Short Studies on Great Subjects

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

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Another curious addition to the same scene is in the words [Greek: kai
pur anephthe en Iordane], 'and a fire was kindled in Jordan.'

Again, Justin Martyr speaks of our Lord having promised 'to clothe us
with garments made ready for us if we keep his commandments'--[Greek:
kai aionion basileian pronoesai]--whatever those words may precisely
mean.

These and other peculiarities in Justin may be explained if we suppose
him to have been quoting from memory. The evangelical text might not as
yet have acquired its verbal sanctity; and as a native of Palestine he
might well have been acquainted with other traditions which lay outside
the written word. The silence as to names, however, remains unexplained;
and as the facts actually stand there is the same kind of proof, and no
more, that Justin Martyr was acquainted with St. Matthew and St. Luke as
there is that one of these evangelists made extracts from the other, or
both from St. Mark. So long as one set of commentators decline to
recognise the truth of this relation between the Gospels, there will be
others who with as much justice will dispute the relation of Justin to
them. He too might have used another Gospel, which, though like them,
was not identical with them.

After Justin Martyr's death, about the year 170, appeared Tatian's
'Diatessaron,' a work which, as its title implies, was a harmony of four
Gospels, and most likely of _the_ four; yet again not exactly as we have
them. Tatian's harmony, like so many others of the early evangelical
histories, was silent on the miraculous birth, and commenced only with
the public ministration. The text was in other places different, so much
so that Theodoret accuses Tatian of having mutilated the Gospels; but of
this Theodoret had probably no better means of judging than we have. The
'Diatessaron' has been long lost, and the name is the only clue to its
composition.

Of far more importance than either Justin or Tatian are such writings as
remain of the immediate successors of the apostles--Barnabas, Clement of
Rome, Polycarp, and Ignatius: it is asserted confidently that in these
there are quotations from the Gospels so exact that they cannot be
mistaken.

We will examine them one by one.

In an epistle of Barnabas there is one passage--it is the only one of
the kind to be found in him--agreeing word for word with the Synoptical
Gospels, 'I came not to call the righteous but sinners to repentance.'
It is one of the many passages in which the Greek of the three
evangelists is exactly the same; it was to be found also in Justin's
'Memoirs;' and there can be no doubt that Barnabas either knew those
Gospels or else the common source--if common source there was--from
which the evangelists borrowed. More than this such a quotation does not
enable us to say; and till some satisfactory explanation has been
offered of the agreement between the evangelists, the argument can
advance no further. On the other hand, Barnabas like St. Paul had other
sources from which he drew his knowledge of our Lord's words. He too
ascribes words to Him which are not recorded by the evangelists, [Greek:
houto phesin Iesous; hoi thelontes me idein kai hapsasthai mou tes
basileias opheilousi thlibentes kai pathontes labein me]. The thought is
everywhere in the Gospels, the words nowhere, nor anything like them.

Both Ignatius and Polycarp appear to quote the Gospels, yet with them
also there is the same uncertainty; while Ignatius quotes as genuine an
expression which, so far as we know, was peculiar to a translation of
the Gospel of the Ebionites--'Handle me and see, for I am not a spirit
without body,' [Greek: hoti ouk eimi daimonion asomaton].

Clement's quotations are still more free, for Clement nowhere quotes the
text of the evangelists exactly as it at present stands; often he
approaches it extremely close; at times the agreement is rather in
meaning than words, as if he were translating from another language. But
again Clement more noticeably than either of the other apostolic Fathers
cites expressions of our Lord of which the evangelists knew nothing.

For instance--

'The Lord saith, "If ye be with me gathered into my bosom, and do not
after my commandments, I will cast you off, and I will say unto you,
Depart from me, I know you not, ye workers of iniquity."'

And again:--

'The Lord said, "Ye shall be as sheep in the midst of wolves." Peter
answered and said unto Him, "Will the wolves then tear the sheep?" Jesus
said unto Peter, "The sheep need not fear the wolves after they (the
sheep) be dead: and fear not ye those who kill you and can do nothing to
you; but fear Him who after you be dead hath power over soul and body to
cast them into hell-fire."'

