Who Wrote the Bible? : a Book for the People

by Washington Gladden

Justin Martyr was born at Rome about the year 100, and was writing most abundantly from his fortieth to his forty-fifth year. In one of the books which he has left us, in describing the customs of the Christians, he uses the following language: "On the day which is called Sunday there is an assembly in the same place of all who live in cities or in country districts, and the records of the apostles or the writings of the prophets are read as long as we have time. Then the reader concludes, and the president verbally instructs and exhorts us to the imitation of these excellent things. Then we all rise up together and offer our prayers." In another place he speaks of something commanded by "the apostles in the records which they made, and which are called Gospels." Justin does not say how many of these Gospels the church in his day possessed, but we find in his writings unmistakable quotations from at least three of them. Dr. Edwin Abbott, of London, whom Mrs. Humphry Ward refers to as master of all the German learning on this subject, says that it would be possible "to reconstruct from his (Justin's) quotations a fairly connected narrative of the incarnation, birth, teaching, crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension of the Lord;" that this narrative is all found in the three Synoptic Gospels, and that Justin quotes no words of Christ and refers to no incidents that are not found in these Gospels. [Footnote: Encyc. Brit., vol. x. p. 817.]

We may fully accept Dr. Abbott's testimony so far as the quotations of Justin from the first three Gospels are concerned; but his arguments, which are intended to prove that there is no certain reference to the fourth Gospel in Justin's works, appear to me inconclusive. When Justin says: "For indeed Christ also said, 'except ye be born again, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven,' but that it is impossible for those who were once born to enter into their mother's womb is plain to all," he is quoting words that are found in the fourth Gospel, and not in any of the other three. The attempt to show that he found these and similar citations in the same sources from which the author of the fourth Gospel derived them is not successful.

Several indirect lines of evidence tend to confirm the belief that Justin possessed all four of our Gospels. This, then, carries us back to the first half of the second century. Between 100 and 150 Papias of Hierapolis, Clement of Rome, and Polycarp of Smyrna were writing. Papias, who wrote about 130-140 A. D., composed five books or commentaries on what he calls "The Oracles of the Lord." He gives us some account of the origin of at least two of these Gospels. "Mark," he says, "was the interpreter of Peter;" "Matthew wrote his scriptures (logia) in Hebrew, and each man interpreted them as best he could." "Interpreted" here evidently means translated. Elsewhere he repeats a tradition of "the elder," by which word he apparently means the Apostle John, whom he may have known, in these words: "Mark, having become Peter's interpreter, wrote down accurately all that he remembered,--not, however, in order,--both the words and the deeds of Christ. For he never heard the Lord, nor attached himself to him, but later on, as I said, attached himself to Peter, who used to adapt his lessons to the needs of the occasion, but not as though he was composing a connected treatise of the discourses of our Lord; so that Mark committed no error in writing down some matters just as he remembered them. For one object was in his thoughts, to make no omissions and no false statements in what he heard." [Footnote: Quoted by Abbott, as above.] This is a perfect description of the Gospel of Mark as we have it in our hands to-day. And the testimony of Papias to its authorship, and to the spirit and purpose of the author, is significant and memorable. Evidence of this nature would be regarded as decisive in any other case of literary criticism.

Polycarp, who was the friend and pupil of John the Apostle, was born about the year 69, and suffered martyrdom about 155. In his writings we find no express mention of the Gospels, but we do find verbally accurate quotations from them. It is clear that he was acquainted with the books. Polycarp was the teacher of Irenæus of Lyons whom I first quoted, and he was the pupil and friend of St. John and the other apostles; and Irenæus, who quotes all these Gospels so freely, bears this testimony respecting Polycarp, in a letter which he wrote to Florinus.

"I saw you, when I was yet a boy, in Lower Asia with Polycarp.... I could even point out now the place where the blessed Polycarp sat and spoke, and describe his going out and coming in, his manner of life, his personal appearance, the addresses he delivered to the multitude, how he spoke of his intercourse with John, and with the others who had seen the Lord, and how he recalled their words, and everything that he had heard about the Lord, about his miracles and his teaching. Polycarp told us, as one who had received it from those who had seen the Word of Life with their own eyes, and all this in complete harmony with the Scriptures. To this I then listened, through the mercy of God vouchsafed to me, with all eagerness, and wrote it not on paper, but in my heart, and still by the grace of God I ever bring it into fresh remembrance."

These living witnesses give us solid ground for our statement that the Gospels--the first three of them at any rate--were in existence during the last years of the first century. Indeed, not to prolong this search for the origin of the books, it is now freely admitted, by many of the most radical critics, that the first three Gospels were written before the year 80, and that Mark must have been written before 70.

It is interesting to contrast the course of New Testament criticism with that engaged upon the Old Testament. In the study of the origin of the Pentateuch the gravitation of opinion has been steadily downward, toward a later date, so that the great majority of scholars are now certain that the books must have been put into their present form long after the time of Moses. In the study of the origin of the Gospels the date has been steadily pushed upward, to the very age of the apostles. The earlier critics, Strauss and Baur, insisted that they must have appeared much later, far on in the second century; but the more recent and more scientific criticism has demolished or badly discredited their theories, and has carried the Gospels back to the last part of the first century.

