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Bible Dictionaries
Gospels (2)
Hastings' Dictionary of the New Testament
or GOSPELS.—The canonical Gospels (including the Synoptic Problem) are fully discussed in separate articles, so that the scope of this article does not necessarily include more than the subjects indicated in the following outline:
1. Definition of the term ‘Gospels.’
2. What brought Gospels, oral or written, into being.
3. Transition from oral to written Gospels.
4. Literary use of the term ‘Gospel’ in the Pauline Epistles.
5. Source of St. Paul’s knowledge of the Gospel story.
6. Evidence of the existence of Gospels, oral or written, when St. Paul wrote.
7. A Gospel is not a Life of Christ.
8. NT use of the term ‘Gospel’ in the sense of a written document.
9. Principle which guided the Church in her selection of Gospel material.
10. Relation between the canonical Gospels and recent literary discoveries.
11. Discussion of the evidence from Papias as to an original Hebrew Gospel.
12. Other considerations hearing on an original Hebrew Gospel.
13. A possible theory of the Synoptic Gospels.
1. The word ‘Gospels’ in Christian terminology, and as employed in this article, signifies accounts of the earthly life of our Lord Jesus Christ, of His manifestation in the historical sphere, narratives of His words and works, it being unimportant whether such narratives were delivered by word of mouth or committed to writing.
The term εὐαγγελια occurs for the first time, in extant Christian literature, in the well-known passage in Justin Martyr’s First Apology, c. 66, where he refers to it as being the usual designation of the Memoirs of the Apostles, οἱ γαρ ἀτοστολοι ἐν τοις γενομένοις ὑτʼ αὐτῶν ἁτομνημονεύμασιν ἅ καλεῖται εὐαγγελια, κ.τ.λ. Justin’s language here certainly implies that, when he wrote, the term ‘Gospels’ was in common use in the Christian Church. The phrase τὰ ἀτομνημονεύματα τῶν ἀτοστολων (c. 67) is intended only as a description, intelligible to heathen readers, of the nature and authority of the εὐαγγέλια.
2. The first question that presents itself is, What was it that called Gospels into being? The answer is to be found in that characteristic of Christianity by which it is distinguished from all other religions, viz., that it concerns the relation of mankind to a Person, not the relation of mankind to a new system of morals or philosophy. Jesus Christ was, of course, a great—we would say the greatest—moral teacher of mankind; yet the Christian consciousness has always felt that what Jesus was, and did, and suffered, has an importance and significance far transcending that which He taught. Christian ethics is derived from and dependent upon the Person of Jesus the Son of God manifested in time. If it be permissible to use in this connexion the metaphor in which the Nicene Creed endeavours to set forth the relation of the Second Person of the Trinity to the First, the ethical teaching of Christ is light generated from light. It is not that Jesus Christ is important and significant to the historian as the originator and promulgator of a singularly lofty code of morals, but rather that in the days of Caesar Augustus, ‘the eternal life which was with the Father was manifested unto us’ (1 John 1:2); and from that life so manifested certain new commandments of love resulted as a necessary consequence, and ‘old commandments which we had from the beginning’ (1 John 2:7) awoke into new life, and put on a strength which they had not had before.
Nothing, perhaps, more clearly proves the truth of what has been just said as to the importance in the Christian system of the personal history of Jesus, than the fact that His human origin and His death are treated in the Gospel narrative as having a significance outweighing all else. In the case of all other great men, birth and death, which are universal and inevitable, have for the most part only a chronological importance. But in Apostolic references to the life of Jesus Christ His human ancestry is co-ordinated with His resurrection, e.g. Romans 1:1-4 ‘the gospel of God … concerning his Son, who was born of the seed of David …, who was declared to be the Son of God … by the resurrection of the dead’; and 2 Timothy 2:8 ‘Remember Jesus Christ, risen from the dead, of the seed of David, according to my gospel.’ Acknowledgment of the Lordship of Jesus, and belief in the historical fact of His resurrection, are declared to have saving efficacy (Romans 10:9). It is evident, therefore, that a narrative of the main facts in the history of Jesus must have been from the very first the foundation or framework of the preaching of those who propagated His religion. These preachers met inquirers for the way of salvation, not with a recitation of the Saviour’s gracious words, but with ‘truth embodied in a tale’: ‘Believe on the Lord Jesus and thou shalt be saved’ (Acts 16:31). A little consideration will make it clear that a proclaiming of the resurrection of One who had been slain entails of necessity an account of who and what manner of man He was, and why He was put to death.
From indications scattered through the Book of the Acts, we gather that an evangelic narrative described Jesus as fulfilling in His lineage, character, and actions the various foreshadowings of Messianic prophecy as hitherto accepted; while the fact that He had suffered, and died, and been raised the third day, was shown to reveal the Messianic character of passages of the OT which had not been hitherto clearly understood. The Resurrection, again, was declared to constitute an authentication by God Himself of the prediction of Jesus that He would come again to judge the living and the dead; and salvation from the terrors of the judgment to come was offered on the conditions of repentance, followed by baptism into the name of Jesus. This is the barest outline of the main features in the first Christian preaching: the accomplishment in Jesus of all that was hoped for in the Christ; His death and resurrection illuminating the dark places of prophecy, and proving the truth of His own claims; judgment; repentance; baptism.
