Short Studies on Great Subjects

by James Anthony Froude

Of St. John's Gospel we do not propose to speak in this place; it forms a subject by itself; and of that it is enough to say that the defects of external evidence which undoubtedly exist seem overborne by the overwhelming proofs of authenticity contained in the Gospel itself.

The faint traditionary traces which inform us that St. Matthew and St. Mark were supposed to have written Gospels fail us with St. Luke. The apostolic and the immediately post-apostolic Fathers never mention Luke as having written a history of our Lord at all. There was indeed a Gospel in use among the Marcionites which resembled that of St. Luke, as the Gospel of the Ebionites resembled that of St. Matthew. In both the one and the other there was no mention of our Lord's miraculous birth; and later writers accused Marcion of having mutilated St. Luke. But apparently their only reason for thinking so was that the two Gospels were like each other; and for all that can be historically proved, the Gospel of the Marcionites may have been the older of the two. What is wanting externally, however, is supposed to be more than made up by the language of St. Luke himself. The Gospel was evidently composed in its present form by the same person who wrote the Acts of the Apostles. In the latter part of the Acts of the Apostles the writer speaks in the first person as the companion of St. Paul; and the date of this Gospel seems to be thus conclusively fixed at an early period in the apostolic age. There is at least a high probability that this reasoning is sound; yet it has seemed strange that a convert so eminent as 'the most excellent' Theophilus, to whom St. Luke addressed himself, should be found impossible to identify. 'Most excellent' was a title given only to persons of high rank; and it is singular that St. Paul himself should never have mentioned so considerable a name. And again, there is something peculiar in the language of the introduction to the Gospel itself. Though St. Luke professes to be writing on the authority of eye-witnesses, he does not say he had spoken with eye-witnesses; so far from it, that the word translated in the English version 'delivered' is literally 'handed down;' it is the verb which corresponds to the technical expression for 'tradition;' and the words translated 'having had perfect understanding of all things from the first,' might be rendered more properly, 'having traced or followed up all things from the beginning.' And again, as it is humanly speaking certain that in St. Luke's Gospel there are passages, however they are to be explained, which were embodied in it from some other source, so, though extremely probable, it is not absolutely certain that those passages in the Acts in which the writer speaks in the first person are by the same hand as the body of the narrative. If St. Luke had anywhere directly introduced himself—if he had said plainly that he, the writer who was addressing Theophilus, had personally joined St. Paul, and in that part of his story was relating what he had seen and heard, there would be no room for uncertainty. But, so far as we know, there is no other instance in literature of a change of person introduced abruptly without explanation. The whole book is less a connected history than a series of episodes and fragments of the proceedings of the apostles; and it is to be noticed that the account of St. Paul's conversion, as given in its place in the first part of the narrative, differs in one material point from the second account given later in the part which was unquestionably the work of one of St. Paul's companions. There is a possibility—it amounts to no more, and the suggestion is thrown out for the consideration of those who are better able than this writer to judge of it—that in the Gospel and the Acts we have the work of a careful editor of the second century. Towards the close of that century a prominent actor in the great movement which gave their present authority to the four Gospels was Theophilus, Bishop of Antioch; he it was who brought them together, incorporated into a single work—in unum opus; and it may be, after all, that in him we have the long-sought person to whom St. Luke was writing; that the Gospel which we now possess was compiled at his desire out of other imperfect Gospels in use in the different Churches; and that it formed a part of his scheme to supersede them by an account more exhaustive, complete, and satisfactory.

To this hypothesis indeed there is an answer which if valid at all is absolutely fatal. We are told that although the names of the writers of the Gospels may not be mentioned until a comparatively late period, yet that the Gospels themselves can be shown to have existed, because they are habitually quoted in the authentic writings of the earliest of the Fathers. If this be so, the slightness of the historical thread is of little moment, and we may rest safely on the solid ground of so conclusive a fact. But is it so? That the early Fathers quoted some accounts of our Lord's life is abundantly clear; but did they quote these? We proceed to examine this question—again tentatively only—we do but put forward certain considerations on which we ask for fuller information.

