The Gospels in the Second Century / An Examination of the Critical Part of a Work Entitled 'Supernatural Religion'

by W. Sanday

(1) If such is the outline of Justin's Gospel, it appears to be really a question of comparatively small importance whether or not he made use of our present Gospels in their present form. If he did not use these Gospels he used other documents which contained substantially the same matter. The question of the reality of miracles clearly is not affected. Justin's documents, whatever they were, not only contained repeated notices of the miracles in general, the healing of the lame and the paralytic, of the maimed and the dumb, and the raising of the dead—not only did they include several discourses, such as the reply to the messengers of John and the saying to the Centurion whose servant was healed, which have direct reference to miracles, but they also give marked prominence to the chief and cardinal miracles of the Gospel history, the Incarnation and the Resurrection. It is antecedently quite possible that the narrative of these events may have been derived from a document other than our Gospels; but, if so, that is only proof of the existence of further and independent evidence to the truth of the history. This document, supposing it to exist, is a surprising instance of the homogeneity of the evangelical tradition; it differs from the three Synoptic Gospels, nay, we may say even from the four Gospels, less than they differ from each other.

(2) But we may go further than this. If Justin really used a separate substantive document now lost, that document, to judge from its contents, must have represented a secondary, or rather a tertiary, stage of the evangelical literature; it must have implied the previous existence of our present Gospels. I do not now allude to the presence in it of added traits, such as the cave of the Nativity and the fire on Jordan, which are of the nature of those mythical details that we find more fully developed in the Apocryphal Gospels. I do not so much refer to these—though, for instance, in the case of the fire on Jordan it is highly probable that Justin's statement is a translation into literal fact of the canonical (and Justinian) saying, 'He shall baptize with the Holy Ghost and with fire'—but, on general grounds, the relation which this supposed document bears to the extant Gospels shows that it must have been in point of time posterior to them.

The earlier stages of evangelical composition present a nucleus, with a more or less defined circumference, of unity, and outside of this a margin of variety. There was a certain body of narrative, which, in whatever form it was handed down—whether as oral or written—at a very early date obtained a sort of general recognition, and seems to have been as a matter of course incorporated in the evangelical works as they appeared.

Besides this there was also other matter which, without such general recognition, had yet a considerable circulation, and, though not found in all, was embodied in more than one of the current compilations. But, as we should naturally expect, these two classes did not exhaust the whole of the evangelical matter. Each successive historian found himself able by special researches to add something new and as yet unpublished to the common stock. Thus, the first of our present Evangelists has thirty-five sections or incidents besides the whole of the first two chapters peculiar to himself. The third Evangelist has also two long chapters of preliminary history, and as many as fifty-six sections or incidents which have no parallel in the other Gospels. Much of this peculiar matter in each case bears an individual and characteristic stamp. The opening chapters of the first and third Synoptics evidently contain two distinct and independent traditions. So independent indeed are they, that the negative school of critics maintain them to be irreconcilable, and the attempts to harmonise them have certainly not been completely successful [Endnote 101:1]. These differences, however, show what rich quarries of tradition were open to the enquirer in the first age of Christianity, and how readily he might add to the stores already accumulated by his predecessors. But this state of things did not last long. As in most cases of the kind, the productive period soon ceased, and the later writers had a choice of two things, either to harmonise the conflicting records of previous historians, or to develope their details in the manner that we find in the Apocryphal Gospels.

But if Justin used a single and separate document or any set of documents independent of the canonical, then we may say with confidence that that document or set of documents belonged entirely to this secondary stage. It possesses both the marks of secondary formation. Such details as are added to the previous evangelical tradition are just of that character which we find in the Apocryphal Gospels. But these details are comparatively slight and insignificant; the main tendency of Justin's Gospel (supposing it to be a separate composition) was harmonistic. The writer can hardly have been ignorant of our Canonical Gospels; he certainly had access, if not to them, yet to the sources, both general and special, from which they are taken. He not only drew from the main body of the evangelical tradition, but also from those particular and individual strains which appear in the first and third Synoptics. He has done this in the spirit of a true desultor, passing backwards and forwards first to one and then to the other, inventing no middle links, but merely piecing together the two accounts as best he could. Indeed the preliminary portions of Justin's Gospel read very much like the sort of rough primâ facie harmony which, without any more profound study, most people make for themselves. But the harmonising process necessarily implies matter to harmonise, and that matter must have had the closest possible resemblance to the contents of our Gospels.

