The Christian Faith Under Modern Searchlights Part 14

263: Dawson Walker: "The Gift of Tongues," 1906, p. 181.

Important alike in its bearing upon the questions of credibility and authorship, is the evidence of the so-called "we-sections." A _prima facie_ case is made out that the author of the Acts was an eye-witness of some of the scenes it records, and a companion in travel of the Apostle Paul. This evidence has of late been greatly strengthened by linguistic investigation. While critical attempts are still made to divide the Acts into doc.u.ments, the "we-sections" (xvi. 10-17; xx. 5-15; xxi. 1-18; xxvii. 1-xxviii. 16), as Sir J. Hawkins says, show an "immense balance of internal and linguistic evidence in favour of the view that the original writer of these sections was the same person as the main author of the Acts and of the Third Gospel."[264]

264: "Horae Synopticae," 2d ed., 1909, p. 188.

No living writers have done more to stimulate interest in the book of Acts than have Sir W. M. Ramsay and Harnack, and the writings of both have materially strengthened the case alike for its Lukan authorship, and, in the main, for its historical accuracy. Ramsay, starting, as he says, from the standpoint of the Tubingen school, "with the confident a.s.sumption that the book was fabricated in the middle of the second century, and studying it to see what light it could throw on the state of society in Asia Minor, was gradually driven to the conclusion that it must have been written in the first century and with admirable knowledge."[265]

265: "Pauline Studies," p. 199.

Harnack's defense, in his four monographs,[266] of the Lukan authorship, integrity, historical reliability (where the supernatural is not in question) and early date of the Acts is the most outstanding and significant achievement of the age in New Testament criticism. Harnack's work has been so thorough and convincing that it may be said to have carried the theological world by storm. At least his powerful argument for Lukan authorship does not appear to have been successfully met. The attempt to turn its flank by a.s.serting that the Paul of Acts, in making a vow, shaving his head and entering into the Temple, was not the defender of Gentile liberty who wrote Galatians, and so that the author of the Acts was not the companion of Paul, is met by Harnack in the fourth of his monographs. Paul, he declares, not only was a Jew, but remained so, whether consistently or not. Harnack thinks that Paul shrank back from taking the last logical step,[267] but that in this the author of the Acts represents the relation of Paul to Judaism precisely as do his letters.[268] Stanton well remarks that the difficulty of accounting for alleged discrepancies between the Acts and the Epistles is equal or greater on the supposition that the author wrote 100 A. D., or later, than if the author was the companion of Paul.[269] The very fact, for example, that Luke says that Paul worshipped in the Temple is an indication that we have here no conception of a later age to which such an act would have seemed unnatural.

266: "Beitrage zur Einl. in das N. T.": I. "Lukas der Arzt," 1906; II. "Spruche und Reden Jesu," 1907; III. "Die Apostelgeschichte,"

1908; IV. "Neue Untersuchungen zur Apostelgeschichte und zur Abfa.s.sungszeit des Synoptischen Evangelien," 1911. For convenience these will be alluded to as I, II, III, and IV, in connection with the English translation.

267: IV, p. 35; "Date of the Acts and of the Synoptic Gospels," p. 49.

268: _Ibid._, p. 62; E. T., p. 88.

269: "The Gospels as Historical Doc.u.ments," Pt. II, 1909, p. 242.

In his "Date of the Acts and of the Synoptic Gospels" (IV), Harnack reverses his former opinion and strongly defends a date for the Acts within the lifetime of Paul and before the end of his trial at Rome.

Reviewing his former arguments for a later date, he finds them inconclusive, and thinks that the earlier date is required by the abrupt close of the Acts. Minor considerations favouring an early date are (1) the t.i.tles for Christ in the early chapters, and for Christians, and the description of the Jews as "the people of G.o.d"; (2) the fact that the Jews are the persecutors and not the persecuted; (3) the absence of any indication of the use of Paul's letters such as would be expected in a later writer; (4) the use of the "first day of the week," instead of the "Lord's Day," and of the names of Jewish feasts, in which Luke stands with Paul against later writers. And (5) even the prediction, Acts xx.

25, which looks primarily to Jerusalem, not Rome, would not have been written, if the second imprisonment be accepted, after its apparent falsification by I Timothy i. 3 and 2 Timothy i. 18. H. Koch develops these arguments independently,[270] and it can no longer be said that the early dating of the Acts is "a pre-critical theory which rests on sentimental or subjective grounds."[271]

270: "Die Abfa.s.sungszeit des lukanischen Geschichtswerkes," 1911.

