The Gospels in the Second Century | Page 8

hitherto. The Jewish
and Christian literature of the century before and of the two centuries
after the birth of Christ must undergo a more searching examination, by
minds of different nationality and training, both as to the date, text, and
character of the several books. The whole balance of an argument may
frequently be changed by some apparently minute and unimportant
discovery; while, at present, from the mere want of consent as to the
data, the state of many a question is necessarily chaotic. It is far better
that all these points should be discussed as disinterestedly as possible.
No work is so good as that which is done without sight of the object to
which it is tending and where the workman has only his measure and
rule to trust to. I am glad to think that the investigation which is to
follow may be almost, if not quite, classed in this category; and I hope I
may be able to conduct it with sufficient impartiality. Unconscious bias
no man can escape, but from conscious bias I trust I shall be free.



CHAPTER II
.

ON QUOTATIONS GENERALLY IN THE EARLY CHRISTIAN
WRITERS.
The subject then proposed for our investigation is the extent to which
the canonical Gospels are attested by the early Christian writers, or, in
other words, the history of the process by which they became canonical.
This will involve an enquiry into two things; first, the proof of the
existence of the Gospels, and, secondly, the degree of authority
attributed to them. Practically this second enquiry must be very
subordinate to the first, because the data are much fewer; but it too
shall be dealt with, cursorily, as the occasion arises, and we shall be in
a position to speak upon it definitely before we conclude.
It will be convenient to follow the example that is set us in
'Supernatural Religion,' and to take the first three, or Synoptic, Gospels
separately from the fourth.
* * * * *
At the outset the question will occur to us, On what principle is the
enquiry to be conducted? What sort of rule or standard are we to
assume? In order to prove either the existence or the authority of the
Gospels, it is necessary that we should examine the quotations from
them, or what are alleged to be quotations from them, in the early
writers. Now these quotations are notoriously lax. It will be necessary
then to have some means of judging, what degree and kind of laxity is
admissible; what does, and what does not, prevent the reference of a
quotation to a given source.
The author of 'Supernatural Religion,' indeed, has not felt the necessity
for this preliminary step. He has taken up, as it were, at haphazard, the
first standard that came to his hand; and, not unnaturally, this is found
to be very much the standard of the present literary age, when both the
mechanical and psychological conditions are quite different from those
that prevailed at the beginning of the Christian era. He has thus been
led to make a number of assertions which will require a great deal of
qualification. The only sound and scientific method is to make an
induction (if only a rough one) respecting the habit of early quotation
generally, and then to apply it to the particular cases.
Here there will be three classes of quotation more or less directly in
point: (1) the quotations from the Old Testament in the New; (2) the
quotations from the Old Testament in the same early writers whose

quotations from the New Testament are the point in question; (3)
quotations from the New Testament, and more particularly from the
Gospels, in the writers subsequent to these, at a time when the Canon
of the Gospels was fixed and we can be quite sure that our present
Gospels are being quoted.
This method of procedure however is not by any means so plain and
straightforward as it might seem. The whole subject of Old Testament
quotations is highly perplexing. Most of the quotations that we meet
with are taken from the LXX version; and the text of that version was
at this particular time especially uncertain and fluctuating. There is
evidence to show that it must have existed in several forms which
differed more or less from that of the extant MSS. It would be rash
therefore to conclude at once, because we find a quotation differing
from the present text of the LXX, that it differed from that which was
used by the writer making the quotation. In some cases this can be
proved from the same writer making the same quotation more than
once and differently each time, or from another writer making it in
agreement with our present