is able, if

so

disposed, to take the

whole passage as describing an inward mental experi-
ence, with regard to which the disciples had derived
their knowledge from himself alone, Mt.

repre-

sents the opening of the heavens as a n objective occur-
rence and gives the voice in the third person and thus
not as for the hearing of Jesus alone, whilst according to

Lk.

the Spirit even descends ‘ i n bodily shape.’

As for the narratives of the nativity and childhood see
M

ARY

(M

OTHER

OF

J

ESUS

) and N

ATIVITY

.

W e pass

over the numerous other minor differences in the accounts
of miracles

the gospels, in order to touch upon

:-

Two cases in which even one strongly predisposed

I t must be granted that

Mt.

means

a

dumb,

and in 11 a deaf

But the two infirmities so often g o

together that

of meaning cannot be held to in-

validate the statement

in

the text, which in all other respects is

absolutely exact.

These

passages must be regarded as parallel because

in

each there follows this detailed examination of the

that

Jesus cast out demons by Beelzebub (Mt. 12

11

A

second parallel to

Lk.

11 14

is Mt.

9

which agrees in

its details with

Lk.

more exactly.

42).

erson.

to believe in miracles would find it difficult to

a

narrative of this kind on account of the time to which
it is assigned.

(a)

Lk.

expressly, and Mk.

Mt.

also to all appearance, allege an eclipse of the

sun,

a

celestial phenomenon which, however, is pos-

sible only at the period of New Moon-Le., shortly
before the

of Nisan-and cannot happen on the

or 14th of a month.

To

save for the narrative some

relic of credibility the suggestion has even been made
that it is in fact an eclipse of the moon that

is

re-

corded.

But in offering this explanation it was for-

gotten, not only that at midday such an occurrence
would not produce darkness, but also that the shadow
of the earth falling upon the moon is visible only from
the side of the earth that is turned away from the sun,
in other words, during the night, not in the middle of

the day from

to

3.

As for the fig tree (Mk.

11

12-14

Mt. 21

18-22),

it is certainly the fact that its fruits begin to form before

the leaves unfold-approximately about Easter tide.
But at this early stage they are still exceedingly small
and quite uneatable.

The first ripe figs are gathered

in the end of June, most of the rest in August, and
some not till

so

late

as

February.

Some

do not reach

their development at all in the year of their formation,
but only in the following spring.

Fruits of this

named class might therefore have been found by Jesus
on the tree but they are in no sense

a

characteristic

mark

of a good tree the characteristic of such

a

tree is its

young freshly-produced figs. But with figs of this last
kind Jesus could not have satisfied his hunger the nar-
rative would have been possible a t any time from June to

February but, placed at Easter, it

is

not

so

and yet it

belongs so definitely to the Easter season that it would be
indeed abold thing to

true initselfbutwrongly

dated. T h e only really pertinent remark is that of Mk.

(11 :

it was not the season of figs. This

is so

contrary,

however, to the whole of the rest of the narrative that
Scholten thought himself justified. in setting it down as
a marginal note by

a

foreign hand

119

b ) .

Thus,

even where there

is

not the slightest shadow of aversion

to miracles as such, there is nothing to surprise us when
these two narratives are declared to be unhistorical.
See

F

IG

T

RE

E

.

Taken as a whole the facts brought forward in

the immediately preceding paragraphs show only too
clearly with what lack of concern for historical precision
the evangelists write. T h e conclusion is inevitable that
even the one evangelist whose story in any particular
case involves less of the supernatural than that of the

others,

is

still very far from being entitled on that

account to claim implicit acceptance of his narrative.
Just in the same degree in which those who came after
him have gone beyond him, it is easily conceivable that
he himself may have gone beyond those who went
before him.

With reference to the resurrection of Jesus

( a )

the

most credible statement in the Synoptics is that

of

Mt.

(and

that the first appearances

were in Galilee. T h e appearance in
Jerusalem to the two women (Mt. 28

gf.)

is almost

up-not

only because of the silence of all the other accounts, but
also because in it Jesus only repeats the direction which
the women had already received through the angel.

If

the disciples had seen Jesus in Jerusalem

as

Lk. states,

it would be absolutely incomprehensible how Mk. and
Mt. came to require them to repair to Galilee before
they could receive a manifestation of Jesus. The con-
verse on the other hand is very easy to understand;
Lk. found it inconceivable that the disciples who,
according to him, were still in Jerusalem, should have
been unable to see Jesus until they went to Galilee.

In

actual fact the disciples had already dispersed at
Gethsemane (Mk.

Mt. 2656); this Lk. very signi-

ficantly

Even Peter, after he had perceived,

1878

GOSPELS

GOSPELS

when

denied his Master, the dangers he incurred,

will hardly have exposed himself to these, gratuitously,
any longer.

At the cross only women, not disciples,

were present.

Whither these last had betaken them-

selves we are not told.

But it is not difficult to con-

jecture that they had gone to their native Galilee. The

angelic command, therefore, that they should make this
their rendezvous, may reasonably he taken as

a

veiled

indication that they had already gone thither.

The

presupposition made both by Mk. and by Mt. that they
were still in Jerusalem on the day of the resurrection is
accordingly erroneous.

I t was this error of theirs that

led Lk. to his still more erroneous inversion of the actual
state of the facts.

The second element in the synoptics that may he

accepted with confidence is the statement that it was
Peter who received the first manifestation of his risen
master. All the more surprising is it that it is only Lk.
who tells

us

so,

and that only in passing

(2434).

I t is

the chief point in the statement of Paul,

I

Cor.

15

This passage must be regarded

as

the earliest

of the appearances of the risen Jesus unquestionably
it goes back to the communications made by Peter
during the fifteen days’ visit of Paul, three years after
the conversion of the latter (Gal.

(c)

Not only is it

a

mark of inadequacy in the gospels

that they have nothing to say about the greater number
of the manifestations here recorded

it also becomes

necessary to withhold belief from what they actually do
relate in addition.

Paul would certainly not have left

it out had he known it the duty of bringing forward

all

the available evidence in support of the truth of the

resurrection of Jesus as against the Corinthian doubters
was of the most stringent kind.

( d ) Thus, on the one hand, the statements that

Jesus was touched, and that he ate (Lk.

are seen

to be incredible. But these are precisely the statements
which make it possible to understand why the evangelists
should pass over the mere appearing of Jesus

to

which the statements of Paul are confined, inasmuch as
they believed they could offer proofs of

a

more palpable

character.

I n criticism it was a great error to believe that

the expres-

sion ‘was seen’

Paul was characterizing the appearances

as unreal. I t is indeed true that in the N T this expression with
one exception (Acts

is applied to visions but, unless he be

a thoroughly modern person well versed in philosophy and
science, the visionary

under a psychological necessity to

regard

as

real the things which he sees in vision even though h e

distinguishes between them and the objects of ordinary sight.
T h e only thing that would prevent him from doing so would

if

the vision offered that which according to his ideas was utterly

impossible. But in the case before us this is far from being

so.

I n the N T the resurrection of a

of the Baptist or of

Elijah- is supposed to be thoroughly possible (Mk. 6

11

What the expression ‘was seen’

proves is,

accordingly, rather this-that in

no

description of any

appearances of the risen Lord did Paul perceive any-
thing by which they were distinguished from his own, re-
ceived at Damascus. With reference to this he uses the
sameexpression he therefore characterizes it

as

a

‘vision’

and, as he still distinguishes from this the

revelation

in

Cor.

12

I

,

we shall have

to take the word literally and interpret it

as

denoting

seeing, not hearing.

( e ) T h e statements

as

to the empty sepulchre are to

be rejected; Paul is silent regarding ‘them, and his
silence is very strongly reinforced by Mk.

1 6 8

which

says the women told no one anything of what they had
seen. This failure to carry out the angel’s bidding is
quite unthinkable, and one readily understands why Mt.
and Lk. should say the opposite, though this is probably
the most violent change they have anywhere made on
their exemplar.

(The word ‘fear,’

in Mt.

288

shows that he had before him the were afraid,’

of Mk.

)

The statement of Mk. is intelligible

only

if

we take him to mean that the whole statement as

to

the empty sepulchre is now being promulgated for the

first time by the publication of his gospel. He cannot.
intend to say that the women held their peace for
short time only, for the general belief is that Jesus.
appeared very soon after his resurrection, and every
delay

on

the part of the women would have put back

the time at which the disciples could arrive in Galilee-
and behold the promised appearing of the Lord.
Mk. is understood in the sense we have indicated, then
in him we have a virtual admission, veiled indeed, yet
clear, that all Statements as to the empty

were innovations of a later time.

Nor,

as

against this, will it avail to urge

inherent likelihood that the sepulchre must without fail
have been visited.