If any one of the primitive Christian writers was likely to have been acquainted with the authentic writings of the evangelists, that one was indisputably Justin Martyr. Born in Palestine in the year 89, Justin Martyr lived to the age of seventy-six; he travelled over the Roman world as a missionary; and intellectually he was more than on a level with most educated Oriental Christians. He was the first distinctly controversial writer which the Church produced; and the great facts of the Gospel history were obviously as well known to him as they are to ourselves. There are no traces in his writings of an acquaintance with anything peculiar either to St. John or St. Mark; but there are extracts in abundance often identical with and generally nearly resembling passages in St. Matthew and St. Luke. Thus at first sight it would be difficult to doubt that with these two Gospels at least he was intimately familiar. And yet in all his citations there is this peculiarity, that Justin Martyr never speaks of either of the evangelists by name; he quotes or seems to quote invariably from something which he calls απομνημονευματα των Αποστολων, or 'Memoirs of the Apostles.' It is no usual habit of his to describe his authorities vaguely: when he quotes the Apocalypse he names St. John; when he refers to a prophet he specifies Isaiah, Jeremiah, or Daniel. Why, unless there was some particular reason for it, should he use so singular an expression whenever he alludes to the sacred history of the New Testament? why, if he knew the names of the evangelists, did he never mention them even by accident? Nor is this the only singularity in Justin Martyr's quotations. There are those slight differences between them and the text of the Gospels which appear between the Gospels themselves. When we compare an extract in Justin with the parallel passage in St. Matthew, we find often that it differs from St. Matthew just as St. Matthew differs from St. Luke, or both from St. Mark—great verbal similarity—many paragraphs agreeing word for word—and then other paragraphs where there is an alteration of expression, tense, order, or arrangement.

Again, just as in the midst of the general resemblance between the Synoptical Gospels, each evangelist has something of his own which is not to be found in the others, so in these 'Memoirs of the Apostles' there are facts unknown to either of the evangelists. In the account extracted by Justin from 'the Memoirs,' of the baptism in the Jordan, the words heard from heaven are not as St. Matthew gives them—'Thou art my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased'—but the words of the psalm, 'Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten Thee;' a reading which, singularly enough, was to be found in the Gospel of the Ebionites.

Another curious addition to the same scene is in the words και πυρ ανηφθη εν Ιορδανη, 'and a fire was kindled in Jordan.'

Again, Justin Martyr speaks of our Lord having promised 'to clothe us with garments made ready for us if we keep his commandments'— και αιωνιον βασιλειαν προνοησαι—whatever those words may precisely mean.

These and other peculiarities in Justin may be explained if we suppose him to have been quoting from memory. The evangelical text might not as yet have acquired its verbal sanctity; and as a native of Palestine he might well have been acquainted with other traditions which lay outside the written word. The silence as to names, however, remains unexplained; and as the facts actually stand there is the same kind of proof, and no more, that Justin Martyr was acquainted with St. Matthew and St. Luke as there is that one of these evangelists made extracts from the other, or both from St. Mark. So long as one set of commentators decline to recognise the truth of this relation between the Gospels, there will be others who with as much justice will dispute the relation of Justin to them. He too might have used another Gospel, which, though like them, was not identical with them.

After Justin Martyr's death, about the year 170, appeared Tatian's 'Diatessaron,' a work which, as its title implies, was a harmony of four Gospels, and most likely of the four; yet again not exactly as we have them. Tatian's harmony, like so many others of the early evangelical histories, was silent on the miraculous birth, and commenced only with the public ministration. The text was in other places different, so much so that Theodoret accuses Tatian of having mutilated the Gospels; but of this Theodoret had probably no better means of judging than we have. The 'Diatessaron' has been long lost, and the name is the only clue to its composition.

Of far more importance than either Justin or Tatian are such writings as remain of the immediate successors of the apostles—Barnabas, Clement of Rome, Polycarp, and Ignatius: it is asserted confidently that in these there are quotations from the Gospels so exact that they cannot be mistaken.