biography of the same man, so entirely different is its character; yet a closer comparison removes all doubt on this point, while the mingled harmony and diversity which characterise all four, make the question of their mutual relations a problem of no ordinary difficulty. Now, if the four Gospels agreed together more manifestly than they do, if no difficulties existed, we should conclude that the writers obtained their information from the same sources. If, on the other hand, there were no passages closely resembling one another, we should conclude that their sources of information were wholly different. But taking into account these peculiar features of diversity and harmony, from what authorities can they have been compiled ?* Several solutions have been proposed, but the number is now reduced to two, to which I must briefly allude. The first theory is, that the Gospels were compiled, almost simultaneously, from the oral apostolic teaching, which was of course the only source of knowledge among the earlier converts. This theory is very lucidly stated by Dean Alford, in the Prolegomena to his edition of the Greek Testament † He observes that a necessary qualification for the apostolic office was to "have known all things from the very first," and so be able to "bear witness" respecting them; that the oral instructions of the twelve to their new converts would, therefore, naturally assume a formal and authoritative character, and that their narratives of our Lord's life and teaching would be passed from one to another in the same distinct and unaltered form of words. Such valued oral accounts would, doubtless, be written down by many in portions; but in the continual transmission, words and sentences would necessarily alter more or less according to their importance. From these traditions and fragmentary writings the Gospels would be composed, and hence would arise the great verbal resemblance of many parts, combined, as it is, with constant alterations and inversions. This would, of course, only account for the parts common to them. The narratives peculiar to any one Gospel are presumed to be derived from various sources according to the opportunities of each Evangelist. *It may be asked, If the Evangelists were inspired, what need had they of authorities? But the whole structure of the Gospels forbids the idea that the writers were mere machines. We may recognise fully the independence and differing characters and designs of the Evangelists, without forgetting that the secret control and guidance of the Holy Ghost preserved them from all inaccuracy, and overruled their researches and the natural efforts of their minds to the accomplishment of the Divine purpose. + Vol. i, Proleg., chap. i. § 2 and 3. See Acts i. 21, 22; 1 Cor. ix. 1. The second theory supposes that the later Evangelists were acquainted with and made use of the writings of their predecessors. Mr. Greswell is the chief expositor of this view, and it is argued with great minuteness and ability by Mr. Birks in his Hora Evangelica. The main question is,-if St. Luke (for example) made use of the two earlier Gospels, can we account for his omitting much of their matter, and for the differences in those parts which he has in common with them? On the other hand, if he had not seen them, can we suppose that the oral tradition would have been so exact as to render parts of his Gospel almost word for word what had been written by the others? It would be impossible to argue the question within my present limits; I will, therefore, only express my decided preference for the supplemental theory of Mr. Greswell, although Dean Alford's adoption of the opposite hypothesis has led to a very wide reception of it among scholars.* The existence of the mingled harmony and diversity which has caused such opposite opinions to be held respecting the origin of the Gospels, is of itself a convincing proof of their historical fidelity The objections to the Supplemental Theory are very forcibly stated in Smith's Biblical Dict, Art. Four Gospels, the writer of which adopts Alford's view. Yet the difficulties of the theory of oral transmission seem still greater. There are one or two considerations which have not, I think, been allowed due weight in the controversy. First, if Matthew, Mark, and Luke, wrote in entire independence of one another, they must have written almost simultaneously, otherwise it is incredible that the later writers should not have been acquainted with the labours of the earlier; and accordingly the oral transmission theory is made a ground for dating all three Gospels within the narrow limits of a year or two. But surely the dates should be first fixed, and the theory made to bend to them, and Mr. Birks' argument (Hora Evang., Book ii.) for placing an interval of five or six years between each Gospel seems unanswerable. Again,-if Luke's omis sions imply ignorance of the facts omitted, and of the Gospels that record them, so also would the far more numerous omissions of St. John; but it seems impossible to suppose, although some have supposed it, that he, the only surviving Apostle, and patriarch of the Church, could have been ignorant of the three earlier Gospels. We therefore refer his alterations and omissions to the special purpose of his work; why not also those of Mark and Luke? Again, the regu lar oral instructions of the Apostles, described by Dean Alford, would certainly have included many incidents of the Lord's life which are not common to the three first Gospels, as the raising of the widow's son at Nain, given only by Luke,-and the more important parables, only two of which are given by more than one Evangelist; and also some facts omitted by all three, especially the raising of Lazarus. How can we account for these omissions? Only upon the principle of selection for a special design; and this principle might explain all the difficulties urged against the supplemental theory, if we only possessed the knowledge necessary to apply it. They are found to contain numerous "undesigned coincidences," of a kind similar to those in the Acts and Epistles which are so forcibly expounded in Paley's Hore Pauline. These coincidences are of the highest interest and value, not only as testifying to the truthfulness of the writers, but as throwing striking light on the narratives themselves. To give only one example :-St. John, in relating the feeding of the five thousand, tells us (chap. vi. 5) that Christ's question, "Whence shall we buy bread that these may eat?" was addressed to Philip. St. Luke tells us (chap. ix. 10), which John does not, that the desert place where they were assembled adjoined Bethsaida, but does not name Philip. From a third passage, in a different part of John's Gospel (chap. i. 44), we find that Philip had lived at Bethsaida, which at once accounts for our Lord's question being put to him, as one acquainted with the neighbourhood. In this and numerous other instances, the agreement is so simple and incidental, and the Gospels dovetail into one another so undesignedly, that we cannot resist the conviction that real facts are being recorded by honest writers. But if a careful collation of the Gospels reveals these hidden harmonies, so also does it reveal some apparent discrepancies. These, however, have been made far too much of by the enemies of the faith, and some of its defenders, in their laudable but extreme desire to be candid and liberal, have been too ready to concede the existence of disagreement. Of the latter, Dean Alford is a conspicuous example. In his just indignation at the readiness of the old harmonists to adopt strained explanations rather than confess a difficulty, he seems to admit that to some difficulties there can be no solution.