better to comprehend this subject, I will present him with a recapitulation made by Mr. Norton himself, near the close of his arguments.

It

Notwithstanding, therefore, the ingenuity and labor with which the hypothesis in question has been defended, I believe the objections to which it is exposed, occur, in a more or less definite form, to almost every one who has examined it. It supposes an Original Gospel, sanctioned by the apostles; yet, had such a work existed, we cannot believe, that, even if the Hebrew original had perished, its Greek translation would have been lost, and no memory of the book remain. It supposes this book to have been treated in a manner without parallel in literary history, and wholly inconsistent with the authority which must have been ascribed to it. It implies a solicitude about the finishing and refashioning of writings, equally inconsistent with the character and habits of the Jews of Palestine. requires us to believe, that the evangelists copied into their histories the collections of anonymous individuals; when one of them was an eyewitness of the events which he related, and the other two were in habits of continual intercourse with those, who, like him, were the primary sources of information respecting the history of Jesus, and the business of whose lives it was to afford this information to others. It is inconsistent with the account which St. Luke gives of the manner in which he procured the materials for his Gospel, and with the historical notices which we have of the composition of the other Gospels of Matthew and Mark, notices, which, so far as they represent these Gospels as containing what the apostles had before delivered orally, are confirmed by their intrinsic probability. And it fails of its proposed object. It does not explain the phenomena of the agreement and disagreement of the first three Gospels; but, on the other hand, is irreconcilable with the appearances those Gospels present. For it supposes, that an original document was so used as the basis of the first three Gospels, that it is still preserved in each; while, in fact, no such document can be discovered. On the contrary, in the unsuccessful attempts made to restore this document, it becomes necessary to represent it as so brief, defective, and unsatisfactory, that we cannot believe such a work to have existed, because we can discern no purpose for which it could have been intended. The hypothesis implies, that the correspondences of the three Gospels may be separated from their differences by a sort of mechanical process, so that the former may afterward be brought together and form a connected whole; while, in fact, the one and the other are blended so intimately, as continually to appear together in the same narrative. In attempting to account for the correspondences of these books with each other, it presents a solution which requires much more correspondence than exists. And, in the last place, the

number of writers whom it represents as contributing materials for the Gospels, is irreconcilable with the individuality of character evident in each of them; pp. clix. seq.

Mr. Norton next proceeds to shew, that there is another and more satisfactory method of accounting for the coincidences of the three first Gospels. In substance this is given on p. 289 seq. above. The amount of it is, that the events of Jesus's life and his sayings were so deeply impressed on the minds of multitudes, that they needed no writings at first, in order to recal them to memory. But when a new generation came to spring up, who had not witnessed these things, the danger of forgetting them, and of varying the narrations respecting them, became more and more apparent. There were, however, many original witnesses still living, when the Gospels were written. The preachers of the Gospel had often, and in each other's presence, given accounts of many important facts and sayings of Jesus. On all sides, the essential features in narrations of this sort were preserved, and were apparent; while some individuality would also of course appear, in the different modes of expression adopted by different narrators.

A single passage from Mr. Norton here, will illustrate and expand this view.

We conclude, then, that portions of the history of Jesus, longer or shorter, were often related by the apostles; and it is evident, that the narrative at each repetition by the same individual, would become more fixed in its form, so as soon to be repeated by him with the same circumstances and the same turns of expression. Especially, would no one vary from himself in reporting the words of his Master. We have next to consider, that the apostles, generally, would adopt a uniform mode of relating the same events. The twelve apostles, who were companions of our Saviour, resided together at Jerusalem, we know not for how long a period, certainly for several years; acting and preaching in concert. This being the case, they would confer together continually; they would be present at each other's discourses, in which the events of their Master's life were related; they would, in common, give instruction respecting his history and doctrine to new converts, especially to those who were to go forth as missionaries. From all these circumstances, their modes of narrating the same events would become assimilated to each other. Particularly would their language be the same, or nearly the same, in quoting and applying passages of the Old Testament as prophetical; and in reciting the words of Jesus, whose very expressions they must have been desirous of retaining. But the verbal agree

ment between the first three Gospels is found, as we have seen, principally where the evangelists record words spoken by Christ or by others, or allege passages from the Old Testament. Elsewhere there is often much resemblance of conception and expression, but, comparatively, much less verbal coincidence; pp. clxvi. seq.

Mr. Norton, in mentioning that the instruction of the Rabbies was given orally and retained by memory, and thus showing that the Jews were accustomed to the exercise of their memories in the way of preserving what their teachers inculcated, has not urged the subject, as it seems to me, so far as he might and should have done. He does not mention that the whole copy of the oral law of the Jews, which they call Mishna (i. e. the iteration) was brought down memoriter to the time of the Rabbi Joseph Hakkodesh, i. e. to more than a century after the birth of Christ. There cannot be a question that many of the rites and maxims of the Pharisees, adverted to in the Gospels, are embodied in the Mishna. The book itself begins with the declaration, that the contents of it were delivered orally to Moses on Mount Sinai; then by him to the Seventy Elders; by these to heads of divisions and families; by them to the mass of the people; and so in succession down to the time when Rabbi Judah committed the whole to writing. I do not cite this story because I believe in it; but I cite it to shew, that the Mishna must have been quite an ancient tradition, in order to render it possible for a writer to palm off such a story upon the Jewish nation; and that, at all events, the extraordinary retention in a mere memoriter way of the whole of the Mishna for a long time, shews to what extent such matters were carried among the Jews.