271: J. Moffatt: "Historical New Testament," p. 414, note 4. It is noticeable that Moffatt now favours the Lukan authorship, "put practically beyond doubt by the exhaustive researches of Hawkins and Harnack" ("Introduction to New Testament," p. 295), while advocating a date later than Josephus' "Antiquities" (pp. 29 f.).

Why should the author follow so carefully the fortunes of the Apostle on his voyage to Rome, and describe so fully the initial stages of his trial, and yet leave the reader in doubt concerning its outcome?

Commentators have been puzzled by the seemingly inordinate s.p.a.ce which Luke devotes to the details of the voyage and shipwreck. Sometimes it is said that the voyage marks the final rejection of the Jewish people; or in the description is seen a literary device intended to intensify the suspense of the reader; or allegorical interpretations are resorted to by those who think that Luke would not thus descend from the level of the philosophical historian to that of the novelist.

In the minute description of the voyage and shipwreck, Koch sees evidence that the writer's experiences as Paul's companion on the voyage were still fresh in his mind. The details would scarcely have been remembered and recorded so vividly after twenty-five years. Even if a journal had been kept, it is still strange that the minutiae of the story should have been retained in the perspective of the finished history. "The author still stands under the fresh impression of the wonderful divine guidance through which Paul, in spite of all dangers and hindrances, reached his long sought goal." "What interest would a reader of later times have in details such as that on an Alexandrian ship precisely two hundred and seventy-six men were found?" In the seventh or eighth decade more important contemporary events would have stood in the foreground of interest.[272] A striking parallelism has been observed between the Third Gospel and the Acts, while, supposing Paul's death to have occurred, it is urged that Luke has missed "the finest--the most essential--point of the whole comparison, the death of Paul."[273]

272: H. Koch: "Die Abfa.s.sungszeit des lukanischen Geschichtswerkes,"

pp. 61, 62.

273: D. Walker: "The Gift of Tongues," p. 228.

The a.s.sumed intention of the author to write a third treatise does not help the matter much. It is absurd, Ramsay admits, to relate the earlier stages of the trial at great length, "and wholly omit the final result which gives them intelligibility and purpose"; but his conclusion is that "it therefore follows that a sequel was contemplated by the author," a sequel which the "first" (protos) of Acts i. 1 implies, if Luke "wrote as correct Greek as Paul wrote."[274] But the intention of writing a sequel does not explain the failure to mention the outcome of the trial. Luke would have no motive like the writer of a continued story for keeping the reader in suspense, and the simple addition of the words "until his release or acquittal" would have relieved the suspense, and given "intelligibility and purpose" to the detailed description of the earlier stages of the trial. The account of the Ascension is not omitted from Luke's Gospel although given in greater detail in the Acts.

There is nothing un-philosophical in the abrupt ending of a history which brings the record down to the date of writing.

274: "Paul the Traveller," pp. 307-309. The use of "first" (p??tos [protos]) is not decisive, for it is used where there are but two objects in the comparison in Acts xii. 10 (and see vii. 12), Hebrews ix. 8 and 15, Apoc. xx. 5, and even I Corinthians xv. 47.

The leading argument against an early date for the Acts is drawn from the possible use by Luke of the writings of Josephus, and the crux of the question is in the words put into the mouth of Gamaliel (Acts v. 36, 37). The coincidence of the names of Theudas and Judas of Galilee (Acts v. 36, 37; Antiq. xx. v. 1 and 2) is striking and, if the two men named Theudas be identified and Josephus is correct, Luke is guilty of an anachronism in putting an allusion to him into the mouth of Gamaliel; for the Theudas of Josephus falls in the time of Fadus who was procurator under Claudius, about 45 A. D. The following points deserve to be noticed:

(1) Luke had from Paul, whether or not Paul was present at the meeting of the Sanhedrin, the best means of knowing what Gamaliel, his teacher and the spokesman of the Pharisaic party, actually said. (2) The a.s.sumption that Luke was quoting Josephus is in itself very difficult when we compare the pa.s.sages. Luke speaks of about four hundred under Theudas while Josephus mentions a great part of the people; Luke speaks of Judas while Josephus speaks of the sons of Judas. To quote thus loosely from his a.s.sumed authority and then to commit the further blunder of making Gamaliel allude to an event which occurred at least a dozen years later is, while possible, strangely out of keeping with Luke's proved care and accuracy in most of his historical allusions. The difficulty is acknowledged by those who make Luke dependent on Josephus.