It is scarcely necessary to add that these facts or requirements would be ‘commended to every man’s conscience’ (2 Corinthians 4:2) by examples of the wisdom, sublimity, and beauty of the Saviour’s moral and spiritual teaching. Of this we have an example in St. Paul’s speech at Miletus (Acts 20:35). In this case the audience was composed of Christian elders; and it may be that a true instinct led the early preachers, in addressing the unconverted, to dwell on the Woes rather than on the Beatitudes. However this may be, the meagre sermon sketches contained in the Book of the Acts do not enable us to make a positive statement as to what the preachers said, beyond what is indicated in the outline given above.
3. We may say, then, that it was the needs of the Christian Church in her natural expansion that first called Gospels into existence. The language of St. Luke (Luke 1:1-2) confirms what we might have otherwise guessed as to the history of the transition from oral to written narratives. Those who had been privileged to be ‘eye-witnesses and ministers of the word’ ‘delivered’ (παρέδοσαν) to others what they deemed essential in what they had seen and heard in the course of their attendance on their Master, and ‘many’ of their hearers ‘took in hand to draw up narratives’ (ἀνατάξασθαι διήγησιν). It may be remarked in passing that St. Paul, who always claimed an authoritative knowledge of the capital events of the Evangelic history, uses the word παραδιδόναι of his own communications to his converts (1 Corinthians 11:2; 1 Corinthians 11:23; 1 Corinthians 15:3, 2 Thessalonians 2:15; 2 Thessalonians 3:6).
It is impossible to say how early the necessity for written Gospels arose. The expansion of the Church beyond Judaea began possibly immediately after the Pentecostal outpouring of the Holy Spirit; it certainly was in operation after the martyrdom of Stephen (Acts 11:19). The number of those who could be reckoned as ‘eye-witnesses and ministers of the word’ cannot have been very great. Even if we make the large assumption that every one of the 120 persons who were gathered together for the election of Matthias (Acts 1:15), or of the 500 brethren to whom the Lord appeared (1 Corinthians 15:6), could be so described, and that they were all subsequently engaged in active evangelistic work, yet the labour of spreading the new faith, even within the limits of Palestine, would have soon outgrown their power to cope with it. As far as the original witnesses were concerned, their memory would enable them to tell all that was necessary of the Saviour’s life, even as much as is contained in the longest of our present Gospels. Indeed, there can be no doubt that from constant, perhaps daily, repetition of some portion of the story, the recollection of the whole would soon assume a stereotyped form. But as the number of evangelists who had not ‘known Christ after the flesh’ multiplied in every direction, it would very soon become impossible for the original witnesses even to instruct all those who were to teach others. To meet this imperative and growing need—the instruction of preachers—was, we may well believe, one of the objects with which the narratives alluded to by St. Luke in his preface were first drawn up. It is natural to suppose that at first such narratives were used to refresh the memory of the evangelists; afterwards, when the first generation of believers had quite passed away, the written Gospels would be openly read, as being the most authentic account of what the original witnesses had seen and heard.
Dr. Salmon is of opinion that even before the Crucifixion some of our Lord’s discourses, or portions of them, had been committed to writing. Without going so far as this, it is scarcely open to reasonable doubt that written Gospels of some sort were in circulation well within the period covered by the Acts of the Apostles. In order the better to see this, we shall examine the evidence supplied by the Epistles of St. Paul. His writings, from their extent and the comparative certainty with which they can be dated, afford the most satisfactory grounds on which to base a conclusion.
4. It is obvious that the question when the word εὐαγγέλιον was first used in the sense in which we use it when we speak of the ‘Gospel according to St. Matthew,’ is quite distinct from the question as to when such written narratives first appeared and received any degree of public recognition. The first step towards what may be called the literary use of the term εὐαγγέλιον is to be found in passages where the word is used, not of the ‘good news’ itself, but in the sense of someone’s presentation of it.
1 Thessalonians 1:5 ‘Our gospel came not unto you in word only.’
2 Thessalonians 2:14 ‘God called you [unto salvation] through our gospel.’
Galatians 1:11 ‘The gospel which was preached by me … is not after man.’
Galatians 2:2 ‘I laid before them the gospel which I preach among the Gentiles.’
Romans 2:16 ‘God shall judge the secrets of men, according to my gospel, by Jesus Christ.’
1 Corinthians 15:1 f. ‘I make known unto you … the gospel which I preached unto you … in what words I preached it unto you.’
2 Timothy 2:8 ‘Remember Jesus Christ, risen from the dead, of the seed of David, according to my gospel.’
In these instances, certainly in most of them, the word ‘gospel’ means not so much St. Paul’s manner or method of presenting the good news of salvation to his hearers, as the actual substance of what he said. It is true that the substance of what any preacher of the gospel would say would include more than a narrative without comment, such as is one of the Synoptic Gospels; yet St. Paul’s gospel evidently did contain some merely historical matter. This point will come up for consideration later. Here it is sufficient to say that the above instances of St. Paul’s use of the word ‘gospel’ as meaning the substance of his evangelic preaching, would naturally suggest the application of the term to a narrative embodying all that it was necessary to know of the life of Jesus Christ as a means of salvation. So much was, no doubt, claimed by their compilers for the short narratives which St. Luke’s Gospel was intended to supersede; much more may it be claimed for any one of the four Gospels which have come down to us.
