Henry Beam Piper and John Joseph McGuire - "Lone Star Planet"

J. E. Bygate - "Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Durham"

Jean Webster - "Jerry Junior"

Charles Beard - "Strong Souls"

Annual Bibliography of Commonwealth Literature 2007
This paper argues that discourses of love in Ghanaian market literature for youth offer a view into complex negotiations of agency and empowerment. Drawing on Deborah Durham's notion of youth as "social `shifters'" and Francis Nyamnjoh's conception of the "interconnectedness" of agency, I take Ghanaian market literature as one specific case of how African literature for youth foregrounds questions of continuity and change as African societies enter into increasingly complex global relations. In this literature for youth, received notions of love, often constructed out of impressions from American pop and hip hop music, carry new notions of agency that compete with existing "domesticated" forms. Authors like Ike Tandoh and Evelyn Tay employ discourses of love to offer youth alternative avenues for empowerment in a context of socio-economic disenfranchizement. In a creative process of "straddling", this writing both reveals and reproduces the contradictions that obtain in youth configurations of agency.

Short Studies on Great Subjects

J >> James Anthony Froude >> Short Studies on Great Subjects




We put the question hypothetically, not as meaning to suggest the fact
as uncertain, but being--as the matter is of infinite moment--being, as
it were, the hinge on which our faith depends, we are forced beyond our
office to trespass on ground which we leave usually to professional
theologians, and to tell them plainly that there are difficulties which
it is their business to clear up, but to which, with worse than
imprudence, they close their own eyes, and deliberately endeavour to
keep them from ours. Some of these it is the object of this paper to
point out, with an earnest hope that Dean Alford, or Dr. Ellicott, or
some other competent clergyman, may earn our gratitude by telling us
what to think about them. Setting aside their duty to us, they will find
frank dealing in the long run their wisest policy. The conservative
theologians of England have carried silence to the point of
indiscretion.

Looking, then, to the three first Gospels, usually called the
Synoptical, we are encountered immediately with a remarkable common
element which runs through them all--a resemblance too peculiar to be
the result of accident, and impossible to reconcile with the theory that
the writers were independent of each other. It is not that general
similarity which we should expect in different accounts of the same
scenes and events, but amidst many differences, a broad vein of
circumstantial identity extending both to substance and expression.

And the identity is of several kinds.

I. Although the three evangelists relate each of them some things
peculiar to themselves, and although between them there are some
striking divergencies--as, for instance, between the account of our
Lord's miraculous birth in St. Matthew and St. Luke, and in the absence
in St. Mark of any mention of the miraculous birth at all--nevertheless,
the body of the story is essentially the same. Out of those words and
actions--so many, that if all were related the world itself could not
contain the books that should be written--the three evangelists select
for the most part the same; the same parables, the same miracles, and,
more or less complete, the same addresses. When the material from which
to select was so abundant--how abundant we have but to turn to the
fourth evangelist to see--it is at least singular that three writers
should have made so nearly the same choice.

II. But this is not all. Not only are the things related the same, but
the language in which they are expressed is the same. Sometimes the
resemblance is such as would have arisen had the evangelists been
translating from a common document in another language. Sometimes, and
most frequently, there is an absolute verbal identity; sentences,
paragraphs, long passages, are word for word the very same; a few
expressions have been slightly varied, a particle transposed, a tense or
a case altered, but the differences being no greater than would arise if
a number of persons were to write from memory some common passages which
they knew almost by heart. That there should have been this identity in
the account of the _words_ used by our Lord seems at first sight no more
than we should expect. But it extends to the narrative as well; and with
respect to the parables and discourses, there is this extraordinary
feature, that whereas our Lord is supposed to have spoken in the
ordinary language of Palestine, the resemblance between the evangelists
is in the Greek translation of them; and how unlikely it is that a
number of persons in translating from one language into another should
hit by accident on the same expressions, the simplest experiment will
show.

Now, waiving for a moment the inspiration of the Gospels; interpreting
the Bible, to use Mr. Jowett's canon, as any other book, what are we to
conclude from phenomena of this kind? What in fact do we conclude when
we encounter them elsewhere? In the lives of the saints, in the monkish
histories, there are many parallel cases. A mediaeval chronicler, when he
found a story well told by his predecessor, seldom cared to recompose
it; he transcribed the words as they stood into his own narrative,
contented perhaps with making a few trifling changes to add a finish or
a polish. Sometimes two chroniclers borrow from a third. There is the
same identity in particular expressions, the same general resemblance,
the same divergence, as each improves his original from his independent
knowledge by addition or omission; but the process is so transparent,
that when the original is lost, the existence of it can be inferred with
certainty.