Here the assumption is that forthwith

on the resurrection day

the tidings of the empty sepulchre became known

in Jerusalem.

this supposition has been shown to he groundless. Yet even

had the tidings been brought forthwith

to

the Christians in

Jerusalem, and even

if

they had thereupon at once visited the

sepulchre, their evidence would not have proved more than did
that of the women. Only an examination by opponents could
have claimed greater weight. But it is hardly likely that the
tidings reached their ears forthwith.

Yet, even had this

happened and the sepulchre been found empty the fact would
have been capable of heing explained by

as due to a

removal of the body. The (unhistorical) statement of Mt. as to
setting a watch over the sepulchre

108) had in fact just this

very purpose in view-to exclude the

possibility

of any such

removal. But after the visit

of

the women the watch was not

continued even in Mt. Further

it has to be borne in mind

according to Jewish belief a body did not remain
for more than three days (see

S

O

N OF

Z

EB

EDEE

H a d a body, therefore, really been found,

it

would

have been possible

t o identify it as the

of Jesus.

This comes yet more strongly into view if we

to ourselves the order of events in the way in which, in
all probability, they actually happened.

The first belief

in the resurrection of Jesus arose through the appearances.

in

Galilee on the third day after his death, or later.

T h e disciples believed in them and therefore felt them-
selves under no necessity to assure themselves by ex-
amination of the sepulchre. Even if the tidings of

appearances had

brought to Jerusalem

forthwith, not even

so

would they have given occasion

for such an examination.

I t was unnecessary:

followers of Jesus believed them without further evi-
dence his enemies laughed them to scorn.

knew

that the emptiness of the sepulchre after

so

long

a

time could prove

just as little as could the

production of

a no

longer identifiable body.

It is

unnecessary to enter more fully into the almost incred-
ible variations in the accounts of what happened at
the sepulchre, after what has already been said (see, for-
enumeration, § 27).

(g)

T h e conclusion of Mk.

is

admittedly not.

genuine (see W. and

H.,

Appendix, and above,

4,

n.

2 ) .

Still less can the shorter conclusion printed by

W.

and

H.

lay claim to genuineness. Should it he found that

thelonger, in accordance with

an

Armenian superscription

found by Conybeare

’93

pp.

was.

written by the

name in the inscrip-

tion

i s

a

very unfavourable light would

be shed upon this disciple

the Lord,’

as

Papias calls.

Almost the entire section is a compilation,

even from the fourth gospel and Acts.

At the same time-

the words

‘

for they were afraid’

cannot have been the close intended by the author,
especially seeing that appearances in Galilee are an-
nounced

(167).

T h e suggestion that the author was.

interrupted as he was finishing is

a

mere makeshift.

I t cannot be urged in support of it that in Mt. and

Lk.

no traces of the conjectured genuine conclusion

of‘

Mk. are to he found.

W e could not be sure.

whether at least Mt. has not drawn from it, especi-
ally as he coincides entirely with Mk.

But.

deliberate divergence from the (supposed)
sion of Mk. would also be very intelligible, for Mt.
and Lk. have already, as against Mk.

168,

said the-

opposite of what lay hefore them in their exemplar..
The fact that the last leaf of

a

book is always the most

1880

GOSPELS

GOSPELS

liable to get lost can suffice to explain how the close

of

Mk. should have disappeared without leaving any trace.
Yet

a

deliberate removal of it is also conceivable,-if

it did not answer the demands which had already come
to be set

in the time of Mt. and

Lk.

Nothing can

be conjectured with any certainty, except that it
described an appearance of Jesus to the disciples. The
fact that Peter is also individually named in

may

perhaps be held to indicate that the conclusion con-
tained also an appearance to Peter alone.

The foregoing sections may have sometimes seemed

to raise a doubt whether any credible elements were to

be found in the gospels at all

all

the

,

moreemphatically

stress

be laid on the existence of passages of
the kind indicated in

131.

Refer-

ence has already been made to Mk.

10

Whv

thou me

none is good save

as

also to Mt.

(that blasphemy against the son of man can be forgiven),’
and to Mk.

(that his relations held him to be beside

himself; cp

T o

these, two others may now

be added : Mk.

(‘of that day and

of

that

knoweth no one, not even the angels in heaven, neither
the Son but the Father

the words neither the Son

are absent from Mt. in many MSS and

the whole verse from Lk.

cp

and

Mt. 2746 ( ‘ M y God, my God, why

thou forsaken

m e ? ‘-an utterance which Lk. has wholly omitted).

These five passages, along with the four which will

be spoken

of

in

might be called the

pillars for

a

truly scientific life of Jesus. Should the

idea suggest itself that they have been sought out with
partial intent,

as

proofs of the human as against the

divine character of Jesus, the fact at all events cannot

be set aside that they exist in the Bible and demand

attention.

I n reality, however, they prove not only

that in the person of Jesus we have to do with a com-
pletely human being, and that the divine is to be sought
in him only in the form in which it is capable of being

found in a m a n ; they also prove that he really did
exist, and that the gospels contain at least some absolutely

trustworthy facts concerning him.

If passages of this

kind were wholly wanting in them it would be impos-
sible to prove to

a

sceptic that any historical value

whatever was to be assigned to the gospels he would
be in

a

position to declare the picture of Jesus contained

in them to be purely

a

work of phantasy, and could

remove the person of Jesus from the field of history,-
all the

more

when the meagreness of the historical

testimony regarding him, whether in canonical writings
outside of the gospels, or in profane writers snch

as

Josephus, Tacitus, Suetonius, and Pliny, is considered.

( a )

According to Mk.

Jesus emphatically declined

to

work a ‘sign

before the eyes of his con-

116

6

d).

temporaries ;

‘

there shall no sign be

given unto this generation.

In Mt.

and Lk.

this saying

is

given in the enlarged form, ‘there

shall no sign be given to this generation but the sign
of Jonah (the prophet).’

Unless here the meaning

intended be the exact contrary of what is said in

Mk.,

the ‘sign of Jonah’ cannot be really

a

‘sign,’ but

rather the opposite of one.

To

illustrate how notwithstanding i t was possible for Jesus

to

express himself

let us put a n

parallel case.

A

conqueror, without receiving any provocation, invades a country.

I t s inhabitants send a n embassy t o ask of him what justification

he can show for his aggression.

He

gives the answer: You

a s k me what

I

can allege in justification?

I

shall

you no

other justification than that which my sword gives.

The

situation in the gospel is quite similar.

The one thing which Jesus has hitherto done, and,

if he refuses to work signs

the one thing which

Lk.

also as well as

Mk.

has his share in the weakening

of

this sentence the verse he gives immediately before it heing

9),

‘he

denieth me in the presence

of

men

shall

he denied

i n

the presence

of

the angels of

God.’

61

1881

he can continue to do, is to preach.

The main activity

of Jonah also in like manner consisted in preaching.
By the sign of Jonah accordingly is meant the opposite
of a

preaching like that of Jonah. This is

shown also by the immediate sequel: ‘ t h e men of

repented at the preaching of Jonah.’ Next

follows the example of the Queen of Sheba who came
to hear the preaching of Solomon (Mt.

It

is only in

that this good connection is

by

the interpretation that the sign of Jonah means his three days’
sojourn in the belly of the whale and that by this is signified
the three days’ sojourn of Jesus

heart of the earth. But

even apart from its breaking the connection this verse which
rests only on misunderstanding of the

utterance in

Lk.

11

is quite unsuitable ; for a ‘sign’ of course makes its

impression only when it can be seen. T h e people of Nineveh
could not observe

the

emergence of Jonah from the place

o f

his

sojourn, nor indeed is it even stated that he told them of it

;

all

that is said is that he preached to them.

(6)

According to

Jesus was able to do no

mighty work (save healing a few sick folk) in
and marvelled at the unbelief of its people. This then
is the reason why he was unable.

Mt.

1 3 5 8

is

a

manifest weakening of this : he did not many mighty
works there because of their unbelief.

(c)

In Mk.

8

the disciples, in the crossing of the

Lake, which has been touched on in

are re-

presented as having forgotten to take bread with them.
Jesus says : ‘ T a k e heed, beware of the leaven of the

Pharisees and of Herod’ (in Mt.

: ‘of the Pharisees

and Sadducees

’).

This exhortation the disciples

as a

reproach on them for their forgetfulness.

Jesus rebukes them for their little understanding, and
reminds them of the feeding of the

and of the

4000.

The conclusion is given fully only by Mt.

but unquestionablyin the sense of

Mk.,

How

that ye do not perceive that I

not to

you

concerning bread?

. .

.

then understood they how that

he bade them beware of the teaching of the Pharisees
and Sadducees.’

evangelists have previously

related the feeding of the

and the

4000

as facts.

If Jesus reminds them of this, the consequence must of
course be that they should think of material loaves

as

being what they are to beware of.

