Chapter II: Positive Proofs That The Scriptures Are A Divine Revelation (2)

(_c_) The gospels cannot be a mythical outgrowth of Jewish ideas and expectations, because, in their main features, they run directly counter to these ideas and expectations. The sullen and exclusive nationalism of the Jews could not have given rise to a gospel for all nations, nor could their expectations of a temporal monarch have led to the story of a suffering Messiah.

The O. T. Apocrypha shows how narrow was the outlook of the Jews.
2 Esdras 6:55, 56 says the Almighty has made the world “for _our_
sakes”; other peoples, though they “also come from Adam,” to the
Eternal “are nothing, but be like unto spittle.” The whole
multitude of them are only, before him, “like a single foul drop
that oozes out of a cask” (C. Geikie, in S. S. Times). Christ’s
kingdom differed from that which the Jews expected, both in its
_spirituality_ and its _universality_ (Bruce, Apologetics, 3).
There was no missionary impulse in the heathen world; on the other
hand, it was blasphemy for an ancient tribesman to make known his
god to an outsider (Nash, Ethics and Revelation, 106). The
Apocryphal gospels show what sort of myths the N. T. age would
have elaborated: Out of a demoniac young woman Satan is said to
depart in the form of a young man (Bernard, in Literature of the
Second Century, 99-136).

(_d_) The belief and propagation of such myths are inconsistent with what we know of the sober characters and self-sacrificing lives of the apostles.

(_e_) The mythical theory cannot account for the acceptance of the gospels among the Gentiles, who had none of the Jewish ideas and expectations.

(_f_) It cannot explain Christianity itself, with its belief in Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection, and the ordinances which commemorate these facts.

(_d_) Witness Thomas’s doubting, and Paul’s shipwrecks and
scourgings. _Cf._ _2 Pet. 1:16_—οὐ γὰρ σεσοφισμένοις μύθοις
ἐξακολουθήσαντες = “we have not been on the false track of myths
artificially elaborated.” See F. W. Farrar, Witness of History to
Christ, 49-88. (_e_) See the two books entitled: If the Gospel
Narratives are Mythical,—What Then? and, But How,—if the Gospels
are Historic? (_f_) As the existence of the American Republic is
proof that there was once a Revolutionary War, so the existence of
Christianity is proof of the death of Christ. The change from the
seventh day to the first, in Sabbath observance, could never have
come about in a nation so Sabbatarian, had not the first day been
the celebration of an actual resurrection. Like the Jewish
Passover and our own Independence Day, Baptism and the Lord’s
Supper cannot be accounted for, except as monuments and
remembrances of historical facts at the beginning of the Christian
church. See Muir, on the Lord’s Supper an abiding Witness to the
Death of Christ, In Present Day Tracts, 6: no. 36. On Strauss and
his theory, see Hackett, in Christian Rev., 48; Weiss, Life of
Jesus, 155-163; Christlieb, Mod. Doubt and Christ. Belief,
379-425; Maclear, in Strivings for the Faith, 1-136; H. B. Smith,
in Faith and Philosophy, 442-468; Bayne, Review of Strauss’s New
Life, in Theol. Eclectic, 4:74; Row, in Lectures on Modern
Scepticism, 305-360; Bibliotheca Sacra, Oct. 1871: art. by Prof.
W. A. Stevens; Burgess, Antiquity and Unity of Man, 263, 264;
Curtis on Inspiration, 62-67; Alexander, Christ and Christianity,
92-126; A. P. Peabody, in Smith’s Bible Dict., 2:954-958.

2nd. The Tendency-theory of Baur (1792-1860).

This maintains that the gospels originated in the middle of the second century, and were written under assumed names as a means of reconciling opposing Jewish and Gentile tendencies in the church. “These great national tendencies find their satisfaction, not in events corresponding to them, but in the elaboration of conscious fictions.”

Baur dates the fourth gospel at 160-170 A. D.; Matthew at 130;
Luke at 150; Mark at 150-160. Baur never inquires who Christ was.
He turns his attention from the facts to the documents. If the
documents be proved unhistorical, there is no need of examining
the facts, for there are no facts to examine. He indicates the
presupposition of his investigations, when he says: “The principal
argument for the later origin of the gospels must forever remain
this, that separately, and still more when taken together, they
give an account of the life of Jesus which involves
impossibilities”—_i. e._, miracles. He would therefore remove
their authorship far enough from Jesus’ time to permit regarding
the miracles as inventions. Baur holds that in Christ were united
the universalistic spirit of the new religion, _and_ the
particularistic form of the Jewish Messianic idea; some of his
disciples laid emphasis on the one, some on the other; hence first
conflict, but finally reconciliation; see statement of the
Tübingen theory and of the way in which Baur was led to it, in
Bruce, Apologetics, 360. E. G. Robinson interprets Baur as
follows: “Paul = Protestant; Peter = sacramentarian; James =
ethical; Paul + Peter + James = Christianity. Protestant preaching
should dwell more on the ethical—cases of conscience—and less on
mere doctrine, such as regeneration and justification.”

Baur was a stranger to the needs of his own soul, and so to the
real character of the gospel. One of his friends and advisers
wrote, after his death, in terms that were meant to be laudatory:
“His was a completely objective nature. No trace of personal needs
or struggles is discernible in connection with his investigations
of Christianity.” The estimate of posterity is probably expressed
in the judgment with regard to the Tübingen school by Harnack:
“The _possible_ picture it sketched was not the _real_, and the
key with which it attempted to solve all problems did not suffice
for the most simple.... The Tübingen views have indeed been
compelled to undergo very large modifications. As regards the
development of the church in the second century, it may safely be
said that the hypotheses of the Tübingen school have proved
themselves everywhere inadequate, very erroneous, and are to-day
held by only a very few scholars.” See Baur, Die kanonischen
Evangelien; Canonical Gospels (Eng. transl.), 530; Supernatural
Religion, 1:212-444 and vol. 2: Pfleiderer, Hibbert Lectures for
1885. For accounts of Baur’s position, see Herzog, Encyclopädie,
art.: Baur; Clarke’s transl. of Hase’s Life of Jesus, 34-36;
Farrar, Critical History of Free Thought, 227, 228.