Why did Luke diverge from a correct narrative if he had one before him?

Writers who affirm (Holtzmann) and those who deny (Schurer) the dependence on Josephus practically agree that if Luke had read Josephus he had forgotten him. (3) In the narrative of the death of Herod (Acts xii. 20 f.; Antiq. xix. viii. 2), where the two authors most obviously come together, both are plainly describing the same event, and yet seem to be quite independent both in the use of words and in the details of the description. (4) The c.u.mulative evidence of an early date for Luke weighs heavily in the scale against the hypothesis of dependence upon the "Antiquities" written about 93 or 94 A. D.

The question of date cannot be said to be absolutely settled, but the tendency of criticism as ill.u.s.trated by Harnack is to the acceptance of an early date, as well as to that of the Lukan authorship of the entire book. It is difficult to see how Harnack, with his present defense of a date before Paul's release from prison, can consistently maintain his skepticism where the supernatural events recorded in the Acts are concerned. It is idle to say that his "revolution in chronology" has no effect upon the question of reliability. It is an established principle of historical method that the nearer a tradition is to the event it professes to describe, the more likely it is to be trustworthy. The resources of Harnack's learning have been used in support of the reliability of Luke in his geographical and chronological references,[275] and his treatment of persons and reports of their speeches.[276] He has shown that Luke was in touch with the leaders of the Jerusalem church, and that his statements are abundantly confirmed by the writings of Paul. If Luke wrote within the lifetime of Paul, the Acts was published while the main actors were still living, and, by inference, it recorded events as Peter and Barnabas and Apollos and Philip and Mark thought that they happened. If further, as Harnack argues, it was written during Paul's imprisonment there seems no room for doubt that it was written under the eye and with the full endors.e.m.e.nt of its princ.i.p.al actor, and that we have thus the implicit guarantee not only of Luke but of Paul also for the accuracy of its record.

275: III, p. 97; "Acts of the Apostles," p. 112.

276: _Ibid._, pp. 101 ff.; E. T., pp. 117 ff.

III. THE SYNOPTIC PROBLEM

It has been said that the two most important questions for religion are those of the rational foundations of theism and of the trustworthiness of the Four Gospels.[277] The Gospel records have always been regarded as the citadel of the Christian Faith. Not only do they contain the record of works of power and words of grace, and of a transcendent Personality, but they have always been considered to have been themselves supernatural in origin and character. They have been regarded as "a house not made with hands" (Robertson Nicoll), "a miracle of the Holy Ghost" (Stier), "the heaven-drawn picture of Christ, the living Word."

The criticism of the past century, in its quest for the historical Jesus, has taken a very different att.i.tude towards the Evangelical records. By many critics they have been regarded as a patchwork of traditions, a work of pious but credulous men, whose idealization and exaggeration, in the supposed interest of faith, it is necessary to discount in order to reach the bed-rock of historical fact.

277: Dr. Francis L. Patton, in an address.

The literary relation of the Synoptic Gospels to one another has furnished to the New Testament student a problem of great intricacy and singular fascination. Its importance for our present purpose is in its bearing upon the trustworthiness of our canonical Gospels. The school of Baur, under the influence of the Hegelian dialectic, saw in Matthew, the Jewish Gospel, the thesis; in Luke, the Gentile Gospel, the ant.i.thesis; and lastly in Mark, the neutral Gospel, the synthesis or last term of the development. Criticism since the time of Baur has, with much unanimity, seen in Mark not the latest but the first of the Gospels, and has made Matthew and Luke dependent upon Mark.

The theory which has for some years held the field is the so-called "two-doc.u.ment" theory. According to this Matthew and Luke, usually regarded as independent of each other, are both dependent, for much of their narrative portion and for the framework of their history, upon Mark, and, for the non-Markan discourse material which they have in common, upon a collection of the sayings of Jesus, formerly designated as "the Logia" but now usually called by the letter "Q." The importance of the Synoptic Problem, for our present purpose, is in its historical rather than its literary features. a.s.suming the priority of Mark, and a.s.suming that Matthew and Luke were dependent upon him alone in those parts of their narratives which have Markan parallels, it is clear that we must regard all deviations made by the other Synoptists from the Markan narrative as of only secondary value. Variations from Mark, if Mark be the sole source, whether these consist of additions, omissions or modifications in the narrative, obviously add nothing to our knowledge of the facts, but simply represent changes which the later writers have made in their source from subjective reasons. It is important, then, to ask whether, in the present state of opinion upon the inter-Synoptic relations, there is reason to believe that Matthew and Luke are following Mark as their sole authority for the narratives which have Markan parallels.