In reality, however,

the deduction is quite the opposite. This is possible
only on one assumption-if the feeding of the

and

the 4000 was not a historical occurrence,

a

parable

having this as its point that the bread with which one
man in the wilderness was able to feed a vast multitude
signifies the teaching with which he satisfied their souls.
On this view the closing statement of the narrative first
finds its full explanation; more bread remains over
than was present at the beginning; truth is not con-
sumed when it is communicated to others, but only
serves to awaken in them ever new thoughts and an
ever-growing power to satisfy in their turn the spiritual
hunger of others.

It is exceedingly surprising, yet at

the same time evidence of

a

reproduction of earlier

materials, that Mk. and Mt. should give the present
narrative at

all-a

narrative which in their understand-

ing of the miracle of the feeding is so meaningless.

Mt. has made some attempt, albeit a somewhat feeble one, t o

bring the two narratives

harmony. With him Jesus (16

8)

re-

proaches the disciples for their little faith. Similarly

Mk.

a t a n

earlier place

the wording of which recalls that of the

present passage alludes

the miracle of the loaves and implies

that the

ought to have learned from it implicit faith in

the supernatural power of Jesus even in the storm.

All

the

more important

is i t to notice that

the passage of

Mk.

now

before us

14-21)

Jesus blames them, in the only fitting (and

therefore the only original) way, for their little undersianding
and

by taking

this reproach in

shows that the

other, that

of

unbelief,

is

not

the original one.

In Mt.

5

7 2 2

Jesus sends an answer

to

the

Baptist that the blind see, the lame walk, the lepers
are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and
the poor have the gospel preached to them.

As

has

been shown above

a ) ,

both evangelists have seen

to it that

all

the miracles. mentioned have taken place,

either at an earlier date, or before the eyes of the

GOSPELS

GOSPELS

Baptist’s messengers. All the more remarkable there-
fore is it that the list should close with what is not a
miracle a t all.

I t would be impossible to counteract

the preceding enumeration more effectually than by the
simple insertion of this final clause.

T h e evangelists

therefore cannot have added it

of

their own proper

motion.

Neither could Jesus have neutralised the

force of his own words-if we assume

to be

intended- in such an extraordinary way.

On the

other hand the clause

question fits admirably,

if

Jesus was speaking not of the physically but of the
spiritually blind,

leprous, deaf, dead.

This

is

the meaning, too, which these words actually have in
the O T passages,

Is.

611,

which lie at the root

of this, and it also fits very well the continuation in Mt.

116

Lk.

which reads, ‘Blessed is he who

is

not

offended in me’

in

my unpretentious simplicity).

Here, therefore, we have a case, as remarkable

as

it

is

assured, in which a saying of Jesus, though completely
misunderstood, has been-in its essence at
incorporated with verbal accuracy in the gospels.

Jesus, then, declined to work signs

and that,

too, on principle.

Mk.

8

(and parallels) is not a

saying of

a

kind

he ‘could have

uttered one day and broken the next
moreover he exuresslv

that no

sign should be given to

‘

this [whole] generation,’ because

as

a

whole it was wicked and rebellious against God.

Now, the word

does not denote any kind of

wonder, but only

a

wonder of the kind which serves the

end of showing the power of him who works it-as, in
the present case, the Messiahship of Jesus.

But,

so

far as the reported miracles of Jesus have this end,
they are, if this saying of his is to be accepted, no
longer to be taken to be credible; either they never
happened at all

or

(at least), if historical, they were

not miraculous.

This applies very conspicuously t o the withering

of the fig-tree.

Apart from the motive mentioned in

6,

this particular

miracle is rejected

many theologians on the ground that

such

a deed having no manifest saving purpose, appears to them
worth; of his character. The same principle will apply also a t
least to the stilling

of the storm and the walking upon the

water, and likewise

to the stater

the fish‘s mouth even

though, strangely enough, it is not expressly said
that this miracle was actually carried

out.

( a )

As for the feeding of the

5000

and the 4000,

so

also

for the withering of the

we still possess a clue to

the way in

the narrative arose

out of a parable.

The narrative in

question

is

not

found in Lk., and this

is, doubtless correctly, explained from
the

that Lk. considered his

of the fie-tree

-

or

rather the

to the parable,

the tree

had at last to be cut down after all-as identical with
the narrative.

By the fig-tree, in this view, was meant

the nation of Israel, and that which we have seen to be
impossible if the story

is

taken as a relation of actual

fact

6,

becomes very effective as soon as the

symbolical interpretation is adopted. At the close of
his ministry, at his last

festival, Jesus utters his

curse upon the nation that has borne no fruit.
rative forms of expression, which could give rise to the
story of the feeding, are also to be found

in

Mt.

56

: ‘blessed are they that hunger,’ for they shall be

filled,’ and the verse which in Mk.

(634)

stands before

the miraculous narrative, to the effect that Jesus
the multitude, embodies

in

reality the substance of that

narrative.

For

Peter’s draught of fishes, cp Mk.

and Mt.

I t is not difficult to

expressions made use of by Jesus out of which

the narrative of the walking on the water and the still-
ing of the tempest could be framed, somewhat after the
analogy of Mk.

11

22-24

and Lk.

1 7 6

: if ye have faith as

a

grain of mustard seed, then shall ye be able to com-

On

the

earliest

text

see

123

a,

n.

mand the storm and it will obey, and ye shall be able
to walk unharmed upon the troubled sea (of life).’
Indeed even the words which actually stand in the
passages last cited might have given occasion to the
formation of miraculous narratives.

If ye shall say in

faith to this mountain, Re thou cast into the sea, or to
the

tree, Be thou transplanted into the sea,

so

shall it be done.’ But literalism of this sort even
those days had its limits.

(6)

T h e same explanation is capable of being applied

also where deeds or words attributed to Jesus himself are
not concerned. I t is very easily conceivable that a
preacher on the death of Jesus may have said, purely
figuratively, that then was the veil of the temple rent in
twain (Mk.

Mt.

Lk.

What he

meant to say was that by the death of Jesus the
ancient separation between God and his people was
done away.

By a misunderstanding, this saying could

easily be taken up as statement of a literal physical fact.

So

also, if another preacher said, using figurative

language, that at the death of Jesus the graves had
opened (Mt.

or that darkness (of sorrow) had

spread over all the earth (Mk.

( a )

In the present connection we need not do more

than allude verv

to what bv Strauss was

also 26, n.

as almost the only source of origin for
such miraculous narratives as had no

real foundation

in

fact

-

namelv.

passages of the OT. These may very well have con-
tributed to the shaping of such narratives, even though
we do not assume that they originated them.

For the

of the dead cp

I

K. 1 7

for

the multiplication of the loaves and fishes, cp Ex.

16

Nu.

11

K.

for the walking upon the water

Ps.

77

Is.

43

16

Job

9

8

for the stilling

the storm,

107

for the healing of the withered hand

I

K. 136

for the healing of the dumb

Wisd.

Apart from the miracles, there is one

OT

passage which has very clearly influenced the form of
the gospel narrative in

21 7.

It

is

impossible to

deny

representation here to be that

rode into

Jerusalem

upon

two asses.

Even

if

one chooses to

interpret the words as meaning that he sat upon the
garments and not

upon

the animals the sense is

stantially the same, for the garments were laid upon the
asses. The misunderstanding rests only upon a too
literal interpretation of the prophecy in Zech.

which

is not shared by Mk. and Lk.

So

also the number

thirty (unmentioned in Mk.

1411

Lk.

given to the

sum received by Judas, as also the casting away of the
money into the teniple (Mt.

2615

would seem to

not from tradition but from the passage in Zechariah

(11

expressly cited in Mt.

Upon

Bethlehem, as the birthplace of Jesus, the virgin birth,
the Magi, the flight into Egypt, the massacre of the
innocents, see M

ARY

[M

OTHER

OF

JESUS]

and

N

ATIVITY

.

According to

Mk.

(see

we are to under-

stand that Jesus healed where he found faith.

This

power is so strongly attested throughout
the first and second centuries that, in
view of the spiritual greatness of Jesus

and the imposing character

his personality, it

be indeed difficult to deny it to him.

Even the Phari-

sees do not deny his miracles of healing, though they
trace them to a compact with Beelzebub (Mk.

Mt.

9 3 4

Lk.

According to Mt.

the disciples of the Pharisees also wrought such miracles
the man who followed not with the disciples of Jesus cast
out devils (Mk.

the same is said of

those whom in Mt.

Jesus rejects in his final judg-

ment.

Paul asserts that a like power was possessed by

himself

Cor.

12

Rom.

15

and by other Christians

(

I

Cor.

Justin mentions castings-out of devils

26

35,

39,

76, 85)

so

also

1884

GOSPELS

GOSPELS

Irenaeus

Eus.

and Quadratus

(Eus.

That Jesus demanded faith is frequently stated (Mk.