Or to take a more modern parallel--we must entreat our readers to pardon
any seeming irreverence which may appear in the comparison--if in the
letters of the correspondents of three different newspapers written from
America or Germany, we were to read the same incidents told in the same
language, surrounded it might be with much that was unlike, but
nevertheless in themselves identical, and related in words which, down
to unusual and remarkable terms of expression, were exactly the same,
what should we infer?

Suppose, for instance, the description of a battle; if we were to find
but a single paragraph in which two out of three correspondents agreed
verbally, we should regard it as a very strange coincidence. If all
three agreed verbally, we should feel certain it was more than accident.
If throughout their letters there was a recurring series of such
passages, no doubt would be left in the mind of any one that either the
three correspondents had seen each other's letters, or that each had had
before him some common narrative which he had incorporated in his own
account. It might be doubtful which of these two explanations was the
true one; but that one or other of them was true, unless we suppose a
miracle, is as certain as any conclusion in human things can be certain
at all. The sworn testimony of eye-witnesses who had seen the letters so
composed would add nothing to the weight of a proof which without their
evidence would be overwhelming; and were the writers themselves, with
their closest friends and companions, to swear that there had been no
intercommunication, and no story pre-existing of which they had made
use, and that each had written _bona fide_ from his own original
observation, an English jury would sooner believe the whole party
perjured than persuade themselves that so extraordinary a coincidence
would have occurred.

Nor would it be difficult to ascertain from internal evidence which of
the two possible interpretations was the real one. If the writers were
men of evident good faith; if their stories were in parts widely
different; if they made no allusion to each other, nor ever referred to
one another as authorities; finally, if neither of them, in giving a
different account of any matter from that given by his companions,
professed either to be supplying an omission or correcting a mistake,
then we should have little doubt that they had themselves not
communicated with each other, but were supplementing, each of them from
other sources of information, a central narrative which all alike had
before them.

How far may we apply the parallel to the Synoptical Gospels? In one
sense the inspiration lifts them above comparison, and disposes
summarily of critical perplexities; there is no difficulty which may not
be explained by a miracle; and in that aspect the points of disagreement
between these accounts are more surprising than the similarities. It is
on the disagreements in fact that the labours of commentators have
chiefly been expended. Yet it is a question whether, on the whole,
inspiration does not leave unaffected the ordinary human phenomena; and
it is hard to suppose that where the rules of judgment in ordinary
writings are so distinct, God would have thus purposely cast a
stumbling-block in our way, and contrived a snare into which our reason
should mislead us. That is hard to credit; yet that and nothing else we
must believe if we refuse to apply to the Gospel the same canons of
criticism which with other writings would be a guide so decisive. It may
be assumed that the facts connected with them admit a natural
explanation; and we arrive, therefore, at the same conclusion as before:
that either two of the evangelists borrowed from the third, or else that
there was some other Gospel besides those which are now extant; existing
perhaps both in Hebrew and Greek--existing certainly in Greek--the
fragments of which are scattered up and down through St. Mark, St.
Matthew, and St. Luke, in masses sufficiently large to be distinctly
recognisable.

That at an early period in the Christian Church many such Gospels
existed, we know certainly from the words of St. Luke. St. Paul alludes
to words used by our Lord which are not mentioned by the evangelists,
which he assumed nevertheless to be well known to his hearers. He
speaks, too, of an appearance of our Lord after His resurrection to five
hundred brethren; on which the four Gospels are also silent. It is
indisputable, therefore, that besides and antecedent to them there were
other accounts of our Lord's life in use in the Christian Church. And
indeed, what more natural, what more necessary, than that from the day
on which the apostles entered upon their public mission, some narrative
should have been drawn up of the facts which they were about to make
known? Then as little as now could the imagination of men be trusted to
relate accurately a story composed of stupendous miracles without
mistake or exaggeration; and their very first step would have been to
compose an account of what had passed, to which they could speak with
certainty, and which they could invest with authoritative sanction. Is
it not possible then that the identical passages in the Synoptical
Gospels are the remains of something of this kind, which the
evangelists, in their later, fuller, and more complete histories,
enlarged and expanded? The conjecture has been often made, and English
commentators have for the most part dismissed it slightingly; not
apparently being aware that in rejecting one hypothesis they were bound
to suggest another; or at least to admit that there was something which
required explanation, though this particular suggestion did not seem
satisfactory. Yet if it were so, the external testimony for the truth of
the Gospel history would be stronger than before. It would amount to the
collective view of the first congregation of Christians, who had all
immediate and personal knowledge of our Lord's miracles and death and
resurrection.