5. An interesting question now arises, What was the content of the Gospel presented by St. Paul to the Churches which he evangelized? and what was its relation to our existing Gospels, or any of them? It ought to be unnecessary to remark that in an examination of the Pauline Epistles for the purpose of this question, any inference drawn from silence is peculiarly precarious. It is as unreasonable to expect to find Gospel material in St. Paul’s letters as it would be to find it in the letters of a pastor or bishop of our own day. Paradoxical as it may at first seem, it is probably none the less true that the Churches to which St. Paul wrote had a more intimate and living acquaintance with the facts of the Gospel history than is usual with Christians in our own day. Every member of those Churches had been recently converted from either heathenism or Judaism. Consequently the interest they felt in their newly-acquired faith was fresh and absorbing; and the Apostle writes as though the main facts of the Gospel history were familiar to his readers. He is able to appeal in the most natural way to their knowledge of the character of Jesus, e.g. Romans 15:3 ‘Christ pleased not himself’; 2 Corinthians 8:9 ‘Though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor’; and 2 Corinthians 10:1 ‘I … intreat you by the meekness (διὰ τῆς πραΰτητος) and gentleness of Christ.’ It would doubtless be impossible to prove that St. Paul had in mind recorded sentiments of Christ similar to, or identical with, ‘The Son of Man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister’ (Matthew 20:28); ‘The Son of Man hath not where to lay his head’ (Matthew 8:20, Luke 9:58); ‘I am meek (πραΰς) and lowly in heart’ (Matthew 11:29). But it may be safely affirmed that there was in those to whom St. Paul wrote a knowledge of deeds and words of Christ that made the Apostle’s appeal intelligible.
What then was the source of St. Paul’s knowledge of the Gospel narrative? To many, perhaps most, Christians this question may appear superfluous, in view of the Apostle’s own explicit statements: Galatians 1:11 ‘The gospel which was preached by me … came to me through revelation of Jesus Christ,’ and 1 Corinthians 11:23 ‘I received of the Lord that which also I delivered unto you.’ Even if we grant, what is likely enough, that the passage from Galatians refers to St. Paul’s favourite doctrines, yet his language to the Corinthians seems to imply that his knowledge of an objective historical circumstance came to him in a miraculous manner. The present writer has no desire to minimize the miraculous element in the NT narrative, or to call in question the reality of St. Paul’s visions; but in this case an explanation can be given of the expression ‘I received of the Lord’ which will both satisfy the requirements of St. Paul’s language and also take the matter out of the region of subjective visions, and so render the statement historically intelligible and verifiable. The question is, What would one of St. Paul’s contemporary fellow-Christians have understood by ‘I received of the Lord’? The answer is supplied by parallel phrases in the Book of the Acts, and by what we learn from that book and other sources as to the ministry of prophets in the Apostolic Church. When we read (Acts 13:2), ‘The Holy Ghost said, Separate me Barnabas and Saul,’ etc., and again, (Acts 16:7) ‘The Spirit of Jesus suffered them not,’ it is natural to ask, How did the Holy Ghost speak? and how did the Spirit of Jesus control the movements of St. Paul and his company? It was through the utterance of an accredited prophet, or number of prophets, in either case. This is placed beyond doubt by an instance given later (Acts 21:11), where a prophet, Agabus, begins his prediction with, ‘Thus saith the Holy Ghost’ (cf. Acts 20:23 ‘The Holy Ghost testifieth unto me in every city’). We see, then, that Acts 13:2 means that the separation of Paul and Barnabas was in consequence of an utterance of the prophets, or one of them, who are mentioned in the previous verse; while in Acts 16:7 it was an utterance of Silas (see Acts 15:32), if not of Paul himself (see Acts 13:1, 1 Corinthians 14:37), that forbade the missionaries to cross the frontier of Bithynia.
We are now enabled to understand ‘I received of the Lord’ (1 Corinthians 11:23) in the same sense as we interpret ‘The Spirit of Jesus suffered them not.’ St. Paul did not really mean that his knowledge of the Gospel history had been acquired without human intervention, nor can he have intended his readers so to understand him. What he meant to convey was that he was convinced that the evangelist, or the source whence he derived his information, was indeed inspired by the Spirit of Jesus.
The alternative—evangelist, or source—has been purposely suggested, in order to leave it an open question, as, indeed, with our scanty information it must remain, whether St. Paul derived his knowledge of our Lord’s life from oral teaching or from a written document. At the time of his conversion there was a Christian community of some importance at Damascus; and it is probable in the highest degree that the Church there had the advantage of hearing the story of Jesus from one of those who had companied with Him during His ministry. On the other hand, St. Paul’s own statement (Galatians 1:16-17), ‘I conferred not with flesh and blood … I went away into Arabia,’ suggests a retirement for solitary study, meditation, and prayer. There does not seem any extreme improbability in supposing that even at that early date there was in circulation a Gospel narrative in Aramaic, or even in Greek. In any case, it is unreasonable to question that Saul the persecutor needed some instruction or study before he could ‘proclaim Jesus, that he is the Son of God.’
It cannot be denied, however, that the language of the heavenly vision (Acts 26:14), ‘It is hard for thee to kick against the goad,’ points most naturally to a long previous struggle between prejudices inborn and trained and the strange attractiveness of Jesus of Nazareth, whose glorious deeds and gracious words may have become known to the young Pharisee when he first arrived in Jerusalem from Tarsus. For him the gospel was a thing to which he could not be indifferent. It was either an execrable heresy or the only way of salvation. All that he had learnt from man urged him to ‘crush it, like a vice of blood, upon the threshold of the mind’ (In Memoriam, iii.); the preventing grace of God bade him ‘embrace it as his natural good.’