All the Eastern world exhibits the like phenomena. Let the reader call to mind the rhapsodists in hither Asia who so long preserved Homer, while they sung him; or the innumerable story-tellers of the East, who will entertain their employers, by reciting memoriter many more narrations than the Thousand and One contains. Among all nations, in earlier ages, such practices existed to a wide extent, where there was any cultivation of mind.

There is nothing strange then in the fact, that those who sat daily at the feet of Jesus for more than three years, should have remembered to a wide extent his sayings and doings; nothing strange in the fact, that when they reduced the account of these things to writing, there should have been so many striking coin

cidences between different writings. Yet, with all these coincidences, it is perfectly natural to suppose, that there must have been peculiarities appropriate to each individual Evangelist, as to his mode of viewing each subject, his method of stating it, and the extent of what was comprised in his account. Such is the fact beyond all doubt. On the ground that inspiration is fully credited in each case, this would make no important difference in respect to diversities. The Greek and Roman writers do not exhibit more striking discrepancies of style and modes of representation, than those which are apparent in both the Old Testament and the New.

Mr. Norton endeavours, on p. cclxx. seq., to account for the occasional verbal agreement between Mark and Luke, by the supposition that the Gospel was more usually preached in the Greek language, particularly at Jerusalem, where was always a concourse of foreign Jews, who spoke that language and probably would not have well understood the Hebrew. The words of the Saviour being often stated in the Greek language, would be remembered by those who often heard them, and repeated in like manner, in many respects, by those from whom Mark and Luke obtained information.

But here a difficulty occurs in regard to the occasional sameness of Matthew's Gospel also. Mr. Norton, as we have seen, supposes this to have been originally written in Hebrew. The translator of this Hebrew to Greek, then, as he here maintains, when he came to passages parallel in sentiment with some passages in Mark and Luke, instead of making a simple and direct version of his original, expressed the sentiment of it in the language of one or both of the two latter Evangelists. Of course, he supposes the translator to have had the Gospels of Mark and Luke before him.

There is another point in respect to this similarity, which must be exhibited in Mr. Norton's own language, in order to do justice to him.

But there is, further, a remarkable phenomenon in the verbal coincidences between the Greek Gospel of Matthew and the Gospels of Mark and Luke, which shows that the translator of Matthew used those Gospels in a particular manner. Throughout the matter common to all three Gospels, his rendering is, with very trifling exceptions, never coincident with the words of Luke, except in passages where there was a previous verbal coincidence between Luke and Mark; while in the matter common only to Matthew and Luke, he

often adopts the words of the latter. The obvious solution of this fact is, that the translator, in his renderings, did not rely merely upon his general recollection of the phraseology of Mark and Luke, but wrote with their Gospels open before him; and that, finding the correspondence between the language of his original and that of Mark much greater than between it and that of Luke, he used the Gospel of Mark alone so far as it contained the same matter, and had recourse to that of Luke only when Mark failed him. Thus, in the matter common to all three, he agrees with Luke only accidentally, that is, where there was a previous agreement between Luke and Mark; pp. clxxii. seq.

In the next paragraph he states, that on the supposition that Matthew wrote originally in Hebrew, the verbal agreement of his Greek Gospel can be accounted for in no other way than this. A more important conclusion still he deduces from the alleged coincidence of agreement with Luke as stated above, where the latter agrees with Mark in cases of matter common to both the conclusion namely, that Matthew's Gospel must have been originally written in Hebrew, because such a phenomenon in respect to coincidence can be accounted for in no other way, than by supposing it to have been occasioned by the manner in which the translator performed his work. Where Mark and Luke exhibit the same matter, the translator of Matthew, it is assumed, followed Mark; and the coincidence of Luke in such a case is accidental, or (in other words) springs merely from his having accorded with Mark in his expressions. Of course, then, where Luke differs from Mark, there the translator of Matthew follows the latter, and consequently disagrees with Luke; but where Luke and Matthew alone exhibit narrations of any particular thing, there the translator of Matthew resorted to Luke as his model, and there the resemblance between them is striking.

Mr. Norton thinks that this discovery of the manner in which Matthew harmonizes with Mark, in the way of preference to Luke, and then with Luke where Mark fails him, is " one of the most important of all the explanations that have been given of the phenomena of the correspondencies among the Gospels. He deems it due, therefore, to Bishop Marsh, to acknowledge him as the author of this discovery, lest he should be thought to arrogate to himself the credit arising from so important a discovery, which is due to the Bishop.

It seems not a little strange however to me, that Mr. Norton, VOL. XI. No. 30.

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