The Wave of Scepticism and the Rock of Truth

by M. H. Habershon

I maintain that God has supernaturally revealed His character and His will in the Bible, but I know not where the hard and fast line is which separates the human from the superhuman in our versions of these sacred documents, the general characteristic of which is that they are inspired productions; that therein "holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost."[25] "Not the words which man's wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth."[26]

"God at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers," and having subsequently spoken by His Son, authenticates His message, which, we cannot doubt, the Holy Spirit inspired the apostles to record, by a special inspiration, as He did in pre-Christian times.

It is human nature for man to pervert even his best of blessings. Jews and Christians alike have done so. When we think of the translators of the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek altering the prophetical dates, to mislead as to the coming of Messiah, as was done in the Septuagint Version; of the genealogy of Joseph being fitted into three periods of fourteen generations each, to square with Jewish notions of numerical precision and completeness; of the verse in John's first epistle (v. 7) inserted in the text to add strength to the theological phraseology of a creed; and of the first verses of the eighth chapter of the Fourth Gospel being left out in several of the most ancient MSS., evidently owing to some great authority, such as Eusebius (who was ordered by Constantine to prepare copies of the Scriptures), having suppressed them; we cannot but be suspicious that human infirmity and meddlesomeness have, to some extent, interfered with the transmission of the Divine oracles. The fountain is undoubtedly pure, but has not the channel been polluted through which the Divine truths have been transmitted?

We have next a reference to the "Epistle of Barnabas" and the "Pastor of Hermas," both of which are attached to that ancient copy of the Scriptures known as the Codex Sinaiticus, recently found by Tischendorf, in a monastery in the desert of Sinai, and now preserved at St. Petersburg. It is the most ancient MS. of the Scriptures we can refer to, and is supposed to have been written in the fourth century.

After the New Testament, in this valuable MS., is placed the epistle ascribed to Barnabas. It is complete. It was written some time between the year 70 and the close of the first century, and it contains these words:—"Let us therefore beware lest we should be found as it is written, Many are called, few are chosen." These words certainly appear to be quoted from the twenty-second chapter of Matthew, but our author says there is a similar passage in the apocryphal book of Ezra—"There be many created, but few shall be saved," and he asks us to believe it is quoted from the latter. As we have not the same bias as he has, we decline, for obvious reasons, to do so, although he points out that the verse in Matthew is not in the oldest codex. Unfortunately the one in the British Museum is defective at that part, but the verse appears in later MSS. He says, had the Epistle of Barnabas been seriously regarded as a work of the apostle of that name, it could scarcely have failed to attain canonical rank. If this be our author's opinion, there was more discrimination used by the men who decided what writings were admissible into the canon than he has elsewhere given them credit for. The Epistle of Barnabas also contains the following important passage:—

"But when he selected his own apostles, who should preach his gospel, who were sinners above all sin, in order that he might show that he came not to call the righteous, but sinners, then he manifested himself to be the Son of God."

Our author says that the words "he came not to call the righteous, but sinners," very probably a pious scribe added in the margin, and they were afterwards included in the text of the epistle.

I remark that this is quite a gratuitous assumption. I see no probability of anything of the kind, and I agree with Tischendorf, who asks, "Could any one mistake the words being a quotation from Matt. ix. 13?" But our author insinuates that this chapter should be dissected, and the miraculous eliminated. He says the words of Jesus, "They that be whole need not a physician, but they that are sick," "evidently belong to the oldest tradition of the Gospel;" and he gives the opinion of Ewald, who ascribed them (ver. 1214), apart from the remainder of the chapter, originally to the collection of discourses[27] from which, with two intermediate books, he considers our present Gospel of Matthew was composed.

These are the sort of conjectures upon which our author builds his argument. The ninth chapter of Matthew is too full of the miraculous to be accepted as a whole. It records how Jesus forgave sins, to the sick gave health, to the blind sight, to the dumb speech, and to the dead life; all of which is out of keeping with his bias and the German rationalism with which he has such profound sympathy.

Tischendorf finds a further analogy between the Epistle of Barnabas and the Gospel of Matthew in the words, "David prophesied, The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit at my right hand until I make thine enemies thy footstool;" and inquires, "Could Barnabas so write without the supposition that his readers had Matt. xxii. 4 before them? and does not such a supposition likewise infer the actual authority of Matthew's Gospel?" Because the passage is in the Psalms, our author ridicules Tischendorf's inference. It is, to say the least, quite as probable that Barnabas quoted from the Gospel as from the Psalms, and there is propriety in Tischendorf's opinion and inference.