In these words we seem to have the lost link in a passage which appears
in a different connection in St. Matthew and St. Luke. It may be said,
as with Justin Martyr, that Clement was quoting from memory in the sense
rather than in the letter; although even so it is difficult to suppose
that he could have invented an interlocution of St. Peter. Yet no
hypothesis will explain the most strange words which follow:--

'The Lord being asked when His kingdom should come, said, "When two
shall be one, and that which is without as that which is within, and the
male with the female neither male nor female."'

It is needless to say how remote are such expressions as these from any
which have come down to us through the evangelists; but they were no
inventions of Clement. The passage reappears later in Clement of
Alexandria, who found it in something which he called the Gospel of the
Egyptians.

It will be urged that because Clement quoted other authorities beside
the evangelists, it does not follow that he did not know and quote from
them. If the citation of a passage which appears in almost the same
words in another book is not to be accepted as a proof of an
acquaintance with that book, we make it impossible, it may be said, to
prove from quotations at all the fact of any book's existence. But this
is not the case. If a Father, in relating an event which is told
variously in the Synoptical Gospels, had followed one of them minutely
in its verbal peculiarities, it would go far to prove that he was
acquainted with that one; if the same thing was observed in all his
quotations, the proof would amount to demonstration. If he agreed
minutely in one place with one Gospel, minutely in a second with
another, minutely in a third with another, there would be reason to
believe that he was acquainted with them all; but when he merely relates
what they also relate in language which approaches theirs and yet
differs from it, as they also resemble yet differ from one another, we
do not escape from the circle of uncertainty, and we conclude either
that the early Fathers made quotations with a looseness irreconcileable
with the idea that the language of the Gospels possessed any verbal
sacredness to them, or that there were in their times other narratives
of our Lord's life standing in the same relation to the three Gospels as
St. Matthew stands to St. Mark and St. Luke.

Thus the problem returns upon us; and it might almost seem as if the
explanation was laid purposely beyond our reach. We are driven back upon
internal criticism; and we have to ask again what account is to be given
of that element common to the Synoptical Gospels, common also to those
other Gospels of which we find traces so distinct--those verbal
resemblances, too close to be the effect of accident--those differences
which forbid the supposition that the evangelists copied one another. So
many are those common passages, that if all which is peculiar to each
evangelist by himself were dropped, if those words and those actions
only were retained which either all three or two at least share
together, the figure of our Lord from His baptism to His ascension would
remain with scarcely impaired majesty.

One hypothesis, and so far as we can see one only, would make the
mystery intelligible, that immediately on the close of our Lord's life
some original sketch of it was drawn up by the congregation, which
gradually grew and gathered round it whatever His mother, His relations,
or His disciples afterwards individually might contribute. This primary
history would thus not be the work of any one mind or man; it would be
the joint work of the Church, and thus might well be called 'Memoirs of
the Apostles;' and would naturally be quoted without the name of either
one of them being specially attached to it. As Christianity spread over
the world, and separate Churches were founded by particular apostles,
copies would be multiplied, and copies of those copies; and, unchecked
by the presence (before the invention of printing impossible) of any
authoritative text, changes would creep in--passages would be left out
which did not suit the peculiar views of this or that sect; others would
be added as this or that apostle recollected something which our Lord
had said that bore on questions raised in the development of the creed.
Two great divisions would form themselves between the Jewish and the
Gentile Churches; there would be a Hebrew Gospel and a Greek Gospel, and
the Hebrew would be translated into Greek, as Papias says St. Matthew's
Gospel was. Eventually the confusion would become intolerable; and among
the conflicting stories the Church would have been called on to make its
formal choice.

This fact at least is certain from St. Luke's words, that at the time
when he was writing many different narratives did actually exist. The
hypothesis of a common origin for them has as yet found little favour
with English theologians; yet rather perhaps because it would be
inconvenient for certain peculiar forms of English thought than because
it has not probability on its side. That the Synoptical Gospels should
have been a natural growth rather than the special and independent work
of three separate writers, would be unfavourable to a divinity which has
built itself up upon particular texts, and has been more concerned with
doctrinal polemics than with the broader basements of historic truth.
Yet the text theory suffers equally from the mode in which the first
Fathers treated the Gospels, if it were these Gospels indeed which they
used. They at least could have attributed no importance to words and
phrases; while again, as we said before, a narrative dating from the
cradle of Christianity, with the testimony in its favour of such broad
and deep reception, would, however wanting in some details, be an
evidence of the truth of the main facts of the Gospel history very much
stronger than that of three books composed we know not when, and the
origin of which it is impossible to trace, which it is impossible to
regard as independent, and the writers of which in any other view of
them must be assumed to have borrowed from each other.