All that we can certainly state with regard to the Gospel story known to St. Paul, however he acquired his knowledge, is that his allusions to it, direct and indirect, ‘proceed,’ to use Paley’s phrase (Evidences, i. 7), ‘upon the general story which our Scriptures contain’; while it certainly was not identical with any of the four we now possess. This latter point is proved by the enumeration in 1 Corinthians 15 of the appearances of the risen Lord. Of the five appearances there mentioned, two, namely that to James and that to 500 brethren, are not mentioned in the canonical Gospels. It is to be noted, as possibly significant, that the appearance to James was recorded in the Gospel according to the Hebrews (Jerome, de Vir. illustr. c. 2).
6. It would be irrelevant to the purposes of this article to call attention to any correspondences between the Pauline Epistles and our present Gospels other than those that are historical or literary. It would lead us too far afield to discuss St. Paul’s Christology, and to inquire how far it was based on extant recorded statements of Jesus about Himself, how far on OT and subsequent Messianic conceptions, and how far on what we may for convenience call the Johannine theology, which, as distinct from its Johannine expression, seems to have existed in the Church from the beginning.
The faithfulness of God to His promise that the Christ should be not only of the seed of Abraham, but also of the lineage of David, is as markedly emphasized by St. Paul as it is in the Gospels: Romans 15:8 ‘Christ hath been made a minister of the circumcision for the truth of God, that he might confirm the promises given unto the fathers’; words which echo those of Zacharias (Luke 1:72-73); Romans 1:3 ‘Born of the seed of David according to the flesh’; 2 Timothy 2:8 ‘Of the seed of David, according to my gospel.’
There is no explicit reference to the Virgin-birth in the Pauline Epistles. The expressions ‘born of a woman’ (Galatians 4:4) and ‘the childbearing’ (1 Timothy 2:15) refer, the former probably, the latter possibly, to ‘the seed of the woman’ (Genesis 3:15).
The account of the institution of the Lord’s Supper, which St. Paul ‘received of the Lord’ (1 Corinthians 11:23-25), alludes to the betrayal of the Lord Jesus, and otherwise approximates most closely to that given by St. Luke, who possibly in a second edition of his Gospel revised his account in accordance with information received from St. Paul. In the previous chapter (1 Corinthians 10:16) and in 1 Corinthians 14:16 we have allusions to the words of institution which have always been used in the blessing of the bread and wine.
St. Paul’s references to the death of Christ are for the most part doctrinal, not historical. He insists on its voluntary character: ‘He gave himself for our sins’ (Galatians 1:4; cf. Galatians 2:20, Ephesians 5:2; Ephesians 5:25, Titus 2:14). The words of Jesus, extant only in Matthew 20:28 ‘The Son of man came … to give his life a ransom for many,’ seem to underlie these passages, as well as those in which the death of Jesus is spoken of as an atonement or ransom (Galatians 3:13, Romans 3:25, 1 Corinthians 15:3, 1 Timothy 2:6, Titus 2:14). Of course the sacrificial aspect of Christ’s death is also strongly emphasized in His own words when instituting the Supper.
It cannot perhaps be certainly affirmed that Colossians 3:13 ‘Even as the Lord forgave you, so also do ye’ (cf. Ephesians 4:32), was suggested by the sentiment of ‘Father, forgive them’ (Luke 23:34), for the verb is different, Lk. having ἀβιημι, Col. and Eph. χαρἰζομαι. Nor can we base any argument on the statement in 1 Thessalonians 2:15, that ‘the Jews killed the Lord Jesus’ (see Acts 3:15). There remains one definite historical allusion, 1 Timothy 6:13 ‘Christ Jesus, who before Pontius Pilate witnessed the good confession.’ Our Lord’s answer, ‘Thou sayest’ [i.e. ‘yes’], to Pilate’s question, ‘Art thou the king of the Jews?’ which is the only confession before Pontius Pilate reported in the Synoptic Gospels, hardly satisfies, important though it is, the requirements of St. Paul’s solemn adjuration.
The proclamation by Jesus before Pilate of the nature of His Kingdom, and that He had come for the sole purpose of hearing witness unto the truth, which is recorded in the Fourth Gospel, is indeed a ‘good confession’; and we must remember that although St. John did not commit his Gospel to writing until long after the death of St. Paul, yet, unless we are prepared to assert that it is a work of fiction, it seems unreasonable to question that the circumstances recorded in it, or some of them, were known to St. Paul. The omission in the Synoptic Gospels of the substance of ‘the good confession’ of which we are speaking is not more remarkable than their silence as to the appearances of the risen Lord to James and to ‘500 brethren at once.’
