Chapter II: Positive Proofs That The Scriptures Are A Divine Revelation (1)

I. Genuineness of the Christian Documents.

THE GENUINENESS OF THE CHRISTIAN DOCUMENTS, or proof that the books of the Old and New Testaments were written at the age to which they are assigned and by the men or class of men to whom they are ascribed.

Our present discussion comprises the first part, and only the
first part, of the doctrine of the Canon (κανών, a measuring-reed;
hence, a rule, a standard). It is important to observe that the
determination of the Canon, or list of the books of sacred
Scripture, is not the work of the church as an organized body. We
do not receive these books upon the authority of Fathers or
Councils. We receive them, only as the Fathers and Councils
received them, because we have evidence that they are the writings
of the men, or class of men, whose names they bear, and that they
are also credible and inspired. If the previous epistle alluded to
in _1 Cor. 5:9_ should be discovered and be universally judged
authentic, it could be placed with Paul’s other letters and could
form part of the Canon, even though it has been lost for 1800
years. Bruce, Apologetics, 321—“Abstractly the Canon is an open
question. It can never be anything else on the principles of
Protestantism which forbid us to accept the decisions of church
councils, whether ancient or modern, as final. But practically the
question of the Canon is closed.” The Westminster Confession says
that the authority of the word of God “does not rest upon historic
evidence; it does not rest upon the authority of Councils; it does
not rest upon the consent of the past or the excellence of the
matter; but it rests upon the Spirit of God bearing witness to our
hearts concerning its divine authority.” Clarke, Christian
Theology, 24—“The value of the Scriptures to us does not depend
upon our knowing who wrote them. In the O. T. half its pages are
of uncertain authorship. New dates mean new authorship. Criticism
is a duty, for dates of authorship give means of interpretation.
The Scriptures have power because God is in them, and because they
describe the entrance of God into the life of man.”

Saintine, Picciola, 782—“Has not a feeble reed provided man with
his first arrow, his first pen, his first instrument of music?”
Hugh Macmillan: “The idea of stringed instruments was first
derived from the twang of the well strung bow, as the archer shot
his arrows; the lyre and the harp which discourse the sweetest
music of peace were invented by those who first heard this
inspiring sound in the excitement of battle. And so there is no
music so delightful amid the jarring discord of the world, turning
everything to music and harmonizing earth and heaven, as when the
heart rises out of the gloom of anger and revenge, and converts
its bow into a harp, and sings to it the Lord’s song of infinite
forgiveness.” George Adam Smith, Mod. Criticism and Preaching of
O. T., 5—“The church has never renounced her liberty to revise the
Canon. The liberty at the beginning cannot be more than the
liberty thereafter. The Holy Spirit has not forsaken the leaders
of the church. Apostolic writers nowhere define the limits of the
Canon, any more than Jesus did. Indeed, they employed
extra-canonical writings. Christ and the apostles nowhere bound
the church to believe all the teachings of the O. T. Christ
discriminates, and forbids the literal interpretation of its
contents. Many of the apostolic interpretations challenge our
sense of truth. Much of their exegesis was temporary and false.
Their judgment was that much in the O. T. was rudimentary. This
opens the question of development in revelation, and justifies the
attempt to fix the historic order. The N. T. criticism of the O.
T. gives the liberty of criticism, and the need, and the
obligation of it. O. T. criticism is not, like Baur’s of the N.
T., the result of _a priori_ Hegelian reasoning. From the time of
Samuel we have real history. The prophets do not appeal to
miracles. There is more gospel in the book of Jonah, when it is
treated as a parable. The O. T. is a gradual ethical revelation of
God. Few realize that the church of Christ has a higher warrant
for her Canon of the O. T. than she has for her Canon of the N. T.
The O. T. was the result of criticism in the widest sense of that
word. But what the church thus once achieved, the church may at
any time revise.”

We reserve to a point somewhat later the proof of the credibility
and the inspiration of the Scriptures. We now show their
genuineness, as we would show the genuineness of other religious
books, like the Koran, or of secular documents, like Cicero’s
Orations against Catiline. Genuineness, in the sense in which we
use the term, does not necessarily imply authenticity (_i. e._,
truthfulness and authority); see Blunt, Dict. Doct. and Hist.
Theol., art.: Authenticity. Documents may be genuine which are
written in whole or in part by persons other than they whose names
they bear, provided these persons belong to the same class. The
Epistle to the Hebrews, though not written by Paul, is genuine,
because it proceeds from one of the apostolic class. The addition
of Deut. 34, after Moses’ death, does not invalidate the
genuineness of the Pentateuch; nor would the theory of a later
Isaiah, even if it were established, disprove the genuineness of
that prophecy; provided, in both cases, that the additions were
made by men of the prophetic class. On the general subject of the
genuineness of the Scripture documents, see Alexander, McIlvaine,
Chalmers, Dodge, and Peabody, on the Evidences of Christianity;
also Archibald, The Bible Verified.

1. Genuineness of the Books of the New Testament.

We do not need to adduce proof of the existence of the books of the New Testament as far back as the third century, for we possess manuscripts of them which are at least fourteen hundred years old, and, since the third century, references to them have been inwoven into all history and literature. We begin our proof, therefore, by showing that these documents not only existed, but were generally accepted as genuine, before the close of the second century.

Origen was born as early as 186 A. D.; yet Tregelles tells us that
Origen’s works contain citations embracing two-thirds of the New
Testament. Hatch, Hibbert Lectures, 12—“The early years of
Christianity were in some respects like the early years of our
lives.... Those early years are the most important in our
education. We learn then, we hardly know how, through effort and
struggle and innocent mistakes, to use our eyes and ears, to
measure distance and direction, by a process which ascends by
unconscious steps to the certainty which we feel in our
maturity.... It was in some such unconscious way that the
Christian thought of the early centuries gradually acquired the
form which we find when it emerges as it were into the developed
manhood of the fourth century.”

A. All the books of the New Testament, with the single exception of 2 Peter, were not only received as genuine, but were used in more or less collected form, in the latter half of the second century. These collections of writings, so slowly transcribed and distributed, imply the long continued previous existence of the separate books, and forbid us to fix their origin later than the first half of the second century.