Mt.

as also that he was approached with

faith (Mk.25

Mt.

Lk.

; Mt.

810

Lk.

Mt.

see

d),

and that he

prayed.

Many of the accounts contain particulars that could hardly

have been introduced a t will merely for effect. Thus in Mk. 5
the devil does not leave the demoniac of Gerasa a t the first
adjuration Jesus must first, just like a modern alienist, enter
with the man into a conversation in which he elicits from him

what his hallucinations are. In Mk.

all the symptoms

shown by the boy, except the falling into the fire, can he
paralleled from the descriptions of epilepsy in ancient medical
writers (Krenkel,

u.

Of course we must endeavour to ascertain how

many, and still more what sorts of cures were effected by
Jesus.

I t is quite permissible for us to regard as

historical only those of the class which even at the
present day physicians are able to effect by psychical
methods,-as, more especially, cures of mental maladies.

I t is highly significant that, in

a

discourse of Peter

the whole activity of Jesus is summed

in this that he went about doing good and healing

all those that were oppressed of the devil.

By this

expression only demoniacs are intended.

Cp also Lk.

It

is not at all difficult to understand how the

contemporaries

of

Jesus, after seeing some wonderful

deed or deeds wrought by him which they regarded

as

miracles, should have credited him with every other

kind of miraculous power without distinguishing,

as

the

modern mind does, between those maladies which are
amenable to psychical influences and those which are not.

It

is also necessary

to

bear in mind that the cure may

often have been only temporary.

If

there was

a

relapse,

people did not infer any deficiency in the miraculous
efficacy of the healer

they accounted for it simply by

the return of the demon who had been cast out.

On

this point Mt. 12

43-45

is very characteristic.

Perhaps

also Lk.

82

may be cited in this connection, if the seven

devils were cast out

of

Mary Magdalene

not

simul-

taneously but on separate occasions.

Most obscure of all are the two accounts found only in Mk.

(7

32-35 8

22-26)

according to which Jesus

use of saliva to

effect a

in these two cases it is extraordinarily

difficult to believe in a cure whether by this or

by

psychical

methods.

( a )

Even if the public ministry

of

Jesus had lasted for

a

few months

he must have uttered

a

thousandfold

145.

Conclusion

as

t o

discourses

of Jesus.

more than all that has been recorded
in the gospels. His longest discourse
would, if delivered in the form in
which it has come down to

us,

not

have taken more than some five minutes in the delivery.

However self-evident, this has been constantly over-

looked by the critics. They are constantly assuming
that we possess the several words of Jesus that
have been reported approximately in the same
ness with which they were spoken.

For the parables

perhaps (apart, of course, from the manipulations
pointed out above, in

c

d)

this may

be to

a

certain extent true.

Of other utterances, we

have traced in Mt.

11

Lk.

and Mk.

8

=

Mt.

one or two which must have been

preserved almost

I n what remains, however,

it

can hardly be sufficiently emphasised that we possess

only an excessively meagre

of what Jesus said,

namely, only

so

much

as

not only made an immediate

impression when first heard, but also continued to survive
the ordeal of frequent repetition (for much of it possessed
too little interest for those who had not been actual
witnesses). In this process not only was an extra-
ordinary number of utterances completely lost ; but

a

As

for Josephus cp

8

6

6 3

Ant.

11

3

viii. 2 5

and

c.

1 3 1

;

for

for

16

According to Tacitus

4

Vespasian effected several

wonderful cures

(cp

above,

1456).

large number

of

the sayings of Jesus now received

for

the first time that consecutive and pointed form which
made them seem worthy of further repetition.

Without

doubt Jesus must very often have repeated himself;
but what he assuredly often repeated in many variations
has been preserved to us only in a single form.

One

may perhaps venture to compare the process with that
of a photographer who prints from many negatives of
the same individual on the same paper.

There is pro-

duced in this way an

'

average

'

likeness which when

viewed from some distance seems satisfactory enough,
but when it is more closely viewed the vagueness of its
contours is at once discovered.

The context in which we now find the sayings of

Jesus must never (from what has been said in

be

taken

as

a

trustworthy guide in determining what the

original meaning may have been.

In

every case the

context tells us only what the evangelists, or their pre-
decessors, found it to mean

indeed in many

it is

impossible to believe that even for them the place where
they introduce the saying is intended to convey any hint

as

to the meaning.

A

source like the logia laid

naturally very little stress upon this point.

T h e greater

number of the utterances of Jesus are like erratic blocks.
All that one sees with perfect clearness is that they d o
not originally belong

to

the place where they are now

found. What their original position was

is

unknown.

The observer

has

to rest satisfied if in spite of its removal

to

a

new site the real nature and quality

of

the stone

can be made out ; and this is happily very often the
case.

On the other hand a wholly mistaken line is taken when for

example, the

is niade to base consequences on any

a s that Jesus was apt to give forth parahles or say-

ings

pairs. T h e parable of the leaven which in Mt.

and

Lk.

immediately follows on that o f t h e mustard-seed

is still wanting in Mk. 4

In

source a s well a s

the sayings about the salt and about the light were still separate
(not connected a s we now see them in Mt. 5

Equally

are discussions a s to the order in which Jesus may have

spoken the beatitudes. If any one were to try to repeat the
beatitudes after hearing

once he would not he sure

of

re-

taining the original order.

We cannot expect more of those who

heard Jesus. In the Sermon on the Mount not only is it needless
to ask whether it was heard

the disciples alone or by the

multitude as well

it is equally needless to ask whether it

was intended for the one or for the other. I t is a conglomer-
ate. Little of what is found in Mt. 5-7 recurs in Lk. 6

On

Mt. 5

13-16

see

on 5

see

In chap.

a really

good connection is found only within each of the following

with

16-18;

not between

these groups reciprocally, nor yet between them and the other

sayings contained in these chapters. Nay, there is not the least
ground for supposing, because they are three in number, that
Jesus enumerated immediately

succession those things in

which according to

Mt.

16-18

hypocrisy is to be avoided

quite apart from the fact that the enumeration

is

disturbed and

broken by

vv.

Words of such pre-eminent importance

as

the

Lord's Prayer or the words of institution of the
Eucharist, or the description of a scene

so

unforgettable

as

that in which the sign is given by which the betrayer

is made known (Mk.

Mt.

Lk. 2221)

are given in a very conflicting manner. Of the words
uttered on the cross, Mk. and Mt. have only one, which
in turn is omitted by Lk., who, however, gives three
others.

In

this last case, however, one may be

that Mk. and Mt. are in the right

and to the

three previous ones one

safely apply the maxim

that additions are more likely than omissions omissions
would in fact be difficult to account for

Mk.

accordingly, with omission of

take

may be regarded as the relatively (not absolutely) oldest
form of the words of institution of the Eucharist.
(Against the deletion

of

Lk. 22

196

see Schmiedel

in

Hand-cornmentar on

I

Cor.

1 1 3 4 . )

( d ) While

the case of the Eucharistic words only

Lk. is dependent on Paul, Mt. and still more Mk. avoid-
ing his novelties, Paul in

I

Cor.

as

against

all

the

synoptists, exhibits the earlier form of the prohibition of
divorce.

This we infer from the fact that it is he who

gives the strictest form of the prohibition.

Subsequent

GOSPELS

GOSPELS

relaxations in view of the difficulty in working the
severer form, are intelligible, increases of stringency are
not

especially would these be unintelligible in the case

of Paul, who actually finds himself constrained

(

I

Cor.

7

on his own responsibility to introduce a relaxation

the law.

Even the Epistle of James, although it

.already omits

Jerusalem as an object by which

one can swear

gives an older form of the precept

.against swearing than is found in Mt.

5

37 ;

namely, Let

your yea be a (simple) yea, and your nay a (simple)

nay.

( e ) As for the substance of the sayings of Jesus, it has

:already been pointed out in

109

6,

136

how little credence we can attach to the historicity of
the sayings attributed to Jesus about the call of the

Gentiles, the baptismal formula, the later conditions of

t h e primitive church, and the postponement of his

parusia.

Here it may be added that in Mk.

a

say-

ing which certainly was originally the closing remark

.of

a

preacher on the anointing at Bethany is given

.as a

word of Jesus.

I n Mt.

(2663)

it is still further

.altered by the addition : Wheresoever

gospel shall

be preached, that also which this woman hath done shall
be spoken of.'

As

regards

a

passage of such great

as Mk.

( ' t o give his life a

'ransom for many'), judgment can be given only in
accordance with the following considerations.

It can

be accepted

as

genuine

if

Jesus spoke of his life as

a

in no other sense than that in which he did

so

a t the last

as

an offering not for sin but

for

the immunity of his followers, after the manner of the

Passover lamb in Egypt,

or

for ratification of their

with God as in Gen.

