The Books of the New Testament | Page 7

Christianity in Asia Minor,
Rome, and France. His evidence must therefore be considered as
carrying great weight. Equally important is the evidence of Tatian. This
remarkable Syrian wrote a harmony of the Gospels near A.D. 160.
Allusions to this harmony, called the Diatessaron, were known to exist
in several ancient writers, but until recently it was strenuously
maintained by sceptical writers that there was not sufficient evidence to
prove that the Diatessaron was composed of our present Gospels. It was
suggested that it might have been drawn from other Gospels more or
less resembling those which we now possess. This idea has now been
dispelled. A great Syrian father, Ephraim, who died in 373, wrote a
commentary on the Diatessaron. This was preserved in an Armenian
translation which was made known to the world in 1876. The discovery
proved that the Diatessaron had been drawn from our four Gospels. In
1886 an Arabic version of the Diatessaron itself was found, and it {12}
proved conclusively that Tatian's Diatessaron was simply a
combination of our four canonical Gospels. About the same date as
Tatian, a famous Gnostic writer named Heracleon wrote commentaries
on Luke and John, and it can also be shown that he was acquainted
with Matt. There can therefore be no doubt that all our four Gospels
were well known by A.D. 170.
Between A.D. 130 and 170 our Gospels were also in use. The most
important evidence is furnished by Justin Martyr, who was born near
Samaria, and lectured in Rome about A.D. 152. He says "the apostles
handed down in the Memoirs made by them, which are called
Gospels;" he shows that these Memoirs were used in Christian worship,
and he says that "they were compiled by Christ's apostles and those
who companied with them." This exactly agrees with the fact that the
first and the fourth of our Gospels are attributed by the tradition of the
Church to apostles, while the second and the third are attributed to
companions of the apostles. The quotations which Justin makes show
that these Memoirs were our four Gospels. It has been thought that

Justin perhaps used some apocryphal Gospel in addition to our Gospels,
but there is no sufficient proof of this. We may explain that he uses the
term "Memoirs" in order to make himself intelligible to non-Christian
readers who would not understand the word "Gospel."
The Shepherd of Hermas, which was written at Rome, probably about
A.D. 140, but perhaps earlier, uses expressions which imply an
acquaintance with all our Gospels, though none of them are directly
quoted. Moreover, the Shepherd, in depicting the Christian Church as
seated on a bench with four feet, probably refers to the four Gospels.
This would be in agreement with the allegorical style of the book, and
it gains support from the language of Origen and Irenaeus.
The testimony rendered to the authenticity of the Gospels by the
heretics who flourished between A.D. 130 and 170 is of importance. At
the beginning of this period, Basilides, the {13} great Gnostic of
Alexandria, who tried to replace Christianity by a semi-Christian
Pantheism, appears to have used Matt., Luke, and John. The fact that
they contain nothing which really supports his peculiar tenets, forms an
argument which shows that the genuineness of these documents was
then too well established for it to be worth his while to dispute it.
Marcion, whose teaching was half Gnostic and half Catholic,
endeavoured to revive what he imagined to be the Christianity of St.
Paul, whom he regarded as the only true apostle. He believed that
Judaism was the work of an inferior god, and he therefore rejected the
whole of the Old Testament, and retained only the Gospel written by St.
Luke, the friend of St. Paul, and ten of St. Paul's Epistles. Modern
writers have sometimes urged that Marcion's list of New Testament
books proves that all other parts of the New Testament were regarded
as doubtful about A.D. 140. But it is quite evident that Marcion, unlike
those Gnostics who adapted uncongenial books to their own systems by
means of allegorical explanations, cut out the books and verses which
would not correspond with his own dogma. In spite of his pretended
fidelity to St. Paul, he mutilated not only St. Luke's Gospel, but even
the Epistle to the Galatians. So whereas it is certain that he used our
Luke, there is no indication to show that he did not admit that the other
Gospels were really the work of the writers whose names they bear.

In the period between A.D. 98, when the death of St. John probably
took place, and A.D. 130, we find several signs of acquaintance with
the Gospels. About A.D. 130, Papias, Bishop of Hierapolis, wrote a
book called Expositions of the