The Books of the New Testament Part 2

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An equally important statement which Papias makes with regard to the composition of Mark, is made on the authority of John the Presbyter who had been a personal follower of the Lord and was an elder contemporary of Papias. It is at least possible that Papias derived his information about Matt. from the same authority. It is almost inconceivable that between the time of Papias and that of Irenaeus, whose life probably overlapped that of Papias, the name of Matthew became wrongly affixed to our first Gospel. We may therefore regard it as certain that in our first Gospel is contained the book of sayings, which St. Matthew himself wrote. In our third Gospel we find that St. Luke has inserted much information with regard to our Lord's teaching which is apparently derived from a version of the Logia. The order of the sayings is more original in Luke than in Matt. The reason for this a.s.sertion is the following:--

The two evangelists arrange the sayings of our Lord differently. In more than two-thirds of the instances in which they seem to employ some collection of _Logia_, they place their materials in a different setting. It has often been remarked that St. Matthew places the discourses of our Lord together in large blocks, while St. Luke records them separately, and in many cases records the circ.u.mstances which led up to them. Instances of this are--The Lord's Prayer (Matt. vi. 9-13 and Luke xi. 1-4); the treasure and the heart (Matt. vi. 19-21 and Luke xii. 33, 34); G.o.d and Mammon (Matt. vi. 24 and Luke xvi. 13). It would therefore seem plain that either one evangelist or the other altered the places of these discourses. Examination makes it equally plain that the alteration was made in Matt. Much of Matt. is arranged in numerical forms, and this is especially true of those pa.s.sages which are not derived from Mark. The numbers 5, 10, and 7 are used as helps to memory. Thus in Matt. we find _five_ chapters (called by the Jews "Pereqs") of the sayings of our Lord, ending respectively at vii. 28; xi. 1; xiii. 53, xix. 1; xxvi. 1. The {26} number five was a favourite number with the Jews in such cases; thus we have five books of the Pentateuch, five books of the Psalms, the five _Megilloth_ or festival volumes, and the five parts of the _Pirqe Aboth_. In chs. viii. and ix. we have a collection of _ten_ miracles, in spite of the fact that three of these miracles are placed elsewhere by St. Mark and St. Luke.

The pet.i.tions of the Lord's Prayer are arranged as seven, there are _seven_ parables in ch. xiii., _seven_ woes in ch. xxiii., and the genealogy of our Lord is arranged in three _fourteens_. As these numerical arrangements are specially characteristic of Matt., and certainly appear to be caused by a desire to aid oral repet.i.tion, we are led to the conclusion that the Logia are to be found in a less artificial and therefore earlier form in Luke. We are also led once more to the conclusion that though we cannot say that the whole of Matt. owes its form to oral teaching, yet many sections of it are moulded by oral teaching.

It must lastly be noted that although the collection of Logia employed in Luke contained much material which is also found in Matt., the parallel pa.s.sages vary considerably in style and language. Examination of these pa.s.sages seldom enables us to prove what expressions were specially characteristic of the Logia. But we can a.s.sert with a fair amount of confidence that the version, or versions, of the Logia so employed, had a simple and Hebraic style; and that whereas Luke has kept the order of the Logia better than Matt., the latter preserves the style more faithfully.

In addition to Mark and collections of the Logia, St. Matthew and St.

Luke employed other sources now unknown to us. The narratives of the infancy and the Resurrection are independent, and are so different that they point both to the fact that the two evangelists were here employing different sources, and that each was unacquainted with the Gospel written by the other. Also, St. Luke's account of our Lord's ministry in Peraea and elsewhere, contained in ix. 51-xix. 28, is peculiar to his Gospel.

[Sidenote: The relation of St. John's Gospel to the Synoptic Gospels.]

The difference between the theological tone of St. John's Gospel and that which we find in the Synoptists is mentioned {27} in our account of the separate Gospels. Besides this difference of tone, there is a decided difference in the march of the events which are recorded and some difference in the narrative of pa.s.sages which are parallel. The first rough impression which we gather from the Synoptists is that our Lord did not visit Jerusalem until shortly before the Crucifixion.