Jer.

if he did

so

at

a

date not too long before his death.

Otherwise the doubt will have to be expressed, that the

sentence comes from the Pauline theology. In any case

it is noteworthy that it is absent from Lk.

2227.

That Jesus had in view the possibility of his death some

time before it came upon him is

unlikely. But

the very precise predictions of it with their various details are
open to the suspicion that they took shape a t a later date in

.accordance with the facts of history, and least of all is

it credible

that Jesus should have put forth such a prediction directly after
Peter's confession

831 Mt.

Lk.

This confession

must have been one of the supreme moments in the joyous con-

sciousness of Jesus-the discovery that he was finding recog-

nition as the Messiah and was winning his battle. Suffering

.and death are the very opposite of all that is looked for in the

Jewish Messiah, and of what Jesus a t that moment could have
looked forward to for himself.

the eschatological discourses disappears

specifically apocalyptic concerning the signs

of his parusia, if the separation of the little Apocalypse

as

made in

This does not, however,

by any means imply the elimination of all eschatological
utterances whatsoever.

On

the contrary, there still

remain to be attributed to Jesus the words

in

Mt.

(ultimately also

;

see

which he prophesies his return with the clouds

of

heaven,

and the like. This

is

in fact quite intelligible, and even

necessary, if he held himself to be the Messiah in such

.a

case it would have been impossible for him to believe

that God would allow him and his work to go to ruin

through the persecutions of his enemies. T h e failure

of

these prophecies to come to fulfilment ought in no case

t o

lead to any attempt to make out that they were not

uttered

Jesus, or to interpret

in such a sense

.as

causes their inconsistency with the facts to disappear.

As

has been shown in

111

,

e,

the evangelists

found that much trouble was required in order to tone
down this inconsistency they had not the least occasion,
therefore, to invent such predictions or to heighten them
the prophecies must have lain before them as quite fixed

elements of tradition.

6

is correct.

Another question

is

whether Jesus foretold the destruction of

the temple a s in Mk. 13 Mt. 24 Lk. 21

6.

If the little

(Mk. 13

Mt. 24

or Rev. 11

I

is

from a Christian

hand the answer can hardly be affirmative,

a Christian writer

could

have Dresumed the continued existence of the

temple in

to Jesus' own prophecy.

Both these

1887

pieces, however, may be Jewish ; and Jesus could have foreseen
the destruction of Jerusalem even without supernatural know-
ledge.

I n no case, however,

we to lay weight on the

circumstance that he connects it with the end of the world for

this arises from the fusion of the (certainly vacillating) tradition
regarding his own words with the 'little Apocalypse'
Therefore, also, we must refuse to entertain the conjecture that
in reality he prophesied the destruction of Jerusalem only, and
that his alleged prediction of the end of the world

on

a

misunderstanding of the disciples.

According to the same

mode of reasoning, he cannot have prophesied his resurrection
alone without adding a prediction of his second coming from
heaven for this, according to the general and most ancient belief,
which makes no mention

ascension also

Cor. 1 5

Bom.

Rev.

I

Pet. 3

Eph.

carried him direct to heaven ; but

there

was

quite as general a belief that as Messiah his

of

setting up the kingdom of God upon earth required his presence
here.

Of all these predictions it is possible to deny that they

were uttered by

only if it be at the same time denied

that he held himself to be the Messiah. But in that
case it

be impossible to explain how the disciples,

who had been thrown into the utmost depths of despond-
ency

his death, nevertheless came to be able to believe

in his resurrection. Those theologians who go so far as
to remove all the utterances of Jesus to the effect that
he was the Messiah, hardly continue to hold that the
belief in his resurrection rests

on

anything more real than

the visions

the disciples which arose out of their sub-

jective mental condition.

All

psychology, however,

affirms that visions arise only when that which is seen
in the concrete has previously taken firm and living hold

on

the

soul

of the visionary.

The belief is therefore

inevitable that the disciples had already, in the lifetime
of Jesus, held him to be the Messiah. They could not,
however, have done

so

without acquainting him with

this

of theirs

;

and if he had denied it, it is im-

possible

how their respect for his authentic

declaration should have permitted them to go on believ-
ing the opposite.

As

regards the date

of

his

coming, the statements in Mt.

(that it would be

before the then living generation had passed away) and
in 2664 (that it would be immediately,

have a

like claim to probability.

Whatever he may have said

as to this, it is

certain that he also declared

that none knoweth of that day

or

of that hour (Mk.

13

Mt.

2436).

It would be quite out of place to look in the

gospels for direct statements as to any development in
Jesus during the period of his public activity. The
latest date at which reverence for him would have allowed
a

conception of anything of the kind to be assigned is that

of

his temptation (Mt.

Lk.

41-13)

before his ministry

began.

It could only be from unconscious touches of

theirs that we could be led to conjecture any develop-
ment later than this.

Yet such a conjecture we

venture to make, for example, as regards Jesus' freedom of
attitude towards the Mosaic law.

What he says in Mt.

about murder, or in

about adultery, may

be easy enough to reconcile with his declaration that he
is not come to destroy the law

( 5 1 7 )

but the case is

otherwise with the sayings immediately following, upon
divorce

upon swearing

upon

retaliation

upon love of one's

43-48),

as

also

upon the laws about foods (Mk.

1-23

Mt.

15

and about the Sabbath (Mk.

and parallels). If

the first-mentioned conservative saying

(517)

is to be

held genuine, we must assign it to the first period of the
public activity of Jesus.

I t is in fact quite credible that

Jesus, who unquestionably was a pious Jew, at first saw
in the Mosaic law the unalterable will of his Father, and
regarded the errors of the Pharisees as consisting only
in a too external apprehension of it.

But it

is

equally

intelligible that in the course of his controversy with them
he should have become convinced how many precepts
the law in point of fact embodied which were antagonistic
to the spirit of religion as it had revealed itself to him.
It was one of his greatest achievements that he sacrificed
the letter of the law to this and not this to the letter of

1888

GOSPELS

GOSPELS

the l a w ; but we may be sure that it cost him many a
hard struggle.

( h )

Another point in regard to which we may venture

to

conjecture some development in Jesus during his

public life is his Messiahship.

As

late as on the occasion

of

Peter’s confession we find him commanding his dis-

ciples to keep this

a

secret (Mk.

830

Mt.

Lk.

With this it agrees that in Mk., before this date, he
applies thd designation Son of Man to himself only
twice’

(21028).

In Mt., on the contrary, he does

so

very often, and, besides, the significance of Peter’s con-
fession

is

completely destroyed by

where already

all the apostles have been made to declare him to be the
Son‘of God.

In

accordingly, this trace of develop-

ment in Jesus’ thinking is obliterated.

I t is when the purely religious-ethical utterances

of

Jesus come under consideration that we are most

advantageously placed.

Here especially applies the

maxim laid down in

131

(end) that we may accept as

credible everything that harmonises with the idea of

Jesus

which has been derived from what we have called

the foundation pillars

)

and is not otherwise

open to fatal objection. Even though such utterances

may have been liable to Ebionitic heightening, and

already, as showing traces of this, cannot lay claim to

literal accuracy-even though they may have been

unconsciously modified into accord with conditions of

the Christian community that arose only at a later

date-even though they may have undergone some
distortion of their meaning through transference to a

connection that does not belong to them-the spirit
which speaks in them

is

quite unmistakable.

Here

we have a wide field of the wholly credible in which to

expatiate, and it would be of unmixed advantage for
theology were it to concentrate its strength upon the
examination of these sayings, and not attach

so

much

importance to the minute investigation of the other less
important details

of

the gospel history.

A

UTHORS

AND

D

ATES OF THE

G

OS

PEL

S

AND

M

OST

IMPORTANT

SOURCES.

means originally (and still continues to

do

so

in

4

the reward

for

a

of

news.

late classical Greek the good news

Itself, for which the LXX has the

in

For religious.

tidings we have the verb

in

Is.

611,

cited in Lk.

418.

T h e

N T

has the substantive also

in

this sense. I t was a serious error on Origen’s part when

Eus.

H E

vi.

he took the Gospel of Lk. to be

meant where Paul speaks of

my Gospel (Rom.

2

Tim.

28).

I n the

also,

still

signifies the substance

of

the gospel history without

reference to the book in which it was written so too in

82,

the Lord says in his gospel

so

too in Irenaeus

when he describes the gospel as fourfold

so

too even in the Muratorian fragment (1.

:

But here we already find also

17)

similarly Justin

76) speaks of the

of the apostles which are called gospels,’

and Claudius Apollinaris says in the

(cp

JOHN,

SON

OF

42,

‘the gospels seem to contradict one

another.’ Thus it was not till the middle of the second
century that the nord came to signify a book, and,
after that, till the end of the second century, it continued
t o bear its original meaning as well.