Are we entitled, then, to say that these Gospels were written by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John? We should be cautious, no doubt, in making such a statement. The Gospels themselves are not so explicit on this point as we could desire. Their titles do not warrant this assertion. It is not "The Gospel of St. Matthew" or "The Gospel of St. Mark;" it is the "Gospel according to St. Matthew" or St. Mark. The import of the title would be fully satisfied with the explanation that this is the story as Matthew or Mark was wont to tell it, put into form by some person or friend of his, in his last days, or even after his death. But the testimony of Papias, to which I have referred, is to my own mind good evidence that these Gospels were written by the men who bear their names. In the case of Luke, as we shall presently see, the evidence is much stronger. And after going over the evidence as carefully as I am able, the theory that the four Gospels were written by the men whose names they bear, all of whom were the contemporaries of our Lord, and two of whom were his apostles, seems to me, on the whole, the best supported by the whole volume of evidence. The case is not absolutely clear; perhaps it was left somewhat obscure for the very purpose of stimulating study. At all events, the study which has been given to the subject has confirmed rather than weakened the belief that the Gospels are contemporary records of the life of Christ. Mr. Norton, a distinguished Unitarian scholar, sums up the evidence as follows: "It consists in the indisputable fact that throughout a community of millions of individuals, scattered over Europe, Asia, and Africa, the Gospels were regarded with the highest reverence, as the works of those to whom they are ascribed, at so early a period that there could be no difficulty in determining whether they were genuine or not, and when every intelligent Christian must have been deeply interested to ascertain the truth.... This fact is itself a phenomenon admitting of no explanation except that the four Gospels had all been handed down as genuine from the apostolic age, and had everywhere accompanied our religion as it spread throughout the world."

When we turn from the external or historical evidence for the genuineness of the Gospels to study their internal structure and their relations to one another, we come upon some curious facts. These Gospels, in the form in which we possess them, are written in the Greek language. But the Greek language was not the vernacular of the Jews in Palestine when our Lord was on the earth; the language which was then spoken by them, as I have before explained, was the Aramaic. It is true that Palestine was, to some extent, a bilingual country,--like Wales, one writer suggests, where the English and the Welsh languages are now freely spoken,--that Aramaic and Greek were used indifferently. I can hardly imagine that a people as tenacious of their own institutions as the Jews could have adopted Greek as generally as the Welsh have adopted the English tongue. Even in Wales, if a Welshman were speaking to a congregation of his countrymen on any important topic, he would be likely to speak the Welsh language. And much more probable does it seem to me that the discourses and the common conversation of Jesus must have been spoken in the vernacular. The discourses and sayings of our Lord, as reported for us in these Gospels, are not therefore given us in the words that he used. We have a translation of his words from the Aramaic into the Greek, made either by the writers of the Gospels, or by some one in their day. We have quoted the testimony of Papias, that the Gospel of Matthew was originally written in Hebrew (by which he undoubtedly means Aramaic), and that each one interpreted it as best he could; and if this be true, then that copy first made by Matthew did contain many of our Lord's very words. But that Aramaic copy has never been seen since that day; we have no manuscript of any New Testament book except in the Greek language. There are a few cases in which the writers of the Gospels have preserved for us the very words used by Christ. Thus in the healing of the deaf man in the neighborhood of Decapolis, of which Mark tells us (vii. 34), Jesus touched his ears, and said unto him, "Ephphatha," that is, "Be opened." The Evangelist gives us the Aramaic word which Jesus used, and translates it for his readers into Greek. Likewise in the healing of the ruler's daughter (Mark v. 41) he took her by the hand, and said unto her, "Talitha cumi, which is, being interpreted," the Evangelist explains, "Damsel, I say unto thee, Arise." Doubtless most readers get the impression that our Lord used here some cabalistic words in a foreign tongue; the fact is that these are the words of the common speech of the people; only the Evangelist seems to have thought them especially memorable, and he has given us not merely, as he generally does, a translation into the Greek of our Lord's words, but the Aramaic words themselves, with their meaning appended in a Greek phrase. The same is true of our Lord's words on the cross: "Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?" These are Aramaic words, the very words that Jesus uttered. The Roman soldiers who stood near might not know what he meant; but every Jew who distinctly heard him must have understood him, for he was speaking in no foreign tongue, but in the language of his own people.

When we speak, therefore, of the Greek as the original language of the Gospels, we do not speak with entire accuracy. The Greek does not give us our Lord's original words. These we have not, except in the cases I have named, and a few others less important. No man on earth knows or ever will know what were the precise words that our Lord used in his Sermon on the Mount, in his conversation with the woman at the well, in his last discourses with his disciples. We have every reason to believe that the substance of what he said is faithfully preserved for us; the fourfold record, so marvelously accordant in its report of his teachings, makes this perfectly clear. But his very words we have not, and this fact itself is the most convincing dis-proof of the dogma of verbal inspiration. If our Lord had thought it important that we should have his very words he would have seen to it that his very words were preserved and recorded for us, instead of that Greek translation of his words, made by his followers, which we now possess. These evangelists could have written Aramaic, doubtless did write Aramaic; and they would certainly have kept our Lord's discourses and sayings in the Aramaic original if they had been instructed to do so. The fact that they were not instructed to do so, but were permitted to give his teachings to the world in other words than those in which they were spoken, shows how little there was of modern literalism in Christ's conception of the work of revelation.