Passing on now to allusions by St. Paul to the moral and spiritual teaching of Jesus, there are only two explicit references to sayings found in our present Gospels. These are: (1) 1 Corinthians 7:10 ‘But unto the married I give charge, yea not I, but the Lord, That the wife depart not from her husband (but and if she depart, let her remain unmarried, or else be reconciled to her husband); and that the husband leave not his wife.’ Our Lord’s general prohibition of divorce is found in all three Synoptics; but the prohibition of divorce of her husband by a wife, of which, or its equivalent, St. Paul here chiefly speaks, is found only in Mark 10:12. It is conceivable that the prohibition was omitted by Mt. and Lk. either as unnecessary, such divorce being almost unheard of, or as implied in our Lord’s declaration that marriage, generally speaking, is indissoluble. (2) 1 Corinthians 9:14 ‘The Lord ordained that they which proclaim the gospel should live of the gospel.’ The reference is to ‘The labourer is worthy of his food’ (Matthew 10:10), or, more probably, to the form preserved by St: Luke (Luke 10:7), in which ‘hire’ is substituted for ‘food.’ That the reference is to the latter form is almost certain from the fact that the saving is given in 1 Timothy 5:18 exactly as in Luke 10:7. The natural sense of 1 Timothy 5:18 is that the saying in question was already ‘Scripture,’ in the same sense as was the quotation from Dt. with which it is coupled. This view does not involve the assumption that St. Luke’s Gospel was then not only in circulation but also received as authoritative by the Church; it merely affirms that the saving was contained in some authoritative narrative of the life of Jesus, or some collection of His sayings.
The passages which speak of Christ as Judge at the Last Day (Romans 2:16, 1 Corinthians 4:5, 2 Corinthians 5:10), accompanied by angels (1 Thessalonians 4:16, 2 Thessalonians 1:7), and executing His will with fire (1 Corinthians 3:13; 1 Corinthians 3:15, 2 Thessalonians 1:8); and that which states, as matter of common knowledge, that ‘the saints shall judge the world’ (1 Corinthians 6:2), can none of them he necessarily referred to the words and parables of Christ in the Gospels, which affirm the same things, inasmuch as these eschatological conceptions were part of the current Messianic ideas, and may all of them be derived from Daniel 7. There are, however, two details which cannot be referred to that source: (1) that the coming of Christ to judge would be heralded by the sound of a trumpet (1 Thessalonians 4:16, 1 Corinthians 15:52), and (2) that it would be sudden and unlooked for (1 Thessalonians 5:2). The wording of this latter passage is remarkable: ‘Yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord so cometh as a thief in the night.’ The only place in our present Gospels where the judgment trumpet is mentioned is Matthew 24:31, and in Matthew 24:43 of the same chapter we have the illustration of the thief’s unexpected and unsuspected attack.
There are, in conclusion, a number of passages in which it is difficult not to see references to recorded sayings of Christ.
Romans 13:7 ‘Render (ἀτοδοτε) to all their dues,’ etc. See Matthew 22:21, Mark 12:17, Luke 20:25 ‘Render unto Caesar,’ etc. (ἁπόδοτε).
Galatians 5:14, Romans 13:9 ‘Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself,’ quoted as a summary of the second table of the Law. See Matthew 22:40.
Romans 14:14 ‘I know, and am persuaded in the Lord Jesus, that nothing is unclean of itself,’ based on our Lord’s teaching in Matthew 15:11, more distinctly brought out in Mark 7:15; Mark 7:19.
Romans 16:19 ‘I would have you wise (σοφοὑς) unto that which is good, and simple (ἀκεραιους) unto that which is evil.’ See Matthew 10:16 ‘Be ye therefore wise (φρόνιμοι) as serpents, and harmless (ἀκέραιοι) as doves.’
1 Corinthians 6:7. When deprecating litigiousness, ‘Why not rather take wrong, be defrauded?’ See Matthew 5:39-40, Luke 6:29-30.
1 Corinthians 7:1 ‘It is good for a man not to touch a woman.’ This private opinion, or preferred sentiment, of St. Paul’s, is in agreement with that remarkable saying preserved only by St. Matthew (Matthew 19:12), ‘There are eunuchs, which made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven’s sake. He that is able to receive it, let him receive it.’ The caution with which our Lord prefaces this saying, ‘All men cannot receive this saying, but they to whom it is given,’ finds also an echo in St. Paul’s conclusion: ‘Howbeit each man hath his own gift from God,’ etc.
1 Corinthians 9:17 ‘I have a stewardship intrusted to me.’ See Luke 12:42 ‘Who then is the faithful and wise steward?’ etc.
1 Corinthians 13:2 ‘If I have all faith, so as to remove mountains.’ See Matthew 17:20; Matthew 21:21 = Mark 11:23.
Colossians 1:23 ‘The gospel … which was preached in all creation’ (ἐν πάσῃ κτισει). See Mark 16:15 ‘Preach the gospel to the whole creation’ (τασῃ τῇ κτισει).
The meagreness of historical material contained in these references to Jesus, His acts and sayings, which are to be found in the Epistles of St. Paul, will cease to surprise us when we compare them with the baldness of the Creeds of the Church, even of the Constantinopolitan.
7. The truth is that we have been hitherto misled by the ‘Lives of Christ’ which have from time to time appeared. The assumption that underlies an attempt to write the Life of any one is that it is possible to give an account not only of his birth and death, but to arrange in some orderly chronological sequence the movements of his life, using the term ‘movement’ in its most comprehensive signification. This it is well nigh impossible to do in the case of our Lord’s earthly ministry. Between the age of twelve years and His death the only events which really mark intervals are, His baptism by John, the Temptation, and the Transfiguration. It is true that the Fourth Gospel notes the Passovers which took place during our Lord’s ministry; but it cannot be said that any of the attempts to arrange the circumstances and discourses recorded in the Synoptics so as to fit in with St. John’s notes of time have been such as to compel belief. Moreover, although conclusions based on internal evidence must always be more or less precarious, yet there are instances of sayings of Jesus which have an early place in the Synoptic record, but which from their tone it is difficult to assign to an early stage of our Lord’s ministry.