We object to the Tendency-theory of Baur, that

(_a_) The destructive criticism to which it subjects the gospels, if applied to secular documents, would deprive us of any certain knowledge of the past, and render all history impossible.

The assumption of artifice is itself unfavorable to a candid
examination of the documents. A perverse acuteness can descry
evidences of a hidden _animus_ in the most simple and ingenuous
literary productions. Instance the philosophical interpretation of
“Jack and Jill.”

(_b_) The antagonistic doctrinal tendencies which it professes to find in the several gospels are more satisfactorily explained as varied but consistent aspects of the one system of truth held by all the apostles.

Baur exaggerates the doctrinal and official differences between
the leading apostles. Peter was not simply a Judaizing Christian,
but was the first preacher to the Gentiles, and his doctrine
appears to have been subsequently influenced to a considerable
extent by Paul’s (see Plumptre on 1 Pet., 68-69). Paul was not an
exclusively Hellenizing Christian, but invariably addressed the
gospel to the Jews before he turned to the Gentiles. The
evangelists give pictures of Jesus from different points of view.
As the Parisian sculptor constructs his bust with the aid of a
dozen photographs of his subject, all taken from different points
of view, so from the four portraits furnished us by Matthew, Mark,
Luke and John we are to construct the solid and symmetrical life
of Christ. The deeper reality which makes reconciliation of the
different views possible is the actual historical Christ. Marcus
Dods, Expositor’s Greek Testament, 1:675—“They are not two
Christs, but one, which the four Gospels depict: diverse as the
profile and front face, but one another’s complement rather than
contradiction.”

Godet, Introd. to Gospel Collection, 272—Matthew shows the
greatness of Jesus—his full-length portrait; Mark his
indefatigable activity; Luke his beneficent compassion; John his
essential divinity. Matthew first wrote Aramæan Logia. This was
translated into Greek and completed by a narrative of the ministry
of Jesus for the Greek churches founded by Paul. This translation
was not made by Matthew and did not make use of Mark (217-224). E.
D. Burton: Matthew = fulfilment of past prophecy; Mark =
manifestation of present power. Matthew is argument from prophecy;
Mark is argument from miracle. Matthew, as prophecy, made most
impression on Jewish readers; Mark, as power, was best adapted to
Gentiles. Prof. Burton holds Mark to be based upon oral tradition
alone; Matthew upon his Logia (his real earlier Gospel) and other
fragmentary notes; while Luke has a fuller origin in manuscripts
and in Mark. See Aids to the Study of German Theology, 148-155; F.
W. Farrar, Witness of History to Christ, 61.

(_c_) It is incredible that productions of such literary power and lofty religious teaching as the gospels should have sprung up in the middle of the second century, or that, so springing up, they should have been published under assumed names and for covert ends.

The general character of the literature of the second century is
illustrated by Ignatius’s fanatical desire for martyrdom, the
value ascribed by Hermas to ascetic rigor, the insipid allegories
of Barnabas, Clement of Rome’s belief in the phœnix, and the
absurdities of the Apocryphal Gospels. The author of the fourth
gospel among the writers of the second century would have been a
mountain among mole-hills. Wynne, Literature of the Second
Century, 60—“The apostolic and the sub-apostolic writers differ
from each other as a nugget of pure gold differs from a block of
quartz with veins of the precious metal gleaming through it.”
Dorner, Hist. Doct. Person Christ, 1:1:92—“Instead of the writers
of the second century marking an advance on the apostolic age, or
developing the germ given them by the apostles, the second century
shows great retrogression,—its writers were not able to retain or
comprehend all that had been given them.” Martineau, Seat of
Authority, 291—“Writers not only barbarous in speech and rude in
art, but too often puerile in conception, passionate in temper,
and credulous in belief. The legends of Papias, the visions of
Hermas, the imbecility of Irenæus, the fury of Tertullian, the
rancor and indelicacy of Jerome, the stormy intolerance of
Augustine, cannot fail to startle and repel the student; and, if
he turns to the milder Hippolytus, he is introduced to a brood of
thirty heresies which sadly dissipate his dream of the unity of
the church.” We can apply to the writers of the second century the
question of R. G. Ingersoll in the Shakespeare-Bacon controversy:
“Is it possible that Bacon left the best children of his brain on
Shakespeare’s doorstep, and kept only the deformed ones at home?”
On the Apocryphal Gospels, see Cowper, in Strivings for the Faith,
73-108.

(_d_) The theory requires us to believe in a moral anomaly, namely, that a faithful disciple of Christ in the second century could be guilty of fabricating a life of his master, and of claiming authority for it on the ground that the author had been a companion of Christ or his apostles.

“A genial set of Jesuitical religionists”—with mind and heart
enough to write the gospel according to John, and who at the same
time have cold-blooded sagacity enough to keep out of their
writings every trace of the developments of church authority
belonging to the second century. The newly discovered “Teaching of
the Twelve Apostles,” if dating from the early part of that
century, shows that such a combination is impossible. The critical
theories assume that one who knew Christ as a man could not
possibly also regard him as God. Lowrie, Doctrine of St. John,
12—“If St. John wrote, it is not possible to say that the genius
of St. Paul foisted upon the church a conception which was strange
to the original apostles.” Fairbairn has well shown that if
Christianity had been simply the ethical teaching of the human
Jesus, it would have vanished from the earth like the sects of the
Pharisees and of the Sadducees; if on the other hand it had been
simply the Logos-doctrine, the doctrine of a divine Christ, it
would have passed away like the speculations of Plato or
Aristotle; because Christianity unites the idea of the eternal Son
of God with that of the incarnate Son of man, it is fitted to be
and it has become an universal religion; see Fairbairn, Philosophy
of the Christian Religion, 4, 15—“Without the personal charm of
the historical Jesus, the œcumenical creeds would never have been
either formulated or tolerated, and without the metaphysical
conception of Christ the Christian religion would long ago have
ceased to live.... It is not Jesus of Nazareth who has so
powerfully entered into history: it is the deified Christ who has
been believed, loved and obeyed as the Savior of the world.... The
two parts of Christian doctrine are combined in the one name
‘Jesus Christ.’ ”

(_e_) This theory cannot account for the universal acceptance of the gospels at the end of the second century, among widely separated communities where reverence for writings of the apostles was a mark of orthodoxy, and where the Gnostic heresies would have made new documents instantly liable to suspicion and searching examination.