But the object of this article is not to press either this or any other
theory; it is but to ask from those who are able to give it an answer to
the most serious of questions. The truth of the Gospel history is now
more widely doubted in Europe than at any time since the conversion of
Constantine. Every thinking person who has been brought up a Christian
and desires to remain a Christian, yet who knows anything of what is
passing in the world, is looking to be told on what evidence the New
Testament claims to be received. The state of opinion proves of itself
that the arguments hitherto offered produce no conviction. Every other
miraculous history is discredited as legend, however exalted the
authority on which it seems to be rested. We crave to have good reason
shown us for maintaining still the one great exception. Hard worked in
other professions, and snatching with difficulty sufficient leisure to
learn how complicated is the problem, the laity can but turn to those
for assistance who are set apart and maintained as their theological
trustees. We can but hope and pray that some one may be found to give us
an edition of the Gospels in which the difficulties will neither be
slurred over with convenient neglect or noticed with affected
indifference. It may or may not be a road to a bishopric; it may or may
not win the favour of the religious world; but it will earn at least the
respectful gratitude of those who cannot trifle with holy things, and
who believe that true religion is the service of truth.

The last words were scarcely written when an advertisement appeared, the
importance of which can scarcely be over-estimated. A commentary is
announced on the Old and New Testaments, to be composed with a view to
what are called the 'misrepresentations' of modern criticism. It is to
be brought out under the direction of the heads of the Church, and is
the nearest approach to an official act in these great matters which
they have ventured for two hundred years. It is not for us to anticipate
the result. The word 'misrepresentations' is unfortunate; we should have
augured better for the work if instead of it had been written 'the
sincere perplexities of honest minds.' But the execution may be better
than the promise. If these perplexities are encountered honourably and
successfully, the Church may recover its supremacy over the intellect of
the country; if otherwise, the archbishop who has taken the command will
have steered the vessel direct upon the rocks.

FOOTNOTES:

[E] _Fraser's Magazine_, 1864.

[F] I do not speak of individuals; I speak of _tendency_.

THE BOOK OF JOB.[G]

It will be matter some day of curious enquiry to ascertain why,
notwithstanding the high reverence with which the English people regard
the Bible, they have done so little in comparison with their continental
contemporaries towards arriving at a proper understanding of it. The
books named below[H] form but a section of a long list which has
appeared during the last few years in Germany on the Book of Job alone;
and this book has not received any larger share of attention than the
others, either of the Old or the New Testament. Whatever be the nature
or the origin of these books (and on this point there is much difference
of opinion among the Germans as among ourselves) they are all agreed,
orthodox and unorthodox, that at least we should endeavour to understand
them; and that no efforts can be too great, either of research or
criticism, to discover their history, or elucidate their meaning.

We shall assent, doubtless, eagerly, perhaps noisily and indignantly, to
so obvious a truism; but our own efforts in the same direction will not
bear us out. Able men in England employ themselves in matters of a more
practical character; and while we refuse to avail ourselves of what has
been done elsewhere, no book, or books, which we produce on the
interpretation of Scripture acquire more than a partial or an ephemeral
reputation. The most important contribution to our knowledge on this
subject which has been made in these recent years is the translation of
the 'Library of the Fathers,' by which it is about as rational to
suppose that the analytical criticism of modern times can be superseded,
as that the place of Herman and Dindorf could be supplied by an edition
of the old scholiasts.