A Gospel, in fact, is not a biography. What are of saving efficacy in the events of our Lord’s life are His birth, death, and resurrection. The fact that ‘He went about doing good, and healing all that were oppressed of the devil’ (Acts 10:38), and that His example and His moral and spiritual discourses threw a new light on the relations of men to God and to one another, this too is of great importance; but there is not any practical significance whatever in the order in which this or that miracle was performed, or this or that discourse spoken. It is not likely that the Apostolic preachers dwelt more on the historical sequence of the works and words of Jesus than do those in modern times; and in consequence, speaking generally, such sequence would be disregarded, even by original witnesses. The events of any one memorable day might be remembered and repeated exactly in the order in which they had occurred; and thus we have, no doubt, in Mark 1 an account of the incidents that were indelibly impressed on Peter’s mind in connexion with the day on which he finally left all and followed Jesus.
8. We are now ready to discuss the question, Is there any instance in the NT of the term ‘Gospel’ applied to a written document? There are perhaps two such cases.
Before citing them, it may be well to premise, (1) that they were written at a time when there must have been written accounts of some sort of our Lord’s works and words, and when the term ‘Gospel’ was unquestionably applied to oral narratives of the life of Jesus; and also (2) that in Ignatius (Phil. [Note: Philistine.] 5) ‘the Gospel’ is quite naturally applied to the Evangelic story, and, being co-ordinated with ‘the Apostles’ and ‘the Prophets,’ implies that the story was written.
The passages are: Mark 1:1 ‘The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God’; and Revelation 14:6 ‘I saw another angel flying in mid heaven, having an eternal gospel to proclaim unto them that dwell on the earth.’ However visions are to be explained, they are essentially pictures, seen by the eye before they are interpreted by the mind. This picture of the angel ‘having an eternal gospel’ plausibly suggests a figure with a scroll or roll in his hand.
The opening clause of St. Mark’s Gospel has indeed been explained as parallel to Philippians 4:15, where ‘the beginning of the gospel is relative to the person apprehending it’ (Grimm-Thayer), as though it referred to the preaching of John the Baptist. This interpretation seems to the present writer far-fetched. It is surely more natural to take it as the title of the book, and, as Dr. Salmon thinks, modelled on Hosea 1:2 Ἀρχὴ λόγου Κυρίου ἑν Ὡσῆε. It is not easy to give reasons why a considerable interval should elapse between the application of the term ‘Gospel’ to an oral narrative, and to the same narrative when committed to writing. It may be fairly asked, How would the writer of the Second Gospel have been likely to describe his work? It is not probable that St. Mark’s Gospel, as we have it, was actually the first narrative drawn up. Nor can it be fairly said that the language of St. Luke, in his preface, proves that he was unacquainted with the term ‘Gospel’ in the sense of a document. The use or a Christian technical term would have seemed to St. Luke out of place in a section in which he was carefully using what he deemed his best literary style.
9. What has been said in explanation of St. Paul’s statement that his knowledge of Gospel facts had been received from the Lord, i.e. from a man inspired by the Lord, a prophet-evangelist, suggests the answer to the question, How did the Church recognize the inspiration of the narratives which she finally, and at a very early date, acquiesced in as authoritative Gospels? It was through the double and almost simultaneous action of the original Evangelist or Evangelists, and the judgment of the Church on the sections of the Gospel story delivered on successive Lord’s Days, both directed and suggested and controlled by the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Jesus.
It is the intention of the writer of the present article to deal with this subject from the standpoint of the Christian Church to a greater degree than is usual now among critical writers. The indignant remonstrance of St. Paul to the individualistic Corinthians has a certain relevance to some modern exponents of early Christian literature: ‘What? was it from you that the word of God went forth? or came it unto you alone?’ (1 Corinthians 14:36). One sometimes hears or reads discussions on Christian literature which indicate that for the speaker or writer the Christian Church has no existence. The collection of writings which we call the NT is treated as though it were a fortuitous collection, the selection of which was determined arbitrarily, or at least on principles which have now no claim to respect; as though Christianity were merely a matter of literary or antiquarian interest, so that some new discovery might change our whole conception of Christ’s work and words, or alter the value of the Gospels already received. Now the existence of the Christian Church during the first centuries of our era is a fact; a fact the recognition of which has no connexion with any special views we may hold as to what ought to be the constitution or organization of the Church in our own times. It is surely un-philosophical to ignore a fact which was admittedly one of transcendent importance to the first Christians. The Gospels, as we have them now, are a product of the Church of Apostolic and sub-Apostolic times. It is, to say the least, conceivable that some principle determined the Church in her final selection of Gospels; and any suggestion as to what that principle was cannot be without interest, even if it fails to compel assent.
It may be proper to remark, by way of caution, that an inquiry into the principle or principles by which the Church was guided in her selection of authoritative Gospels is not precluded by any theory of inspiration. Even if we hold that the sacred books only are inspired, and that the Church was not inspired, or guided by the Holy Spirit, in her choice of them, the question must arise, How did the Church recognize the inspiration of the books?