Abbot, Genuineness of the Fourth Gospel, 52, 80, 88, 89. The
Johannine doctrine of the Logos, if first propounded in the middle
of the second century, would have ensured the instant rejection of
that gospel by the Gnostics, who ascribed creation, not to the
Logos, but to successive “Æons.” How did the Gnostics, without
“peep or mutter,” come to accept as genuine what had only in their
own time been first sprung upon the churches? While Basilides
(130) and Valentinus (150), the Gnostics, both quote from the
fourth gospel, they do not dispute its genuineness or suggest that
it was of recent origin. Bruce, in his Apologetics, says of Baur
“He believed in the all-sufficiency of the Hegelian theory of
development through antagonism. He saw tendency everywhere.
Anything additional, putting more contents into the person and
teaching of Jesus than suits the initial stage of development,
must be reckoned spurious. If we find Jesus in any of the gospels
claiming to be a supernatural being, such texts can with the
utmost confidence be set aside as spurious, for such a thought
could not belong to the initial stage of Christianity.” But such a
conception certainly existed in the second century, and it
directly antagonized the speculations of the Gnostics. F. W.
Farrar, on _Hebrews 1:2_—“The word _æon_ was used by the later
Gnostics to describe the various emanations by which they tried at
once to widen and to bridge over the gulf between the human and
the divine. Over that imaginary chasm John threw the arch of the
Incarnation, when he wrote: ‘The Word became flesh’_ (John
1:14)_.” A document which so contradicted the Gnostic teachings
could not in the second century have been quoted by the Gnostics
themselves without dispute as to its genuineness, if it had not
been long recognized in the churches as a work of the apostle
John.

(_f_) The acknowledgment by Baur that the epistles to the Romans, Galatians and Corinthians were written by Paul in the first century is fatal to his theory, since these epistles testify not only to miracles at the period at which they were written, but to the main events of Jesus’ life and to the miracle of his resurrection, as facts already long acknowledged in the Christian church.

Baur, Paulus der Apostel, 276—“There never has been the slightest
suspicion of unauthenticity cast on these epistles (Gal., 1 and 2
Cor., Rom.), and they bear so incontestably the character of
Pauline originality, that there is no conceivable ground for the
assertion of critical doubts in their case.” Baur, in discussing
the appearance of Christ to Paul on the way to Damascus, explains
the outward from the inward: Paul translated intense and sudden
conviction of the truth of the Christian religion into an outward
scene. But this cannot explain the hearing of the outward sound by
Paul’s companions. On the evidential value of the epistles here
mentioned, see Lorimer, in Strivings for the Faith, 109-144;
Howson, in Present Day Tracts, 4: no. 24; Row, Bampton Lectures
for 1877:289-356. On Baur and his theory in general, see Weiss,
Life of Jesus, 1:157 _sq._; Christlieb, Mod. Doubt and Christ.
Belief, 504-549; Hutton, Essays, 1:176-215; Theol. Eclectic,
5:1-42; Auberlen, Div. Revelation; Bib. Sac., 19:75; Answers to
Supernatural Religion, in Westcott, Hist. N. T. Canon, 4th ed.,
Introd.; Lightfoot, in Contemporary Rev., Dec. 1874, and Jan.
1875; Salmon, Introd. to N. T., 6-31; A. B. Bruce, in Present Day
Tracts, 7: no. 38.

3d. The Romance-theory of Renan (1823-1892).

This theory admits a basis of truth in the gospels and holds that they all belong to the century following Jesus’ death. “According to” Matthew, Mark, etc., however, means only that Matthew, Mark, etc., wrote these gospels in substance. Renan claims that the facts of Jesus’ life were so sublimated by enthusiasm, and so overlaid with pious fraud, that the gospels in their present form cannot be accepted as genuine,—in short, the gospels are to be regarded as historical romances which have only a foundation in fact.

The _animus_ of this theory is plainly shown in Renan’s Life of
Jesus, preface to 13th ed.—“If miracles and the inspiration of
certain books are realities, my method is detestable. If miracles
and the inspiration of books are beliefs without reality, my
method is a good one. But the question of the supernatural is
decided for us with perfect certainty by the single consideration
that there is no room for believing in a thing of which the world
offers no experimental trace.” “On the whole,” says Renan, “I
admit as authentic the four canonical gospels. All, in my opinion,
date from the first century, and the authors are, generally
speaking, those to whom they are attributed.” He regards Gal., 1
and 2 Cor., and Rom., as “indisputable and undisputed.” He speaks
of them as “being texts of an absolute authenticity, of complete
sincerity, and without legends” (Les Apôtres, xxix; Les Évangiles,
xi). Yet he denies to Jesus “sincerity with himself”; attributes
to him “innocent artifice” and the toleration of pious fraud, as
for example in the case of the stories of Lazarus and of his own
resurrection. “To conceive the good is not sufficient: it must be
made to succeed; to accomplish this, less pure paths must be
followed.... Not by any fault of his own, his conscience lost
somewhat of its original purity,—his mission overwhelmed him....
Did he regret his too lofty nature, and, victim of his own
greatness, mourn that he had not remained a simple artizan?” So
Renan “pictures Christ’s later life as a misery and a lie, yet he
requests us to bow before this sinner and before his superior,
Sakya-Mouni, as demigods” (see Nicoll, The Church’s One
Foundation, 62, 63). Of the highly wrought imagination of Mary
Magdalene, he says: “O divine power of love! sacred moments, in
which the passion of one whose senses were deceived gives us a
resuscitated God!” See Renan, Life of Jesus, 21.