Matthew and Mark refer to one Pa.s.sover only for which Jesus comes to Jerusalem. The scene of His ministry is Galilee. On the other hand, the centre of interest in John is not Galilee, but Jerusalem and Judaea. But a minute examination proves that the narrative of St. John fits that of the Synoptists in a remarkable manner. In the first place, the Synoptists give us hints of our Lord's earlier visits to Judaea and Jerusalem. In Luke iv. 44 (see margin R.V.) we find Him preaching in the synagogues of Judaea (cf. Acts x. 37). In Luke v. 17 the presence in Galilee of Pharisees from _Jerusalem_ is a testimony to the impression which Christ had produced in the holy city. Both Matt.

(xxiii. 37) and Luke (xiii. 34) record the lament of our Lord, "O _Jerusalem_, . . . how _often_ would I," etc. So from John iv. 3, 43 we learn of our Lord returning to _Galilee_ after His first visit to Jerusalem. This second journey into Galilee recorded by St. John brings us to a point corresponding with the early days of the ministry in Galilee described by the Synoptists. In John vi.-vii. 9 we have narratives connected with _Galilee_, and this section belongs to an interval of time between the approach of Pa.s.sover in March A.D. 28 and the feast of Tabernacles in September A.D. 28. Of this period the Synoptists give a much fuller account.

The question of the length of our Lord's ministry is thus intimately connected with that of the scene of His ministry. St. John marks the length of our Lord's ministry, not by ordinary chronology, but by the mention of various Jewish feasts. The dates of these feasts show that His ministry lasted two years and a half. The absence of dates in the Synoptists {28} has led to the opinion that they represent our Lord's ministry as only extending over one year. This opinion may be summarily dismissed. The mention of ripe corn in Mark ii. 23, and green gra.s.s in vi. 39, implies two spring-times before the last Pa.s.sover. It is impossible to compress the teaching which the Synoptic Gospels relate into the period of one year, and they show a hostility towards Christ on the part of the ruling cla.s.ses in Jerusalem which could not have sufficiently fermented in the s.p.a.ce of a few months. We may also notice that there is a close agreement between the Synoptists and St. John with regard to the points on which the conflict between Christ and the Jews turned (cf. Matt. xvi. 1-4, Mark viii. 11-13, Luke xi. 16, 29-32, with John ii. 18). The Jews specially charged Him with being possessed by a devil (cf. Matt. xii. 24, Mark iii. 22, Luke xi.

15, with John viii. 48 and x. 19), and also with breaking the sabbath (cf. Matt. xii. 9, Mark iii. 1, Luke vi. 6, xiii. 10, with John v. 10, vii. 22, ix. 14).

The dates of two important incidents have been the subjects of much discussion. A cleansing of the temple by our Lord is related by the Synoptists at the close of our Lord's ministry (Mark xi. 15). John ii.

14 places a cleansing of the temple at the very beginning of our Lord's ministry. If we have to choose between one record and the other, we should perhaps be inclined to say that the narrative in John is the more probable. But there is no good reason for making such a choice.

No one who is at all familiar with the history of the abuses which took place in some mediaeval churches would find a difficulty in believing that the temple needed a second cleansing by our Lord. The first cleansing is the natural outcome of His righteous indignation in beholding for the first time the holiest place in the world given up to common traffic, the second cleansing is appropriate in Him who had then openly proclaimed His divine authority and Messiahship.

The day of our Lord's death is a date about which there is an apparent discrepancy between the Synoptists and St. John. {29} The discrepancy has been elevated into momentous importance by the sceptics of the last sixty years, and has been employed as one of the most formidable arguments against the authenticity of St. John's Gospel. The argument employed by these critics is as follows:--(1) The Synoptic Gospels contain the original apostolic tradition, and they agree in stating that Jesus celebrated the ordinary Jewish pa.s.sover on the evening between the 14th and 15th of the month Nisan; they therefore represent the crucifixion as taking place on the 15th, after the pa.s.sover had been eaten. (2) The fourth Gospel places the Last Supper on the evening between the 13th and the 14th of Nisan. It therefore represents the crucifixion as taking place on the 14th, and tacitly denies that Christ ate the usual Jewish pa.s.sover. (3) The Churches of the province of Asia, which were founded by St. John, were accustomed in the 2nd century to keep their pa.s.sover on the 14th of Nisan, and declared that they derived their custom from St. John. They consequently believed that Christ died on the 15th, and that He ate the usual Jewish Pa.s.sover. (4) Therefore the fourth Gospel was not written by St. John, but by a forger who wished to emphasize the break between Judaism and Christianity.

