This plausible but dangerous detail, however, is not insisted on; what is essential is the datum of long oral tradition. Orthodox as he is, too, Mr. Wright holds that [Luke i]; [ii]; [iii, 23–38], “are comparatively late additions, which never formed part of the primitive oral teaching.”[4] Thus he can summarily get rid of a number of incredibilities which the other schools more prudently leave to be excised by the reader as he sees fit. But we shall find him making a stout fight for many others.
On the “oral” theory every Church had its own tradition,[5] “differing both in contents and wording from that of other Churches, and in particular exhibiting much mixture and many sayings of Christ which are not in our Gospels at all”[6]—an interesting approximation, in effect, to the theory of scattered leaflets. Thus is to be accounted for the endless variety in Gospel phrasing and detail. For Mr. Wright, further, it is inconceivable that any evangelist left out anything he knew of. “The common idea” (before Dr. Petrie) “that they picked and selected what was specially adapted to their readers, I most confidently reject.”[7] Matthew would gladly have given the parable of the Prodigal Son, and Luke the story of the Syrophœnician woman, which would so well have suited his purpose.[8] “He did not give it because he had never heard of it.” Thus, in brief, Mr. Wright posits much teaching lost even from the oral tradition, as Dr. Petrie posits many lost leaflets.
But Mr. Wright’s conception of the oral tradition, upon scrutiny, becomes disquieting to the critical sense. In one place, discussing Luther’s estimate of the Epistle of James as an epistle of straw, he remarks—with a great deal more truth, I fancy, than he dreams of—that James’s Epistle “is Christianity in swaddling-clothes.”[9] Again, the opening verses of John’s Gospel “reveal a depth of knowledge to which S. James never attained. Not that S. James would have contradicted them or doubted their truth. But it is one thing to see truth when it is set before you; it is another to set it forth yourself. There is such a thing as latent knowledge.”[10] Yet on the same page with the swaddling-clothes passage Mr. Wright has said, with regard to Mark’s omission of the words, “Come unto me all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest”:—
Was it humility that made him deliberately omit them as too good for so insignificant a creature as himself to record? Or was it a conscious or unconscious feeling that they were unsuited to his readers? A man with such preposterous humility was ill-equipped for the work of an evangelist. Readers so unchristian would not value a Gospel.
What now becomes of the two presentments of James and John? Both must presumably have known most that was to be known, ex hypothesi. Yet James has not a word of specifically Christian doctrine, and, save in two sentences, one of which has every appearance of interpolation, while the other is only less suspicious, no mention of Jesus. John, on the other hand, as an apostle (whether or not the beloved one), must on the theory have heard many of the sayings given in the synoptics, which he does not report. Why does he not? Had he never heard of the “Come unto me” allocution? Could he conceivably have put it aside from a preposterous humility? If he had not heard that, had he not heard the Sermon on the Mount, or any of the parable-solutions given in the synoptics as specially addressed to the twelve disciples? Can Mr. Wright, holding by the central tradition of Jesus and the twelve, believe that John had heard none of the teachings which he does not repeat? If, on the other hand, he admits wholesale suppression in John’s case, what becomes of the argument above cited?
It matters little that Mr. Wright credits John with evolving the Logos doctrine out of his own profound meditation, and with having “remoulded” the sayings of Jesus which he does give. That is a standing device of exegesis, Unitarian and Trinitarian alike; and by his account the general oral tradition did the same thing indefinitely. But all the while Mr. Wright is going a great deal further. He alternately insists that every evangelist told all he knew, and assumes that the two evangelists who are alleged to have been apostles did not. If, he writes—
If, as becomes increasingly probable, a Johannine course of teaching was extant in comparatively early times, it is not strange that, as S. John dealt chiefly with the Judæan ministry, S. Peter should have refused to intrude into his brother Apostle’s domain. They may have agreed at the outset to divide the work thus between them.
It is impossible to reconcile this with Mr. Wright’s theory of the inclusiveness of the evangelists. Why should not Mark do what Matthew and John did in the terms of the case?
Of course this is not the true critical solution; the immediate question is the consistency of Mr. Wright’s critical principles. To the eye of unbiassed criticism the “Come unto me” logion is not a possible oracle at all; it is an unintelligently inserted liturgical formula from the mysteries, misplaced and meaningless as a public teaching.[11] As regards the fair historical inference from the wide difference between the synoptic Gospels and the fourth, it is not possible to accept any of Mr. Wright’s solutions, tried by his own tests. To suggest that John had not “heard” of the Virgin Birth story is for him impossible, unless he post-dates that as he does the birth-stories in Luke. If he follows that course, what can he make of the 13th chapter of John, a palpable interpolation or substitution between the 12th and the 14th, which form a sequence that the 13th absolutely breaks?[12] If that interpolation be admitted, what exactly is left to fight for?
In any case, the implication that Matthew, the apostle, “had not heard of” what John declares to be the first miracle, or of the raising of Lazarus, is as destructive of every traditionalist assumption as is the implication that John the Apostle had not heard of the Sermon on the Mount, or of the parables of the mystery of the kingdom. Mark and Luke expressly declare that John was present at the raising of Jairus’ daughter; and the fourth Gospel makes no mention of it. It was perhaps to meet cruces of this kind that Mr. Wright makes John and Peter “divide between them” the portions of the ministry; but such a device simply destroys, as we have seen, another main part of his case. Mr. Wright may well reject the thesis of Mr. Halcombe, who, severely condemning “modern criticism,” produces a modern criticism of his own, which makes John’s Gospel the first—another of the hopeless devices of traditionalist critics to escape from the imbroglio of the tradition. Mr. Halcombe gravely reasons that the best Gospel came first; and Mr. Wright pronounces that “such a plan of composition seems unworthy of God and incredible in man.”[13] But his own theory presents only a different set of incredibilities. He accepts without a misgiving the most staggering anomalies. “If it were not for a single incidental statement in S. John” (iv, 1, 2), he writes, “we should have concluded confidently that the sacrament of holy baptism was first instituted after the Resurrection.” John’s statement is in fact the sole intimation that Jesus or the disciples ever baptized at all; and it is either a designed or redacted equivoque or a flat contradiction in terms:—