ii. Instances in which Criticism has corrected itself.
These are not merely a priori reflections, but they are based upon experience of the actual course that criticism has taken. By this time criticism has a considerable history behind it. It has corrected some of its mistakes, and is able to look back upon the course by which it came to make them. In this way it should learn some wholesome lessons.
I will take three rather conspicuous examples in which criticism has at first gone wrong and has afterwards come to set itself right, in the hope that they may teach us what to avoid in future. I imagine that they may be found to throw some side-light upon the particular problem of the Fourth Gospel.
The first example that I will take shall be from the criticism of the Ignatian Epistles. I may assume that the Seven Epistles are now generally allowed to be genuine, and written by Ignatius, bishop of Antioch, on his way to martyrdom at Rome sometime before the end of the reign of Trajan (i. e. before 117). This result is due especially to the labours of two scholars, Zahn and Lightfoot. It is instructive to note with what kind of argument they had to contend.
Both in their day had to stem a formidable current of opinion. Bishop Lightfoot wrote in the Preface to his great work dated ‘St. Peter’s day, 1885’:
‘We have been told more than once that “all impartial critics” have condemned the Ignatian Epistles as spurious. But this moral intimidation is unworthy of the eminent writers who have sometimes indulged in it, and will certainly not be permitted to foreclose the investigation. If the ecclesiastical terrorism of past ages has lost its power, we shall, in the interests of truth, be justly jealous of allowing an academic terrorism to usurp its place.’
I should not find it difficult to produce parallels to this kind of intimidation in the case of the Fourth Gospel. To look back in face of them upon the issue of the Ignatian controversy is consoling.
Much was said in the course of the controversy about certain features of style and character as unworthy of an Apostolic father. It was enough to answer with Bishop Lightfoot that ‘objections of this class rest for the most part on the assumption that an Apostolic father must be a person of ideal perfections intellectually as well as morally—an assumption which has only to be named in order to be refuted[[22]].’
It is true that the letters contained exaggerated language of humility, and also an exaggerated eagerness for martyrdom. Beside these general features, there were a good many strange and crude expressions of other kinds. It is needless to say that it did not in the least follow that such expressions could not have been used by Ignatius. But if the critics had been willing to study the letters a little deeper and with a little more sympathy, they might have found reason to change their estimate even of these acknowledged flaws.
In dealing with Ignatius it is always important to remember that we have to do with a Syrian and not a Greek. Certainly the language that he wrote was not in his hand a pliant instrument. It always cost him a struggle to express his thought; and the expression is very often far from perfect. The figure of the writer that one pictures to oneself is rugged, shaggy (if one may use the word), uncouth; and yet there is a virile, nervous strength about his language which is at times very impressive. And even his extravagances differ in this from many like extravagances, that they are not in the least insincere. For instance, if we read through the letter to Polycarp, we shall see in it a really great personality. And Ignatius had a very considerable power of thought as well as of character. Outside the New Testament, he is the first great Christian thinker; and he is one who left a deep mark on all subsequent thinking.
I have little doubt that the strong expressions of humility that are found from time to time in Ignatius are wrung from him by the recollection of the life that he led before he became a Christian. They are doubtless suggested by St. Paul, and they spring from a feeling not less intense than his.
The humility of St. John is a different matter. But as very shallow and obtuse criticisms are sometimes passed upon it, the Ignatian parallel may serve as a wholesome warning. I shall have occasion to return to this point later.
The main arguments against the Ignatian authorship of the letters were drawn from the seemingly advanced condition of things which they implied in the way of heretical teaching on the one hand, and church organization on the other. The objections on these grounds have been quite cleared up; and now the letters supply some of the most important data that the historian has to go upon.
It will be remembered that Bishop Lightfoot began by converting himself before he converted others. He had been inclined to think at one time that the shorter Syriac version represented the true Ignatius. He tells us himself how he came to give up this opinion. He says:
‘I found that to maintain the priority of the Curetonian letters I was obliged from time to time to ascribe to the supposed Ignatian forger feats of ingenuity, knowledge, intuition, skill, and self-restraint, which transcended all bounds of probability’ (Preface to the First Edition).
This is another bit of experience that it may be worth while to bear in mind.
My second example is perhaps in this sense not quite so clear a case, that there is not as yet as complete a consensus in regard to it as there is in regard to the Ignatian Letters. It is taken from the discussions which have been going on at various times in the last twenty-five years as to the genuineness of the treatise De Vita Contemplativa which has come down to us among the works of Philo.
A marked impression was made on the side of the attack by a monograph by Lucius, Die Therapeuten u. ihre Stellung in d. Gesch. der Askese, published in 1879. This, together with the acceptance at least of the negative part of its result by Schürer, inaugurated a period during which opinion was on the whole rather unfavourable to the treatise. A reaction began with two articles by Massebieau in 1888, followed by the important and valuable work of Mr. F. C. Conybeare, Philo about the Contemplative Life, Oxford, 1895. The success of this defence may be regarded as clenched by the accession of such excellent and impartial authorities as Cohn and Wendland, who are bringing out the great new edition of Philo, and of Dr. James Drummond. It is true that Schürer reviewed Mr. Conybeare in an adverse sense so far as his main conclusion was concerned, and that he still maintains his opinion in the third edition of his Geschichte d. Jüdischen Volkes (1898); but I must needs think that his arguments were satisfactorily and decisively answered by Dr. Drummond in the Jewish Quarterly Review for 1896.
One or two points in this reply of Dr. Drummond have a general bearing, relevant to our present subject.