To this Romance-theory of Renan, we object that

(_a_) It involves an arbitrary and partial treatment of the Christian documents. The claim that one writer not only borrowed from others, but interpolated _ad libitum_, is contradicted by the essential agreement of the manuscripts as quoted by the Fathers, and as now extant.

Renan, according to Mair, Christian Evidences, 153, dates Matthew
at 84 A. D.; Mark at 76; Luke at 94; John at 125. These dates mark
a considerable retreat from the advanced positions taken by Baur.
Mair, in his chapter on Recent Reverses in Negative Criticism,
attributes this result to the late discoveries with regard to the
Epistle of Barnabas, Hippolytus’s Refutation of all Heresies, the
Clementine Homilies, and Tatian’s Diatessaron: “According to Baur
and his immediate followers, we have less than one quarter of the
N. T. belonging to the first century. According to Hilgenfeld, the
present head of the Baur school, we have somewhat less than three
quarters belonging to the first century, while substantially the
same thing may be said with regard to Holzmann. According to
Renan, we have distinctly more than three quarters of the N. T.
falling within the first century, and therefore within the
apostolic age. This surely indicates a very decided and
extraordinary retreat since the time of Baur’s grand assault, that
is, within the last fifty years.” We may add that the concession
of authorship within the apostolic age renders nugatory Renan’s
hypothesis that the N. T. documents have been so enlarged by pious
fraud that they cannot be accepted as trustworthy accounts of such
events as miracles. The oral tradition itself had attained so
fixed a form that the many manuscripts used by the Fathers were in
substantial agreement in respect to these very events, and oral
tradition in the East hands down without serious alteration much
longer narratives than those of our gospels. The Pundita Ramabai
can repeat after the lapse of twenty years portions of the Hindu
sacred books exceeding in amount the whole contents of our Old
Testament. Many cultivated men in Athens knew by heart all the
Iliad and the Odyssey of Homer. Memory and reverence alike kept
the gospel narratives free from the corruption which Renan
supposes.

(_b_) It attributes to Christ and to the apostles an alternate fervor of romantic enthusiasm and a false pretense of miraculous power which are utterly irreconcilable with the manifest sobriety and holiness of their lives and teachings. If Jesus did not work miracles, he was an impostor.

On Ernest Renan, His Life and the Life of Jesus, see A. H. Strong,
Christ in Creation, 332-363, especially 356—“Renan attributes the
origin of Christianity to the predominance in Palestine of a
constitutional susceptibility to mystic excitements. Christ is to
him the incarnation of sympathy and tears, a being of tender
impulses and passionate ardors, whose native genius it was to play
upon the hearts of men. Truth or falsehood made little difference
to him; anything that would comfort the poor, or touch the finer
feelings of humanity, he availed himself of; ecstasies, visions,
melting moods, these were the secrets of his power. Religion was a
beneficent superstition, a sweet delusion—excellent as a balm and
solace for the ignorant crowd, who never could be philosophers if
they tried. And so the gospel river, as one has said, is traced
back to a fountain of weeping men and women whose brains had oozed
out at their eyes, and the perfection of spirituality is made to
be a sort of maudlin monasticism.... How different from the strong
and holy love of Christ, which would save men only by bringing
them to the truth, and which claims men’s imitation only because,
without love for God and for the soul, a man is without truth. How
inexplicable from this view the fact that a pure Christianity has
everywhere quickened the intellect of the nations, and that every
revival of it, as at the Reformation, has been followed by mighty
forward leaps of civilization. Was Paul a man carried away by
mystic dreams and irrational enthusiasms? Let the keen dialectic
skill of his epistles and his profound grasp of the great matters
of revelation answer. Has the Christian church been a company of
puling sentimentalists? Let the heroic deaths for the truth
suffered by the martyrs witness. Nay, he must have a low idea of
his kind, and a yet lower idea of the God who made them, who can
believe that the noblest spirits of the race have risen to
greatness by abnegating will and reason, and have gained influence
over all ages by resigning themselves to semi-idiocy.”

(_c_) It fails to account for the power and progress of the gospel, as a system directly opposed to men’s natural tastes and prepossessions—a system which substitutes truth for romance and law for impulse.

A. H. Strong, Christ in Creation, 358—“And if the later triumphs
of Christianity are inexplicable upon the theory of Renan, how can
we explain its founding? The sweet swain of Galilee, beloved by
women for his beauty, fascinating the unlettered crowd by his
gentle speech and his poetic ideals, giving comfort to the
sorrowing and hope to the poor, credited with supernatural power
which at first he thinks it not worth while to deny and finally
gratifies the multitude by pretending to exercise, roused by
opposition to polemics and invective until the delightful young
rabbi becomes a gloomy giant, an intractable fanatic, a fierce
revolutionist, whose denunciation of the powers that be brings him
to the Cross,—what is there in _him_ to account for the moral
wonder which we call Christianity and the beginnings of its empire
in the world? Neither delicious pastorals like those of Jesus’
first period, nor apocalyptic fevers like those of his second
period, according to Renan’s gospel, furnish any rational
explanation of that mighty movement which has swept through the
earth and has revolutionized the faith of mankind.”

Berdoe, Browning, 47—“If Christ were not God, his life at that
stage of the world’s history could by no possibility have had the
vitalizing force and love-compelling power that Renan’s pages
everywhere disclose. Renan has strengthened faith in Christ’s
deity while laboring to destroy it.”

