When the “selection” theory is applied to the logia actually recovered at Oxyrhynchus it conspicuously fails to square these with the traditionalist assumption. On Dr. Petrie’s principle they were left out of the Nucleus and Gospels alike because they met no need of the Christian organization. That is to say, oracles of the Son of God were simply ignored by the apostles and the organizers because they did not serve any useful purpose. Independent criticism finds in them plain marks of Judaism, of Gnosticism, of Christian heresy, and of a Christism irreconcilable with the Gospel record.[1] Logion iv, iii, a, runs: “I stood in the midst of the world, and in flesh I was seen of them; and I found all drunken, and none found I athirst among them” [sc. for the word]—the saying of a retrospective Christ, no longer in the flesh, such as we find in the Gnostic Pistis Sophia and the Odes Of Solomon.[2] On the traditionalist view this at least must be tolerably late; what then does the “selection” argument gain from the recovered papyri?
But it fares no better when confronted with the opening chapters of Luke. For the Blass school these are to be dated 50–60. Already Luke’s “many”[3] had drawn up their narratives; and these, we are to suppose, included the miracle story of the birth of John, the Annunciation, the kinship and intercourse of Elizabeth and Mary, the preparation of John “in the desert,” a different account of the birth at Bethlehem, the appearance of the Divine Child in the Temple, and all the rest of it; but no mention of the flight into Egypt. We are asked to believe that all these added narratives were current among the faithful “from the first,” but that Mark and Matthew did not see fit to include them in their Gospels, though Matthew saw reason to tell of the flight into Egypt, and Luke to suppress it. Whatever may be the outcome of the “liberal” method of handling the Gospels, it is safe to say that this will never appease the critical spirit. The “gospel of the Infancy” thus embodied in Luke is visibly cognate with the “apocryphal” gospels which were never allowed into the canon, but were more or less popular in the Church. A compromise between traditionalism and the statistical method may set up the position that the stories were current from the first, although all fictitious; but this involves the awkward consequence that the whole atmosphere “from the first” is one of unrestrained invention. Would the inventors of all these myths have any scruple about putting in the mouth of “the Lord” any medley of teachings collected from the present and the past?
Luke inserts the episode of the mission of the seventy, with the usual lack of time measurement, between the mission of the twelve and the decisive visit to Jerusalem. In this narrative, the twelve bring back no message, merely reporting “what things they had done.” Their mission is in effect made of no account: we read of more miracles, predictions of the approaching tragedy, the Transfiguration, and a series of episodes disparaging the disciples; and then we come upon the mission of the seventy, who are “sent two and two before his face into every city and place whither he himself was about to come.” To the seventy is now ascribed the joyful report which the Weiss school calmly assign to the Primitive Gospel, and ascribe to the returning twelve, though Matthew and Mark have no mention of it. Thus Luke is in effect represented as connecting with a new mission story a result which he found connected in the primitive story with the mission of the twelve, while Matthew and Mark had seen fit to suppress the result altogether.
What gain in credibility, then, is effected by substituting the “selection” theory for one in which the third evangelist is implicitly represented as a framer of fiction? For Dr. Petrie, the story of the seventy is a logion ignored by the first two Gospel-makers, presumably as serving no purpose, albeit one of the most important items in the history. What kind of narrators, then, were the men who passed it over? The alternatives are equally destructive to credence: on either view we are dealing with men who would invent anything or suppress anything. And yet the subject of the missions lies at the core of the historical problem. To the eye of rational criticism it is an evolving legend. If we take Mark as the first selector or collector, we have the twelve sent forth “by two and two” without money or supplies; with authority over unclean spirits; and with no specified message whatever, though the twelve are to make a solemn and minatory testimony against those who refuse to hear them. “And they went out, and preached that men should repent. And they cast out many devils, and anointed with oil many that were sick, and healed them.” They make no report.
In Matthew, similarly, the twelve are empowered to cast out spirits and heal diseases, and are “sent forth” with a peremptory veto on any visit to Samaritans or Gentiles, to “preach, saying, The kingdom of heaven is at hand. Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out devils: freely ye received, freely give.” As in Mark, they are to go unfurnished; and are to withhold their peace from the unworthy, testifying as aforesaid. Then ensues a long discourse, with no explanation of the kingdom of heaven, though the missioners are to “proclaim upon the housetops” what they “hear in the ear.” Then, “when Jesus had made an end of commanding his twelve disciples, he departed thence to teach and preach in their cities.” Of the mission there is not another word: the disciples are not even mentioned as returning.
Upon this kind of basis Luke erects a new structure. The twelve are sent forth to exorcise, heal, and preach, unfurnished; and as before they are to give testimony against those who will not receive them. “And they departed, and went throughout the villages, preaching the Gospel, and healing everywhere.” “And the apostles, when they were returned, declared unto him what things they had done.” The story is not suppressed, and it is supplied with a conclusion; but it is on the mission of the seventy that stress is visibly laid: they “return with joy,” and are told to rejoice that their names are written in heaven. “In that same hour he rejoiced in the Holy Spirit”; and after the discourse on the Father and the Son[4] the disciples are “privately” told that many prophets and kings had desired in vain to see and hear what they had seen and heard.
In face of all this the methods of the Bernhard Weiss school and the selection theory are alike invalid. They furnish no explanation. The third Gospel is simply substituting a mission to the Gentiles for a mission to the Jews, under cover of a story of a preparatory mission to all the places that were to be visited by the Teacher on his way to his death at Jerusalem. The seventy—in some MSS. seventy-two—stand for the seventy or seventy-two peoples into whom, by Jewish tradition, mankind was divided. The notion that a genuine logion of this kind was all along lying ready to be used is surely fantastic. It is a planned myth, eking out the main myth. It yields only the same Gospel of one phrase, not meant to be understood by the hearers. But it carries in symbol a provision for the Gentiles; and immediately upon it there follows the story of the Good Samaritan, demonstrating that the real tie among men is not nationality but humanity, and impeaching the fanaticism and hypocrisy of the Jewish leaders.
Facing once more the sharp antithesis between this and the strictly Judaic command in Matthew, we dismiss as a futility the notion that the same teacher delivered both about the same time, and that the pro-Gentile compiler merely “selected” one and dropped the other. The two sayings are framed for two schools or two sects; and it is idle to see history in either. If the deified Teacher had delivered the first, the second would have been a daring blasphemy. They are alike but men’s counsels ascribed to “the Lord.” To this conclusion we are always driven. The starting-point of the diverging sects must be looked for in something else than a body of oracular teaching of any kind.
[1] See the collection of opinions in Dr. Charles Taylor’s The Oxyrhynchus Logia and the Apocryphal Gospels, 1899, pp. 15–19, 23, 24, 25, 27, 39, 42, etc. [↑]