(_a_) Tertullian (160-230) appeals to the “New Testament” as made up of the “Gospels” and “Apostles.” He vouches for the genuineness of the four gospels, the Acts, 1 Peter, 1 John, thirteen epistles of Paul, and the Apocalypse; in short, to twenty-one of the twenty-seven books of our Canon.

Sanday, Bampton Lectures for 1893, is confident that the first
three gospels took their present shape before the destruction of
Jerusalem. Yet he thinks the first and third gospels of composite
origin, and probably the second. Not later than 125 A. D. the four
gospels of our Canon had gained a recognized and exceptional
authority. Andover Professors, Divinity of Jesus Christ, 40—“The
oldest of our gospels was written about the year 70. The earlier
one, now lost, a great part of which is preserved in Luke and
Matthew, was probably written a few years earlier.”

(_b_) The Muratorian Canon in the West and the Peshito Version in the East (having a common date of about 160) in their catalogues of the New Testament writings mutually complement each other’s slight deficiencies, and together witness to the fact that at that time every book of our present New Testament, with the exception of 2 Peter, was received as genuine.

Hovey, Manual of Christian Theology, 50—“The fragment on the
Canon, discovered by Muratori in 1738, was probably written about
170 A. D., in Greek. It begins with the last words of a sentence
which must have referred to the Gospel of Mark, and proceeds to
speak of the Third Gospel as written by Luke the physician, who
did not see the Lord, and then of the Fourth Gospel as written by
John, a disciple of the Lord, at the request of his fellow
disciples and his elders.” Bacon, N. T. Introduction, 50, gives
the Muratorian Canon in full; 30—“Theophilus of Antioch (181-190)
is the first to cite a gospel by name, quoting _John 1:1_ as from
‘John, one of those who were vessels of the Spirit.’ ” On the
Muratorian Canon, see Tregelles, Muratorian Canon. On the Peshito
Version, see Schaff, Introd. to Rev. Gk.-Eng. N. T., xxxvii;
Smith’s Bible Dict., pp. 3388, 3389.

(_c_) The Canon of Marcion (140), though rejecting all the gospels but that of Luke, and all the epistles but ten of Paul’s, shows, nevertheless, that at that early day “apostolic writings were regarded as a complete original rule of doctrine.” Even Marcion, moreover, does not deny the genuineness of those writings which for doctrinal reasons he rejects.

Marcion, the Gnostic, was the enemy of all Judaism, and regarded
the God of the O. T. as a restricted divinity, entirely different
from the God of the N. T. Marcion was “ipso Paulo paulinior”—“plus
loyal que le roi.” He held that Christianity was something
entirely new, and that it stood in opposition to all that went
before it. His Canon consisted of two parts: the “Gospel” (Luke,
with its text curtailed by omission of the Hebraistic elements)
and the Apostolicon (the epistles of Paul). The epistle to
Diognetus by an unknown author, and the epistle of Barnabas,
shared the view of Marcion. The name of the Deity was changed from
Jehovah to Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. If Marcion’s view had
prevailed, the Old Testament would have been lost to the Christian
Church. God’s revelation would have been deprived of its proof
from prophecy. Development from the past, and divine conduct of
Jewish history, would have been denied. But without the Old
Testament, as H. W. Beecher maintained, the New Testament would
lack background; our chief source of knowledge with regard to
God’s natural attributes of power, wisdom, and truth would be
removed: the love and mercy revealed in the New Testament would
seem characteristics of a weak being, who could not enforce law or
inspire respect. A tree has as much breadth below ground as there
is above; so the O. T. roots of God’s revelation are as extensive
and necessary as are its N. T. trunk and branches and leaves. See
Allen, Religious Progress, 81; Westcott, Hist. N. T. Canon, and
art.: Canon, in Smith’s Bible Dictionary. Also Reuss, History of
Canon; Mitchell, Critical Handbook, part I.

B. The Christian and Apostolic Fathers who lived in the first half of the second century not only quote from these books and allude to them, but testify that they were written by the apostles themselves. We are therefore compelled to refer their origin still further back, namely, to the first century, when the apostles lived.

(_a_) Irenæus (120-200) mentions and quotes the four gospels by name, and among them the gospel according to John: “Afterwards John, the disciple of the Lord, who also leaned upon his breast, he likewise published a gospel, while he dwelt in Ephesus in Asia.” And Irenæus was the disciple and friend of Polycarp (80-166), who was himself a personal acquaintance of the Apostle John. The testimony of Irenæus is virtually the evidence of Polycarp, the contemporary and friend of the Apostle, that each of the gospels was written by the person whose name it bears.

To this testimony it is objected that Irenæus says there are four
gospels because there are four quarters of the world and four
living creatures in the cherubim. But we reply that Irenæus is
here stating, not his own reason for accepting four and only four
gospels, but what he conceives to be God’s reason for ordaining
that there should be four. We are not warranted in supposing that
he accepted the four gospels on any other ground than that of
testimony that they were the productions of apostolic men.

Chrysostom, in a similar manner, compares the four gospels to a
chariot and four: When the King of Glory rides forth in it, he
shall receive the triumphal acclamations of all peoples. So
Jerome: God rides upon the cherubim, and since there are four
cherubim, there must be four gospels. All this however is an early
attempt at the philosophy of religion, and not an attempt to
demonstrate historical fact. L. L. Paine, Evolution of
Trinitarianism, 319-367, presents the radical view of the
authorship of the fourth gospel. He holds that John the apostle
died A. D. 70, or soon after, and that Irenæus confounded the two
Johns whom Papias so clearly distinguished—John the Apostle and
John the Elder. With Harnack, Paine supposes the gospel to have
been written by John the Elder, a contemporary of Papias. But we
reply that the testimony of Irenæus implies a long continued
previous tradition. R. W. Dale, Living Christ and Four Gospels,
145—“Religious veneration such as that with which Irenæus regarded
these books is of slow growth. They must have held a great place
in the Church as far back as the memory of living men extended.”
See Hastings’ Bible Dictionary, 2:695.