This argument can be turned with fatal force against the critics who made it. It is no doubt true that St. John by numerous indications (xiii. 1; xviii. 28; xix. 14, 31) implies that the Last Supper was eaten the day before the usual pa.s.sover, and that Christ died on Nisan 14. But the usage of the Christians of the Asiatic Churches in the 2nd century absolutely corroborates these indications. These Churches when they celebrated the pa.s.sover were not celebrating the anniversary of the Last Supper, but the anniversary of the death of Christ, the true Paschal Lamb. By doing this on Nisan 14, they showed that they believed that Christ died on that day, and there is particularly strong evidence of a belief among the early Christians that our Lord did die on Nisan 14. Moreover, although the account of the Synoptists is not free from {30} ambiguity, it bears many testimonies to St. John's chronology. They record as happening on the day of Christ's death several actions which the Jewish law did not permit on a feast day such as Nisan 15, and which must presumably have taken place on Nisan 14.

The Synoptists make the Sanhedrim say that they will not arrest Jesus "on the feast day," the guards and St. Peter carry arms, the trial is held, Simon the Cyrenian comes from work, Joseph of Arimathaea buys a linen cloth, the holy women prepare spices, all of which works would have been forbidden on Nisan 15. Finally, the day is itself called the "preparation," a name which would not be given to Nisan 15. The conclusion is irresistible. It is that our Lord died on Nisan 14, that St. John is correct, and that the Synoptists in most of the pa.s.sages concerned corroborate St. John. The only real difficulty is raised by Mark xiv. 12 (cf. Matt. xxvi. 17; Luke xxii. 7), which seems to imply that the Paschal lamb was sacrificed on the day before Christ died. If so, this verse implies that Christ died on Nisan 15. But we must observe that not one of the Synoptists says that the disciples ate a lamb at the Last Supper, and also that, for all ceremonial purposes, the day for killing the lamb began on the evening of Nisan 13. It is therefore doubtful whether there is even as much as one verbal contradiction on this point between the Synoptists and St. John.

The omission of events which are of importance in the Synoptic Gospels is a striking feature in St. John's Gospel. But these instances of omission can be more reasonably explained by the hypothesis that the author was content to omit facts with which the Christians around him were well acquainted, than by the hypothesis that he was a spiritualistic writer of the 2nd century who wished to make his Gospel fit some fanciful theory of his own. In fact, the latter hypothesis has proved a signal failure. The critics who say that the writer omitted the story of our Lord's painful temptation as incompatible with the majesty of the Divine Word, may be asked {31} why the writer gives no fuller account of the glorious transfiguration than the hint in i.

14. Those who say that sentimental superst.i.tion induced the writer to omit the agony the garden, may be asked why the writer records the weariness of Christ at Samaria and His tears at the grave, of Lazarus.

There are gaps in the evangelist's narrative, but we cannot argue that the Gospel is therefore a forgery. The evangelist is acquainted with the Ascension (vi. 62), though he does not record it; and he knows that Nazareth was the early home of Christ (i. 46), though he does not narrate the story of the sacred infancy. The Gospel of St. John is none the less genuine for being of the nature of a treatise, intended to bring certain aspects of the life of our Lord to bear upon the intellectual life of Ephesus. Much has been made of the fact that he says nothing of the inst.i.tution of the Eucharist. Nor does he record the command of Jesus to baptize. Are we to suppose that a writer who has told us how "the Word was made flesh" so shrank from believing material things to be connected with a spiritual efficacy that he rejected the sacraments? Is it not more probable that among people who were perfectly familiar with both Baptism and the Eucharist he preferred to tell what Christ had said about being born again (iii.), and about the a.s.similation of His life by the believer (vi.)? This seems to us more reasonable. The fourth Gospel, though it has a character and purpose of its own, and might even have been written if there had been no other Gospel, yet was intended to supplement either the Synoptic Gospels or else a body of teaching corresponding with that contained in those Gospels.