The titles Gospel

according to Matthew,’

‘

to Mark,’ etc., accordingly do

not, linguistically considered, mean the written Gospel
of Matthew,’ etc. still less, however, ‘written Gospel

based on communications by Matthew,’

as

if theverytitles

We

firmly

hold that by this name he means to designate

himself

as

the Messiah-and that

too

even in Mk.

2

I

O

although

these are

the

two

places in which there is

most

justification

for

the attempt

to

make it

‘man‘ in general.

Cp

also

S

O

N

O

F

1889

conveyed that Matthew, Mark, and the others were-not
the authors, but only the guarantors for the contents of
the hooks.

The inscription means simply ‘Gospel

history in the form in which Matthew put it into
writing.‘

In Mk.

1 1

the expression ‘ t h e Gospel of

Jesus Christ’ seems already to designate a book

but

at the same time it teaches

us

that the writer of these

words cannot have set down as title to the whole book
the words Gospel according to Mark

Thus also in Mt. and Lk. etc. the titles

do not come from the authors.

I n fact the writings bore no superscription at

Every

one who possessed any book of this sort will have called it

‘the gospel

as in the case of Marcion

the gospel of Lk. which he caused to be used in his
congregations was called simply

‘

gospel

The additions with according to

(

became neces-

sary at a later date when people began to possess several
such books either separately

or

bound together in one

volume.

If, therefore, it should prove not to be the

case that our gospels were severally written by Matthew,
Mark, and Luke, the statements that they were

do

not

arise from falsification on the part of the actual authors,
but only from error on the part of the church fathers,
such as Papias or the person upon whom he relied.

Besides the statements of Papias

at most those

only of the church fathers of the close of the second and

the beginning of the third century
referred to in

75-82 can come into

consideration here. How small, how-
ever. is the confidence that can be

placed in the authors of these will at once be evident
when it is remembered that Irenaeus (and similarly
Tertullian,

4

z )

declares Luke to have com-

mitted to writing the Gospel preached by Paul.

The

details of the life of Jesus had

so

little interest for

Paul that, for example, in

Cor.

in order to induce

the Corinthians to contribute liberally to the collection
for the poor in Palestine he

is

able to adduce no other

feature in Jesus

as a

pattern than the fact

of

his having

become man.

As

his explicit declarations in

Cor.

5

I

Cor.

Gal.

31

tell us, he preached extremely little

to his congregations about the earthly life of Jesus. T h e
whole attribution to Paul of the gospel of Lk., which,
according to Origen, the

refers to in

216

as ‘ m y Gospel’

is

only an expedient which

the church fathers adopted to enable them to assign a
quasi-apostolic origin to the work of one who was not
himself an apostle.

For this reason suspicion attaches also to the state-

ment that the gospel of Mk. rested upon communica-
tions of Peter

especially as it is accompanied

with an elaborate apology for Mark’s undertaking.

T h e statements of the church fathers, moreover, are

not in the least consistent among themselves. Accord-
ing to Irenaeus, Matthew wrote his gospel while Peter
and Paul were preaching in Rome-thus somewhere in
the sixties,-while according to a tradition in Eusebius

iii.

246)

he wrote it before his departure from

Palestine into foreign parts, that is to say, much earlier.

Again, according to Irenaeus, Mark wrote after the
death of Peter and Paul, while according to

of

Alexandria, Peter lived to see the completion of Mark’s
gospel.

Nay, more,-the two statements

as

to Peter’s

attitude to this gospel which Eusebius

( H E

and

vi.

takes from Clement

are in conflict with

each other, quite apart from the question whether
Clement did not also regard the Gospels that had
genealogies as older than those which had not.

In

short, all that can be said to be certain

is

this, that it

is

vain to

look

to the church fathers for trustworthy in-

formation

on

the subject of the origin of the gospels.

Mt.

I

could, at

a

subsequent date, be

as

such after the analogy

of

2 4

; after

that of

5

I

it originally referred only

to the

genealogy of Jesus,

Mt.

11-17.

1890

GOSPELS

GOSPELS

According to Papias (see

and also his authority,

Mark

the second gospel was written by M

ARK

is known to

us

from Acts

There is also an inclination to identify
him with the young man who left

his garment in the hands of his pursuers in the garden
of Gethsemane

(Mk.

).

This conjecture. how-

ever, has no value, of course, in the wdy of proof
either that the young man was Mark, or that he was the
author of the second gospel he need only be one of the
chief

for its contents.

In what Papias says the

important point is not so much the statement that Mark
wrote the gospel as the further statement that Peter
supplied its contents orally.

If the student interprets

the narratives of the feeding of the five thousand and
of the four thousand, of the stilling of the storm, of the
walking upon the water, of the withering of the fig-tree,
and

so

forth, in the manner that has been indicated in

preceding sections of this article
then the supposition that the gospel is essentially a re-
petition of oral communications by Peter, will at once
fall to the ground.

Rut even apart from this, the

compass of the entire work is far too short.

It is hardly felicitous to say

to this that Mk. repeatsso

few of the words of Jesus because he was aware that the others
were already known through the logia

Why, in that

case, then, does he fill some seven of his sixteen chapters with
these?

it

certainly is true that the statements concerning him in
Mt.

is

richer than Mk. (his walking upon the water,

;

the promise given him, 16

the stater in the fish's mouth,

17

make no claim to historicity.

But the statements

e.

Wernle (p.

recognises the leading position of

Peter

it necessary to add also

of the sons of

Zehedee'), are found with trifling exceptions

in

Mt. and Lk.

also. Only Mk. 136 13 3 16 7 are wanting

both the others

Mk. 3

76

537

is wanting also in

only, and Mk. 1433 37 in

Lk. only. Peter's leading position

in

the gospel,

any case

corresponds to the actuality.

But precisely for this reason the

statements regarding it are all the less conclusively

shown to be

derived from Peter personally.

Whether it was original Mk. that arose in the manner

described by Papias will be differently judged according
to

the various opinions that are held regarding that

writing.

No

answer to a question of this sort, however,

can be of any real service to gospel criticism, for we no
longer possess original Mk.

Mark have written

in

Aramaic then he cannot be held to have been the

author of canonical Mk., which is certainly not a
translation (see

nor yet, in view of the LXX

quotations which have passed over into all three gospels;
can he be held to have been the author of original Mk.,
but only to have been the author of the

source

from

the last-named writer drew.

T h e employment of various sources (amongst others,

of

or

original Mk. the characteristic difference of the

quotations from the LXX and the original

the indefiniteness of the deter-

minations of time and place (§§

the incredibilities of the contents

108,

the introduction of later conditions

as also the artificial arrangement

and

so

forth, have long since led to the conclusion that

for the authorship of the First Gospel the apostle
Matthew must be given up.

All the more strenuously

is

the effort made to

preserve for Matthew the anthorship of the logia.
From the contents it is clear that one must assign to
the logia many things which no ear-witness can have

heard from the mouth of Jesus.

This is the case

even

if

only discourses

(for

examples, see

136

and also

150)

are sought in the logia,

or

if it is

assumed that the legalistic and Jewish-particularistic
passages were first introduced in the course of a revision

If one derives most of the narratives also

from the logia, the considerations against their apostolic
origin already adduced in

148

became still more

cogent.

That the apostle Matthew should liave been

the author of a still older writing is not excluded. On

this supposition the statement of Papias-that he wrote

As

for what Mk. tells

ahout Peter personally

in Aramaic-becomes also possible, which cannot be
said of the logia according to

Rut there

remains this

that according to the prologue

of Lk.

no

eye-witnesses of the life of Jesus took pen in

hand-none at least appear to have produced any
writing which Lk. would have called a

narrative'

In Mt.

the Jewish judicial procedure is still

presupposed

in

the sacrificial system

and in

535

Jerusalem is referred to as still a city

while in Jas.

5

the swearing by Jerusalem

is significantly omitted it was certainly

no

longer in existence then.

While it is not practicable

to prove by means of these passages that Mt. was com-
posed before

70

A.

D

.

(see

they strongly tend to

establish that earlier date for the logia.

Zachariah the

son of Berechiah is the well-known prophet of the O T who did
not suffer martyrdom.

Hut,

according t o

Zechariah the son of Jehoiada did so suffer. This was about

so that he certainly cannot be called the last martyr, and

least of all can he be

so

called merely because Chronicles is the

last book in the OT. From Josephus

5 4,

we learn

that in

Zechariah

was put to death

The

conjecture is a very obvious one that the author had

event

in his mind.

If it

be correct, the date of

will

have to be placed considerably later than 68

A.

D

.,

a s the writer

could not, very shortly after this event, easily have confounded
this Zechariah with some other who had lived before, or in, the
time of Jesus. I t must not he overlooked, however that accord-
ing to Lk.

the source of this narrative is

of

God, that is to say, according to the most probable conjecture,
a

hook distinct from the logia which either

on its title the

words 'Wisdom of God or introduced the Wisdom of God a s
speaking. It is doubtful therefore whether the passage is to be
assigned to the logia.