(_b_) Justin Martyr (died 148) speaks of “memoirs (ἀπομνημονεύματα) of Jesus Christ,” and his quotations, though sometimes made from memory, are evidently cited from our gospels.

To this testimony it is objected: (1) That Justin Martyr uses the
term “memoirs” instead of “gospels.” We reply that he elsewhere
uses the term “gospels” and identifies the “memoirs” with them:
Apol., 1:66—“The apostles, in the memoirs composed by them, which
are called gospels,” _i. e._, not memoirs, but gospels, was the
proper title of his written records. In writing his Apology to the
heathen Emperors, Marcus Aurelius and Marcus Antoninus, he chooses
the term “memoirs”, or “memorabilia”, which Xenophon had used as
the title of his account of Socrates, simply in order that he may
avoid ecclesiastical expressions unfamiliar to his readers and may
commend his writing to lovers of classical literature. Notice that
Matthew must be added to John, to justify Justin’s repeated
statement that there were “memoirs” of our Lord “written by
apostles,” and that Mark and Luke must be added to justify his
further statement that these memoirs were compiled by “his
apostles and those who followed them.” Analogous to Justin’s use
of the word “memoirs” is his use of the term “Sunday”, instead of
Sabbath: Apol. 1:67—“On the day called Sunday, all who live in
cities or in the country gather together to one place, and the
memoirs of the apostles or the writings of the prophets are read.”
Here is the use of our gospels in public worship, as of equal
authority with the O. T. Scriptures; in fact, Justin constantly
quotes the words and acts of Jesus’ life from a written source,
using the word γέγραπται. See Morison, Com. on Mat., ix; Hemphill,
Literature of Second Century, 234.

To Justin’s testimony it is objected: (2) That in quoting the
words spoken from heaven at the Savior’s baptism, he makes them to
be: “My son, this day have I begotten thee,” so quoting _Psalm
2:7_, and showing that he was ignorant of our present gospel,
_Mat. 3:17_. We reply that this was probably a slip of the memory,
quite natural in a day when the gospels existed only in the
cumbrous form of manuscript rolls. Justin also refers to the
Pentateuch for two facts which it does not contain; but we should
not argue from this that he did not possess our present
Pentateuch. The plays of Terence are quoted by Cicero and Horace,
and we require neither more nor earlier witnesses to their
genuineness,—yet Cicero and Horace wrote a hundred years after
Terence. It is unfair to refuse similar evidence to the gospels.
Justin had a way of combining into one the sayings of the
different evangelists—a hint which Tatian, his pupil, probably
followed out in composing his Diatessaron. On Justin Martyr’s
testimony, see Ezra Abbot, Genuineness of the Fourth Gospel, 49,
note. B. W. Bacon, Introd. to N. T., speaks of Justin as “writing
_circa_ 155 A. D.”

(_c_) Papias (80-164), whom Irenæus calls a “hearer of John,” testifies that Matthew “wrote in the Hebrew dialect the sacred oracles (τὰ λόγια),” and that “Mark, the interpreter of Peter, wrote after Peter, (ὕστερον Πέτρῳ) [or under Peter’s direction], an unsystematic account (οὐ τάξει)” of the same events and discourses.

To this testimony it is objected: (1) That Papias could not have
had our gospel of Matthew, for the reason that this is Greek. We
reply, either with Bleek, that Papias erroneously supposed a
Hebrew translation of Matthew, which he possessed, to be the
original; or with Weiss, that the original Matthew was in Hebrew,
while our present Matthew is an enlarged version of the same.
Palestine, like modern Wales, was bilingual; Matthew, like James,
might write both Hebrew and Greek. While B. W. Bacon gives to the
writing of Papias a date so late as 145-160 A. D., Lightfoot gives
that of 130 A. D. At this latter date Papias could easily remember
stories told him so far back as 80 A. D., by men who were youths
at the time when our Lord lived, died, rose and ascended. The work
of Papias had for its title Λογίων κυριακῶν ἐξήγησις—“Exposition
of Oracles relating to the Lord” = Commentaries on the Gospels.
Two of these gospels were Matthew and Mark. The view of Weiss
mentioned above has been criticized upon the ground that the
quotations from the O. T. in Jesus’ discourses in Matthew are all
taken from the Septuagint and not from the Hebrew. Westcott
answers this criticism by suggesting that, in translating his
Hebrew gospel into Greek, Matthew substituted for his own oral
version of Christ’s discourses the version of these already
existing in the oral common gospel. There was a common oral basis
of true teaching, the “deposit”—τὴν παραθήκην—committed to Timothy
(_1 Tim. 6:20_; _2 Tim. 1:12, 14_), the same story told many times
and getting to be told in the same way. The narratives of Matthew,
Mark and Luke are independent versions of this apostolic
testimony. First came belief; secondly, oral teaching; thirdly,
written gospels. That the original gospel was in Aramaic seems
probable from the fact that the Oriental name for “tares,”
_zawān_, (_Mat. 13:25_) has been transliterated into Greek,
ζιζάνια. Morison, Com. on Mat., thinks that Matthew originally
wrote in Hebrew a collection of Sayings of Jesus Christ, which the
Nazarenes and Ebionites added to, partly from tradition, and
partly from translating his full gospel, till the result was the
so-called Gospel of the Hebrews; but that Matthew wrote his own
gospel in Greek after he had written the Sayings in Hebrew.
Professor W. A. Stevens thinks that Papias probably alluded to the
original autograph which Matthew wrote in Aramaic, but which he
afterwards enlarged and translated into Greek. See Hemphill,
Literature of the Second Century, 267.

