[64]. A few sentences here are repeated from my article in Hastings, D. B. iv. 575.
[65]. Atonement and Personality, p. 194. Compare the important and detailed exposition, pp. 154-9, 168 f., 180-2.
[66]. I do not doubt that the most active period for the putting together of material for Gospels was the decade 60-70 A.D. At the beginning of this period St. Mark had not yet taken up his task; and his Gospel forms the base of the other two Synoptics. The Matthaean Logia perhaps by this time were collected.
[67]. I cannot regard this argument as at all invalidated by Dr. Drummond’s three sermons, The Pauline Benediction (London, 1897). At the same time I can quite accept the view that the Apostle’s words are ‘the seed rather than the final expression of Christian theology.’
[68]. With the above may be compared Dr. Hort’s comment (ad. loc.) on 1 St. Peter, i. 1, 2, and other Trinitarian passages referred to in illustration: ‘In no passage is there any indication that the writer was independently working out a doctrinal scheme: a recognized belief or idea seems to be everywhere presupposed. How such an idea could arise in the mind of St. Paul or any other apostle without sanction from a Word of the Lord, it is difficult to imagine: and this consideration is a sufficient answer to the doubts which have, by no means unnaturally, been raised whether Matt. xxviii. 19 may not have been added or recast in a later generation.’
[69]. Compare the Fifth of the Oxyrhynchus Logia.
[70]. L’Évangile et L’Église, p. 78 f.
[71]. H. J. Holtzmann, for instance, points to Is. xiv. 3; xxviii. 12; lv. 1-3; Jer. vi. 16; xxxi. 2, 25, but especially Ecclus. iii. 6; vi. 24, 25, 28, 29; li. 23-30.
[72]. Contrast the treatment of the passage by M. Loisy with the way in which it is singled out by Matthew Arnold (Literature and Dogma, p. 214 f.). Indeed the course of the most recent criticism has borne in upon me more and more that, far from being a stumbling-block, it is really the key to any true understanding of the Christ of the Gospels. If we had not had the passage, we should have had to invent one like it!
[73]. I do not of course mean to deny all influence of St. Paul upon St. John in the shaping or formulating of Christian ideas. But the ultimate origin of those ideas goes further back than to St. Paul.