CHAPTER III. THE ORIGIN OF THE GOSPELS. Η τῶν πρεσβυτέρων παρακαταθήκη διὰ τῆς γραφῆς λαλοῦσα ὑπουργῷ χρῆται τῷ γράφοντι πρὸς τὴν παράδοσιν τῶν ἐντευξομένων. — CLEM. ALEX. A DISTINCT Conception of the spirit of the Apostolic age is necessary for a right understanding of the spiritual relation of the Gospel to the Gospels- of The position of the Apostles incompatible with the design of forming a permanent Christian the divine message to the lasting recordat the rise of Christianity. Experience has literature, and yet placed in so clear a light the fulness and comprehensiveness of the Christian Scriptures, that it is natural to suppose that they must have occupied from the first the position which the Church has assigned to them. But this idea is an anachronism both in fact and in thought. The men who were enabled to penetrate most deeply into the mysteries of the new revelation, and to apprehend with the most vigorous energy the change which it was destined to make in the world, seem to have placed little value upon the written witness remarks in his Versuch zur Herstellung des historischen Standpunkts für die Kritik. d. Neutest. Schrift. (Erlangen, 1845), and the tract by which it was followed, Einige Worte über d. Aechth. d. Neutest. Schrift. (Erlangen, 1846), but with many exaggerations. The object of the present chapter is rather to excite and guide inquiry than to discuss fully the question of the origin of the Gospels in all its bearings- a subject far too vast for the space which can be given to it. them. to words and acts which still, as it were, lived among They felt as none else ever can feel the greatness of the crisis in which they were placed, and the calm progress of common life appeared to be forever interrupted by the spiritual revolution in which they were called to take part. The "coming age" to which they looked was not one of arduous conflict, but of completed triumph. The close of the old dispensation and the consummation of the new were combined in one vision. The outward "fashion of the world"- the transitory veil which alone remained was "passing away." The long development of a vast future was concentrated in the glory of its certain issue. But while everything shows that the Apostles made no conscious provision for the requirements of after times, in which the life of the Lord would be the subject of remote tradition, they were enabled to satisfy a want which they did not anticipate. The same circumstances to its which obscured their view of the immediate favorable formation. future gave to the time in which they lived its true significance. They pierced beneath the temporal and earthly to the spiritual and eternal. Men wrote history as it had never been written, whose present seemed to have no natural sequel, and unfolded doctrine with farseeing wisdom, while they looked eagerly for that divine presence in which all partial knowledge should be done. away. That which was in origin most casual became in effect most permanent by the presence of a divine energy; and the most striking marvel in the scattered writings of the New Testament is the perfect fitness which they exhibit for fulfilling an office of which their authors appear themselves to have had no conception. The intensity of the hope cherished by the first Christian teachers was not more unfavorable to conscious literary efforts on their part than their original national char acter. The national character of the later Palestinian Jews generally alien from literature; and It was most unlikely that men who had been accustomed to a system of training generally, if not exclu sively oral, should have formed any design to commit to writing a complete account of the history or of the doctrines of the Gospel. The whole influence of Palestinian habits was most adverse to such an undertaking. The rules of Scriptural interpretation, the varied extensions of the Law, and the sayings of the elders, were preserved either by oral tradition, or perhaps, in some degree, in secret rolls, till the final dispersion of the Jewish nation led to the compilation of the Mishna. Nothing less than the threatened destruction of the traditional faith occasioned the abandonment of the great rule of the schools. "Commit nothing to writing" was the characteristic principle of the earlier Rabbins, and even those who, like Gamaliel, were familiar with Greek learning, faithfully observed it. Nor could it be otherwise. The Old Testament was held to be the single and sufficient source of truth and wisdom, the reflection of divine knowledge, and the embodiment of human feeling. The voice of the teacher might enforce or apply its precepts, but it admitted no definite additions. The various avenues to an independent literature were closed by the engrossing study of the Law; and an elaborate ritualism occupied the place of a popular exposition of its precepts. The learned had no need for writing, and the people had no need for books. The Scriptures contained infinite subjects for meditation in their secret depths; and the practice of Judaism furnished an orthodox commentary upon their general purport, open alike to all, clearly intelligible and absolutely authoritative. Tradition was dominant in the schools, and from the this was more especially the case in Galilee among the peasant class. schools it passed to the nation; for the same influence which affected the character of the teachers must have been felt still more pow erfully by the great mass of the Jews. In their case the want of means was added to the want of inclination. In the remoter regions of the north, the impediments to the simplest learning were still greater than 1 Cf. Jost, Geschichte des Judenthums, i. 367. those which prevailed at Jerusalem. The school of Tiberias grew up only after the fall of the Temple; and the faithful zeal of the Galilæans may be rightly connected with their intellectual simplicity. To descend one step further: the art of writing itself was necessarily rare among the peasantry, and the instinct of composition proportionately rarer. From all these circumstances, from their nation, their class, their province, their education, the first Christians were primarily unfitted for forming any plan of a comprehensive religious literature. If they were writers, it could only have been by the providential influence of circumstances, while they were oral teachers by inclination and habit. 1. These general obstacles to the conscious formation of a Christian literature were increased by the special work of the Apostles' preaching. But it may be rightly said, that such obstacles as these are only important when they fall in with others which lie deeper; for men become great writers, even in common life, not so much by discipline as by instinct. In the case of the Apostles, however, these further obstacles were not wanting; their external disinclination for literature was unremoved, if not increased, by their special work. Both from the nature of their charge and the character of their hearers, they sought other means of fulfilling their great commission than such as books afforded. Their Master enjoined on them during His presence, and at the moment of His departure, to "preach the Gospel." And while they fulfilled the office for which they were fitted, no less by habit than by the effusion of the Holy Spirit, they could not have felt that more was needed for the permanent establishment of the Christian society. "How shall men believe without a preacher" (poowv)? is the truest expression of the feeling and hope of the Apostles. They cherished the lively image of the Lord's life and teaching without any written. outline from His hand; and they might well hope that the Spirit which preserved the likeness in their hearts might fix it in the hearts of others. Christianity was contrasted with Judaism as a dispensation of the Spirit and not of the letter; the laws of which were written not on tables of stone, but on the souls of believers. The sad experience of ages has alone shown the necessity that an unchanging record should coëxist with a living body: in the first generation, the witness of word and the embodiment of the word in practice belonged to the same men. But this preaching was the true Gospels. It must not, however, be supposed that this tendency to preach rather than to write was any drawback to the final completeness of the foundation of the Apostolic Gospel. It was, in fact, the very condition and pledge of its completeness. Naturally speaking, the experience of oral teaching was required in order to bring within the reach of writing the vast subject of the Life of Christ; and it cannot be urged that any extraordinary provision was made for the fulfilment of a task which is now rightly felt to have been of the utmost importance. The Gospel was a growth, and not an instantaneous creation. The Gospels were the results, and not the foundation of the Apostolic preaching. Without presuming to decide how far it would have been possible, according to the laws of divine action, to produce in the Apostles an immediate sense of the relation which the history of the Life of Christ occupied towards the future Church, it is evident that the occasion and manner in which they wrote were the results of time and previous labor. The wide growth of the Church furnished them with an adequate motive for adding a written record to the testimony of their living words; and the very form of the Gospels was only determined by the experience of teaching. The work of an Evangelist was thus not the simple result of divine inspiration or of human thought, but rather the complex issue of both when applied to such 1 By the Gospels in this connection I understand the first three "Synoptic" Gospels. The Gospel of St. John stands on a different footing in some respects, as exhibiting the result of the peculiar experience of one Apostle, and not the first and common experience of all. |