The facts which St. John records in common with the Synoptists before the Last Supper, the Pa.s.sion, and the Resurrection are--the Baptism of John (i. 26), the Feeding of the 5000 (vi. 10), the Walking on the Sea (vi. 19), the Anointing at Bethany, with the action of Judas (xii. 1), the Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem (xii. 12). Even in connection with these incidents St. John gives his additional details, and {32} therefore the character of his work is here, as elsewhere, both independent and supplemental.

It remains to ask whether any words used by St. John seem to show that he borrowed expressions from the Synoptic Gospels.

The following pa.s.sages may be noticed: John v. 8 f. (Mark ii. 11 f.), vi. 7, 10, 19 f. (Mark vi. 37, 40, 49 f.), xii. 3, 5, 7 f. (Mark xiv.

3-6), xiii. 21 (Mark xiv. 18), xviii. 18, 17 (Mark xiv. 54, 69), xviii.

22 (Mark xiv. 65). For the quotation from Zechariah in xii. 15, cf.

Matt. xxi. 5. The words of our Lord in John xv. 18-xvi. 2 have been compared with those in Matt. x. 17-22. Sometimes John has more points of contact with Luke than with the other Synoptists; _e.g._ there is the journey of Christ to Galilee before the death of John the Baptist, the fact that the scourging of Christ by Pilate was intended to restrain the Jews from demanding His death, and the visit of St. Peter to the sepulchre. It has been thought that John xii. 3 is based upon Luke vii. 38. The anointing of our Lord's _feet_ in both is certainly remarkable. Sometimes John agrees with Matt. and Mark and not Luke, as in recording the binding of Jesus, the crown of thorns, the purple robe, and the custom of releasing a malefactor at the feast. Such coincidences between John and the Synoptic Gospels are so slight and disconnected that it seems doubtful whether the former uses any material drawn from the latter. Nevertheless, the story contained in the Synoptic Gospels, though not quoted, is presupposed. A good instance is in John vi. 5, where St. John does not stop to explain that the hour was late and the people therefore hungry.

[1] _Apol._ i. 66.

[2] The longest instance of a pa.s.sage in Matt. and Luke being parallel in these Gospels and without a parallel in Mark is the short pa.s.sage, Matt. iii. 7-10, Luke iii. 7-9.

[3] This theory was first clearly expounded in 1818 by Gieseler, a celebrated German Protestant Church historian. It has been more popular in England than in Germany.

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CHAPTER III

THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ST. MATTHEW

[Sidenote: The Author.]

St. Matthew is one of the least known of the Apostles. He was first called Levi the son of Alphaeus, and was a "publican" or collector of customs at Capernaum. At the call of Jesus, "he forsook all, and rose up and followed Him." He then made a great feast, to which he invited his old companions, no doubt that they too might come under the influence of the Lord. After the appointment of the twelve Apostles, he was put in the second of the three groups of Apostles. The New Testament gives us no further information concerning him. An early tradition narrates that the Apostles remained at Jerusalem until twelve years after the Ascension, and certainly St. Paul does not seem to have found any of the Apostles at Jerusalem when he was there in A.D. 56 (Acts xxi. 17). According to Clement of Alexandria, A.D. 190, St.

Matthew led a rigorously ascetic life, such as is also recorded of St.

James. Nothing certain is known of his missionary labours. Parthia, Ethiopia, and India were believed in the 4th and 5th centuries to have been visited by St. Matthew. We learn from Clement of Alexandria that he did not suffer martyrdom.[1] The fact that he disappears almost completely from the realm of history is an additional reason for believing the tradition which connects our first Gospel with his name.

A false tradition would have probably connected it with one of the more favourite figures of early Christian story.

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It is repeatedly a.s.serted by the Fathers that St. Matthew wrote his Gospel in _Hebrew_, which may either mean the sacred language of the synagogues, or the popular language of Palestine which we now call Aramaic. It should, however, be remembered that Papias, our earliest authority, describes St. Matthew's composition by the word _Logia_, which seems to point to a list of sacred sayings or "oracles" of our Lord, rather than to a historical narrative. About A.D. 125, Papias writes: "Matthew then composed the Logia in the Hebrew tongue, and every one interpreted them as he was able." [2] About A.D. 185, St.

