Short Studies on Great Subjects

by James Anthony Froude

To the question of the authenticity of the Gospels, therefore, the common sense of Englishmen has instinctively turned. If, as English commentators confidently tell us, the Gospel of St. Matthew, such as we now possess it, is undoubtedly the work of the publican who followed our Lord from the receipt of custom, and remained with Him to be a witness of His ascension; if St. John's Gospel was written by the beloved disciple who lay on Jesus' breast at supper; if the other two were indeed the composition of the companions of St. Peter and St. Paul; if in these four Gospels we have independent accounts of our Lord's life and passion, mutually confirming each other, and if it can be proved that they existed and were received as authentic in the first century of the Christian Church, a stronger man than M. Renan will fail to shake the hold of Christianity in England.

We put the question hypothetically, not as meaning to suggest the fact as uncertain, but being—as the matter is of infinite moment—being, as it were, the hinge on which our faith depends, we are forced beyond our office to trespass on ground which we leave usually to professional theologians, and to tell them plainly that there are difficulties which it is their business to clear up, but to which, with worse than imprudence, they close their own eyes, and deliberately endeavour to keep them from ours. Some of these it is the object of this paper to point out, with an earnest hope that Dean Alford, or Dr. Ellicott, or some other competent clergyman, may earn our gratitude by telling us what to think about them. Setting aside their duty to us, they will find frank dealing in the long run their wisest policy. The conservative theologians of England have carried silence to the point of indiscretion.

Looking, then, to the three first Gospels, usually called the Synoptical, we are encountered immediately with a remarkable common element which runs through them all—a resemblance too peculiar to be the result of accident, and impossible to reconcile with the theory that the writers were independent of each other. It is not that general similarity which we should expect in different accounts of the same scenes and events, but amidst many differences, a broad vein of circumstantial identity extending both to substance and expression.

And the identity is of several kinds.

I. Although the three evangelists relate each of them some things peculiar to themselves, and although between them there are some striking divergencies—as, for instance, between the account of our Lord's miraculous birth in St. Matthew and St. Luke, and in the absence in St. Mark of any mention of the miraculous birth at all—nevertheless, the body of the story is essentially the same. Out of those words and actions—so many, that if all were related the world itself could not contain the books that should be written—the three evangelists select for the most part the same; the same parables, the same miracles, and, more or less complete, the same addresses. When the material from which to select was so abundant—how abundant we have but to turn to the fourth evangelist to see—it is at least singular that three writers should have made so nearly the same choice.

II. But this is not all. Not only are the things related the same, but the language in which they are expressed is the same. Sometimes the resemblance is such as would have arisen had the evangelists been translating from a common document in another language. Sometimes, and most frequently, there is an absolute verbal identity; sentences, paragraphs, long passages, are word for word the very same; a few expressions have been slightly varied, a particle transposed, a tense or a case altered, but the differences being no greater than would arise if a number of persons were to write from memory some common passages which they knew almost by heart. That there should have been this identity in the account of the words used by our Lord seems at first sight no more than we should expect. But it extends to the narrative as well; and with respect to the parables and discourses, there is this extraordinary feature, that whereas our Lord is supposed to have spoken in the ordinary language of Palestine, the resemblance between the evangelists is in the Greek translation of them; and how unlikely it is that a number of persons in translating from one language into another should hit by accident on the same expressions, the simplest experiment will show.

Now, waiving for a moment the inspiration of the Gospels; interpreting the Bible, to use Mr. Jowett's canon, as any other book, what are we to conclude from phenomena of this kind? What in fact do we conclude when we encounter them elsewhere? In the lives of the saints, in the monkish histories, there are many parallel cases. A mediæval chronicler, when he found a story well told by his predecessor, seldom cared to recompose it; he transcribed the words as they stood into his own narrative, contented perhaps with making a few trifling changes to add a finish or a polish. Sometimes two chroniclers borrow from a third. There is the same identity in particular expressions, the same general resemblance, the same divergence, as each improves his original from his independent knowledge by addition or omission; but the process is so transparent, that when the original is lost, the existence of it can be inferred with certainty.

Or to take a more modern parallel—we must entreat our readers to pardon any seeming irreverence which may appear in the comparison—if in the letters of the correspondents of three different newspapers written from America or Germany, we were to read the same incidents told in the same language, surrounded it might be with much that was unlike, but nevertheless in themselves identical, and related in words which, down to unusual and remarkable terms of expression, were exactly the same, what should we infer?

Suppose, for instance, the description of a battle; if we were to find but a single paragraph in which two out of three correspondents agreed verbally, we should regard it as a very strange coincidence. If all three agreed verbally, we should feel certain it was more than accident. If throughout their letters there was a recurring series of such passages, no doubt would be left in the mind of any one that either the three correspondents had seen each other's letters, or that each had had before him some common narrative which he had incorporated in his own account. It might be doubtful which of these two explanations was the true one; but that one or other of them was true, unless we suppose a miracle, is as certain as any conclusion in human things can be certain at all. The sworn testimony of eye-witnesses who had seen the letters so composed would add nothing to the weight of a proof which without their evidence would be overwhelming; and were the writers themselves, with their closest friends and companions, to swear that there had been no intercommunication, and no story pre-existing of which they had made use, and that each had written bonâ fide from his own original observation, an English jury would sooner believe the whole party perjured than persuade themselves that so extraordinary a coincidence would have occurred.

Nor would it be difficult to ascertain from internal evidence which of the two possible interpretations was the real one. If the writers were men of evident good faith; if their stories were in parts widely different; if they made no allusion to each other, nor ever referred to one another as authorities; finally, if neither of them, in giving a different account of any matter from that given by his companions, professed either to be supplying an omission or correcting a mistake, then we should have little doubt that they had themselves not communicated with each other, but were supplementing, each of them from other sources of information, a central narrative which all alike had before them.