THE GOSPELS

Their Name and Nature. — At the head of the New Testament stand the four Gospels. This position has been fitly assigned to them, because, although by no means the earliest written of the New Testament Books, they contain a record of the life and ministry of Jesus Christ which forms the comer-stone of the whole fabric — Christianity being essentially a historical. religion, basing its doctrines not on fancy but on fact. The name gospel, which is the Saxon equivalent for a word in the original. meaning "good tidings," was originally applied to Christ's preaching (Matt. iv. 23; Mark i. 15), and that of the apostles (I Cor. ix. 16). In course of time it came to be applied also to the books containing a record of the great facts and truths which formed the substance of that preaching. One of the earliest writers to use the word in this sense is Justin Martyr, who wrote about the middle of the second century.¹ He frequently refers to Memoirs composed by the apostles and their companions, to which he applies the name of "Gospels"; and he informs us that they were read along with the writings of the prophets at the meetings for Christian worship each Lord's Day.

Their Authenticity. — That the Memoirs to which Justin refers are the same as the Gospels which we now possess may be inferred from the circumstance that almost all. the facts concerning Christ's life which he mentions in about 200 scattered passages of his writings are found in one or other of the four Gospels, while in all. the express quotations — seven in number — which he makes from the Memoirs  the words quoted are also to be found in our Gospels. This conclusion is strengthened by the fact that about twenty years later (170 A.D.) a disciple of Justin named Tatian, a well-informed and far-travelled man, drew up in the Syriac language a sort of harmony of the four Gospels (called Diatessaron), which had a very large circulation in the East. An Arabic translation of this work and a Syriac commentary on it have recently been discovered, from which it is evident that the four Gospels on which Tatian's work was founded were identical. with ours. In the Muratorian Fragment, also, there is a list of New Testament books, which most critics assign to about 170 A.D., where the Gospels of Luke and John are mentioned as third and fourth, the other two being apparently mentioned in a part of the MS. now lost. If further corroboration be needed, we have it in the universally-admitted fact that fifteen years later (185 A.D.) the four Gospels which we possess were circulated in all. parts of Christendom — in Europe, Asia, and Africa — in thousands of copies for the use of the innumerable Christians who heard them read at their weekly meetings for worship.

For these reasons it seems to admit of no doubt that Justin Martyr's Gospels were the same as ours; and it is easy to trace them back through a series of still. earlier writers to the testimony of the apostles. We know that Marcion the Gnostic² (140 A.D.) built his system largely on the Gospel. of Luke, of which he published a mutilated edition known as Marcion's Luke. In contrast with Marcion, Tertullian places Valentinus, another Gnostic (140-160 A.D. ), as one who used the canon in its entirety. A prominent witness is Papias (Bishop of Hierapolis), who wrote an Exposition of the Oracles of Our Lord about 135 A.D., when he was an old man. Among other things which he had gathered from personal. intercourse with friends of the apostles and with two disciples of the Lord (one "the Elder John"),³ he tells the circumstances under which Matthew wrote his Oracles and Mark his Oracles of the Lord. Still. earlier, we find many quotations more or less exact from our Gospels in the lately -discovered "Teaching of the Twelve Apostles " (dating from the end of the first or the early part of the second century) in the language of Basilides (125 A.D.), who wrote twenty-four books on "the Gospel," and in the short extant writings of Polycarp (a disciple of the Apostle John, martyred 155 A.D.), of Hermas and "Barnabas" (early in the second century), and of Clement of Rome (close of first century).⁴ They are also found in all. MSS. of the Syriac and Old Latin Versions — both of which are known to have existed in the second century. To this we may add that in the undisputed epistles of Paul, written within a generation after our Lord's death, there are numberless allusions to Christ's history, teaching, and example, which harmonise with the facts recorded in the four Gospels.

In these circumstances we may challenge those who throw doubt on the credibility of the Gospels to show at what period it was even possible for forgery or falsification to be perpetrated, and perpetrated so successfully as to impose upon all. branches of the Church, leaving its members and teachers utterly unconscious of the deception that had been practised on them — and this, in matters affecting the most vital. interests of the Church's faith, regarding which the apostles had been testifying ever since the day of Pentecost on which they began to preach in the name of their Risen Master.