There is now a quite general recognition of the fact that the literary problem presented by the Synoptic Gospels is exceedingly intricate, and that the "two-doc.u.ment" hypothesis in its simplicity has not solved all the difficulties. It is recognized that it must be modified in one of three directions.

(1) There may be said to be a growing appreciation of the part which oral transmission has played in the composition of the Gospels. This is shown for example in the volume of Oxford "Studies in the Synoptic Problem" (1911),[278] and by the statement of Sir John Hawkins, who, in the second edition of his "Horae Synopticae" (1909), expresses the strong opinion "that at least the Second and Third Evangelists had provided themselves with written doc.u.ments as their main sources, but that they often omitted to refer closely to them, partly because of the physical difficulties which there must have been in consulting ma.n.u.scripts, and partly because of the oral knowledge of the life and sayings of Jesus Christ which they had previously acquired as learners and used as teachers, and upon which therefore it would be natural for them to fall back very frequently."[279] It is natural to suppose, with Schmiedel, that oral tradition continued for a considerable time after the first doc.u.ments were written.[280]

278: Compare the statement of J. V. Bartlett: "I am not convinced that there ever was a written 'book of discourses' that has perished" (p. 360).

279: "Horae Synopticae," 2d ed., p. 217.

280: Art. "Gospels," Encycl. Bib., vol. ii. col. 1846.

(2) A considerable number of scholars, finding that Mark condenses his account of such incidents as the Baptism and Temptation of Jesus and the discourse concerning Beelzebub, and that Matthew and Luke are parallel in matter which they add at these points to the Markan account, have concluded that Mark must have used Q, the a.s.sumed source of the Matthew-Luke agreements. A moderate statement is that of Dr. Sanday: "I do not think that Q was used by Mark regularly and systematically, as the later Evangelists use his own narrative; but he must have known of its existence, and reminiscences of it seem to have clung to him and from time to time made their way into his text." [281]

281: "Studies in the Synoptic Problem," pp. xvi, xvii.

(3) Another group of scholars, basing their view on the agreement of Matthew and Luke against Mark in matter with Markan parallels, and on the difficulty of accounting for some omissions from Mark in the later Evangelists (such as the omission in Luke, where it would be most appropriate, of the story about the Syro-Phoenician woman), have framed a theory of different recensions in Mark, one being used by Matthew, a different one by Luke, and a final recension, whether the work of the Evangelist himself or of an editor, representing our canonical Mark.

This theory in different forms has been advocated by Stanton in his "Gospels as Historical Doc.u.ments," Part II (1909), and more recently by Holdsworth in his "Gospel Origins" (1913). When the two-doc.u.ment theory is held in this form, the priority of Mark belongs only to the a.s.sumed earlier editions, for whose extent and contents there is no objective evidence except the a.s.sumed dependence, while our canonical Mark is later than either Matthew or Luke.

There is a growing tendency to find secondary elements in Mark as well as in Matthew or Luke. Hawkins, it will be recalled, gives a list of pa.s.sages in Mark "which may have been omitted or altered (by the other Evangelists) as being liable to be misunderstood, or to give offense, or to suggest difficulties."[282] Of the pa.s.sages which seem (a) to limit the power of Jesus, or (b) to be otherwise derogatory to, or unworthy of Him, the more noteworthy of the twenty-two instances given by Hawkins are as follows: under (a),

282: "Horae Synopticae," 2d ed., pp. 117 f.

1. Mark i. 32-34, "He healed many that were sick." Matthew viii. 16, "He healed all"; cf. Luke iv. 40, "Every one of them."

3. Mark vi. 5, "He could there do no mighty work, save etc." Matthew xiii. 58, "He did not many mighty works there because of their unbelief."

Under (b),

2. Mark i. 12, "The Spirit driveth him forth." Matthew and Luke use words meaning to "lead."

4. Mark iii. 21, "They said he is beside himself." This is omitted by Matthew and Luke.

10. Mark x. 17, 18, "Good Master" and "Why callest thou me good?" appear in Matthew xix. 16, 17 (R. V.) as "Master" and "Why askest thou me concerning that which is good?" Luke follows Mark.