For the earliest instance in which

a

passage

is

quoted

which now is to be found in

our

canonical Mt. (Epistle

of Barnabas) see

It is not per-

missible to infer a date earlier than

7 0

A.D.

either from the

straightway

which Mt.

has retained from the 'little

Apocalypse' (see

1 1 1

,

1246)

or from the other in-

dicia adduced in §

In

Mt.

2 2 7

the. destruction

of Jerusalem is clearly presupposed as already past
(see

T h e church-conditions also, as well

a s the postponement of the parusia (see

136,

point to a later date.

I t is not practicable

to separate these passages

as

later interpolations,

and thus gain for the Gospel as

a

whole the earlier

date.

They are much too numerous, and many

of them

--

as, for example, precisely

- much

too closely implicated with a tendency which pervades
the entire work

On

the other hand, it is quite

open to

us

to regard some of them as interpolations

:

for example,

16

or the baptismal formula

28

or

the appearance of Jesus to the women

or

also

chaps.

Substantially, these are the leading pas-

sages on account of which many are disposed to bring
down the date of the entire gospel as late as to

130

A.

D

.

T h e fact that it was used, as well as

Mk.

and Lk.,

by the author of the Fourth Gospel would not
forbid this late date (see J

OHN

, S

ON

O

F

Z

EBEDEE

,

Probably, however, its main contents must

have been in existence at an earlier period if they were
known to Lk.

127,

and even the most of chaps.

is presupposed to have been in existence if it can be

shown that in

119

A

.

D

.

a final addition was introduced

into it.

This has been suggested as regards the story of

the Magi

:

a Syriac writing, ascribed to Eusebius of

which was published by William Wright in

the

Sacred

Literature, 1866,

pp.

and discussed by

and Hilgenfeld in

pp.

pp.

makes the statement,

which can hardly have been invented, that this narrative,
committed to writing in the interior of Persia, was in

The heading of the whole tractate is, according to Nestle,

den Stern

:

wie

und

was

den Stern

und

Joseph

Mt. 23 35 is in the highest degree remarkable.

89.

1892

GOSPELS

GOSPELS

during the episcopate of Xystus of Rome,

made search for, discovered, andwritten in the languageof
those who were interested in it (that

is

to say, in Greek).

As regards canonical Mk. we possess

a

datum for

fixing its date only if we assume it

to

have been the

book that was

by

Mt.

and Lk.

find ourselves unable to do this

it is open to

us

to

suppose that it may

have received its final form later than

and Lk.

It

is not, however, justifiable to find

a

proof

of

this in

the fact that in

it designates the public appear-

ance of the Baptist as the beginning of the gospel of
Jesus. Some scholars have detected here a silent polemic
against those gospels which begin with the narratives
relating to the nativity of Jesus.

The significant

anceof the ‘straightway’

Mt.

1324

certainly points clearly to the period after the

destruction of Jerusalem.

If

the companion of Paul, cannot have been

the author of Acts (see A

CTS

,

9

neither can he have

been the author of the Third Gospel.
That both works are from the same

pen may be regarded

as

quite certain.

The weightiest evidences of the employment of

Josephus by Lk.

seen in Acts (see

16) yet

tolerably many are found in the gospel also.

I n that

case the year

will be the superior, and some-

where about

the inferior, limit of the date of

its composition, since there must have been a considerable
interval between the production of the gospel and that
of Acts.

T h e very precise description of the destruction

of Jerusalem in Lk.

is in full accord

with history and, in language, with Josephus.

It

cannot

exactly be pronounced absolutely impossible that it
should nevertheless have been written before

70

for

a

lively imagination acquainted with the localities

could hardly have presented them very differently.
Only, the prediction of the little Apocalypse

b )

which is still rightly interpreted in

Mt.

and Mk. in ac-

cordance with Daniel (see

D

A

NIE

L

,

ii.) as referring to

the setting up of

a

foreign image in the temple has been

made by

wrongly yet very

in accordance

with the expression

to

refer to the destruction

of Jerusalem

Upon this event, he

says,

will

follow

(v.

24)

the times of the Gentiles

111

)

during

which Jerusalem

is

to be trodden under foot.

Not till

after these times are the signs in heaven to appear and
the Son of Man to come with clouds

(vv.

25-27),

and

not till this point does he promise to the followers of

Christ their redemption and the coming of the
of God

(vv.

Had Lk. written before the destruc-

tion of Jerusalem we

have expected him to have

thought of this event

as

connected with the second

coming of Jesus.

That instead of this he should re-

present the judgment day

(v.

and the beginning of

the kingdom of God

as

being separated by so long a n

interval is, ascomparedwith all prophecyand apocalyptic,
something quite new and admits of only one explanation
-that the destruction of Jerusalem could at the time
of writing be no longer regarded

as

a

recent event.

In his prologue Lk. distinguishes himself not only

from the eye-witnesses of the life of Jesus but also from
the many who before him had written comprehensive

and from the number of these, he again seems

to exclude the eye-witnesses.

On Mk.

see

in

Dan.

(cp

9

27

11

31)

is simply a veiled ex-

pression for

‘Lord

Zeus,

altar

(or

was erected

upon

the

altar

of

burnt-offering in

December

B

.

C.

(

I

Macc.

154

The Syriac Bible actually

gives

in

Macc.

6

in connection

with this

event

as a

rendering

of

the Greek word

Thus Daniel had not desola-

tion in

his mind

in

the

least.

See

A

BOMINATION

OF

D

ESOLATION

.

Further

information as

to

similar

veiled designations of heathen

deities is given

in

$5,

n.

56.

The verb

(EV

‘set forth in order’) denotes

andbecause,

words ‘alsotome’

Lk.

applies it also

to

his own performance) the composition of

a

Lk. makes

a

quite clear division :

the

eye-witnesses have

handed down

and

that

by word

of

mouth

no

purpose

would have

been served by

adding to

the further

predicate ‘ministers of

the

word

others

have

composed gospel writings;

and

seeks

to

excel

these

last

by

accurate

research

(or

taking

u p

the

narrative from an earlier point) and

by correct

arrangement.

That

he

himself had direct intercourse

with

is

therefore not very

probable, and it is not

at

all expressed

by

the

word

(1

‘they delivered them

unto

us

which

from the

begin-

ning

were

eye-witnesses and ministers

of

the

word,’ for

immedi-

ately before he speaks

of

‘the things which have been fulfilled

among us,’ a phrase by which he obviously cannot

mean

himself

and

his contemporaries,

h u t only

Christendom generally

similarly therefore in

will be seen, but few definite results.

Cp

37 64.

The discussion of the dates of the gospel yields, it

W e have

ately refrained from making use of
certain arguments which could be

more

or

less easily applied otherwise.

All the more

would we

the proposition, that our uncertainty

on the chronological question by no means carries with
it any uncertainty in the judgment we are to form of the
gospels themselves.

T h e chronological question

is

in

this instance a very subordinate one.

Indeed, even if

our gospels could be shown to have been written from

50

A

.

D.

onwards, or even earlier, we should not be

under any necessity to withdraw our conclusions as to
their contents we should, on the contrary, only
to say that the indubitable transformation in the original
tradition had taken place much more rapidly than
might have been ready to suppose. T h e credibility of
the gospel history cannot be established by an earlier
dating of the gospels themselves in any higher degree
than that in which it has already been shown to
especially

as

we know that even in the lifetime of Jesus

miracles of every sort were attributed to him in the most
confident manner.

as the transformation has de-

parted

so

far from the genuine tradition, it is only in the

interest of a better understanding and of a

reason-

able appreciation of the process that one should claim
for its working out

a,

considerable period

of

time.

By way of appendix

a

few words must be said here on

the question, postponed from

A

P

OC

RYPHA

26,

I )

to

this place,

as

to whether the gospel of

the Hebrews is

to

be reckoned among

the sources of the

ing to the church fathers this gospel was the Hebrew or
Aramaic form of canonical Mt.

If this were correct,

it would not ,have been necessary for Jerome to
make

. a

separate translation of it.

According to

Nicholson

(The

Gospel according

the Hebrews,

‘79)

it was a later Hebrew edition

of

the gospel of Mt.,

issued after the Greek had already been published by
Matthew himself. Since Lessing’s time

117)

it has

often

regarded-especially in the Tiibingen school

-as

one of the sources, or even as the most ancient, or

even

as

the only, source of our synoptics.