Renan, in discussing Christ’s appearance to Paul on the way to
Damascus, explains the inward from the outward, thus precisely
reversing the conclusion of Baur. A sudden storm, a flash of
lightning, a sudden attack of ophthalmic fever, Paul took as an
appearance from heaven. But we reply that so keen an observer and
reasoner could not have been thus deceived. Nothing could have
made him the apostle to the Gentiles but a sight of the glorified
Christ and the accompanying revelation of the holiness of God, his
own sin, the sacrifice of the Son of God, its universal efficacy,
the obligation laid upon him to proclaim it to the ends of the
earth. For reviews of Renan, see Hutton, Essays, 261-281, and
Contemp. Thought and Thinkers, 1:227-234; H. B. Smith, Faith and
Philosophy, 401-441; Christlieb, Mod. Doubt, 425-447; Pressensé,
in Theol. Eclectic, 1:199; Uhlhorn, Mod. Representations of Life
of Jesus, 1-33; Bib. Sac, 22:207; 23:353, 529; Present Day Tracts,
3: no. 16, and 4: no. 21; E. G. Robinson, Christian Evidences,
43-48; A. H. Strong, Sermon before Baptist World Congress, 1905.

4th. The Development-theory of Harnack (born 1851).

This holds Christianity to be a historical development from germs which were devoid of both dogma and miracle. Jesus was a teacher of ethics, and the original gospel is most clearly represented by the Sermon on the Mount. Greek influence, and especially that of the Alexandrian philosophy, added to this gospel a theological and supernatural element, and so changed Christianity from a life into a doctrine.

Harnack dates Matthew at 70-75; Mark at 65-70; Luke at 78-93; the
fourth gospel at 80-110. He regards both the fourth gospel and the
book of Revelation as the works, not of John the Apostle, but of
John the Presbyter. He separates the prologue of the fourth gospel
from the gospel itself, and considers the prologue as a preface
added after its original composition in order to enable the
Hellenistic reader to understand it. “The gospel itself,” says
Harnack, “contains no Logos-idea; it did not develop out of a
Logos-idea, such as flourished at Alexandria; it only connects
itself with such an idea. The gospel itself is based upon the
historic Christ; he is the subject of all its statements. This
historical trait can in no way be dissolved by any kind of
speculation. The memory of what was actually historical was still
too powerful to admit at this point any Gnostic influences. The
Logos-idea of the prologue is the Logos of Alexandrine Judaism,
the Logos of Philo, and it is derived ultimately from the ’Son of
man’ in the book of Daniel.... The fourth gospel, which does not
proceed from the Apostle John and does not so claim, cannot be
used as a historical source in the ordinary sense of that word....
The author has managed with sovereign freedom; has transposed
occurrences and has put them in a light that is foreign to them;
has of his own accord composed the discourses, and has illustrated
lofty thoughts by inventing situations for them. Difficult as it
is to recognize, an actual tradition in his work is not wholly
lacking. For the history of Jesus, however, it can hardly anywhere
be taken into account; only little can be taken from it, and that
with caution.... On the other hand it is a source of the first
rank for the answer of the question what living views of the
person of Jesus, what light and what warmth, the gospel has
brought into being.” See Harnack’s article in Zeitschrift für
Theol. u. Kirche, 2:189-231, and his Wesen des Christenthums, 13.
Kaftan also, who belongs to the same Ritschlian school with
Harnack, tells us in his Truth of the Christian Religion, 1:97,
that as the result of the Logos-speculation, “the centre of
gravity, instead of being placed in the historical Christ who
founded the kingdom of God, is placed in the Christ who as eternal
Logos of God was the mediator in the creation of the world.” This
view is elaborated by Hatch in his Hibbert Lectures for 1888, on
the Influence of Greek Ideas and Usages upon the Christian Church.

We object to the Development-theory of Harnack, that

(_a_) The Sermon on the Mount is not the sum of the gospel, nor its original form. Mark is the most original of the gospels, yet Mark omits the Sermon on the Mount, and Mark is preëminently the gospel of the miracle-worker.

(_b_) All four gospels lay the emphasis, not on Jesus’ life and ethical teaching, but on his death and resurrection. Matthew implies Christ’s deity when it asserts his absolute knowledge of the Father (11:27), his universal judgeship (25:32), his supreme authority (28:18), and his omnipresence (28:20), while the phrase “Son of man” implies that he is also “Son of God.”

_Mat. 11:27—_“All things have been delivered unto me of my Father:
and no one knoweth the Son, save the Father; neither doth any know
the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son willeth to
reveal him”; _25:32—_“and before him shall be gathered all the
nations: and he shall separate them one from another, as the
shepherd separateth the sheep from the goats”; _28:18—_“All
authority hath been given unto me in heaven and on earth”;
_28:20—_“lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the
world.” These sayings of Jesus in Matthew’s gospel show that the
conception of Christ’s greatness was not peculiar to John: “I am”
transcends time; “with you” transcends space. Jesus speaks “sub
specie eternitatis”; his utterance is equivalent to that of _John
8:58—_“Before Abraham was born, I am,” and to that of _Hebrews
13:8—_“Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and to-day, yea and for
ever.” He is, as Paul declares in _Eph. 1:23_, one “that filleth
all in all,” that is, who is omnipresent.

A. H. Strong, Philos. and Religion, 206—The phrase “Son of man”
intimates that Christ was more than man: “Suppose I were to go
about proclaiming myself ‘Son of man.’ Who does not see that it
would be mere impertinence, unless I claimed to be something more.
‘Son of Man? But what of that? Cannot every human being call
himself the same?’ When one takes the title ‘Son of man’ for his
characteristic designation, as Jesus did, he implies that there is
something strange in his being Son of man; that this is not his
original condition and dignity; that it is condescension on his
part to be Son of man. In short, when Christ calls himself Son of
man, it implies that he has come from a higher level of being to
inhabit this low earth of ours. And so, when we are asked ‘What
think ye of the Christ? whose son is he?’ we must answer, not
simply, He is Son of man, but also, He is Son of God.” On Son of
man, see Driver; on Son of God, see Sanday; both in Hastings’
Dictionary of the Bible. Sanday: “The Son is so called primarily
as incarnate. But that which is the essence of the Incarnation
must needs be also larger than the Incarnation. It must needs have
its roots in the eternity of Godhead.” Gore, Incarnation, 65,
73—“Christ, the final Judge, of the synoptics, is not dissociable
from the divine, eternal Being, of the fourth gospel.”