‘As the Father hath sent me, even so send I you’ (John 20:21). These words of the risen Lord express the idea that the Church is the representative of Christ on earth, and that, as ‘in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily’ (Colossians 2:9), so is the Church His body, a body not only quickened by His life, but indwelt by His mind: ‘We have the mind of Christ’ (1 Corinthians 2:16). In the context immediately preceding this quotation, St. Paul claims for those who have this mind the possession of a special critical sense, a faculty of discernment in spiritual matters; and other passages exhibit the practical operation of this critical sense, as it may be termed, e.g. 1 Corinthians 14:29 ‘Let the prophets speak by two or three, and let the others discern,’ and 1 Corinthians 14:37 ‘If any man thinketh himself to be a prophet, or spiritual, let him take knowledge of the things which I write unto you, that they are the commandments of the Lord.’ This special sense was formed by those who had been ‘from the beginning eye-witnesses and ministers of the word.’ Their reports of what their Master had done and said, the conditions in which He worked, the tone and temper of His utterances, formed a standard by which it was possible to decide the claims to genuineness of stories told about Him. There is really nothing fanciful in this: it only supposes the Apostolic Church, or at least the leading members of it, to have had the same sort of sense of discernment which is undoubtedly possessed by good critics in other departments of literature. The very best attempts to imitate the style of a great poet or prose writer ring false in the ear of one who knows.
But not only did the Church, thinking through the accredited teachers ‘who had the spirit,’ or if it be preferred, the sanctified ‘common sense of most,’ determine which were the Gospels inspired by God; but also their form—at least so far as the Synoptics are concerned—was in all probability determined by the use made of them in the weekly Church assemblies. This use must have obtained from the very earliest times at which meetings were held for distinctively Christian worship. We cannot otherwise account for the familiarity on the part of his readers with the general tenor of the Evangelic story which is assumed by St. Paul in his Epistles.
In Justin Martyr’s time (Apol. i. 67) the established custom was that two lessons were read, one from the Prophets, another from the Gospels. We cannot press Justin’s language too closely, so as to exclude from public reading the non-Prophetical parts of the OT, or the Apostolic Epistles. We must remember that his intention was to give heathens a general idea as to the nature of the Christian worship; he was not composing rubrical directions for the clergy. It is more likely than not that more use was made of the Prophetical books than of any other portion of the OT: and in any case, it is to them that Justin most constantly refers his Gentile readers. That the Apostolic Epistles were also read in the Christian assemblies we know from other sources; but it is not likely that a Lord’s Day ever passed without a recitation of some portion of the narratives of the works and words of Jesus.
When we examine the canonical Gospels with this consideration in our mind, we are struck by the fact that it is easy to imagine that the first three were compiled from sections read with a view to practical instruction, and that it is not so easy to think of the Fourth Gospel as having had this origin. The stories and discourses in the Synoptics have the effect of pictures reproduced in the words of the original witness, while the impression was still fresh in his memory, and before he had time to place them in any systematized doctrinal setting. St. John’s Gospel, on the other hand, has the air of being an attempt to write a history, a spiritual history if you will, still a history, an orderly statement of words and deeds meditated on in the study, and recorded as they emerged from the writer’s inner consciousness after the lapse of many years. To say this is not to undervalue the historical truth, much less the inspiration, of the Fourth Gospel. The difference between it and the Synoptics is similar to that between a diarist and a historian: a diary chronicles facts, a history interprets them.
It is possible that St. John’s Gospel was known as a history for private reading only, for some considerable time before it was read in the congregation. This supposition would partly explain why so few of Justin’s quotations of Christ’s words are taken from it, although we have sufficient proof of his acquaintance with it. Even in our own day it is doubtful whether any judicious apologist for Christianity, in citing examples of our Lord’s discourses to a non-Christian public, would make much use of the Fourth Gospel, though he might regard it as of inestimable value in his own devotional reading. He would feel instinctively that its wisdom is for those whom St. Paul calls ‘the perfect,’ or ‘full grown,’ not for ‘babes’ in Christ, much less for them that are without.’ Moreover, apart from this difference in quality between St. John’s Gospel and the Synoptics, the difference in literary style must have, even from the first, delayed its adoption in general public use. Those who think, as they read or listen, soon become aware that its simplicity of vocabulary and grammatical structure conceal great subtlety of thought: we are out of our depth after the first step.
10. A word is necessary as to the relation between the, canonical Gospels and the fragments of early Gospel material which have already repaid the patient toil of scholarly excavation in Egypt. In 1892 a fragment of the lost Gospel of Peter, discovered at Akhmîm in 1886–7, was published by U. Bouriant; and in 1897, Messrs. Grenfell and Hunt published a papyrus containing eight Sayings of Jesus in a more or less fragmentary condition; and another fragment of five Sayings has since appeared. We are not at all concerned here with the so-called Gospel of Peter. It is confessedly the production of a sect of Docetae not earlier than the latter half of the 2nd century. It is undoubtedly interesting and valuable, as illustrating the beliefs of Gnostics; but it has no claim whatever to be an original source of information. It is instructive as a harmonistic narrative based chiefly on the canonical Gospels.
