And the transformation is not one whit more radical than we ought to anticipate. The Transfiguration story had been a halting attempt to embody Pauline doctrine in Petrine story. But apart from the obvious hold afforded to mere Doketism, how inadequate to Paul's conception of the "Man from heaven"! The Fourth evangelist depicts the person of Jesus consistently and throughout, despite his meagre and refractory material, along the lines of Pauline Christology. There is no concession to Doketism, for in spite of all, and designedly (iv. 6; xix. 28, 34), Jesus is still no phantasm, but true man among men. There is no hesitation to override, where needful, on vital points the great and growing authority of 'apostolic' tradition. Tacitly, but uncompromisingly, Petrine tradition is set aside. The "disciple whom Jesus loved" sees the matter otherwise. In particular, apocalyptic eschatology is firmly repressed in favour of a doctrine of eternal life in the Spirit. The second Coming is not to be a manifestation "to the world." It will be an inward indwelling of God and Christ in the heart of the believer (xiv. 22 f.).[30] The place of future reward is not a glorified Palestine and transfigured, rebuilt Jerusalem. The disciple, like Paul, will "depart to be with Christ." The Father's house is wider than the Holy Land. It has "many mansions," and the servant must be content to know that his Master will receive him where he dwells himself (xiv. 1-3; xvii. 24).
To realize what it meant to produce the 'spiritual' Gospel that comes to us from Ephesus shortly after the close of the first century we must place ourselves side by side with men who had learnt the gospel of Paul about Jesus, the drama of the eternal, pre-existent, "heavenly Man," incarnate, triumphant through the cross over the Prince of this world and powers of darkness. We must realize how they found it needful to impregnate the 'apostolic' material of Petrine and Matthæan tradition with this deeper significance, preserving the concrete, historic fact, and the real manhood, and yet supplementing the disproportionately external story with a wealth of transcendental meaning. The spirit of Paul was, indeed, not dead. Neither Gnostic heresy could dissipate it, nor reactionary Christianized legalism absorb it. It had been reborn in splendid authority and power. In due time it would prove itself the very mould of 'catholic' doctrine. The Fourth gospel, as its Prologue forewarns, is an application to the story of Jesus as tradition reported it of the Pauline incarnation doctrine formulated under the Stoic Logos theory. It represents a study in the psychology of religion applied to the person of Christ. Poor as Paul himself in knowledge of the outward Jesus, unfamiliar with really historical words and deeds, its doctrine about Jesus became, nevertheless, like that of the great Apostle to the Gentiles, the truest exposition of 'the heart of Christ.'
CHAPTER X
EPILOGUES AND CONCLUSIONS
Few of the great writings cherished and transmitted by the early church have escaped the natural tendency to attachments at beginning and end. In the later period such attachments took the form of prefixed argumenta, i. e. prefatory descriptions of author and contents, and affixed subscriptions, devoted to a similar purpose. These, like the titles, were clearly distinguished from the text itself, and in modern editions are usually not printed, though examples of 'subscriptions' may be seen in the King James version after the Pauline Epistles. Before the time when canonization had made such a process seem sacrilege they were attached to the text itself, with greater or less attempt to weld the parts together. We need not add to what has been already said as to certain superscriptions of the later epistolary literature, such as James and Jude, where the relation to the text impresses us as closer than is sometimes admitted; nor need we delay with the preamble to Revelation (Rev. i. 1-3). That which has been added at the close, in cases where real evidence exists of such later supplementation, is of special significance to our study, inasmuch as it tends to throw light where light is most required. For that is an obscure period, early in the second century, when not only the churches themselves were drawing together toward catholic unity under the double pressure of inward and outward peril, but were bringing with them their treasured writings, sometimes a collection of Epistles, sometimes a Gospel, or a book of Prophecy, sometimes, as in the groups of writings attributed to John and Peter, a full canon of Gospel, Epistles and Apocalypse, followed but little later by 'Acts' as well.
The most ancient list of books authorized to be publicly read that we possess is that of the church of Rome c. 185, called after its discoverer the Canon of Muratori. From this fragment, mutilated at beginning and end, we learn that Paul's letters to the churches were arranged in a group of seven[31] of which Romans stood last. It is probably due to its position at the end that Romans has been supplemented by the addition of Pauline fragments, which did not appear in some early editions of the text. The letter proper ends with ch. xv. though xvi. 21-23 probably followed, perhaps concluding with ver. 24, which some texts insert after ver. 19. Ver. 25-27 is another fragment omitted in some texts.
We have seen above ([p. 200]) how Revelation has received conclusion after conclusion, so that the relation of personalities has become almost unintelligible. We have very meagre textual material for Revelation, and can scarcely judge whether any of the process represented in Rev. xxii. 6-21 belongs to the period of transmission, after the publication of the book in its present form. Until the discovery of new textual evidence the phenomena in Revelation must be treated by principles of the higher criticism, as pertaining to its history before publication. At all events we know that the attribution to "John" (ver. 8 f.) was current as early as Justin's Apology (153).
The longer and shorter supplements to Mark belong again to the field of textual criticism. The manuscripts and early translations carry us back to a time when neither ending was known; though only to leave us wondering how the necessity arose for composing them—a question of the higher criticism. Mark xvi. 9-20 shows acquaintance with Luke, and probably with John xx. It is noteworthy, however, in view of the author's attempt to cover the resurrection appearances of these two gospels, that he betrays no sign of acquaintance with John. xxi. In this case of the Roman gospel, however, textual evidence enables us to trace something of the history of supplementation. The so-called 'Shorter' ending provides a close for the incomplete story, resembling Matthew, while the 'Longer' is drawn from Luke and John. i.-xx. Subsequent employments show that the 'Longer' ending had been attached (perhaps at Rome) not later than c. 150. It is the first evidence we have of combination of the Fourth gospel with the Synoptics; for even Justin, though affected by John, does not use it as he uses Matthew, Mark and Luke. Parity among the four is not traceable earlier than Tatian (c. 175), the father of gospel 'harmonies.' The 'Shorter' ending, if not the Longer as well, would seem to have been added in Egypt. The supplements to Mark have this at least of singular interest, that they show the progress of a process whose beginnings we traced back to Palestine itself in the church of the 'apostles, elders and witnesses of the Lord,' where "the Elder" in the tradition reported by Papias is already offering explanations of the disagreements of Matthew and Mark with a view to their concurrent circulation.
After the addition of Mark to Matthew it was comparatively easy to take in Luke-Acts as a third, and to form composites out of the three such as the Gospel of Peter (North Syria c. 130) and the Gospel of the Nazarenes (Coele-Syria c. 140). Justin at Rome (c. 153) is still such a three-gospel man, though affected by the Fourth; whereas his predecessor Hermas (125-140) seems to rest on Mark alone, though perhaps acquainted with Matthew. The step was a harder one which aimed to take in the Fourth gospel. Tatian at Rome (c. 175) and Theophilus at Antioch (181) are the agents of its accomplishment; and, as we have seen, it was not effected without a determined opposition, led at Rome by the presbyter Gaius, and answered by Irenæus (c. 186) and Hippolytus (c. 215). Such opposition from the side of advocates of Petrine apostolicity is anticipated in the most significant and important of all the epilogues, the so-called Appendix or Epilogue to the Fourth gospel (John xxi.).