Handmann,

again

in

5

identifies it with the logia. That it may have been,

in some older form, one of the sources of the Synoptics
cannot be contradicted but neither can it be proved,
for we no longer possess the older form. Among the
fragments preserved to

us

there are ,only

a

few which

are not open to challenge on the score of their late date.
Many on the other hand are unquestionably late legends

James, the brother of Jesus, swore a t the last

supper (where according to our evangelists he cannot
even have been present) to eat nothing till he should
have beheld Jesus after his resurrection

Jesus accord-

ingly appeared in the first instance to him, brought
bread, broke it, and gave it to him.

Or, again, a t the

death

of

Jesus the superliminare

or

lintel of the temple

was broken.

Or, Jesus is reported to have said

:

even

prehensive work in accordance with literary aims.

(AV

‘declaration,’ RV ‘narrative accordingly

must

also mean

this, and not

a

mere

statement about a particular occurrence,

without pretension to literary art (cp

GOSPELS

GOSPELS

now

has my mother, the Holy Spirit, seized me by one

of

my hairs and borne me to the great mountain Tabor :

and more

of

the like.

It is almost universally conceded that the fragments

of

the so-called gospel of the Ebionites can claim

antiquity in

a

much less degree still than can the gospel

of

the Hebrews to which it is related.

(n)

Other

gospel-

so-

called logia

of

Jesus found at Oxyrhynchus, first pub-

lished by Grenfell and Hunt.

These contain besides a n (almost) verbatim repetition

of

Lk. 6

which g o far beyond the Johannine theology,

and have absolutely nothing analogous to
them in the canonical gospels. I t would be

a great error to see in them a portion of the

gospel

logia of Mt.

But the hypothesis also, that

they are excerpts from the gospel of the
Egyptians, has its strongest support only in

the fact that according to accounts this gospel itself was
of an equally mixed character. Moreover the identification
cannot he made

were it only for this realon-that we cannot

know whether these seven or eight sayings were excerpted
wholly from one hook or whether they were compiled from a
variety of sources.

in fact, the principle on which such

a

heterogeneous variety of sayings has been brought together is
quite obscure to us (cp 86).

(6)

1900)

has published

a

Coptic fragment which, amongst other

things, touches upon the scene in Gethsemane.

I n character this is the same mixture of Synoptic and

Johannine

or

even supra-Jobannine ideas as has been observed

in the Oxyrhynchus logia.

Its derivation from the gospel

of the Egyptians is just as questionable a s is that of those
logia. I f then we read in it-what, according

to

the con-

nection, it can hardly he doubted, notwithstanding the frag-
mentary character of the piece, we ought to read- that

the words 'The spirit is willing, hut the flesh is

weak, with reference' to himself and not with reference to
the disciples,

if we should feel inclined to regard this a s

the more original

we must not do so merely

on

account of the source in which we find it.

The case is quite similar with the gospel accord-

ing to Peter (see P

ETER

).

( d )

T h e fragment, first published by Bickell in the

Theol., 1885, pp.

which

has

been dealt with by (amongst others) Harnack

Untersuch. 54,

pp.

and Resch

This fragment contains in a somewhat divergent form the

predictionof Jesus that all his disciples would he offended in
him and that Peter would deny

mentioning also that the

cock crowed twice it agrees most strongly with Mk. 14

26-30

but also with Mt. 2631

the words 'in this night since

these words in Mk. do not occur in v.

27

hut only

30.

That we have here before

us a pre-canonical form of the text

cannot be proved with certainty from the divergences in in-
dividual words. A stronger argument is supplied hy the fact that

i n

the present fragment v.

of Mk.

32 of

wanting-a verse which has long been recognised as disturbing
the

:

I

am

risen again

I

will go before you

into Galilee.

At

the same time, we must not forget

may have been omitted preciselyfor this reason, if

dealing

with a free excerpt. Neither does this fragment, then, supply

with an irrefragable

the existence of written sources

for our gospels.

( e ) T h e so-called

that

is

to say,

sayings of his which are not met with in the gospels,
have been collected with great care by Kesch in

u.

Untersuch.

5 4 ,

'89.

Resch's judgment of these his readiness t o recognise genuine

sayings of Jesus preserved

latest church fathers and

his employment of these for his Hebrew original gospel
have, however, met with very just criticism in the same series
(142)

a t the hands of Ropes (Die

die i n den

nicht

sind '96). At the

same time Ropes

in accepting so many as

a s probably genuine has perhaps gone too far. A somewhat
richer selection,

without pronouncing any judgment as to

their genuineness, is given by Nestle in

'96, pp. 89-92 where hesides a collation of Codex

D,

the extra-canonical

as a whole will he found very

conveniently brought together.

Literature.

In German. -For facility

of

refer-

ence we group the present selection from the German

literature

on

the

problem

partly according to the methods they

I t is

applied in the Roman Missal and Breviary (see

Office for Palm Sunday).

employ, and partly according

to

the

views

they main-

tain.

Mainly tendency-criticism.-(a)

Mt.,

Mk. :

Krit.

die

47

Gesch.

('67) ;

i.

(6)

Mk., Lk. : Hilgenfeld,

Die

Evangelien, '54 ;

from '58 onwards. Holsten, Die

Evangelien, '83 ; Die

'85 ;

c p

125

a.

Mt. : Bruno Bauer,

der

Gesch.

der Evangelien,

mar, Die Evangelien

die Synopsis,

70;

Marcus

der

'76

Schulze,

'61,

'86.

Mainly, or entirely literary criticism.-(a)

Mk

Lk.

Mt. :

der

'38. Pfleiderer,

die

des

;

Stud.

cp

Theory of two sources (Mk. and the logia): Weisse,

Evangel. Gesch.,

'38

'56 (but see

Wernle, Die synopt.

Original gospel of Philip, with the logia: Ewald, Die 3

'71

(e)

Original Mk. with the logia: Holtzmann, Die

'63 ;

1878, pp.

Theol.

from

125

die evangel. Gesch., 64 ; Das

'86

Johannes Weiss

u.

pp.

;

pp.

Wiederkunftsrede

in Meyer's

Beyschlag,

pp.

1883,

; cp

.

Feine,

'85-'88 ;

des

Lk.,

Apostolic

logia

:

Bernhard Weiss,

pp.

1883,

1864, pp.

1 4 0 ;

pp.

72

;

'76 in

Komm.

'83,

Mk.

'85,

(Mk. only),

Theol. Stud.

Weiss,

('97); also

separately under the title, Das

der

den Logia

des

C p above,

(g)

Theory of two sources with borrowing from Mt. by Lk.

:

Simon?, Hat

der

Evangelist

Stockmeyer

des

in

Theol.

der

1884, pp.

Wendt

Lehre

'86. Soltau,

der

synopt.

Wissensch.,

Combined

with hypothesis of a n original Mk.: Jacohsen,

die

Evangelien, ' 8 3 ;

1886,

More complicated hypotheses

:

Wittichen

Scholten,

6 8

(Germ. transl.,

69

Evangelium)

de

de

van

der

'73 (German translation of both,

under title

Evangelium).

English.-It may be well to notice that the

efforts

of

recent English students have been

devoted to collecting and arranging the material for the
solution of the critical problems under consideration,

as

a preliminary to the critical hypotheses which may,
unforced, suggest themselves in the future.

(a)

Books helpful to students :-Rushbrooke's

and Ahbott and Rushbrooke's

Tradition of

the

('84); A. Wright,

of

the Gospels ('96)

and

Luke's

Sir

J.

F. H.

Woods in

2

('go).

Special treatises, etc.

:-A.

Wright, The Composition

the Gospels ('go), and

New

The

ed.

io

Matthew ('97);

E .

A. Abbott,

A

Guide

Hebrew Scripture

and The

Lk

'87.

(6) Schleiermacher

;

pp.

Important articles

:-E.

A.

art. 'Gospels' in

Sanday in

'91,

'93, and art.

Gospels' in Smith's

; V. H.

art. 'Gospels'

in Hastings'

vol.

Behb, art. 'Luke,'

F.

Salmond art.

'

Mark,' ibid.

J.

V. Bartlett,

'Matthew.'

W.

C. Allen in

and

The following hooks hear upon the subject :-Westcott

Introduction

t o the Study

('60

;

Salmon'

t o

N T

('85)

Plummer,

on

Luke

P.

w.

1896

GOSPELS

SOME

T H E

PASSAGES

REFERRED

TO

I N

T H E PRECEDING ARTICLE.

the

right

the Gospel citations indicate the

( o r

n.

I

,

11-17.

1777

18 15-17,

136, 1876

8.

M

A

TTHE

W

.

28 3a,

1844

128, 1870

2749,

n.

I

,

1807

142, 1884

27

S

26. 1782

28

108, 1839

28

6

1782

28

19,

136, 1876

1842

M

A

RK

.

n.

I

,

7877

IAA.

9

9

128, 1864

1536,

n.

I

,

1807

1884

16

27, 1783

138,

138,

16

n.

3, 1767

138,

9

LUKE.

39,

L

U

KE

.

1898