(_c_) The preëxistence and atonement of Christ cannot be regarded as accretions upon the original gospel, since these find expression in Paul who wrote before any of our evangelists, and in his epistles anticipated the Logos-doctrine of John.

(_d_) We may grant that Greek influence, through the Alexandrian philosophy, helped the New Testament writers to discern what was already present in the life and work and teaching of Jesus; but, like the microscope which discovers but does not create, it added nothing to the substance of the faith.

Gore, Incarnation, 62—“The divinity, incarnation, resurrection of
Christ were not an accretion upon the original belief of the
apostles and their first disciples, for these are all recognized
as uncontroverted matters of faith in the four great epistles of
Paul, written at a date when the greater part of those who had
seen the risen Christ were still alive.” The Alexandrian
philosophy was not the source of apostolic doctrine, but only the
form in which that doctrine was cast, the light thrown upon it
which brought out its meaning. A. H. Strong, Christ in Creation,
146—“When we come to John’s gospel, therefore, we find in it the
mere unfolding of truth that for substance had been in the world
for at least sixty years.... If the Platonizing philosophy of
Alexandria assisted in this genuine development of Christian
doctrine, then the Alexandrian philosophy was a providential help
to inspiration. The microscope does not invent; it only discovers.
Paul and John did not add to the truth of Christ; their
philosophical equipment was only a microscope which brought into
clear view the truth that was there already.”

Pfleiderer, Philos. Religion, 1:126—“The metaphysical conception
of the Logos, as immanent in the world and ordering it according
to law, was filled with religious and moral contents. In Jesus the
cosmical principle of nature became a religious principle of
salvation.” See Kilpatrick’s article on Philosophy, in Hastings’
Bible Dictionary. Kilpatrick holds that Harnack ignores the
self-consciousness of Jesus; does not fairly interpret the Acts in
its mention of the early worship of Jesus by the church before
Greek philosophy had influenced it; refers to the intellectual
peculiarities of the N. T. writers conceptions which Paul insists
are simply the faith of all Christian people as such; forgets that
the Christian idea of union with God secured through the atoning
and reconciling work of a personal Redeemer utterly transcended
Greek thought, and furnished the solution of the problem after
which Greek philosophy was vainly groping.

(_e_) Though Mark says nothing of the virgin-birth because his story is limited to what the apostles had witnessed of Jesus’ deeds, Matthew apparently gives us Joseph’s story and Luke gives Mary’s story—both stories naturally published only after Jesus’ resurrection.

(_f_) The larger understanding of doctrine after Jesus’ death was itself predicted by our Lord (John 16:12). The Holy Spirit was to bring his teachings to remembrance, and to guide into all the truth (16:13), and the apostles were to continue the work of teaching which he had begun (Acts 1:1).

_John 16:12, 13—_“I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye
cannot bear them now. Howbeit, when he, the Spirit of truth, is
come, he shall guide you into all the truth”; _Acts 1:1—_“The
former treatise I made, O Theophilus, concerning all that Jesus
began to do and to teach.” A. H. Strong, Christ in Creation,
146—“That the beloved disciple, after a half century of meditation
upon what he had seen and heard of God manifest in the flesh,
should have penetrated more deeply into the meaning of that
wonderful revelation is not only not surprising,—it is precisely
what Jesus himself foretold. Our Lord had many things to say to
his disciples, but then they could not bear them. He promised that
the Holy Spirit should bring to their remembrance both himself and
his words, and should lead them into all the truth. And this is
the whole secret of what are called accretions to original
Christianity. So far as they are contained in Scripture, they are
inspired discoveries and unfoldings, not mere speculations and
inventions. They are not additions, but elucidations, not vain
imaginings, but correct interpretations.... When the later
theology, then, throws out the supernatural and dogmatic, as
coming not from Jesus but from Paul’s epistles and from the fourth
gospel, our claim is that Paul and John are only inspired and
authoritative interpreters of Jesus, seeing themselves and making
us see the fulness of the Godhead that dwelt in him.”

While Harnack, in our judgment, errs in his view that Paul
contributed to the gospel elements which it did not originally
possess, he shows us very clearly many of the elements in that
gospel which he was the first to recognize. In his Wesen des
Christenthums, 111, he tells us that a few years ago a celebrated
Protestant theologian declared that Paul, with his Rabbinical
theology, was the destroyer of the Christian religion. Others have
regarded him as the founder of that religion. But the majority
have seen in him the apostle who best understood his Lord and did
most to continue his work. Paul, as Harnack maintains, first
comprehended the gospel definitely: (1) as an accomplished
redemption and a present salvation—the crucified and risen Christ
as giving access to God and righteousness and peace therewith; (2)
as something new, which does away with the religion of the law;
(3) as meant for all, and therefore for Gentiles also, indeed, as
superseding Judaism; (4) as expressed in terms which are not
simply Greek but also human,—Paul made the gospel comprehensible
to the world. Islam, rising in Arabia, is an Arabian religion
still. Buddhism remains an Indian religion. Christianity is at
home in all lands. Paul put new life into the Roman empire, and
inaugurated the Christian culture of the West. He turned a local
into a universal religion. His influence however, according to
Harnack, tended to the undue exaltation of organization and dogma
and O. T. inspiration—points in which, in our judgment, Paul took
sober middle ground and saved Christian truth for the world.

2. Genuineness of the Books of the Old Testament.

Since nearly one half of the Old Testament is of anonymous authorship and certain of its books may be attributed to definite historic characters only by way of convenient classification or of literary personification, we here mean by genuineness honesty of purpose and freedom from anything counterfeit or intentionally deceptive so far as respects the age or the authorship of the documents.

We show the genuineness of the Old Testament books:

(_a_) From the witness of the New Testament, in which all but six books of the Old Testament are either quoted or alluded to as genuine.