To the testimony of Papias it is also objected: (2) That Mark is
the most systematic of all evangelists, presenting events as a
true annalist, in chronological order. We reply that while, so far
as chronological order is concerned, Mark is systematic, so far as
logical order is concerned he is the most unsystematic of the
evangelists, showing little of the power of historical grouping
which is so discernible in Matthew. Matthew aimed to portray a
life, rather than to record a chronology. He groups Jesus’
teachings in chapters 5, 6, and 7; his miracles in chapters 8 and
9; his directions to the apostles in chapter 10; chapters 11 and
12 describe the growing opposition; chapter 13 meets this
opposition with his parables; the remainder of the gospel
describes our Lord’s preparation for his death, his progress to
Jerusalem, the consummation of his work in the Cross and in the
resurrection. Here is true system, a philosophical arrangement of
material, compared with which the method of Mark is eminently
unsystematic. Mark is a Froissart, while Matthew has the spirit of
J. R. Green. See Bleek, Introd. to N. T., 1:108, 126; Weiss, Life
of Jesus, 1:27-39.

(_d_) The Apostolic Fathers,—Clement of Rome (died 101), Ignatius of Antioch (martyred 115), and Polycarp (80-166),—companions and friends of the apostles, have left us in their writings over one hundred quotations from or allusions to the New Testament writings, and among these every book, except four minor epistles (2 Peter, Jude, 2 and 3 John) is represented.

Although these are single testimonies, we must remember that they
are the testimonies of the chief men of the churches of their day,
and that they express the opinion of the churches themselves.
“Like banners of a hidden army, or peaks of a distant mountain
range, they represent and are sustained by compact, continuous
bodies below.” In an article by P. W. Calkins, McClintock and
Strong’s Encyclopædia, 1:315-317, quotations from the Apostolic
Fathers in great numbers are put side by side with the New
Testament passages from which they quote or to which they allude.
An examination of these quotations and allusions convinces us that
these Fathers were in possession of all the principal books of our
New Testament. See Ante-Nicene Library of T. and T. Clark; Thayer,
in Boston Lectures for 1871:324; Nash, Ethics and Revelation,
11—“Ignatius says to Polycarp: ‘The times call for thee, as the
winds call for the pilot.’ So do the times call for reverent,
fearless scholarship in the church.” Such scholarship, we are
persuaded, has already demonstrated the genuineness of the N. T.
documents.

(_e_) In the synoptic gospels, the omission of all mention of the fulfilment of Christ’s prophecies with regard to the destruction of Jerusalem is evidence that these gospels were written before the occurrence of that event. In the Acts of the Apostles, universally attributed to Luke, we have an allusion to “the former treatise”, or the gospel by the same author, which must, therefore, have been written before the end of Paul’s first imprisonment at Rome, and probably with the help and sanction of that apostle.

_Acts 1:1—_“The former treatise I made, O Theophilus, concerning
all that Jesus began both to do and to teach.” If the Acts was
written A. D. 63, two years after Paul’s arrival at Rome, then
“the former treatise,” the gospel according to Luke, can hardly be
dated later than 60; and since the destruction of Jerusalem took
place in 70, Matthew and Mark must have published their gospels at
least as early as the year 68, when multitudes of men were still
living who had been eye-witnesses of the events of Jesus’ life.
Fisher, Nature and Method of Revelation, 180—“At any considerably
later date [than the capture of Jerusalem] the apparent
conjunction of the fall of the city and the temple with the
Parousia would have been avoided or explained.... Matthew, in its
present form, appeared after the beginning of the mortal struggle
of the Romans with the Jews, or between 65 and 70. Mark’s gospel
was still earlier. The language of the passages relative to the
Parousia, in Luke, is consistent with the supposition that he
wrote after the fall of Jerusalem, but not with the supposition
that it was long after.” See Norton, Genuineness of the Gospels;
Alford, Greek Testament, Prolegomena, 30, 31, 36, 45-47.

C. It is to be presumed that this acceptance of the New Testament documents as genuine, on the part of the Fathers of the churches, was for good and sufficient reasons, both internal and external, and this presumption is corroborated by the following considerations:

(_a_) There is evidence that the early churches took every care to assure themselves of the genuineness of these writings before they accepted them.

Evidences of care are the following:—Paul, in _2 Thess. 2:2_,
urged the churches to use care, “to the end that ye be not quickly
shaken from your mind, nor yet be troubled, either by spirit, or
by word, or by epistle as from us”; _1 Cor. 5:9—_“I wrote unto you
in my epistle to have no company with fornicators”; _Col.
4:16—_“when this epistle hath been read among you, cause that it
be read also in the church of the Laodiceans; and that ye also
read the epistle from Laodicea.” Melito (169), Bishop of Sardis,
who wrote a treatise on the Revelation of John, went as far as
Palestine to ascertain on the spot the facts relating to the Canon
of the O. T., and as a result of his investigations excluded the
Apocrypha. Ryle, Canon of O. T., 203—“Melito, the Bishop of
Sardis, sent to a friend a list of the O. T. Scriptures which he
professed to have obtained from accurate inquiry, while traveling
in the East, in Syria. Its contents agree with those of the Hebrew
Canon, save in the omission of Esther.” Serapion, Bishop of
Antioch (191-213, Abbot), says: “We receive Peter and other
apostles as Christ, but as skilful men we reject those writings
which are falsely ascribed to them.” Geo. H. Ferris, Baptist
Congress, 1899:94—“Serapion, after permitting the reading of the
Gospel of Peter in public services, finally decided against it,
not because he thought there could be no fifth gospel, but because
he thought it was not written by Peter.” Tertullian (160-230)
gives an example of the deposition of a presbyter in Asia Minor
for publishing a pretended work of Paul; see Tertullian, De
Baptismo, referred to by Godet on John, Introduction; Lardner,
Works, 2:304, 305; McIlvaine, Evidences, 92.

(_b_) The style of the New Testament writings, and their complete correspondence with all we know of the lands and times in which they profess to have been written, affords convincing proof that they belong to the apostolic age.