Irenaeus writes: "Matthew published a Gospel among the Hebrews in their own dialect." [3] Origen and Eusebius make similar statements. St.

Jerome, in A.D. 392, writes: "Matthew, also called Levi, who from being a publican became an apostle, first wrote a Gospel of Christ in Judaea, and in Hebrew letters and words for the benefit of those of the circ.u.mcision who believed. Who afterwards translated it into Greek is not quite certain." [4] We naturally inquire what became of this Hebrew Gospel?

St. Jerome, in A.D. 392, believed that he had found it. He says that it was still preserved at Caesarea, and that the Nazarenes, a Jewish Christian sect of Palestine, allowed him to transcribe a copy of it at Beroea (now Aleppo). In A.D. 398, he says that he had translated this Gospel into Greek and Latin. It is known that it was used by the Nazarenes and by the Ebionites, a Jewish sect which admitted that Jesus was the Messiah, but denied that He was divine. Lastly, we find St.

Epiphanius, about the same time as St. Jerome, describing the Hebrew "Gospel according to the Hebrews" as the Gospel written by St. Matthew.

So at the end of the 4th century it was generally believed that the Gospel used by the Nazarenes, and ordinarily known as "the Gospel according to the Hebrews," was the original {35} Hebrew version of Matt. The opinion arose from the two simple facts that it was known that (1) St. Matthew originally wrote in Hebrew, and that (2) the Nazarenes possessed _a_ Gospel in Hebrew. The conclusion was natural, but it was false. Clement of Alexandria and Origen, who quote the Gospel according to the Hebrews, do not represent it as the work of St.

Matthew. St. Jerome himself felt doubts. When he first discovered the Hebrew Gospel, he felt the enthusiasm of a critic who has made an important find. He believed that he had discovered the original Gospel. He afterwards became more cautious. His later allusions to the Gospel say that "it is called by most the original Matthew," [5]

and that it is "the Gospel according to the Apostles or, _as most suppose_, according to Matthew." [6] In fact, this Hebrew Gospel, which bore sometimes the t.i.tle of "the Hebrews," sometimes "the Apostles," sometimes "St. Matthew," was not the Hebrew original of our present Matthew, nor could it have been written by an Apostle. The fragments of it which now remain come from two versions. Both versions show traces of a mixed Jewish and Gnostic heresy, and are plainly apocryphal. The Holy Spirit is called the "mother" of Jesus, and represented as transporting Him by a hair of His head to Mount Tabor, and our Lord is represented as handing His grave-clothes to the servant of the high-priest as soon as He was risen from the dead. The Gospel certainly seems not only to be a forgery, but to betray a knowledge both of our Greek Gospel according to St. Matthew and that according to St. John.[7] We are obliged to conclude that it throws no light on the origin of our Matt., and that the original Hebrew Matt. was lost at an early date.

On the other hand, it is certain that our Greek Matt. was {36} regarded as authentic in the 2nd century, and it is plain that it records the sayings of Christ with peculiar fulness.

We must now return to what was stated in our previous chapter when dealing with the Synoptic problem. We there saw that there is a great ma.s.s of common material in all three Synoptic Gospels, and saw that Mark was probably used as a groundwork for Matt. and Luke. We therefore are led to the conclusion that the Gospel according to St.

Matthew is a combination of a Greek version of St. Matthew's original Hebrew Logia--St. Matthew possibly wrote a Greek version of it as well as the Hebrew--with the Gospel written by St. Mark. The combination was apparently made either by the apostle himself, or by a disciple of the apostle as the result of his directions. The Catholic Jewish Christians, knowing that the Gospel contained St. Matthew's own Logia, and that the rest of the Gospel was in accordance with his teaching as delivered to them, called it "the Gospel according to Matthew." The less orthodox Jewish Christians, as we have seen, invented a Gospel of their own.

A little help is given us by the internal evidence afforded by Matt.