To the student of the Gospels, the recovery of the lost Gospel of Peter, or of a portion of it, has the same kind, but not the same degree, of interest as the recovery of a lost work by Justin Martyr would have: it serves as an illustration of the way in which the canonical Gospels were employed in the 2nd century. But the case is different with the newly discovered Sayings of Jesus. These seem to claim to be Gospel material. The question is, Are they bona fide Gospel material which has been practically rejected by the responsible thinkers of the Church, or are they only pseudo-Gospel material?
We have seen that a complete ‘Gospel’ must have contained a narrative of those facts of our Lord’s life which have a redemptive significance; but besides Gospels, it is very probable, indeed almost certain, that there were current in Apostolic times sayings of our Lord, without any note of the occasion when they were spoken. We have one such saying in Acts 20:35, and in the extant Gospels there are many passages which it is difficult to believe are not based on collections of Sayings. An almost certain case is Luke 16:14-18, where we have a group of four Sayings, none of which has any connexion with the others, or with the parable that follows.
This example proves that the disconnected nature of the Sayings in the recently discovered papyri affords no presumption against their being genuine Gospel material. Moreover, the record by St. Luke of St. Paul’s quotation (Acts 20:35) of a saying of Jesus which is not found in any canonical Gospel, proves that while St. Luke was no doubt desirous to make his Gospel as full as possible, he was yet aware that there were accessible to him sayings besides those of which he made use. So that we cannot reject the papyri Sayings on the ground that the canonical Gospels must necessarily contain all the sayings of Jesus that were known in Apostolic times.
On the other hand, on the principles we have adopted, we must decide that St. Luke, in his selection of sayings and discourses, was guided by the Spirit of Jesus; and it may be remarked that the fact that he did select is a presumptive proof that he wrote at a time sufficiently early for it to be possible for a Christian to consider any authenticated saying of Jesus to be not worth preserving. Contrast the eager anxiety of Papias to gather up every crumb from the recollections of early disciples. At best, the papyri Sayings belong to the same class as the interpolations in Codex D, that is to say, they are rejected Gospel material, rejected because the mind of the Church in the 1st cent. thought it to be unsuitable for preservation. The present conclusion to St. Mark’s Gospel, on the other hand, and the Pericope adulterœ, are instances of floating Gospel material which have been stamped with the approval of the mind of the Church.
It may happen, however, that further discoveries and mature consideration will suggest that these papyri Sayings have only a relative value and significance, as being fragments of the very extensive religious literature of the 2nd century. If more of this literature had survived to our own day, we should be able to view them in a juster proportion. We know that, even in the lifetime of the Apostles, Christianity had developed so rapidly that there was an exuberant growth of ‘divers and strange teachings’ (Hebrews 13:9). Each of these sects, or schools of thought and speculation, must have had both its authorized expositions and its literary propaganda. We are apt to forget that the business of book production in the first centuries of the Christian era was enormous in volume.
We know from the lists given by Eusebius, and allusions in other authors, that our extant ante-Nicene Fathers represent a very small fraction of the literature of the Church before his time. We may judge from this fact how unlikely it would be that much of the writings of heretics would survive. Such literature did not belong to a body with a continuous organized life, as is the Christian Church, a life continuous in doctrine as well as by personal links. The doctrine of the Christian Church, being a living thing, grows and develops from one generation to another; but the new always has to reconcile itself with the old; they are connected. And so even uninspired Christian writings would continue to be preserved and respected long after they had ceased to be generally read. Whereas heresy, as it was called, is essentially transitory; its literature, even when not merely the expression of the thoughts of an individual, reflects the conception of only one generation. Those who inherit it have no reason for retaining interest in it after it has ceased to represent precisely their thoughts. On the whole, it seems to the present writer that these papyri Sayings of Jesus must be regarded as not an expression of the main line of Church thought of any century. They are, of course, profoundly interesting, as casting light on the religious conceptions of some, we cannot tell how many, in the 2nd cent., but they do not exhibit the general mind of the Church.
11. In any discussion as to the language in which the first Gospel narrative was composed, it is impossible to leave out of account the evidence preserved in the fragments of Papias that are cited in Eusebius, Historia Ecclesiastica iii. 39.
It is not intended here to give a résumé of the controversy that has raged over these few lines; but merely to state what seems to the present writer their most probable sense and value. The title of Papias’ book was Λογίων Κυριακῶν Ἐξήγησις. Besides Eusebius, Irenaeus seems to be the only writer, of those whose works have come down to us, who exhibits a first-hand acquaintance with the book of Papias. The other writers who allude to him evidently knew no more about him than what they found in Eusebius or Irenaeus. The nature of the work may be guessed from what Papias himself states in one of the fragments: ‘I shall not hesitate also to put down for you, along with my interpretations, whatsoever things I have at any time learned carefully from the elders.’ The book, then, had a twofold character: interpretations, and also oral traditions. It is these latter to which Eusebius refers when he says that the book contained ‘certain strange parables and teachings of the Saviour, and some other more mythical things’; and from the fact that Eusebius quotes from Papias two statements concerning the Gospels of Matthew and Mark respectively, it is at least probable that the interpretations dealt with our Gospels. Eusebius does not conceal his contempt for Papias’ literary capacity: ‘He appears to have been of very limited understanding (σφόδρα σμικρὸς τὸν
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Hastings, James. Entry for 'Gospels (2)'. Hastings' Dictionary of the New Testament. https://www.studylight.org/dictionaries/eng/hdn/g/gospels-2.html. 1906-1918.