Notice the mingling of Latin and Greek, as in σπεκουλάτωρ (_Mark
6:27_) and κεντυρίων (_Mark 15:39_); of Greek and Aramæan, as in
πρασιαὶ πρασιαί (_Mark 6:40_) and βδέλυγμα τῆς ἐρημώσεως (_Mat.
24:15_); this could hardly have occurred after the first century.
Compare the anachronisms of style and description in Thackeray’s
“Henry Esmond,” which, in spite of the author’s special studies
and his determination to exclude all words and phrases that had
originated in his own century, was marred by historical errors
that Macaulay in his most remiss moments would hardly have made.
James Russell Lowell told Thackeray that “different to” was not a
century old. “Hang it, no!” replied Thackeray. In view of this
failure, on the part of an author of great literary skill, to
construct a story purporting to be written a century before his
time and that could stand the test of historical criticism, we may
well regard the success of our gospels in standing such tests as a
practical demonstration that they were written in, and not after,
the apostolic age. See Alexander, Christ and Christianity, 27-37;
Blunt, Scriptural Coincidences, 244-354.

(_c_) The genuineness of the fourth gospel is confirmed by the fact that Tatian (155-170), the Assyrian, a disciple of Justin, repeatedly quoted it without naming the author, and composed a Harmony of our four gospels which he named the Diatessaron; while Basilides (130) and Valentinus (150), the Gnostics, both quote from it.

The sceptical work entitled “Supernatural Religion” said in 1874;
“No one seems to have seen Tatian’s Harmony, probably for the very
simple reason that there was no such work”; and “There is no
evidence whatever connecting Tatian’s Gospel with those of our
Canon.” In 1876, however, there was published in a Latin form in
Venice the Commentary of Ephraem Syrus on Tatian, and the
commencement of it was: “In the beginning was the Word”_ (John
1:1)_. In 1888, the Diatessaron itself was published in Rome in
the form of an Arabic translation made in the eleventh century
from the Syriac. J. Rendel Harris, in Contemp. Rev., 1893:800
_sq._, says that the recovery of Tatian’s Diatessaron has
indefinitely postponed the literary funeral of St. John. Advanced
critics, he intimates, are so called, because they run ahead of
the facts they discuss. The gospels must have been well
established in the Christian church when Tatian undertook to
combine them. Mrs. A. S. Lewis, in S. S. Times, Jan. 23, 1904—“The
gospels were translated into Syriac before A. D. 160. It follows
that the Greek document from which they were translated was older
still, and since the one includes the gospel of St. John, so did
the other.” Hemphill, Literature of the Second Century, 183-231,
gives the birth of Tatian about 120, and the date of his
Diatessaron as 172 A. D.

The difference in style between the Revelation and the gospel of
John is due to the fact that the Revelation was written during
John’s exile in Patmos, under Nero, in 67 or 68, soon after John
had left Palestine and had taken up his residence at Ephesus. He
had hitherto spoken Aramæan, and Greek was comparatively
unfamiliar to him. The gospel was written thirty years after,
probably about 97, when Greek had become to him like a mother
tongue. See Lightfoot on Galatians, 343, 347; _per contra_, see
Milligan, Revelation of St. John. Phrases and ideas which indicate
a common authorship of the Revelation and the gospel are the
following: “the Lamb of God,” “the Word of God,” “the True” as an
epithet applied to Christ, “the Jews” as enemies of God, “manna,”
“him whom they pierced”; see Elliott, Horæ Apocalypticæ, 1:4, 5.
In the fourth gospel we have ἀμνός, in Apoc. ἀρνίον, perhaps
better to distinguish “the Lamb” from the diminutive τὸ θηρίον,
“the beast.” Common to both Gospel and Rev. are ποιεῖν, “to do”
[the truth]; περιπατεῖν, of moral conduct; ἀληθινός, “genuine”;
διψᾷν, πεινᾷν, of the higher wants of the soul; σκηνοῦν ἐν,
ποιμαίνειν, ὁδηγεῖν; also “overcome,” “testimony,” “Bridegroom,”
“Shepherd,” “Water of life.” In the Revelation there are
grammatical solecisms: nominative for genitive, 1:4—ἀπὸ ὁ ὤν;
nominative for accusative, 7:9—εἶδον ... ὄχλος πολύς; accusative
for nominative, 20:2—τὸν δράκοντα ὁ ὄφις. Similarly we have in
_Rom. 12:5_—τὸ δὲ καθ᾽ εἶς instead of τὸ δὲ καθ᾽ ἕνα, where κατὰ
has lost its regimen—a frequent solecism in later Greek writers;
see Godet on John, 1:269, 270. Emerson reminded Jones Very that
the Holy Ghost surely writes good grammar. The Apocalypse seems to
show that Emerson was wrong.

The author of the fourth gospel speaks of John in the third
person, “and scorned to blot it with a name.” But so does Cæsar
speak of himself in his Commentaries. Harnack regards both the
fourth gospel and the Revelation as the work of John the Presbyter
or Elder, the former written not later than about 110 A. D.; the
latter from 93 to 96, but being a revision of one or more
underlying Jewish apocalypses. Vischer has expounded this view of
the Revelation; and Porter holds substantially the same, in his
article on the Book of Revelation in Hastings’ Bible Dictionary,
4:239-266. “It is the obvious advantage of the Vischer-Harnack
hypothesis that it places the original work under Nero and its
revised and Christianized edition under Domitian.” (Sanday,
Inspiration, 371, 372, nevertheless dismisses this hypothesis as
raising worse difficulties than it removes. He dates the
Apocalypse between the death of Nero and the destruction of
Jerusalem by Titus.) Martineau, Seat of Authority, 227, presents
the moral objections to the apostolic authorship, and regards the
Revelation, from chapter 4:1 to 22:5, as a purely Jewish document
of the date 66-70, supplemented and revised by a Christian, and
issued not earlier than 136: “How strange that we should ever have
thought it possible for a personal attendant upon the ministry of
Jesus to write or edit a book mixing up fierce Messianic
conflicts, in which, with the sword, the gory garment, the
blasting flame, the rod of iron, as his emblems, he leads the
war-march, and treads the winepress of the wrath of God until the
deluge of blood rises to the horses’ bits, with the speculative
Christology of the second century, without a memory of his life, a
feature of his look, a word from his voice, or a glance back at
the hillsides of Galilee, the courts of Jerusalem, the road to
Bethany, on which his image must be forever seen!”

