JERUSALEM
For the history of the disciples after the death of Jesus we are dependent upon a single source, the Acts of the Apostles, which can, however, be controlled, and to some extent corrected, by the gospels and by the epistles of Paul.
It is now generally recognised that if any one wishes to write a life of Christ he ought to base his work not on the gospels as we have them now, but rather on the information provided by the critical analysis of the gospels as to their sources. These sources, or at least the two oldest and most important, have become well known as Mark and Q. Every one nowadays is aware that behind Matthew and Luke is a document which was almost or entirely identical with our Mark, and that in addition to this both Matthew and Luke used another source, or possibly sources, to which the name of Q is given. In general, however, there is a tendency among those who have acquired this insight into the composition of the gospels from lectures or from little books rather than by the study of a synopsis to attach altogether too rigid an importance to these results.
Mark, though a document of early date and unsurpassed value, is the Greek edition of an earlier Aramaic tradition, probably, though not certainly, in documentary form before it was translated. It would be a miracle if it contained nothing due to the Greek circle in which its present form was produced.
Q, after all, is the name, not of an existing document, but of the critical judgement that there is a documentary source behind material common to Matthew and Luke but absent in Mark. This critical judgement is accepted by theologians as well as critics; but theologians, with a distrust of criticism not wholly unjustified, frequently prefer a mechanical to a rational application of this discovery, and dignify their preference by calling it objective, though it is difficult to see why a process should be regarded as objective, in any valuable sense of the word, because it automatically accepts as derived from Q everything common to Matthew and Luke, and leaves out all the rest. It is merely a method of canonising the subjectivity of Matthew when it agrees with that of Luke, or of Luke when it agrees with that of Matthew, and damning both of them when they happen to disagree. Why the subjectivity of the editors of the gospels becomes objective when it is accepted by modern writers is a little difficult to see.
The result of this concentration of attention on the value of synoptic criticism for the life of Jesus and of the neglect of the editorial subjectivity of the evangelists has been a general tendency to overlook the value of the gospels as the record of the opinion of the generation which produced them. Yet obviously there are no other documents which tell us the views held in the early Church of the teaching and office of Christ. On this subject they give even more information than Acts, and enable us to control it by showing the gradual development of thought and language in the Christian community.
Similarly, for a slightly later period and for a different locality, the Pauline epistles give us glimpses of the process of development—a process by no means always peaceable—of which the results are recorded in the second part of Acts.
In this way the critical use of the gospels, the Acts, and Pauline epistles enable us to trace the general outline of the early stages of the synthesis between primitive Jewish Christianity and the spirit of Graeco-Oriental mysteries. It takes us in succession into Jerusalem, Antioch, and Corinth, not because these were the only churches which grew up in this period, but because it is in the main their tradition which is preserved in the documents at our disposal.
What was the course of events immediately after the death of Jesus? There is no period of which the details are more obscure, but the criticism of Mark and Acts enables us to reconstruct its general outline. The fortunate preservation of Mark enables us to correct the narrative of Acts. If we had Acts alone we should have no doubt but that the disciples stayed in Jerusalem, and settled there from the time when they entered it with Jesus on the first Palm Sunday until the day when they left it to preach to the world outside. Mark, however, is convincing proof that Acts has omitted a complete incident. In Mark xiv. 28 Jesus is represented as saying, "After I am risen I will go before you into Galilee," and in Mark xvi. 7 the young man at the tomb says, "Go tell his disciples and Peter that he goes before you into Galilee, there ye shall see him." The sequence of events clearly implied is that the disciples after the death of Jesus went back to Galilee, where they saw the risen Jesus. Inspired by this vision, they returned to Jerusalem to wait for his return in triumph, and meanwhile to continue the work which he had begun. Unfortunately the end of Mark, which undoubtedly described the details, has disappeared, but the general sequence is as clear as anything can be which is not definitely narrated.
The general tenor of the narrative in Acts makes it plain that in Jerusalem they settled down as a separate synagogue. Any ten Jews had a right to form a synagogue of their own, and general community of interests, joined to opinions differing from those of others, would be the natural basis of its organisation; but it is sometimes hard for Christians, who have come to think of identity of opinion, especially on points beyond the reach of proof, as the basis of ecclesiastical life, to understand that Palestinian Judaism admitted the widest possible range of thought, and that the Church of Israel rested not on uniformity of thought, but on obedience to the Law. Naturally there was in point of fact considerable agreement in opinion, and naturally also difference of opinion led to quarrels and hostility; but in general the Church of Israel in the first century was as characteristically based on uniformity of conduct as the Christian Church in the fourth and following centuries was based on uniformity of opinion.