The N. T. shows coincidences of language with the O. T. Apocryphal
books, but it contains only one direct quotation from them; while,
with the exception of Judges, Ecclesiastes, Canticles, Esther,
Ezra, and Nehemiah, every book in the Hebrew canon is used either
for illustration or proof. The single Apocryphal quotation is
found in _Jude 14_ and is in all probability taken from the book
of Enoch. Although Volkmar puts the date of this book at 132 A.
D., and although some critics hold that Jude quoted only the same
primitive tradition of which the author of the book of Enoch
afterwards made use, the weight of modern scholarship inclines to
the opinion that the book itself was written as early as 170-70 B.
C., and that Jude quoted from it; see Hastings’ Bible Dictionary:
Book of Enoch; Sanday, Bampton Lect. on Inspiration, 95. “If Paul
could quote from Gentile poets (_Acts 17:28_; _Titus 1:12_), it is
hard to understand why Jude could not cite a work which was
certainly in high standing among the faithful”; see Schodde, Book
of Enoch, 41, with the Introd. by Ezra Abbot. While _Jude 14_
gives us the only direct and express quotation from an Apocryphal
book, _Jude 6_ and _9_ contain allusions to the Book of Enoch and
to the Assumption of Moses; see Charles, Assumption of Moses, 62.
In _Hebrews 1:3_, we have words taken from Wisdom 7:26; and
_Hebrews 11:34-38_ is a reminiscence of 1 Maccabees.

(_b_) From the testimony of Jewish authorities, ancient and modern, who declare the same books to be sacred, and only the same books, that are now comprised in our Old Testament Scriptures.

Josephus enumerates twenty-two of these books “which are justly
accredited” (omit θεῖα—Niese, and Hastings’ Dict., 3:607). Our
present Hebrew Bible makes twenty-four, by separating Ruth from
Judges, and Lamentations from Jeremiah. See Josephus, Against
Apion, 1:8; Smith’s Bible Dictionary, article on the Canon, 1:359,
360. Philo (born 20 B. C.) never quotes an Apocryphal book,
although he does quote from nearly all the books of the O. T.; see
Ryle, Philo and Holy Scripture. George Adam Smith, Modern
Criticism and Preaching, 7—“The theory which ascribed the Canon of
the O. T. to a single decision of the Jewish church in the days of
its inspiration is not a theory supported by facts. The growth of
the O. T. Canon was very gradual. Virtually it began in 621 B. C.,
with the acceptance by all Judah of Deuteronomy, and the adoption
of the whole Law, or first five books of the O. T., under Nehemiah
in 445 B. C. Then came the prophets before 200 B. C., and the
Hagiographa from a century to two centuries later. The strict
definition of the last division was not complete by the time of
Christ. Christ seems to testify to the Law, the Prophets, and the
Psalms; yet neither Christ nor his apostles make any quotation
from Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther, Canticles, or Ecclesiastes, the last
of which books were not yet recognized by all the Jewish schools.
But while Christ is the chief authority for the O. T., he was also
its first critic. He rejected some parts of the Law and was
indifferent to many others. He enlarged the sixth and seventh
commandments, and reversed the eye for an eye, and the permission
of divorce; touched the leper, and reckoned all foods lawful;
broke away from literal observance of the Sabbath-day; left no
commands about sacrifice, temple-worship, circumcision, but, by
institution of the New Covenant, abrogated these sacraments of the
Old. The apostles appealed to extra-canonical writings.” Gladden,
Seven Puzzling Bible Books, 68-96—“Doubts were entertained in our
Lord’s day as to the canonicity of several parts of the O. T.,
especially Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon, Esther.”

(_c_) From the testimony of the Septuagint translation, dating from the first half of the third century, or from 280 to 180 B. C.

MSS. of the Septuagint contain, indeed, the O. T. Apocrypha, but
the writers of the latter do not recognize their own work as on a
level with the canonical Scriptures, which they regard as distinct
from all other books (Ecclesiasticus, prologue, and 48:24; also
24:23-27; 1 Mac. 12:9; 2 Mac. 6:23; 1 Esd. 1:28; 6:1; Baruch
2:21). So both ancient and modern Jews. See Bissell, in Lange’s
Commentary on the Apocrypha, Introduction, 44. In the prologue to
the apocryphal book of Ecclesiasticus, we read of “the Law and the
Prophets and the rest of the books,” which shows that as early as
130 B. C., the probable date of Ecclesiasticus, a threefold
division of the Jewish sacred books was recognized. That the
author, however, did not conceive of these books as constituting a
completed canon seems evident from his assertion in this
connection that his grandfather Jesus also wrote. 1 Mac. 12:9
(80-90 B. C.) speaks of “the sacred books which are now in our
hands.” Hastings, Bible Dictionary, 3:611—“The O. T. was the
result of a gradual process which began with the sanction of the
Hexateuch by Ezra and Nehemiah, and practically closed with the
decisions of the Council of Jamnia”—Jamnia is the ancient Jabneh,
7 miles south by west of Tiberias, where met a council of rabbins
at some time between 90 to 118 A. D. This Council decided in favor
of Canticles and Ecclesiastes, and closed the O. T. Canon.

The Greek version of the Pentateuch which forms a part of the
Septuagint is said by Josephus to have been made in the reign and
by the order of Ptolemy Philadelphus, King of Egypt, about 270 or
280 B. C. “The legend is that it was made by seventy-two persons
in seventy-two days. It is supposed, however, by modern critics
that this version of the several books is the work not only of
different hands but of separate times. It is probable that at
first only the Pentateuch was translated, and the remaining books
gradually; but the translation is believed to have been completed
by the second century B. C.” (Century Dictionary, _in voce_). It
therefore furnishes an important witness to the genuineness of our
O. T. documents. Driver, Introd. to O. T. Lit., xxxi—“For the
opinion, often met with in modern books, that the Canon of the O.
T. was closed by Ezra, or in Ezra’s time, there is no foundation
in antiquity whatever.... All that can reasonably be treated as
historical in the accounts of Ezra’s literary labors is limited to
the Law.”

(_d_) From indications that soon after the exile, and so early as the times of Ezra and Nehemiah (500-450 B. C.), the Pentateuch together with the book of Joshua was not only in existence but was regarded as authoritative.