The force of this statement, however, is greatly broken if we
consider that the apostle John, in his earlier days, was one of
the “Boanerges, which is, Sons of thunder”_ (Mark 3:17)_, but
became in his later years the apostle of love: _1 John
4:7—_“Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God.” The
likeness of the fourth gospel to the epistle, which latter was
undoubtedly the work of John the apostle, indicates the same
authorship for the gospel. Thayer remarks that “the discovery of
the gospel according to Peter sweeps away half a century of
discussion. Brief as is the recovered fragment, it attests
indubitably all four of our canonical books.” Riddle, in Popular
Com., 1:25—“If a forger wrote the fourth gospel, then Beelzebub
has been casting out devils for these eighteen hundred years.” On
the genuineness of the fourth gospel, see Bleek, Introd. to N. T.,
1:250; Fisher, Essays on Supernat. Origin of Christianity, 33,
also Beginnings of Christianity, 320-362, and Grounds of Theistic
and Christian Belief, 245-309; Sanday, Authorship of the Fourth
Gospel, Gospels in the Second Century, and Criticism of the Fourth
Gospel; Ezra Abbott, Genuineness of the Fourth Gospel, 52, 80-87;
Row, Bampton Lectures on Christian Evidences, 249-287; British
Quarterly, Oct. 1872:216; Godet, in Present Day Tracts, 5: no. 25;
Westcott, in Bib. Com. on John’s Gospel, Introd., xxviii-xxxii;
Watkins, Bampton Lectures for 1890; W. L. Ferguson, in Bib. Sac.,
1896:1-27.

(_d_) The epistle to the Hebrews appears to have been accepted during the first century after it was written (so Clement of Borne, Justin Martyr, and the Peshito Version witness). Then for two centuries, especially in the Roman and North African churches, and probably because its internal characteristics were inconsistent with the tradition of a Pauline authorship, its genuineness was doubted (so Tertullian, Cyprian, Irenæus, Muratorian Canon). At the end of the fourth century, Jerome examined the evidence and decided in its favor; Augustine did the same; the third Council of Carthage formally recognized it (397); from that time the Latin churches united with the East in receiving it, and thus the doubt was finally and forever removed.

The Epistle to the Hebrews, the style of which is so unlike that
of the Apostle Paul, was possibly written by Apollos, who was an
Alexandrian Jew, “a learned man” and “mighty in the Scriptures”_
(Acts 18:24)_; but it may notwithstanding have been written at the
suggestion and under the direction of Paul, and so be essentially
Pauline. A. C. Kendrick, in American Commentary on Hebrews, points
out that while the style of Paul is prevailingly dialectic, and
only in rapt moments becomes rhetorical or poetic, the style of
the Epistle to the Hebrews is prevailingly rhetorical, is free
from anacolutha, and is always dominated by emotion. He holds that
these characteristics point to Apollos as its author. Contrast
also Paul’s method of quoting the O. T.: “it is written”_ (Rom.
11:8; 1 Cor. 1:31; Gal. 3:10)_ with that of the Hebrews: “he
saith”_ (8:5, 13)_, “he hath said”_ (4:4)_. Paul quotes the O. T.
fifty or sixty times, but never in this latter way. _Heb.
2:3—_“which having at the first been spoken by the Lord, was
confirmed unto us by them that heard”—shows that the writer did
not receive the gospel at first hand. Luther and Calvin rightly
saw in this a decisive proof that Paul was not the author, for he
always insisted on the primary and independent character of his
gospel. Harnack formerly thought the epistle written by Barnabas
to Christians at Rome, A. D. 81-96. More recently however he
attributes it to Priscilla, the wife of Aquila, or to their joint
authorship. The majesty of its diction, however, seems unfavorable
to this view. William T. C. Hanna: “The words of the author ...
are marshalled grandly, and move with the tread of an army, or
with the swell of a tidal wave”; see Franklin Johnson, Quotations
in N. T. from O. T., xii. Plumptre, Introd. to N. T., 37, and in
Expositor, Vol. I, regards the author of this epistle as the same
with that of the Apocryphal Wisdom of Solomon, the latter being
composed before, the former after, the writer’s conversion to
Christianity. Perhaps our safest conclusion is that of Origen:
“God only knows who wrote it.” Harnack however remarks: “The time
in which our ancient Christian literature, the N. T. included, was
considered as a web of delusions and falsifications, is past. The
oldest literature of the church is, in its main points, and in
most of its details, true and trustworthy.” See articles on
Hebrews, in Smith’s and in Hastings’ Bible Dictionaries.

(_e_) As to 2 Peter, Jude, and 2 and 3 John, the epistles most frequently held to be spurious, we may say that, although we have no conclusive external evidence earlier than A. D. 160, and in the case of 2 Peter none earlier than A. D. 230-250, we may fairly urge in favor of their genuineness not only their internal characteristics of literary style and moral value, but also the general acceptance of them all since the third century as the actual productions of the men or class of men whose names they bear.

Firmilianus (250), Bishop of Cæsarea in Cappadocia, is the first
clear witness to 2 Peter. Origen (230) names it, but, in naming
it, admits that its genuineness is questioned. The Council of
Laodicea (372) first received it into the Canon. With this very
gradual recognition and acceptance of 2 Peter, compare the loss of
the later works of Aristotle for a hundred and fifty years after
his death, and their recognition as genuine so soon as they were
recovered from the cellar of the family of Neleus in Asia; De
Wette’s first publication of certain letters of Luther after the
lapse of three hundred years, yet without occasioning doubt as to
their genuineness; or the concealment of Milton’s Treatise on
Christian Doctrine, among the lumber of the State Paper Office in
London, from 1677 to 1823; see Mair, Christian Evidences, 95. Sir
William Hamilton complained that there were treatises of Cudworth,
Berkeley and Collier, still lying unpublished and even unknown to
their editors, biographers and fellow metaphysicians, but yet of
the highest interest and importance; see Mansel, Letters, Lectures
and Reviews, 381; Archibald, The Bible Verified, 27. 2 Peter was
probably sent from the East shortly before Peter’s martyrdom;
distance and persecution may have prevented its rapid circulation
in other countries. Sagebeer, The Bible in Court, 114—“A ledger
may have been lost, or its authenticity for a long time doubted,
but when once it is discovered and proved, it is as trustworthy as
any other part of the _res gestæ_.” See Plumptre, Epistles of
Peter, Introd., 73-81; Alford on 2 Peter, 4: Prolegomena, 157;
Westcott, on Canon, in Smith’s Bib. Dict., 1:370, 373; Blunt,
Dict. Doct. and Hist. Theol., art.: Canon.

