CHAPTER X.
THE TESTIMONY OF THE LECTIONARIES SHEWN TO BE ABSOLUTELY DECISIVE AS TO THE GENUINENESS OF THESE VERSES.
The Lectionary of the East shewn to be a work of extraordinary antiquity (p. [195]).—Proved to be older than any extant MS. of the Gospels, by an appeal to the Fathers (p. [198]).—In this Lectionary, (and also in the Lectionary of the West,) the last Twelve Verses of S. Mark's Gospel have, from the first, occupied a most conspicuous, as well as most honourable place, (p. [204].)—Now, this becomes the testimony of ante-Nicene Christendom in their favour (p. [209].)
I have reserved for the last the testimony of the Lectionaries, which has been hitherto all but entirely overlooked;[326]—passed by without so much as a word of comment, by those who have preceded me in this inquiry. Yet is it, when rightly understood, altogether decisive of the question at issue. And why? Because it is not the testimony rendered by a solitary father or by a solitary MS.; no, nor even the testimony yielded by a single Church, or by a single family of MSS. But it is the united testimony of all the Churches. It is therefore the evidence borne by a “goodly fellowship of Prophets,” a “noble array of Martyrs” indeed; as well as by MSS. innumerable which have long since perished, but which must of necessity once have been. And so, it comes to us like the voice of many waters: dates, (as I shall shew by-and-by,) from a period of altogether immemorial antiquity: is endorsed by the sanction of all the succeeding ages: admits of neither doubt nor evasion. This subject, in order that it may be intelligibly handled, will be [pg 192] most conveniently approached by some remarks which shall rehearse the matter from the beginning.
The Christian Church succeeded to the Jewish. The younger society inherited the traditions of the elder, not less as a measure of necessity than as a matter of right; and by a kind of sacred instinct conformed itself from the very beginning in countless particulars to its divinely-appointed model. The same general Order of Service went on unbroken,—conducted by a Priesthood whose spiritual succession was at least as jealously guarded as had been the natural descent from Aaron in the Church of the Circumcision.[327] It was found that “the Sacraments of the Jews are [but] types of ours.”[328] Still were David's Psalms antiphonally recited, and the voices of “Moses and the Prophets” were heard in the sacred assemblies of God's people “every Sabbath day.” Canticle succeeded to Canticle; while many a Versicle simply held its ground. The congenial utterances of the chosen race passed readily into the service of the family of the redeemed. Unconsciously perhaps, the very method of the one became adopted by the other: as, for example, the method of beginning a festival from the “Eve” of the preceding Day. The Synagogue-worship became transfigured; but it did not part with one of its characteristic features. Above all, the same three great Festivals were still retained which declare “the rock whence we are hewn and the hole of the pit whence we are digged:” only was it made a question, a controversy rather, whether Easter should or should not be celebrated with the Jews.[329]
But it is the faithful handing on to the Christian community of the Lectionary practice of the Synagogue to which the reader's attention is now exclusively invited. That the Christian Church inherited from the Jewish the practice of reading a first and a second Lesson in its public assemblies, is demonstrable. What the Synagogue practice was in the time of the Apostles is known from Acts xiii. 15, 27. Justin [pg 193] Martyr, (A.D. 150) describes the Christian practice in his time as precisely similar:[330] only that for “the Law,” there is found to have been at once substituted “the Gospel.” He speaks of the writings of “the Apostles” and of “the Prophets.” Chrysostom has the same expression (for the two Lessons) in one of his Homilies.[331] Cassian (A.D. 400) says that in Egypt, after the Twelve Prayers at Vespers and at Matins, two Lessons were read, one out of the Old Testament and the other out of the New. But on Saturdays and Sundays, and the fifty days of Pentecost, both Lessons were from the New Testament,—one from the Epistles or the Acts of the Apostles; the other, from the Gospels.[332] Our own actual practice seems to bear a striking resemblance to that of the Christian Church at the earliest period: for we hear of (1) “Moses and the Prophets,” (which will have been the carrying on of the old synagogue-method, represented by our first and second Lesson,)—(2) a lesson out of the “Epistles or Acts,” together with a lesson out of the “Gospels.”[333] It is, in fact, universally received that the Eastern Church has, from a period of even Apostolic antiquity, enjoyed a Lectionary,—or established system of Scripture lessons,—of her own. In its conception, this Lectionary is discovered to have been fashioned (as was natural) upon the model of the Lectionary of God's ancient people, the Jews: for it commences, as theirs did, in the autumn, (in September[334]); and [pg 194] prescribes two immovable “Lections” for every Saturday (as well as for every Sunday) in the year: differing chiefly in this,—that the prominent place which had been hitherto assigned to “the Law and the Prophets,”[335] was henceforth enjoyed by the Gospels and the Apostolic writings. “Saturday-Sunday” lections—(σαββατοκυριακαί, for so these Lections were called,)—retain their place in the “Synaxarium” of the East to the present hour. It seems also a singular note of antiquity that the Sabbath and the Sunday succeeding it do as it were cohere, and bear one appellation; so that the week takes its name—not from the Sunday with which it commences,[336] but—from the Sabbath-and-Sunday with which it concludes. To mention only one out of a hundred minute traits of identity which the public Service of the sanctuary retained:—Easter Eve, which from the earliest period to this day has been called “μέγα σάββατον,”[337] is discovered to have borne the self-same appellation in the Church of the Circumcision.[338]—If I do not enter more minutely into the structure of the Oriental Lectionary,—(some will perhaps think I have said too much, but the interest of the subject ought to be a sufficient apology,)—it is because further details would be irrelevant to my present purpose; which is only to call attention to the three following facts:
(I.) That the practice in the Christian Church of reading publicly before the congregation certain fixed portions of Holy Writ, according to an established and generally received rule, must have existed from a period long anterior to the date of any known Greek copy of the New Testament Scriptures.
(II.) That although there happens to be extant neither “Synaxarium,” (i.e. Table of Proper Lessons of the Greek [pg 195] Church), nor “Evangelistarium,” (i.e. Book containing the Ecclesiastical Lections in extenso), of higher antiquity than the viiith century,—yet that the scheme itself, as exhibited by those monuments,—certainly in every essential particular,—is older than any known Greek MS. which contains it, by at least four, in fact by full five hundred years.