But perhaps the external history of the four Gospels may throw some
light upon the question, if indeed we can speak of light where all is a
cloud of uncertainty. It would seem as if the sources of Christianity,
like the roots of all other living things, were purposely buried in
mystery. There exist no ancient writings whatever of such vast moment to
mankind of which so little can be authentically known.

The four Gospels, in the form and under the names which they at present
bear, become visible only with distinctness towards the end of the
second century of the Christian era. Then it was that they assumed the
authoritative position which they have ever since maintained, and were
selected by the Church out of the many other then existing narratives
as the supreme and exclusive authorities for our Lord's life. Irenaeus is
the first of the Fathers in whom they are found attributed by name to
St. Matthew, St. Mark, St. Luke, and St. John. That there were four true
evangelists, and that there could be neither more nor less than four,
Irenaeus had persuaded himself because there were four winds or spirits,
and four divisions of the earth, for which the Church being universal
required four columns; because the cherubim had four faces, to each of
which an evangelist corresponded; because four covenants had been given
to mankind--one before the Deluge in Adam, one after the Deluge in Noah,
the third in Moses, the fourth and greatest in the New Testament; while
again the name of Adam was composed of four letters. It is not to be
supposed that the intellects of those great men who converted the world
to Christianity were satisfied with arguments so imaginative as these;
they must have had other closer and more accurate grounds for their
decision; but the mere employment of such figures as evidence in any
sense, shows the enormous difference between their modes of reasoning
and ours, and illustrates the difficulty of deciding at our present
distance from them how far their conclusions were satisfactory.

Of the Gospels separately the history is immediately lost in legend.

The first notice of a Gospel of St. Matthew is in the well-known words
of Papias, a writer who in early life might have seen St. John. The
works of Papias are lost--a misfortune the more to be regretted because
Eusebius speaks of him as a man of very limited understanding, [Greek:
panu smikros ton noun]. Understanding and folly are words of
undetermined meaning; and when language like that of Irenaeus could seem
profound it is quite possible that Papias might have possessed
commonplace faculties which would have been supremely useful to us. A
surviving fragment of him says that St. Matthew put together the
discourses of our Lord in Hebrew, and that every one interpreted them as
he could. Pantaenus, said by Eusebius to have been another contemporary
of the apostles, was reported to have gone to India, to have found there
a congregation of Christians which had been established by St.
Bartholomew, and to have seen in use among them this Hebrew Gospel.
Origen repeats the story, which in his time had become the universal
Catholic tradition, that St. Matthew's was the first Gospel, that it was
written in Hebrew, and that it was intended for the use of the Jewish
converts. Jerome adds that it was unknown when or by whom it was
rendered into a Greek version. That was all which the Church had to say;
and what had become of that Hebrew original no one could tell.

That there existed _a_ Hebrew Gospel in very early times is well
authenticated; there was a Gospel called the Gospel of the Ebionites or
Nazarenes, of which Origen possessed a copy, and which St. Jerome
thought it worth while to translate; this too is lost, and Jerome's
translation of it also; but the negative evidence seems conclusive that
it was not the lost Gospel of St. Matthew. Had it been so it could not
have failed to be recognised, although from such accounts of it as have
been preserved, it possessed some affinity with St. Matthew's Gospel. In
one instance, indeed, it gave the right reading of a text which has
perplexed orthodox commentators, and has induced others to suspect that
that Gospel in its present form could not have existed before the
destruction of Jerusalem. The Zachariah the son of Barachiah said by St.
Matthew to have been slain between the temple and the altar, is unknown
to Old Testament history, while during the siege of Jerusalem a
Zachariah the son of Barachiah actually was killed exactly in the manner
described. But in the Ebionite Gospel the same words are found with this
slight but important difference, that the Zachariah in question is there
called the son of Jehoiadah, and is at once identified with the person
whose murder is related in the Second Book of Chronicles. The later
translator of St. Matthew had probably confused the names.