It is urged by those who doubt the genuineness of 2 Peter that the
epistle speaks of “your apostles”_ (3:2)_, just as _Jude 17_
speaks of “the apostles,” as if the writer did not number himself
among them. But 2 Peter begins with “Simon Peter, a servant and
apostle of Jesus Christ,” and Jude, “brother of James”_ (verse 1)_
was a brother of our Lord, but not an apostle. Hovey, Introd. to
N. T., xxxi—“The earliest passage manifestly based upon 2 Peter
appears to be in the so-called Second Epistle of the Roman
Clement, 16:3, which however is now understood to be a Christian
homily from the middle of the second century.” Origen (born 186)
testifies that Peter left one epistle, “and perhaps a second, for
that is disputed.” He also says: “John wrote the Apocalypse, and
an epistle of very few lines; and, it may be, a second and a
third; since all do not admit them to be genuine.” He quotes also
from James and from Jude, adding that their canonicity was
doubted.

Harnack regards 1 Peter, 2 Peter, James, and Jude, as written
respectively about 160, 170, 130, and 130, but not by the men to
whom they are ascribed—the ascriptions to these authors being
later additions. Hort remarks: “If I were asked, I should say that
the balance of the argument was against 2 Peter, but the moment I
had done so I should begin to think I might be in the wrong.”
Sanday, Oracles of God, 73 note, considers the arguments in favor
of 2 Peter unconvincing, but also the arguments against. He cannot
get beyond a _non liquet_. He refers to Salmon, Introd. to N. T.,
529-559, ed. 4, as expressing his own view. But the later
conclusions of Sanday are more radical. In his Bampton Lectures on
Inspiration, 348, 399, he says: 2 Peter “is probably at least to
this extent a counterfeit, that it appears under a name which is
not that of its true author.”

Chase, in Hastings’ Bib. Dict., 3:806-817, says that “the first
piece of _certain_ evidence as to 2 Peter is the passage from
Origen quoted by Eusebius, though it hardly admits of doubt that
the Epistle was known to Clement of Alexandria.... We find no
trace of the epistle in the period when the tradition of apostolic
days was still living.... It was not the work of the apostle but
of the second century ... put forward without any sinister motive
... the personation of the apostle an obvious literary device
rather than a religious or controversial fraud. The adoption of
such a verdict can cause perplexity only when the Lord’s promise
of guidance to his Church is regarded as a charter of
infallibility.” Against this verdict we would urge the dignity and
spiritual value of 2 Peter—internal evidence which in our judgment
causes the balance to incline in favor of its apostolic
authorship.

(_f_) Upon no other hypothesis than that of their genuineness can the general acceptance of these four minor epistles since the third century, and of all the other books of the New Testament since the middle of the second century, be satisfactorily accounted for. If they had been mere collections of floating legends, they could not have secured wide circulation as sacred books for which Christians must answer with their blood. If they had been forgeries, the churches at large could neither have been deceived as to their previous non-existence, nor have been induced unanimously to pretend that they were ancient and genuine. Inasmuch, however, as other accounts of their origin, inconsistent with their genuineness, are now current, we proceed to examine more at length the most important of these opposing views.

The genuineness of the New Testament as a whole would still be
demonstrable, even if doubt should still attach to one or two of
its books. It does not matter that 2nd Alcibiades was not written
by Plato, or Pericles by Shakespeare. The Council of Carthage in
397 gave a place in the Canon to the O. T. Apocrypha, but the
Reformers tore it out. Zwingli said of the Revelation: “It is not
a Biblical book,” and Luther spoke slightingly of the Epistle of
James. The judgment of Christendom at large is more trustworthy
than the private impressions of any single Christian scholar. To
hold the books of the N. T. to be written in the second century by
other than those whose names they bear is to hold, not simply to
forgery, but to a conspiracy of forgery. There must have been
several forgers at work, and, since their writings wonderfully
agree, there must have been collusion among them. Yet these able
men have been forgotten, while the names of far feebler writers of
the second century have been preserved.

G. F. Wright, Scientific Aspects of Christian Evidences, 343—“In
civil law there are ‘statutes of limitations’ which provide that
the general acknowledgment of a purported fact for a certain
period shall be considered as conclusive evidence of it. If, for
example, a man has remained in undisturbed possession of land for
a certain number of years, it is presumed that he has a valid
claim to it, and no one is allowed to dispute his claim.” Mair,
Evidences, 99—“We probably have not a tenth part of the evidence
upon which the early churches accepted the N. T. books as the
genuine productions of their authors. We have only their verdict.”
Wynne, in Literature of the Second Century, 58—“Those who gave up
the Scriptures were looked on by their fellow Christians as
‘traditores,’ traitors, who had basely yielded up what they ought
to have treasured as dearer than life. But all their books were
not equally sacred. Some were essential, and some were
non-essential to the faith. Hence arose the distinction between
_canonical_ and _non-canonical_. The general consciousness of
Christians grew into a distinct registration.” Such registration
is entitled to the highest respect, and lays the burden of proof
upon the objector. See Alexander, Christ and Christianity,
Introduction; Hovey, General Introduction to American Commentary
on N. T.

D. Rationalistic Theories as to the origin of the gospels. These are attempts to eliminate the miraculous element from the New Testament records, and to reconstruct the sacred history upon principles of naturalism.

Against them we urge the general objection that they are unscientific in their principle and method. To set out in an examination of the New Testament documents with the assumption that all history is a mere natural development, and that miracles are therefore impossible, is to make history a matter, not of testimony, but of _a priori_ speculation. It indeed renders any history of Christ and his apostles impossible, since the witnesses whose testimony with regard to miracles is discredited can no longer be considered worthy of credence in their account of Christ’s life or doctrine.