2 Mac, 2:13-15 intimates that Nehemiah founded a library, and
there is a tradition that a “Great Synagogue” was gathered in his
time to determine the Canon. But Hastings’ Dictionary, 4:644,
asserts that “the Great Synagogue was originally a meeting, and
not an institution. It met once for all, and all that is told
about it, except what we read in Nehemiah, is pure fable of the
later Jews.” In like manner no dependence is to be placed upon the
tradition that Ezra miraculously restored the ancient Scriptures
that had been lost during the exile. Clement of Alexandria says:
“Since the Scriptures perished in the Captivity of Nebuchadnezzar,
Esdras (the Greek form of Ezra) the Levite, the priest, in the
time of Artaxerxes, King of the Persians, having become inspired
in the exercise of prophecy, restored again the whole of the
ancient Scriptures.” But the work now divided into 1 and 2
Chronicles, Ezra and Nehemiah, mentions Darius Codomannus (_Neh.
12:22_), whose date is 336 B. C. The utmost the tradition proves
is that about 300 B. C. the Pentateuch was in some sense
attributed to Moses; see Bacon, Genesis of Genesis, 35; Bib. Sac.,
1863:381, 660, 799; Smith, Bible Dict., art.: Pentateuch;
Theological Eclectic, 6:215; Bissell, Hist. Origin of the Bible,
398-403. On the Men of the Great Synagogue, see Wright,
Ecclesiastes, 5-12, 475-477.

(_e_) From the testimony of the Samaritan Pentateuch, dating from the time of Ezra and Nehemiah (500-450 B. C.).

The Samaritans had been brought by the king of Assyria from
“Babylon, and from Cuthah and from Avva, and from Hamath and
Sepharvaim”_ (2 K. 17:6, 24, 26)_, to take the place of the people
of Israel whom the king had carried away captive to his own land.
The colonists had brought their heathen gods with them, and the
incursions of wild beasts which the intermission of tillage
occasioned gave rise to the belief that the God of Israel was
against them. One of the captive Jewish priests was therefore sent
to teach them “the law of the god of the land” and he “taught them
how they should fear Jehovah”_ (2 K. 17:27, 28)_. The result was
that they adopted the Jewish ritual, but combined the worship of
Jehovah with that of their graven images (_verse 33_). When the
Jews returned from Babylon and began to rebuild the walls of
Jerusalem, the Samaritans offered their aid, but this aid was
indignantly refused (_Ezra 4_ and _Nehemiah 4_). Hostility arose
between Jews and Samaritans—a hostility which continued not only
to the time of Christ (_John 4:9_), but even to the present day.
Since the Samaritan Pentateuch substantially coincides with the
Hebrew Pentateuch, it furnishes us with a definite past date at
which it certainly existed in nearly its present form. It
witnesses to the existence of our Pentateuch in essentially its
present form as far back as the time of Ezra and Nehemiah.

Green, Higher Criticism of the Pentateuch, 44, 45—“After being
repulsed by the Jews, the Samaritans, to substantiate their claim
of being sprung from ancient Israel, eagerly accepted the
Pentateuch which was brought them by a renegade priest.” W.
Robertson Smith, in Encyc. Brit., 21:244—“The priestly law, which
is throughout based on the practice of the priests of Jerusalem
before the captivity, was reduced to form after the exile, and was
first published by Ezra as the law of the rebuilt temple of Zion.
The Samaritans must therefore have derived their Pentateuch from
the Jews after Ezra’s reforms, _i. e._, after 444 B. C. Before
that time Samaritanism cannot have existed in a form at all
similar to that which we know; but there must have been a
community ready to accept the Pentateuch.” See Smith’s Bible
Dictionary, art.: Samaritan Pentateuch; Hastings, Bible
Dictionary, art.: Samaria; Stanley Leathes, Structure of the O.
T., 1-41.

(_f_) From the finding of “the book of the law” in the temple, in the eighteenth year of King Josiah, or in 621 B. C.

_2 K. 22:8—_“And Hilkiah the high priest said unto Shaphan the
scribe, I have found the book of the law in the house of Jehovah.”
_23:2—_“The book of the covenant” was read before the people by
the king and proclaimed to be the law of the land. Curtis, in
Hastings’ Bible Dict., 3:596—“The earliest written law or book of
divine instruction of whose introduction or enactment an authentic
account is given, was Deuteronomy or its main portion, represented
as found in the temple in the 18th year of king Josiah (B. C. 621)
and proclaimed by the king as the law of the land. From that time
forward Israel had a written law which the pious believer was
commanded to ponder day and night (_Joshua 1:8_; _Ps. 1:2_); and
thus the Torah, as sacred literature, formally commenced in
Israel. This law aimed at a right application of Mosaic
principles.” Ryle, in Hastings’ Bible Dict., 1:602—“The law of
Deuteronomy represents an expansion and development of the ancient
code contained in _Exodus 20-23_, and precedes the final
formulation of the priestly ritual, which only received its
ultimate form in the last period of revising the structure of the
Pentateuch.”

Andrew Harper, on Deuteronomy, in Expositor’s Bible: “Deuteronomy
does not claim to have been written by Moses. He is spoken of in
the third person in the introduction and historical framework,
while the speeches of Moses are in the first person. In portions
where the author speaks for himself, the phrase ’beyond Jordan’
means east of Jordan; in the speeches of Moses the phrase ‘beyond
Jordan’ means west of Jordan; and the only exception is _Deut.
3:8_, which cannot originally have been part of the speech of
Moses. But the style of both parts is the same, and if the 3rd
person parts are by a later author, the 1st person parts are by a
later author also. Both differ from other speeches of Moses in the
Pentateuch. Can the author be a contemporary writer who gives
Moses’ words, as John gave the words of Jesus? No, for Deuteronomy
covers only the book of the Covenant, Exodus 20-23. It uses JE but
not P, with which JE is interwoven. But JE appears in Joshua and
contributes to it an account of Joshua’s death. JE speaks of kings
in Israel (_Gen. 36:31-39_). Deuteronomy plainly belongs to the
early centuries of the Kingdom, or to the middle of it.”