Companion to the Bible

by E. P. Barrows

Of our Lord's history before his baptism we have only his genealogy in a twofold form; some notices of his miraculous conception; an account of his birth and circumcision, with the visions and prophecies connected with them; a history of his preservation from Herod's attempt to destroy him; the subsequent residence of his parents in Nazareth, with a single incident of his childhood. Luke 2:40-52. All these particulars have, in one way or another, a bearing on his divine mission and work as the Son of God. The apocryphal gospels on the contrary, as, for example, the Gospel of the Infancy, and the Gospel of Nicodemus, abound in frivolous stories relating to our Lord's infancy and later life, which have no connection with the great work of redemption.

9. The peculiarities of the fourth gospel, as well as its relation to the three preceding gospels, will come up for consideration hereafter. At present we only remark that John wrote many years after the appearance of the synoptic gospels, and that, whatever reference he may have had to them, his gospel constitutes, in the plan of revelation, a true complement to the other three. For (1) if we except the narrative of our Lord's passion, it covers, for the most part, ground not occupied by them. They give mainly the history of the Saviour's ministry in Galilee (Luke also, at some length, that of his last journey to Jerusalem); the scene of much of John's gospel, on the contrary, is Jerusalem and its near vicinity. (2) John unfolds more fully the nature of our Lord's person, and his peculiar relation to the Father and to his church. This he does, more especially, in his prologue (chap. 1:1-18); in the record of the Saviour's discussions with the Jews (chaps. 3, 5-12); and in that of his discourses addressed in private to the circle of the apostles, chaps. 13-17. Thus John's gospel is emphatically that of Christ's person, as illustrated by his works and words; while the three earlier evangelists give rather the gospel of his public ministry, through which his divine person everywhere shines forth. This deeper view of our Lord's person and office which the gospel of John unfolds met the wants of the primitive church in a more advanced stage, when false teachers were already beginning to sow the seeds of those errors which, in the next generation, brought forth such a rank and poisonous harvest. The same great characteristics adapt it to the wants of the church in all ages. Without the fourth gospel she could not be completely furnished to meet the assaults of error, which, from one generation to another, makes, with unerring instinct, its main assault upon the person and office of the Son of God.

But if the evangelical narrative would not be complete without the fourth gospel, neither would it be perfect for the use of the church with this alone. The record of our Lord's life and teachings as given in the first three gospels is preëminently adapted to popular instruction. It is precisely such a record as the preachers of the gospel need in their public ministrations. With it they can use the fourth gospel with effect; but without it they would want the natural preparation for and introduction to those deep and spiritual views of Christ's person and office which the bosom-disciple unfolds. It is not in the three synoptic gospels, nor in the gospel of John taken separately, that we find the complete evangelical armor, but in the perfect whole of the four.

10. Very numerous attempts have been made to construct harmonies of the four gospels. One plan is to form out of the whole, in what is supposed to be the true chronological order, a continuous narrative embracing all the matter of the four, but without repetitions of the same or similar words. Another plan is to exhibit in chronological order, the entire text of the four gospels arranged in parallel columns, so far as two or more of them cover the same ground. The idea is very imposing, but the realization of it is beset with formidable if not insurmountable difficulties. It is certain that the evangelists do not always follow the exact order of time, and it is sometimes impossible to decide between the different arrangements of events in their records. In the four narratives of the events connected with the resurrection all harmonists find themselves baffled. Had we a full account of all the particulars of that exciting scene, we might undoubtedly assign to the different parts of each narrative its true place in the order of time. But with our present means of information this is impossible. Experience shows that the most profitable way of studying the evangelical narrative is to take each gospel as a whole, but with continual reference to the parallel parts of the other gospels, so far as they can be ascertained. In this work a good harmony, like that of Robinson, may render essential service, though its arrangements must in many cases be regarded only as tentative—essays at obtaining the true order, rather than the certain determination of it.

The relative number of chapters in the different gospels does not give their true relation in respect to size. The chapters are respectively 28, 16, 24, 21; which are to each other in the proportion of 7, 4, 6, 5 1/4. But estimating according to the number of pages (in an edition without breaks for the verses), it will be found that the gospel of Luke holds the first place, its size being to that of the other gospels nearly as 60 to 57, 35, 46. The relation of Matthew's gospel to that of Mark, in respect to the quantity of matter is then nearly that of 8 to 5.

In the notices of the separate gospels which follow it is not thought necessary to give an elaborate analysis of their contents. The aim will be rather to exhibit the prominent characteristics of each, and its special office in the economy of divine revelation.