If, then, Justin made use either of a single document or set of documents distinct from those which have become canonical, we conclude that it or they belonged to a later and more advanced stage of formation. But it should be remembered that the case is a hypothetical one. The author of 'Supernatural Religion' seems inclined to maintain that Justin did use such a document or documents, and not our Gospels. If he did, then the consequence above stated seems to follow. But I do not at all care to press this inference; it is no more secure than the premiss upon which it is founded. Only it seems to me that the choice lies between two alternatives and no more; either Justin used our Gospels, or else he used a document later than our Gospels and presupposing them. The reader may take which side of the alternative he pleases.

The question is, which hypothesis best covers and explains the facts. It is not impossible that Justin may have had a special Gospel such as has just been described. There is a tendency among those critics who assign Justin's quotations to an uncanonical source to find that source in the so-called Gospel according to the Hebrews or some of its allied forms. But a large majority of critics regard the Gospel according to the Hebrews as holding precisely this secondary relation to the canonical Matthew. Justin's document can hardly have been the Gospel according to the Hebrews, at least alone, as that Gospel omitted the section Matt. i. 18-ii. 23 [Endnote 103:1], which Justin certainly retained. But it is within the bounds of possibility—it would be hazardous to say more—that he may have had another Gospel so modified and compiled as to meet all the conditions of the case. For my own part, I think it decidedly the more probable hypothesis that he used our present Gospels with some peculiar document, such as this Gospel according to the Hebrews, or perhaps, as Dr. Hilgenfeld thinks, the ground document of the Gospel according to Peter (a work of which we know next to nothing except that it favoured Docetism and was not very unlike the Canonical Gospels) and the Protevangelium of James (or some older document on which that work was founded) in addition.

It will be well to try to establish this position a little more in detail; and therefore I will proceed to collect first, the evidence for the use, either mediate or direct, of the Synoptic Gospels, and secondly, that for the use of one or more Apocryphal Gospels. We still keep to the substance of Justin's Gospel, and reserve the question of its form.

Of those portions of the first Synoptic which appear to be derived from a peculiar source, and for the presence of which we have no evidence in any other Gospel of the same degree of originality, Justin has the following: Joseph's suspicions of his wife, the special statement of the significance of the name Jesus ('for He shall save His people from their sins,' Matt. i. 21, verbally identical), the note upon the fulfilment of the prophecy Is. vii. 14 ('Behold a virgin,' &c.), the visit of the Magi guided by a star, their peculiar gifts, their consultation of Herod and the warning given them not to return to him, the massacre of the children at Bethlehem, fulfilling Jer. xxxi. 15, the descent into Egypt, the return of the Holy Family at the succession of Archelaus. The Temptations Justin gives in the order of Matthew. From the Sermon on the Mount he has the verses v. 14, 20, 28, vi. 1, vii. 15, 21, and from the controversial discourse against the Pharisees, xxiii. 15, 24, which are without parallels. The prophecy, Is. xlii. 1-4, is applied as by Matthew alone. There is an apparent allusion to the parable of the wedding garment. The comment of the disciples upon the identification of the Baptist with Elias (Matt. xvii. 13), the sign of the prophet Jonas (Matt. xvi. 1, 4), and the triumphal entry (the ass with the colt), show a special affinity to St. Matthew. And, lastly, in concert with the same Evangelist, Justin has the calumnious report of the Jews (Matt. xxviii. 12 15) and the baptismal formula (Matt. xxviii. 19).

Of the very few details that are peculiar to St. Mark, Justin has the somewhat remarkable one of the bestowing of the surname Boanerges on the sons of Zebedee. Mark also appears to approach most nearly to Justin in the statements that Jesus practised the trade of a carpenter (cf. Mark vi. 3) and that He healed those who were diseased from their birth (cf. Mark ix. 21), and perhaps in the emphasis upon the oneness of God in the reply respecting the greatest commandment.