It is, indeed, reasonable that as long as we are persuaded that our
English theory of the Bible, as a whole, is the right one, we should
shrink from contact with investigations which, however ingenious in
themselves, are based on what we know to be a false foundation. But
there are some learned Germans whose orthodoxy would pass examination at
Exeter Hall; and there are many subjects, such, for instance, as the
present, on which all their able men are agreed in conclusions that
cannot rationally give offence to any one. With the Book of Job,
analytical criticism has only served to clear up the uncertainties which
have hitherto always hung about it. It is now considered to be, beyond
all doubt, a genuine Hebrew original, completed by its writer almost in
the form in which it now remains to us. The questions on the
authenticity of the Prologue and Epilogue, which once were thought
important, have given way before a more sound conception of the dramatic
unity of the entire poem; and the volumes before us contain merely an
enquiry into its meaning, bringing, at the same time, all the resources
of modern scholarship and historical and mythological research to bear
upon the obscurity of separate passages. It is the most difficult of all
the Hebrew compositions--many words occurring in it, and many thoughts,
not to be found elsewhere in the Bible. How difficult our translators
found it may be seen by the number of words which they were obliged to
insert in italics, and the doubtful renderings which they have suggested
in the margin. One instance of this, in passing, we will notice in this
place--it will be familiar to every one as the passage quoted at the
opening of the English burial service, and adduced as one of the
doctrinal proofs of the resurrection of the body:--'I know that my
Redeemer liveth, and that He shall stand at the latter _day_ upon the
earth; and _though_, after my skin _worms_ destroy this _body_, yet in
my flesh I shall see God.' So this passage stands in the ordinary
version. But the words in italics have nothing answering to them in the
original--they were all added by the translators[I] to fill out their
interpretation; and for _in my flesh_, they tell us themselves in the
margin that we may read (and, in fact, we ought to read, and must read)
'_out of_,' or _'without' my flesh_. It is but to write out the verses,
omitting the conjectural additions, and making that one small but vital
correction, to see how frail a support is there for so large a
conclusion: 'I know that my Redeemer liveth, and shall stand at the
latter upon the earth; and after my skin destroy
this ; yet without my flesh I shall see God.' If there is any
doctrine of a resurrection here, it is a resurrection precisely _not_ of
the body, but of the spirit. And now let us only add, that the word
translated Redeemer is the technical expression for the 'avenger of
blood;' and that the second paragraph ought to be rendered--'and one to
come after me (my next of kin, to whom the avenging my injuries belongs)
shall stand upon my dust,' and we shall see how much was to be done
towards the mere exegesis of the text. This is an extreme instance, and
no one will question the general beauty and majesty of our translation;
but there are many mythical and physical allusions scattered over the
poem, which, in the sixteenth century, there were positively no means of
understanding; and perhaps, too, there were mental tendencies in the
translators themselves which prevented them from adequately apprehending
even the drift and spirit of the composition. The form of the story was
too stringent to allow such tendencies any latitude; but they appear,
from time to time, sufficiently to produce serious confusion. With these
recent assistances, therefore, we propose to say something of the nature
of this extraordinary book--a book of which it is to say little to call
it unequalled of its kind, and which will one day, perhaps, when it is
allowed to stand on its own merits, be seen towering up alone, far away
above all the poetry of the world. How it found its way into the canon,
smiting as it does through and through the most deeply-seated Jewish
prejudices, is the chief difficulty about it now; to be explained only
by a traditional acceptance among the sacred books, dating back from the
old times of the national greatness, when the minds of the people were
hewn in a larger type than was to be found among the Pharisees of the
great synagogue. But its authorship, its date, and its history, are
alike a mystery to us; it existed at the time when the canon was
composed; and this is all that we know beyond what we can gather out of
the language and contents of the poem itself.

Before going further, however, we must make room for a few remarks of a
very general kind. Let it have been written when it would, it marks a
period in which the religious convictions of thinking men were passing
through a vast crisis; and we shall not understand it without having
before us clearly something of the conditions which periods of such a
kind always and necessarily exhibit.

The history of religious speculation appears in extreme outline to have
been of the following character. We may conceive mankind to have been
originally launched into the universe with no knowledge either of
themselves or of the scene in which they were placed; with no actual
knowledge, but distinguished from the rest of the creation by a faculty
of gaining knowledge; and first unconsciously, and afterwards
consciously and laboriously, to have commenced that long series of
experience and observation which has accumulated in thousands of years
to what we now see around us. Limited on all sides by conditions which
they must have felt to be none of their own imposing, and finding
everywhere forces working, over which they had no control, the fear
which they would naturally entertain of these invisible and mighty
agents assumed, under the direction of an idea which we may perhaps call
inborn and inherent in human nature, a more generous character of
reverence and awe. The laws of the outer world, as they discovered them,
they regarded as the decrees, or as the immediate energies of personal
beings; and as knowledge grew up among them, they looked upon it, not as
knowledge of nature, but of God, or the gods. All early paganism
appears, on careful examination, to have arisen out of a consecration of
the first rudiments of physical or speculative science. The twelve
labours of Hercules are the labours of the sun, of which Hercules is an
old name, through the twelve signs. Chronos, or _time_, being measured
by the apparent motion of the heavens, is figured as their child; Time,
the universal parent, devours its own offspring, yet is again itself, in
the high faith of a human soul conscious of its power and its
endurance, supposed to be baffled and dethroned by Zeus, or _life_; and
so on through all the elaborate theogonies of Greece and Egypt. They are
no more than real insight into real phenomena, allegorised as time went
on, elaborated by fancy, or idealised by imagination, but never losing
their original character.