Of St. Mark's Gospel the history is even more profoundly obscure.
Papias, again the highest discoverable link of the Church tradition,
says that St. Mark accompanied St. Peter to Rome as his interpreter; and
that while there he wrote down what St. Peter told him, or what he could
remember St. Peter to have said. Clement of Alexandria enlarges the
story. According to Clement, when St. Peter was preaching at Rome, the
Christian congregation there requested St. Mark to write a Gospel for
them; St. Mark complied without acquainting St. Peter, and St. Peter
when informed of it was uncertain whether to give or withhold his
sanction till his mind was set at rest by a vision.

Irenaeus, on the other hand, says that St. Mark's Gospel was not written
till after the death of St. Peter and St. Paul. St. Chrysostom says that
after it was written St. Mark went to Egypt and published it at
Alexandria; Epiphanius again, that the Egyptian expedition was
undertaken at the express direction of St. Peter himself.

Thus the Church tradition is inconsistent with itself, and in all
probability is nothing but a structure of air; it is bound up with the
presence of St. Peter at Rome; and the only ground for supposing that
St. Peter was ever at Rome at all is the passage at the close of St.
Peter's First Epistle, where it pleased the Fathers to assume that the
'Babylon' there spoken of must have been the city of the Caesars. This
passage alone, with the wild stories (now known to have originated in
the misreading of an inscription) of St. Peter's conflict with Simon
Magus in the presence of the emperor, form together the light and airy
arches on which the huge pretences of the Church of Rome have reared
themselves. If the Babylon of the Epistle was Babylon on the
Euphrates--and there is not the slightest historical reason to suppose
it to have been anything else--the story of the origin of St. Mark's
Gospel perishes with the legend to which it was inseparably attached by
Church tradition.

Of St. John's Gospel we do not propose to speak in this place; it forms
a subject by itself; and of that it is enough to say that the defects of
external evidence which undoubtedly exist seem overborne by the
overwhelming proofs of authenticity contained in the Gospel itself.

The faint traditionary traces which inform us that St. Matthew and St.
Mark were supposed to have written Gospels fail us with St. Luke. The
apostolic and the immediately post-apostolic Fathers never mention Luke
as having written a history of our Lord at all. There was indeed a
Gospel in use among the Marcionites which resembled that of St. Luke, as
the Gospel of the Ebionites resembled that of St. Matthew. In both the
one and the other there was no mention of our Lord's miraculous birth;
and later writers accused Marcion of having mutilated St. Luke. But
apparently their only reason for thinking so was that the two Gospels
were like each other; and for all that can be historically proved, the
Gospel of the Marcionites may have been the older of the two. What is
wanting externally, however, is supposed to be more than made up by the
language of St. Luke himself. The Gospel was evidently composed in its
present form by the same person who wrote the Acts of the Apostles. In
the latter part of the Acts of the Apostles the writer speaks in the
first person as the companion of St. Paul; and the date of this Gospel
seems to be thus conclusively fixed at an early period in the apostolic
age. There is at least a high probability that this reasoning is sound;
yet it has seemed strange that a convert so eminent as 'the most
excellent' Theophilus, to whom St. Luke addressed himself, should be
found impossible to identify. 'Most excellent' was a title given only to
persons of high rank; and it is singular that St. Paul himself should
never have mentioned so considerable a name. And again, there is
something peculiar in the language of the introduction to the Gospel
itself. Though St. Luke professes to be writing on the authority of
eye-witnesses, he does not say he had spoken with eye-witnesses; so far
from it, that the word translated in the English version 'delivered' is
literally 'handed down;' it is the verb which corresponds to the
technical expression for 'tradition;' and the words translated 'having
had perfect understanding of all things from the first,' might be
rendered more properly, 'having traced or followed up all things from
the beginning.' And again, as it is humanly speaking certain that in St.
Luke's Gospel there are passages, however they are to be explained,
which were embodied in it from some other source, so, though extremely
probable, it is not absolutely certain that those passages in the Acts
in which the writer speaks in the first person are by the same hand as
the body of the narrative. If St. Luke had anywhere directly introduced
himself--if he had said plainly that he, the writer who was addressing
Theophilus, had personally joined St. Paul, and in that part of his
story was relating what he had seen and heard, there would be no room
for uncertainty. But, so far as we know, there is no other instance in
literature of a change of person introduced abruptly without
explanation. The whole book is less a connected history than a series of
episodes and fragments of the proceedings of the apostles; and it is to
be noticed that the account of St. Paul's conversion, as given in its
place in the first part of the narrative, differs in one material point
from the second account given later in the part which was unquestionably
the work of one of St. Paul's companions. There is a possibility--it
amounts to no more, and the suggestion is thrown out for the
consideration of those who are better able than this writer to judge of
it--that in the Gospel and the Acts we have the work of a careful editor
of the second century. Towards the close of that century a prominent
actor in the great movement which gave their present authority to the
four Gospels was Theophilus, Bishop of Antioch; he it was who brought
them together, incorporated into a single work--_in unum opus_; and it
may be, after all, that in him we have the long-sought person to whom
St. Luke was writing; that the Gospel which we now possess was compiled
at his desire out of other imperfect Gospels in use in the different
Churches; and that it formed a part of his scheme to supersede them by
an account more exhaustive, complete, and satisfactory.