Of the estimation in which the Gospels were held we may judge from the words of Irenæus, a disciple of Polycarp, who, towards the close of the second century, speaks of the written Gospel. as "the foundation and pillar of our faith"; and says regarding the Scriptures — which he defines to be the writings both of prophet and evangelist — "the Scriptures, being spoken by the Word and Spirit of God, are perfect."⁵

Their Origin. — For many years, probably for more than a generation, after the death of Christ, there does not appear to have been any authorised record of His life and teaching in the Church. The charge which the apostles had received from their Master was to preach the Gospel, and the promise of the Spirit had been expressly connected with the bearing of oral. testimony (Matt. x. 19, 20). As they had received nothing in writing from their Master's hands, it was not likely they would see any necessity for a written Word so long as they were able to fulfil. their commission to preach the Gospel, especially as they were looking for a speedy return of their Lord, and had no idea that so many centuries were to elapse before the great event should take place. The preaching of the Gospel. was enough to tax their energies to the utmost; and the task of committing to writing was not more alien to the customs of their nation than it would be uncongenial. to their own habits as uneducated Galilæns. Hence we can readily understand how it was that the Old Testament Scriptures, to which the apostles constantly appealed for proof that Jesus was the Messiah, continued to be for many years the only inspired writings acknowledged by the Christian Church. A New Testament in our sense of the term was something which the apostles never dreamt of; and it is not to the design of man, but to the inscrutable influence of the divine Spirit and the overruling working of divine Providence, that we owe the composition of our Gospels before the apostles and other eyewitnesses of the Saviour's ministry had passed away. Drawn up without concert and without the formal. sanction of the Church, they contain in a simple form, suitable for all. ages and for all. classes, several. independent records of Christ's life and teaching, of which it may be said with truth that they are better authenticated and more nearly contemporaneous with the events than almost any other record we possess in connection with any period of ancient history. Their dignity and truthfulness are only rendered the more conspicuous by the worthlessness and folly of the apocryphal. gospels invented at a later period, which were designed not so much to meet the spiritual. wants of the Church as to gratify an idle curiosity.

It is a remarkable fact that two of our Gospels do not claim to have been written by apostles, but only by companions of apostles; and that of the other two only one bears the name of an apostle of eminence. This is, so far, a confirmation of their genuineness; for if they had been forgeries claiming an authority to which they were not entitled, they would have been pretty sure to claim it in the highest form The same circumstance also shows that the apostles generally did not regard it as a duty to record their testimony in writing.

In the discharge of their commission as preachers of the Gospel, they doubtless followed the practice which was common in the East of trusting to memory rather than to written documents; and as the Church extended, and they were no longer able to minister personally to the wants of their converts or of those who required to have the Gospel. preached to them, it would become their duty to train evangelists and catechists to assist them in the work. In preaching to the heathen, it would only be the leading facts of Christ's life that would require to be proclaimed, but in the instruction of those who had already accepted the message of salvation it would be necessary to go more into detail, and set Christ before them as a guide and pattern in their daily life. This instruction was doubtless given in an oral. form, the scholars repeating the lesson again and again after their teachers — which is the meaning of the word " instructed "⁶ in Luke i. 4. We have another trace of such systematic instruction in the expression used in Acts ii. 42: "They " (the  converts) "continued stedfastly in the apostles' teaching."

The history of Christ's life and teaching was thus originally set forth not in the form of a chronological. narrative but rather as a series of lessons imparted by the apostles and their fellow-labourers as occasion required, or "to meet the needs of their hearers," as one of the early Church Fathers (Papias) says, referring to Peter's style of preaching. During the twelve years or more that elapsed before the dispersion of the apostles from Jerusalem, a recognised course of instruction had doubtless gained currency in the Church, corresponding to St Peter's definition of the period in the life of Christ which was the proper subject for apostolic testimony — "Beginning from the baptism of John unto the day that he (Jesus) was received up from us " (Acts i. 22). With this agree the specimens of apostolic preaching contained in the Book of Acts (iv. 19, 20; x. 36-43; xiii. 23-31), as well. as the allusions which the apostles make in their epistles to the Gospel. preached by them and the knowledge of Christ's life acquired by their converts. A close examination of such passages makes it evident that, while Christ Jesus was the constant theme of the apostles' preaching, they dwelt chiefly on the great facts that formed the consummation of His ministry — His sufferings, death, and resurrection; and we may regard it as an evidence of the faithfulness with which our Gospels reflect the earliest preaching and teaching of the apostles, that they give such prominence to the closing scenes of our Lord's history. We have another token of their authenticity in the fact that they narrate events not in the light shed upon them by the subsequent teaching of the Spirit, but as they were actually regarded by the disciples at the time of their occurrence, long before the publication of the Gospels.