* But this is to concede that one or other of the Gospels contains actual error, for if all are really accurate, there must be some way of reconciling all discrepancies, even though we should wholly fail to discover it. And the examples usually given of insuperable difficulties are sufficient to prove that none such exist, for there is not one of which two or three reasonable explanations have not been given.t There is the question of the two genealogies of Christ given by Matthew and Luke, which both profess to be Joseph's pedigree, and yet are very different. Two explanations have been proposed. The one which seems the favourite with modern scholars, is that • Greek Testament, Vol. i. Proleg. chap. i. § 4 and 7. The fact of expositors differing in their explanations of any given difficulty, is sometimes urged as a reason for refusing every explanation. But where there are three or four hypotheses, each of which is possibly the true one, the proba bility of one of them being right is surely increased, not diminished. Luke gives the line of Joseph's natural ancestry, and Matthew the royal line through which the rights of the heir of David would legally come to him: just as we might trace our queen's pedigree up to James I., either through the succession of sovereigns, or through the natural line of the Princess Sophia of Hanover. The other explanation of the difficulty is that Matthew gives Joseph's descent, and Luke that of Mary; Joseph being not the son, but the son-in-law of Heli, Mary's father, a view which is much strengthened by a careful collation of the Mosaic laws respecting the rights of heiresses, and by the fact that Mary is called by some early writers "the daughter of Heli." The great merit of this explanation is that it shows us how Jesus was really the Son of David, which the first does not. But either one is quite possible and reasonable, and no fair objection can be made to the harmony of the Gospels on such a ground. Among other alleged discrepancies are the following:-That Luke is at variance with Matthew and Mark respecting our Lord's visits to Nazareth during His ministry, and His treatment there;t that Matthew, Mark, and Luke, are severally at variance respecting the healing of the blind men at Jericho that the anointing of Christ by Mary is placed by Matthew and Mark three days after, and by John the night before the public entry into Jerusalem;§ that Johu differs from the three other Evangelists respecting the day and hour of the crucifixion; that the title placed by Pilate See an interesting note on Luke iii., in the Tract Society's Annotated Paragraph Bible. The view adopted above is curiously confirmed by a passage in Zeehariah (xii. 10-14): see Webster and Wilkinson's Greek Testament, note on Luke iii. + See Birks, Hora Evang., Book iii., chap. i. § 5. Mr. Ryle, in his Expository Thoughts on St. Luke (Vol. i., p. 288), gives the various explanations which have been proposed on this point. The most probable view is, that one of the blind men began to cry out as Jesus entered Jericho, and was joined by the other as He was leaving the town, when both were healed together. See Trench, Notes on the Miracles, p. 428. § St. John's account is the generally received one, his words in chap. xii. 12 being considered decisive. Matthew and Mark might well defer their mention of the incident until they were about to relate what stood in so close a connexion with it, viz., the treachery of Judas. As regards the day of the crucifixion, whether it was that before or after the Passover night, the arguments seem fairly balanced: see Ellicott, Huls. Lect., p. 323, and Birks, Hor. Evang., Book iii., chap. ii. § 7. I incline to the latter's view that our Lord ate the Passover on the Passover night, and that the Pharisees (John xviii. 28) were intending to partake of the feast before daybreak. As regards the hour of the crucifixion (Mark xv. 25; John xix. 14), the most pro on the cross is differently worded in all four Gospels; and that to weave the four discordant accounts of the events following the Resurrection into one harmonious narrative is an impossibility.t Now of all these difficulties one or more fair solutions have been offered, some of them approaching to certainty. And, in the words of Mr. Birks, “the attempts to establish a contradiction in the Gospels have, when submitted to a close examination, invariably failed Their usual result is to bring to light some undesigned coincidence, some delicate harmony of truth, which escapes the careless reader, and only reveals itself to a patient, humble, and reverent study of these oracles of God."‡ (To be continued in our next.) E. S. SCENES IN PALESTINE, AND THE LESSONS VI.-BETHANY. THIS Paper will form the concluding one of the present Series, We shall have visited together successively several spots in the Holy Land, each conveying to us by its historical associations many important lessons. Mahanaim, the refuge of the exile, on the eastern side of Jordan, was our first halting place, and then we pictured the ancient Jezreel, with its royal palaces and terraced gardens-a striking contrast to the little town which had sheltered the Patriarchs and King David. We lingered, in our third Paper upon the great stronghold of Judah, the city of Hebron, and recalled its bable opinion seems to be that St. John reckons from midnight, not from sunrise, and the same peculiarity may be traced in other parts of his Gospel, chap. i. 39; iv. 6, 52; xviii. 28 (Gr.): see Hor. Evang., Book iii., chap. ii. § 12. The diversity in the four accounts of the title on the cross is Dean Alford's great objection to the verbal inspiration of the Gospels (Proleg., chap. i. § 6). But the fact of its being written in three languages is the obvious key to the difficulty. There is good reason for supposing that John gives the rendering of the Hebrew inscription, Mark that of the Latin, Luke the original of the Greek, and Matthew (as his words perhaps imply) the substance of the accusation. Webster and Wilkinson's Greek Test., note in loco. See This "impossibility" seems clearly accomplished by Ellicott, Huls. Lect. Lect. viii. Bible and Modern Thought, p. 290. |