Thus paganism, in its very nature, was expansive, self-developing, and,
as Mr. Hume observed, tolerant; a new god was welcomed to the Pantheon
as a new scientific discovery is welcomed by the Royal Society; and the
various nations found no difficulty in interchanging their divinities--a
new god either representing a new power not hitherto discovered, or one
with which they were already familiar under a new name. With such a
power of adaptation and enlargement, if there had been nothing more in
it than this, such a system might have gone on accommodating itself to
the change of times, and keeping pace with the growth of human
character. Already in its later forms, as the unity of nature was more
clearly observed, and the identity of nature throughout the known world,
the separate powers were subordinating themselves to a single supreme
king; and, as the poets had originally personified the elemental forces,
the thinkers were reversing the earlier process, and discovering the law
under the person. Happily or unhappily, however, what they could do for
themselves they could not do for the multitude. Phoebus and Aphrodite
had been made too human to be allegorised. Humanised, and yet, we may
say, only half-humanised, retaining their purely physical nature, and
without any proper moral attribute at all, these gods and goddesses
remained to the many examples of sensuality made beautiful; and, as soon
as right and wrong came to have a meaning, it was impossible to worship
any more these idealised despisers of it. The human caprices and
passions which served at first to deepen the illusion, justly revenged
themselves; paganism became a lie, and perished.

In the meantime, the Jews (and perhaps some other nations, but the Jews
chiefly and principally) had been moving forward along a road wholly
different. Breaking early away from the gods of nature, they advanced
along the line of their moral consciousness; and leaving the nations to
study physics, philosophy, and art, they confined themselves to man and
to human life. Their theology grew up round the knowledge of good and
evil, and God, with them, was the supreme Lord of the world, who stood
towards man in the relation of a ruler and a judge. Holding such a
faith, to them the toleration of paganism was an impossibility; the laws
of nature might be many, but the law of conduct was one; there was one
law and one king; and the conditions under which he governed the world,
as embodied in the Decalogue or other similar code, were looked upon as
iron and inflexible certainties, unalterable revelations of the will of
an unalterable Being. So far there was little in common between this
process and the other; but it was identical with it in this one
important feature, that moral knowledge, like physical, admitted of
degrees; and the successive steps of it were only purchasable by
experience. The dispensation of the law, in the language of modern
theology, was not the dispensation of grace, and the nature of good and
evil disclosed itself slowly as men were able to comprehend it. Thus, no
system of law or articles of belief were or could be complete and
exhaustive for all time. Experience accumulates; new facts are observed,
new forces display themselves, and all such formulae must necessarily be
from period to period broken up and moulded afresh. And yet the steps
already gained are a treasure so sacred, so liable are they at all times
to be attacked by those lower and baser elements in our nature which it
is their business to hold in check, that the better part of mankind have
at all times practically regarded their creed as a sacred total to which
nothing may be added, and from which nothing may be taken away; the
suggestion of a new idea is resented as an encroachment, punished as an
insidious piece of treason, and resisted by the combined forces of all
common practical understandings, which know too well the value of what
they have, to risk the venture upon untried change. Periods of religious
transition, therefore, when the advance has been a real one, always have
been violent, and probably will always continue to be so. They to whom
the precious gift of fresh light has been given are called upon to
exhibit their credentials as teachers in suffering for it. They, and
those who oppose them, have alike a sacred cause; and the fearful
spectacle arises of earnest, vehement men contending against each other
as for their own souls, in fiery struggle. Persecutions come, and
martyrdoms, and religions wars; and, at last, the old faith, like the
phoenix, expires upon its altar, and the new rises out of the ashes.

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