The author appears to be writing for Greek-speaking converts from Judaism, who need to have Hebrew words interpreted to them. Thus he interprets "Immanuel" (i. 23), "Golgotha" (xxvii. 33), and the words of our Lord on the cross (xxvii. 46). The numerous quotations from the Old Testament have for a long time exercised the ingenuity of scholars, who have believed that they enable us to determine how the Gospel was written. On the whole these quotations suggest two conclusions: (1) That the evangelist knew both Greek and Aramaic, (2) that the Gospel is not a mere translation from the Aramaic or Hebrew. Roughly speaking, the quotations which St. Matthew has in common with the other Synoptists are from the Greek (Septuagint) version of the Old Testament, while those which are peculiar to his {37} Gospel show that the Hebrew has been consulted. Altogether the quotations number 45.

Of these there are 11 which are texts quoted by the evangelist himself to ill.u.s.trate the Messianic work of our Lord, and 9 of the 11 seem to imply a knowledge of Hebrew. They are i. 23; ii. 15, iv. 15-16, viii.

17, xii. 18-21; xiii. 14-15; xiii. 35b; xxi. 5; xxvii. 9, 10. The other 34 texts comprise the quotations which are made in the discourses of our Lord, and they are sometimes called context-quotations or cyclic quotations, as coming in the cycle of discourses. Perhaps 6 or 7 of these 34 texts imply a knowledge of the Hebrew. But it is certain that this cla.s.s of quotations is far nearer to the Septuagint than the other cla.s.s. This conclusion remains good in spite of the fact that even the Messianic quotations show the influence of the Septuagint, _e.g._ in i.

23 the writer uses the Septuagint, inasmuch as the Greek word translated "virgin" _necessarily_ implies the unique condition of the mother of our Lord, whereas the corresponding Hebrew word does not _necessarily_ imply the same condition. Now, it is plain that if the Gospel had been translated from the Hebrew, the context-quotations would probably have been as near to the Hebrew as the quotations made by the evangelist himself. This is not the case. The quotations in Matt. show that the writer knew Hebrew but wrote in Greek, and based part of his work on a Greek doc.u.ment.

The fact that the Gospel was written in Greek does not prove that it was not written in Palestine. It has been urged that it cannot have been written in Palestine, because in ix. 26, 31 we find Palestine called "_that_ land," but the phrase may refer only to a part of Palestine, and therefore can hardly be urged as proving anything. It is well known that educated persons in Palestine were acquainted with Greek, although the majority spoke Aramaic. The two languages existed side by side, very much as Welsh and English exist side by side in North Wales. If the Gospel was not written in Palestine, it was probably written in South Syria.

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[Sidenote: Date.]

The date must be shortly before A.D. 70. A favourite argument of modern sceptics is that it contains a reference (xxii. 7) to the burning of Jerusalem by the Romans in A.D. 70, and therefore must have been written after that event. The argument rests upon the a.s.sumption that our Lord could not have foreseen the event predicted--an a.s.sumption which no Christian can accept. Even the favoured servants of G.o.d in later ages have sometimes possessed the gift of prophecy.

Savonarola certainly foretold the fall of Rome, which took place in A.D. 1527, and the prophecy was printed long before the event seemed credible. Much more might the Son of G.o.d have foretold the fall of that city which had so signally neglected His summons. Such expressions as "the holy city," "the holy place," "the city of the great King," suggest that when the Gospel was written it had not yet become the home of "the abomination of desolation." And a far stronger proof is afforded by the caution of the writer in xxiv. 15, "let him that readeth understand." This is an editorial note inserted by the evangelist, as by St. Mark, before our Lord's warning to flee from Judaea. We learn from the early historians of the Church that the Jewish Christians took warning from this statement to flee from Judaea to Peraea before the Romans invested the holy city in A.D. 70. Now, it would have been absurd for the evangelist to insert this note after the Roman forces had begun the siege, as absurd as it would have been to warn the Parisians to flee to England after Paris had been surrounded by the Prussians in 1870, or to warn the English to leave Ladysmith in 1900 after it was surrounded by the Boers. Another and final proof that the Gospel was written before A.D. 70 is given by the form in which the evangelist has recorded our Lord's prophecy of the end of the world (the so-called "eschatological discourse" in chs. xxiv.-xxv.).