[460:2] See Chadwick's Bible of To-Day, pp. 191, 192.
[460:3] "Nec ab ipso scriptum constat, nec ab ejus apostolis sed longo post tempore a quibusdam incerti nominis viris, qui ne sibi non haberetur fides scribentibus quæ nescirent, partim apostolorum, partim eorum qui apostolos secuti viderentur nomina scriptorum suorum frontibus indiderunt, asseverantes secundum eos, se scripsisse quæ scripserunt." (Faust, lib. 2. Quoted by Rev. R. Taylor: Diegesis, p. 114.)
[460:4] "Multa enim a majoribus vestris, eloquiis Domini nostri inserta verba sunt; quæ nomine signata ipsius, cum ejus fide non congruant, præsertim, quia, ut jam sæpe probatum a nobis est, nec ab ipso hæc sunt, nec ab ejus apostolis scripta, sed multo post eorum assumptionem, a nescio quibus, et ipsis inter se non concordantibus semi-Judæis, per famas opinionesque comperta sunt; qui tamen omnia eadem in apostolorum Domini conferentes nomina vel eorum qui secuti apostolos viderentur, errores ac mendacia sua secundum eos se scripsisse mentiti sunt." (Faust.: lib. 88. Quoted in Ibid. p. 66.)
[461:1] Taylor's Diegesis.
[463:1] Says Prof. Smith upon this point: "All the earliest external evidence points to the conclusion that the synoptic gospels are non-apostolic digests of spoken and written apostolic tradition, and that the arrangement of the earlier material in orderly form took place only gradually and by many essays."
Dr. Hooykaas, speaking of the four "Gospels," and "Acts," says of them: "Not one of these five books was really written by the person whose name it bears, and they are all of more recent date than the heading would lead us to suppose."
"We cannot say that the "Gospels" and book of "Acts" are unauthentic, for not one of them professes to give the name of its author. They appeared anonymously. The titles placed above them in our Bibles owe their origin to a later ecclesiastical tradition which deserves no confidence whatever." (Bible for Learners, vol. iii. pp. 24, 25.)
These Gospels "can hardly be said to have had authors at all. They had only editors or compilers. What I mean is, that those who enriched the old Christian literature with these Gospels did not go to work as independent writers and compose their own narratives out of the accounts they had collected, but simply took up the different stories or sets of stories which they found current in the oral tradition or already reduced to writing, adding here and expanding there, and so sent out into the world a very artless kind of composition. These works were then, from time to time, somewhat enriched by introductory matter or interpolations from the hands of later Christians, and perhaps were modified a little here and there. Our first two Gospels appear to have passed through more than one such revision. The third, whose writer says in his preface, that 'many had undertaken to put together a narrative (Gospel),' before him, appears to proceed from a single collecting, arranging, and modifying hand." (Ibid. p. 29.)
[463:2] "Christiani doctores non in vulgus prodebant libros sacros, licet soleant plerique aliteropinari, erant tantum in manibus clericorum, priora per sæcula." (Quoted in Taylor's Diegesis, p. 48.)
[463:3] Mosheim: vol. i. pt. 2, ch. ii.