In Germany, half a century ago, “a man was famous according as he
had lifted up axes upon the thick trees”_ (Ps. 74:5, A. V.)_, just
as among the American Indians he was not counted a man who could
not show his scalps. The critics fortunately scalped each other;
see Tyler, Theology of Greek Poets, 79—on Homer. Nicoll, The
Church’s One Foundation, 15—“Like the mummers of old, sceptical
critics send one before them with a broom to sweep the stage clear
of everything for their drama. If we assume at the threshold of
the gospel study that everything of the nature of miracle is
impossible, then the specific questions are decided before the
criticism begins to operate in earnest.” Matthew Arnold: “Our
popular religion at present conceives the birth, ministry and
death of Christ as altogether steeped in prodigy, brimful of
miracle,—and _miracles do not happen_.” This presupposition
influences the investigations of Kuenen, and of A. E. Abbott, in
his article on the Gospels in the Encyc. Britannica. We give
special attention to four of the theories based upon this
assumption.

1st. The Myth-theory of Strauss (1808-1874).

According to this view, the gospels are crystallizations into story of Messianic ideas which had for several generations filled the minds of imaginative men in Palestine. The myth is a narrative in which such ideas are unconsciously clothed, and from which the element of intentional and deliberate deception is absent.

This early view of Strauss, which has become identified with his
name, was exchanged in late years for a more advanced view which
extended the meaning of the word “myths” so as to include all
narratives that spring out of a theological idea, and it admitted
the existence of “pious frauds” in the gospels. Baur, he says,
first convinced him that the author of the fourth gospel had “not
unfrequently composed mere fables, knowing them to be mere
fictions.” The animating spirit of both the old view and the new
is the same. Strauss says: “We know with certainty what Jesus was
_not_, and what he has _not_ done, namely, nothing superhuman and
supernatural.” “No gospel can claim that degree of historic
credibility that would be required in order to make us debase our
reason to the point of believing miracles.” He calls the
resurrection of Christ “ein weltgeschichtlicher Humbug.” “If the
gospels are really historical documents, we cannot exclude miracle
from the life-story of Jesus;” see Strauss, Life of Jesus, 17; New
Life of Jesus, 1: preface, xii. Vatke, Einleitung in A. T., 210,
211, distinguishes the myth from the _saga_ or legend: The
criterion of the pure myth is that the experience is impossible,
while the _saga_ is a tradition of remote antiquity; the myth has
in it the element only of belief, the _saga_ has in it an element
of history. Sabatier, Philos. Religion, 37—“A myth is false in
appearance only. The divine Spirit can avail himself of the
fictions of poetry as well as of logical reasonings. When the
heart was pure, the veils of fable always allowed the face of
truth to shine through. And does not childhood run on into
maturity and old age?”

It is very certain that childlike love of truth was not the
animating spirit of Strauss. On the contrary, his spirit was that
of remorseless criticism and of uncompromising hostility to the
supernatural. It has been well said that he gathered up all the
previous objections of sceptics to the gospel narrative and hurled
them in one mass, just as if some Sadducee at the time of Jesus’
trial had put all the taunts and gibes, all the buffetings and
insults, all the shame and spitting, into one blow delivered
straight into the face of the Redeemer. An octogenarian and
saintly German lady said unsuspectingly that “somehow she never
could get interested” in Strauss’s Leben Jesu, which her sceptical
son had given her for religious reading. The work was almost
altogether destructive, only the last chapter suggesting Strauss’s
own view of what Jesus was.

If Luther’s dictum is true that “the heart is the best
theologian,” Strauss must be regarded as destitute of the main
qualification for his task. Encyc. Britannica, 22:592—“Strauss’s
mind was almost exclusively analytical and critical, without depth
of religious feeling, or philosophical penetration, or historical
sympathy. His work was rarely constructive, and, save when he was
dealing with a kindred spirit, he failed as a historian,
biographer, and critic, strikingly illustrating Goethe’s
profoundly true principle that loving sympathy is essential for
productive criticism.” Pfleiderer, Strauss’s Life of Jesus,
xix—“Strauss showed that the church formed the mythical traditions
about Jesus out of its faith in him as the Messiah; but he did not
show how the church came by the faith that Jesus of Nazareth was
the Messiah.” See Carpenter, Mental Physiology, 362; Grote, Plato,
1:249.

We object to the Myth-theory of Strauss, that

(_a_) The time between the death of Christ and the publication of the gospels was far too short for the growth and consolidation of such mythical histories. Myths, on the contrary, as the Indian, Greek, Roman and Scandinavian instances bear witness, are the slow growth of centuries.

(_b_) The first century was not a century when such formation of myths was possible. Instead of being a credulous and imaginative age, it was an age of historical inquiry and of Sadduceeism in matters of religion.

Horace, in Odes 1:34 and 3:6, denounces the neglect and squalor of
the heathen temples, and Juvenal, Satire 2:150, says that “Esse
aliquid manes et subterranea regna Nec pueri credunt.” Arnold of
Rugby: “The idea of men writing mythic histories between the times
of Livy and of Tacitus, and of St. Paul mistaking them for
realities!” Pilate’s sceptical inquiry, “What is truth?”_ (John
18:38)_, better represented the age. “The mythical age is past
when an idea is presented abstractly—apart from narrative.” The
Jewish sect of the Sadducees shows that the rationalistic spirit
was not confined to Greeks or Romans. The question of John the
Baptist, _Mat. 11:3—_“Art thou he that cometh, or look we for
another?” and our Lord’s answer, _Mat. 11:4, 5—_“Go and tell John
the thing which ye hear and see: the blind receive their sight ...
the dead are raised up,” show that the Jews expected miracles to
be wrought by the Messiah; yet _John 10:41—_“John indeed did no
sign” shows also no irresistible inclination to invest popular
teachers with miraculous powers; see E. G. Robinson, Christian
Evidences, 22; Westcott, Com. on John 10:41; Rogers, Superhuman
Origin of the Bible, 61; Cox, Miracles, 50.