It would seem that before our Gospels were composed, attempts had been made by private persons to draw up a connected history of the Saviour's life, or at least of His ministry. Such attempts are referred to by St. Luke in the preface to his Gospel. (i. 1-4). It is evident that he is alluding to other documents than the Gospels we possess, both because he speaks of them as " many," in a tone scarcely consistent with the respect due to apostolic records, and because a comparison of the four Gospels leads to the conclusion that he could not have had any of the three others before him when he drew up his narrative. Whatever part the previously-existing documents referred to by Luke may have had in determining the shape in which the oral. Gospel. was finally to be recorded, all. of them were ultimately superseded by our present Gospels, in whose preservation and triumph we may see an illustration, in the highest sense, of '* the survival. of the fittest."

Their Diversity. — On a comparison of the several. Gospels, a marked difference is at once apparent between the fourth and the three preceding ones. The latter are called Synoptical, because they give in one common view the same general. outline of the ministry of Christ — an outline that is almost entirely confined to His ministry in Galilee and includes only one visit to Jerusalem; whereas the fourth Gospel. gives an account of no less than five visits to the capital, and lays the scene of the ministry chiefly in Judaea. A still. more important distinction between them, with regard to the nature of their contents, has been briefly expressed by designating the synoptical. Gospels as the bodily Gospels, and St. John's as the spiritual. Gospel. — by which it is meant that the former relate chiefly to outward events connected with the Savour's visible presence, reported for the most part without note or comment, while the latter is designed to represent the ideal. and heavenly side of His personality and work. Akin to this distinction is the fact that the first three Gospels report Christ's addresses to the multitude, consisting largely of parables, while the fourth Gospel. contains discourses of a more sublime character, frequently expressed in the language of allegory and generally addressed to the inner circle of His followers.

When we enter into a closer examination of the three synoptic Gospels and compare them with one another, we find an amount of similarity in detail, extending even to minute expressions and the connection of individual. incidents, combined with a diversity of diction, arrangement, and contents, which it has hitherto baffled the ingenuity of critics to explain fully. A general. idea of their mutual. relations may be gathered from the following comparison. If the contents of each Gospel. be reckoned 100 the relative proportion of those things in which a Gospel. agrees with one or other of its fellows to those things in which it stands alone would be as follows:—

It is found that the coincidences in language are much fewer than they are in substance — which is only what might have been expected, if the several. accounts are derived from independent witnesses. Reckoning the material. coincidences in St. Matthew to be 58 as above, the verbal. coincidences would only amount to 16 or 17; in St Mark the former would be 93 as compared with 17 of the latter; in St. Luke 41 as compared with 10. It further appears that by far the greater number of these verbal. coincidences are met with in the report of our Lord's discourses and other sayings, a circumstance which confirms us in the belief that the Gospel. was handed down for a number of years in an oral. form, as the preachers and teachers would feel. bound to adhere strictly to the very words in cases of reported speech, whereas they would be under no such obligation in the narration of events. As regards the latter, a considerable modification of the oral. Gospel. would naturally take place during the long period that elapsed before it was committed to writing. The modification would vary in different parts of the Church; and it is in this way, as well. as by taking into account the possibilities of fresh lessons being added from time to time by those who had been "eyewitnesses and ministers of the word" (Luke i. 2), that we can best account for differences, both in expression and in substance, which would otherwise seem unaccountable. If the apostles' teaching was originally given in Aramaic — the form of Hebrew then spoken in Palestine — and had to be translated into Greek by the catechists, this would help still. further to account for the diversity we meet with in the Gospels.

Their Harmony. — It is possible that further study and investigation may shed more light on the historical. and literary relations of the four Gospels, but meantime it is clear that the true way to discern their harmony is not to attempt to piece them together in the vain hope of forming a complete chronological. history, but to study each from its own point of view and learn from it what it has to teach concerning the many-sided life and character of Jesus Christ. No one Gospel could possibly do justice to the infinite significance of the great theme; and instead of causing perplexity, the existence of four different Gospels should rather be matter of thankfulness, as setting Christ before us in so many different aspects of His divinely human personality, much in the same way as various portions of the Old Testament set Him forth prophetically under the several. aspects of prophet, priest, lawgiver, and king.