II. MATTHEW.

11. The unanimous testimony of the ancient church is that the first gospel was written by the apostle Matthew, who is also called Levi. With his call to the apostleship he may have assumed the name of Matthew, as Saul took that of Paul. He was of Hebrew origin, the son of Alphaeus, and a tax-gatherer under the Roman government, Matt. 10:3; Mark 2:14; 3:18; Luke 5:27, 29; 6:15; Acts 1:13. He was evidently a man of some means (Luke 5:29), and his office must have required for its proper discharge a knowledge of the Greek as well as of his native Hebrew; that is, Aramaean, as the word Hebrew means in the New Testament, when applied to the vernacular of the Palestine Jews.

12. The question respecting the original language of Matthew's gospel has been, since the time of Erasmus, a matter of controversy, in which eminent biblical scholars have been found on different sides. The problem is to find a solution which shall bring into harmony the following well-established facts: (1) that, according to the united testimony of the early church fathers, Matthew originally wrote his gospel in Hebrew; (2) that our present Greek gospel has all the freedom of an original work, that it has remarkable coincidences in language with the second and third gospels, and especially that the citations from the Old Testament which stand in our Lord's discourses follow as a rule the Greek version of the Seventy; (3) that all the early writers, those who testify to the Hebrew original of this gospel included, receive and use our present Greek gospel as the genuine and authoritative gospel of Matthew; (4) that the original Hebrew gospel, to the existence of which there is such abundant testimony, was allowed utterly to perish, while the Greek form of it alone was preserved and placed at the head of the canonical books of the New Testament.

13. The testimony from Papias, in the beginning of the second century, and onward to the fourth century, has often been quoted and discussed. It is not necessary to adduce it here at length. It may be found in Kirchhofer, in the critical commentaries and introductions, and also in the modern Bible dictionaries. The words of Papias, as preserved to us by Eusebius (Hist. Eccl., 3. 39) are as follows: "Matthew therefore wrote the oracles in the Hebrew dialect, and every one interpreted them as he was able." If there were any ground for doubting what Papias meant by "the oracles," it would be removed by the testimony of the later writers, as Pantaenus and Origen (in Eusebius' Hist. Eccl., 5. 10; 6. 25), Irenæus (Against Heresies, 3. 1), Eusebius himself (Hist. Eccl., 3. 24), Epiphanius (Heresies, 29. 9; 30. 3), and others. They who maintain that Matthew wrote originally in Greek suppose that the early fathers confounded an apocryphal gospel, the so-called "gospel according to the Hebrews," with the true gospel of Matthew. Others think, perhaps with more reason, that the gospel according to the Hebrews was a corrupted form, or, what amounts to nearly the same thing, a close imitation of the true Hebrew gospel of Matthew.

The Ebionites and Nazarenes used each apparently a different form of a Hebrew gospel which is sometimes called the gospel according to Matthew, but more properly "the gospel according to the Hebrews" (once by Jerome "the gospel according to the apostles"). According to Epiphanius that in use among the Ebionites was "not entire and full, but corrupted and abridged." Heresies, 30. 13. Jerome says: "Matthew, who is called Levi, having become from a publican an apostle, first composed in Judea, for the sake of those who had believed from among the circumcision, a gospel of Christ in Hebrew letters and words. Who was the person that afterwards translated it into Greek is not certainly known. Moreover, the Hebrew copy itself is at this day preserved in the library of Cæsarea which Pampilus the Martyr collected with much diligence. The Nazarenes, who live in Beroca, a city of Syria, and use this volume, gave me the opportunity of writing it out." De Vir. Illustr., 3. Here he certainly identifies this gospel, which, as he repeatedly informs us, he translated, with the true Hebrew gospel of Matthew. But he afterwards speaks of it more doubtfully, as "the gospel according to the Hebrews," and more fully as "the gospel according to the Hebrews, which is written indeed in the Chaldee and Syriac language, but in Hebrew letters, which the Nazarenes use to the present day, [being the gospel] according to the apostles, or, as most think, according to Matthew" (Against the Pelagians, 3); "the gospel which the Nazarenes and Ebionites use, which we have lately translated from the Hebrew language into the Greek, and which is called by most the authentic gospel of Matthew." Comment. in Matt. 12:13. The most probable supposition is that Jerome, knowing that Matthew originally wrote his gospel in Hebrew, hastily assumed at first that the copy which he obtained from the Nazarenes was this very gospel. The character of the quotations which he and Epiphanius give from it forbids the supposition that it was the true Hebrew gospel of Matthew. It may have been a corrupted form of it, or an imitation of it.