Lucius had maintained that the treatise was of Christian origin, and that it was composed not long before the time of its first mention by Eusebius. The history of the text is opposed to this; and Dr. Drummond is quite right in saying ‘the argument seems valid that Eusebius did not make his extracts from a work which had been recently sprung upon the market, but from one which had already undergone a long process of transcription.’ I may point to Dr. Schmiedel’s article in the Encyclopaedia Biblica as one of many examples of reasoning similar to that of Lucius in regard to the Fourth Gospel. It is a common thing among critics to think it unnecessary to allow any but the smallest interval between the first production of a book and the date of its first mention in the literature that happens to be extant. I would not lay down an absolute rule. Circumstances vary in different cases. But I would contend that in any case they need careful consideration, and that assumptions like those of Lucius and Schmiedel are highly precarious.
The next point I would notice is the argument from identity of thought and style. One of the striking features in Mr. Conybeare’s book was the vast accumulation of parallels both in thought and expression between the De Vita Contemplativa and the certainly genuine works of Philo. Dr. Schürer thinks that this might be due to imitation. On that head I should like to quote Dr. Drummond:
‘The purely literary evidence will affect different men differently. To those who have no difficulty in attributing to the forger a boundless power of refined imitation it will carry little weight. To others who act upon the proverb, ex pede Herculem, and believe that successful forgery in the name of an author, if not of high genius, at least of unusual ability and distinguished style, is an exceedingly difficult art, this line of evidence will come with almost overwhelming force. It is easy enough to imitate tricks of style, or to borrow some peculiarities of phrase; but to write in a required style, without betraying any signs of imitation; to introduce perpetual variation into sentences which are nevertheless characteristic; to have shades of thought and suggestion, which remind one of what has been said elsewhere, and nevertheless are delicately modified, and pass easily into another subject; in a word, to preserve the whole flavour of a writer’s composition in a treatise which has a theme of its own, and follows its own independent development, may well seem beyond the reach of the forger, and must be held to guarantee the genuineness of a work, unless very weighty arguments can be advanced on the other side.’
This paragraph seems to be very much in point for those who, like Schmiedel, H. J. Holtzmann and Professor Bacon, would distinguish the author of the First Epistle of St. John from the author of the Gospel.
On this point it is also worth while to consider Dr. Drummond’s replies to the inconsistencies alleged to exist between particular details in the De Vita Contemplativa and the other Philonic writings. There is always a tendency in the critical school to make too much of these little prima facie differences, which generally shrink a good deal on closer examination.
My last example shall be taken from the Vita Antonii, ascribed to, and now generally believed to be a genuine work of, St. Athanasius. The Vita Antonii holds an important place in the literature of the beginnings of Monasticism. As such it was involved in the wholesale scepticism on that subject which was pushed to its furthest limits by the late Professor Weingarten in the seventies and eighties. How complete the reaction has been may be seen in the recent edition of the Historia Lausiaca by Dom Cuthbert Butler. Among Weingarten’s converts was our English scholar, Professor Gwatkin; and I do not think that anything could speak more eloquently than just to transcribe the list of objections brought against the Vita Antonii by Professor Gwatkin in his Studies of Arianism (Cambridge, 1882). I proceed to give the more important of them in an abridged form:
‘In the rest of the works of Athanasius there is no trace of Antony’s existence. Considering the grandeur of the saint’s position, and his intimate relations with the bishop of Alexandria, this fact alone should be decisive.’
Observe the argument from silence, which is enlarged upon in the remainder of the paragraph.
1. The treatise is addressed to the monks of the West, whereas ‘monasticism was unknown in Europe in the reign of Valentinian, and at Rome in particular when Jerome went into the East in 373; and at Milan it had only lately been introduced by Ambrose at the time of Augustine’s visit in 385.’
2. ‘Apart from its numerous miracles, the general tone of the Vita is unhistorical. It is a perfect romance of the desert, without a trace of human sinfulness to mar its beauty. The saint is an idealized ascetic hero, the mons Antonii a paradise of peaceful holiness. We cannot pass from the Scriptores Erotici to the Vita Antonii without noticing the same atmosphere of unreality in both. From Anthanasius there is all the difference of the novel writer from the orator—of the Cyropaedia from the de Corona.’
3. ‘Though Athanasius had ample room for miracles in the adventures of his long life, he never records anything of the sort.... But miracles, often of the most puerile description, are the staple of the Vita Antonii, and some of them are said to have been done before the eyes of Athanasius himself, who could not have omitted all reference to them in the writings of his exile.’
Again, the argument from silence.
4. ‘Antony is represented as an illiterate Copt, dependent on memory even for his knowledge of Scripture.’ Yet he alludes to Plato, Plotinus, &c., and in general reasons like a learned philosopher.
5. ‘The Vita Antonii has coincidences with Athanasius in language and doctrine, as we should expect in any professed work of his.... But the divergences are serious’....
6. It is implied throughout the Vita Antonii that the monks were extremely numerous throughout the East during Antony’s lifetime. Now there were monks in Egypt, monks of Serapis, long before; but Christian monks there were none’ (Studies of Arianism, pp. 100-2).
Now I am not for a moment going to disparage this display of learning. It is very clever; it is very scholarly: in the state of knowledge when it was written it was at least very excusable in its statements. Altogether it was as brilliant a piece of criticism as one would wish to see. To this day the objections read quite formidably. And yet the inference drawn from them is pretty certainly wrong; indeed the whole array is little more than an impressive bugbear.
With such warnings from the past before our eyes, I think we should be inclined to scrutinize rather closely arguments of a like kind when they meet us in the course of our present investigation.