To this hypothesis indeed there is an answer which if valid at all is
absolutely fatal. We are told that although the names of the writers of
the Gospels may not be mentioned until a comparatively late period, yet
that the Gospels themselves can be shown to have existed, because they
are habitually quoted in the authentic writings of the earliest of the
Fathers. If this be so, the slightness of the historical thread is of
little moment, and we may rest safely on the solid ground of so
conclusive a fact. But is it so? That the early Fathers quoted some
accounts of our Lord's life is abundantly clear; but did they quote
these? We proceed to examine this question--again tentatively only--we
do but put forward certain considerations on which we ask for fuller
information.

If any one of the primitive Christian writers was likely to have been
acquainted with the authentic writings of the evangelists, that one was
indisputably Justin Martyr. Born in Palestine in the year 89, Justin
Martyr lived to the age of seventy-six; he travelled over the Roman
world as a missionary; and intellectually he was more than on a level
with most educated Oriental Christians. He was the first distinctly
controversial writer which the Church produced; and the great facts of
the Gospel history were obviously as well known to him as they are to
ourselves. There are no traces in his writings of an acquaintance with
anything peculiar either to St. John or St. Mark; but there are extracts
in abundance often identical with and generally nearly resembling
passages in St. Matthew and St. Luke. Thus at first sight it would be
difficult to doubt that with these two Gospels at least he was
intimately familiar. And yet in all his citations there is this
peculiarity, that Justin Martyr never speaks of either of the
evangelists by name; he quotes or seems to quote invariably from
something which he calls [Greek: apomnemoneumata ton Apostolon], or
'Memoirs of the Apostles.' It is no usual habit of his to describe his
authorities vaguely: when he quotes the Apocalypse he names St. John;
when he refers to a prophet he specifies Isaiah, Jeremiah, or Daniel.
Why, unless there was some particular reason for it, should he use so
singular an expression whenever he alludes to the sacred history of the
New Testament? why, if he knew the names of the evangelists, did he
never mention them even by accident? Nor is this the only singularity in
Justin Martyr's quotations. There are those slight differences between
them and the text of the Gospels which appear between the Gospels
themselves. When we compare an extract in Justin with the parallel
passage in St. Matthew, we find often that it differs from St. Matthew
just as St. Matthew differs from St. Luke, or both from St. Mark--great
verbal similarity--many paragraphs agreeing word for word--and then
other paragraphs where there is an alteration of expression, tense,
order, or arrangement.

Again, just as in the midst of the general resemblance between the
Synoptical Gospels, each evangelist has something of his own which is
not to be found in the others, so in these 'Memoirs of the Apostles'
there are facts unknown to either of the evangelists. In the account
extracted by Justin from 'the Memoirs,' of the baptism in the Jordan,
the words heard from heaven are not as St. Matthew gives them--'Thou art
my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased'--but the words of the psalm,
'Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten Thee;' a reading which,
singularly enough, was to be found in the Gospel of the Ebionites.

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