From the nature of the case, the Gospels are necessarily fragmentary, as indicated by St. John when he says " there are also many other things which Jesus did, the which, if they should be wntten every one, I suppose that even the world itself would not contain the books that should be written " (xxi. 25). The same writer gives us a key to the interpretation of his Gospel. when he says, " These are written, that ye may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that, believing, ye may have life in his name " (xx. 31). In like manner each of the other Gospels, while historical. in its character, is animated by a special. purpose of its own with its appropriate grouping and selection of events. Owing to the frequent change of scene and audience in Christ's ministry, the historical. sequence could not be strictly adhered to by any one desirous to trace, from any point of view, the progress of His teaching. At the same time, there was a gradual. development in Christ's ministry, culminating in His death, resurrection, and ascension; and this gradual. advance we find reflected in each of the four Gospels.

Unity amid diversity, — this is what we have to look for in the Gospels, as in the Scriptures generally; and of this we have a token in the time-honoured fancy of the Church, by which the four Gospels are likened to the four-visaged cherubim, having the faces of a man, a lion, an ox, and an eagle. This comparison has been variously applied, but the interpretation followed in modem works of art, after St. Jerome, identifies the four faces with the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John respectively, as setting forth the human, the conquering, the sacrificial, and the heaven - regarding aspects of Christ's being. We shall. probably be nearer the truth, however, if we say that while the first Gospel. sets forth Christ's life and teaching with reference to the past, as the fulfilment of the Old Testament, the Gospel. of Mark exhibits that life in the present as a manifestation of the activity and power so congenial. to the Roman mind; St. Luke, as a Greek, depicts it in its catholic and comprehensive character, as destined in the future to embrace within its saving influence all. the kindreds of the Gentiles; while the fourth Gospel. represents it in its absolute perfection as it is related to the Father in eternity.

While there is no such thing as uniformity in Scripture any more than in Nature or the Church, there is an essential. and deep-lying unity which cannot be broken without serious injury to the truth. The right way to use the Gospels is to combine their various testimony, allowing each to tell. its story in its own way and to contribute its allotted part to a full. and adequate conception of the Lord's personality and work. While each possesses a distinct indinduality of its own, they may and ought to be united in order to form a complete and grander whole. In this sense they have been likened to the four parts of music, which may be sung apart, but blend together to form a perfect harmony. A striking parallel. has been drawn by Bishop Westcott between the work of the first three evangelists and the threefold portrait of Charles I. (taken from three different points of view) which Vandyke prepared for the sculptor; while Archdeacon Farrar furnishes a beautiful. illustration when he says that " the first three evangelists give us diverse aspects of one glorious landscape; St. John pours over that landscape a flood of heavenly sunshine which seems to transform its very character, though every feature of the landscape remains the same.''⁷

1) Basilides (125 a. d.), quoted by Hippolytus, cites John i. 9 as "said in the Gospels," but some think, without much reason, that the words are to be referred to one of Basilides' school. merely. Another instance has been found in the newly-discovered Apology of Aristides (125-40 A.D.) which mentions " the sacred writing which among them (the Christians) is called Gospel." (literally "evangelic").

2) The Gnostics (who derived their name from a Greek word meaning knowledge) claimed a deeper insight into the mysteries of religion than was possessed by the ordinary believer. But they always professed to be indebted for this knowledge to their fuller comprehension of the meaning of Scripture. Hence the frequency of their appeals to the New Testament writings.

3) Cf. p. 21.

4) The extant Christian writings of the first century (other than the New Testament) are extremely meagre, while the writings of the second century till. near its close are mainly defences of Christianity (Apologies) addressed to unbelievers, with fewer quotations from the New Testament than if they had been intended for members of the Church. But the substance, and even the language, of our Gospels is woven into the earliest Christian writings that have come down to us.

5) The genuineness of the fourth Gospel. is specially dealt with in Chap. vi.. where additional. evidence will. be found specially applicable to that Gospel.

6) Taught by word of mouth by dint of repetition.

7) With regard to the harmony of the four Gospels in matters of historical. detail, while it is true that we meet with apparent discrepancies which it would require more complete information than we possess to explain fully, yet on the other hand there are many cases of undesigned harmony which afford positive evidence of their historical. accuracy and truthfulness. (See Blunt's Scriptural Coincidences.)