chief tendencies which that instinct was obliged to satisfy or to correct. The gospels were not composed in the interstellar spaces. They are derivative and expressive. They betray, on page after page, their age and situation in a breathing world of human facts and feelings. In the phrase of the old Jewish theosophy, the upper Light never comes down unclothed; and even the gospels, which transmit the light of lights, are clothed upon. In their pages the period of Jesus and the period of the growing church meet: 2 to unravel the one it is necessary to use inferences drawn from the other. It is for reasons and objects like these that the gospels have been placed in this edition strictly in accordance with the principle of their literary growth. Such general considerations as have been adduced or remain to be noticed, justify, it is thought, the printing of these evangelic records after the Pauline epistles, in spite of the fact that the latter presuppose the main events and ideas which find expression in the former. Admittedly there is a slight embarrassment in reaching and maintaining this attitude. A set of (evangelic) facts, A, is followed in the order of time by a set (apostolic), B; but the literary record (a) of A may be composed subsequently to A that (B) of B. Hence the series should come to be B ß, α 1 See Martineau's chapter, "The Veil Taken Away," Seat of Authority, pp. 573-601. 2 The work of distinguishing these is the great problem set to the historical sense in dealing with the gospels. Martineau (Seat of Authority, p. 577) lays down three canons to be applied by competent historical feeling: (1) “Whenever, during or before the ministry of Jesus, any person in the narrative is made to speak in language, or refer to events, which had their origin at a later date, the report is incredible as an anachronism." (2) "Miraculous events cannot be regarded as adequately attested, in presence of natural causes accounting for belief in their occurrence. (3) "Acts and words ascribed to Jesus which plainly transcend the moral level of the narrators authenticate themselves as his; while such as are out of character with his spirit, but congruous with theirs, must be referred to inaccurate tradition." It is obvious, however, that the whole value of these rules depends upon their definition and application. They will always be taken according to the presuppositions of each critic, and are apt to be used in a rather subjective fashion. At the same time, their general standpoint is of course unimpeachable. = if the strict chronological order of documents is to be preserved, and the fact disengaged from its record. The apparent confusion thus occasioned has simply to be reckoned with; its adjustment is part of the mental discipline required as a preliminary to historical study. In regard to the NT where a the gospels, and B (roughly) = the epistles of Paul, the church rightly and naturally has reverted to the scheme A a practically ignoring the documents upon the side of Β β their literary birth. The difficulty thus occasioned and increased by the canon will be noticed later on. Meanwhile it is enough to remark that historical study cannot dispense A with the scheme B B. Its earnest endeavour at the outset α is to consider each writing, especially if it be directly historical, in the atmosphere of its own age, and as a possible, though never a very minute, clue to contemporary life. That determined, it can venture to proceed back and use the book as a guide to previous events. A writing is never intelligible unless we read it as close as possible to the situation at which it was composed. Then the significance of its contents appears the omissions which at first surprise us, the selection of incidents, the grouping of sayings, the stress put upon this crisis and that, the pragmatism, the general idealisation. Hence the value of this historical method in two directions. To ascertain the contemporary reference is of service not merely for its own sake, for the light thus gained in the task of deciphering the conditions of the age, but also for the sake of the retrospective reference. Dependence can be placed upon the historicity of a writing only after one has thoroughly weighed and allowed for the amount of later tendency which may have affected it. A classic instance of the former gain is to be seen (Weizsäcker, AA, ii. pp. 32-69, etc.; Hausrath, ii. 147–156; Réville, ii. p. 149 f., etc.) in the partial reconstruction of the earlier apostolic age, 30-70 A.D., out of the materials presented in the synoptic gospels. The latter gain is most obvious, perhaps, in the case of the fourth gospel, which contains a reflection of traits and tones in the stir and drift of Asiatic Christianity towards the close of the first century,1 under the pressure of Hellenistic speculation and of Judaistic controversy. The book is intelligible as a reproduction of the primitive tradition only when it is taken upon the basis of a careful estimate of that reflection. Put in a diagram, the result comes out thus: This environment of the fourth gospel embraces points like these the controversy of Christianity with Judaism upon the OT as a religious codex and creed, accentuated between 70 and 150 (1033-36, etc.); the general rivalry 2 with Judaism upon the score of authority and prestige; the relation of Christianity to John the baptizer and his followers (19 f. 322 f., etc.)—a practical problem which had already agitated the church (e.g. Ac 191-10)—the relation of Christianity to the Samaritans (Lk, Ac, Jo 4), with their tradition and religious 3 1 Cp. Westcott, Gospel of St. John, Introd. pp. xxxv-xl; Wrede, Ueber Aufgabe u. Methode der sog. NTTh (1898), pp. 33-41, 73-76; Weizsäcker, Untersuchungen 2 (1891), erster Theil, AA, ii. pp. 206-236; Havet, Le Christianisme et ses origines (1884), iv. p. 345 f.; Brückner, Die vier Evangelien nach dem gegenwärtigen Stande der Evglien.-Kritik (1887); and most recently Holtzmann, NTTh, ii. pp. 351-389, besides the full discussions in Thoma, Die Genesis des Johannes-Evangeliums (1882), pp. 771-784; Wendt, Das Johannes-Evangelium (1900), pp. 216–228; Wernle, ZNW (1900), pp. 52-64; and Cone, The Gospel and its Interpretations, 267-317. Karl Jesus are made to 2 The deftness with which the Jewish opponents further his dialectic triumph (especially in chaps. v.-ix.) reflects the contemporary polemic of the author and his age. It has been rightly compared to the similar phenomenon in the Sokratic dialogues of Plato, where "the opponents of Socrates are usually lay figures skilfully arranged as a foil to set forth the method and the teaching of the great philosopher" (Dr. Gardner, Explor. Evang. p. 165). 3 A point worked out with conspicuous ability, though not without some exaggeration (Holtzmann, ThLz (1899), 202 f.), by Baldensperger in his Prolog des vierten Evglms. Sein polemisch-apologetische Zweck (1897). propaganda; to Hellenism with its philosophical temper, especially as the mention of Philip implies (1222)—in Asia Minor (Euseb. HE, iii. 31. 3, v. 24. 2); also the questions of baptism (3) and the Lord's supper (6). These and numerous other burning topics of interest and difficulty in the early church are reflected, as the first century drew to a close, in this notable philosophy of early Christian religion,1 “a treatise illustrated by history" (Liddon), and are essential to its interpretation. Hawthorne warns the readers of his Twice-Told Tales, that if they would see anything in the book they must read it "in the clear brown twilight atmosphere in which it was written; if opened in the sunshine, it is apt to look exceedingly like a volume of blank pages.' The fourth gospel also must be read in the light of its age and environment; not as an attempt to write a concrete biography of Jesus, but as the outcome of reflection upon the past in the evening of primitive Christianity. The point to be pressed then is, that the principle of this historical method is sound, and that it is silently and necessarily assumed as a criterion in all serious work upon early Christian life and literature. What requires to be brought out is the need of mental adjustment to the preliminary and somewhat subtle task of regarding not merely the epistles, but also the NT historical narratives (more specially the gospels), not as they superficially stand, but as successive although indirect records of an experience and consciousness within the early church, which has itself to be partially deciphered from their contents. Curiously enough, it is within this consciousness again that one of the supreme clues lies for determining the situation and significance of these very records. Such an aspect, by which book and age are correlated, is not the point of historical research. But it is one point in it, and a point 1 But the fourth gospel was not the sole reservoir of this novel method of teaching. Outside of it, before as well as subsequently, a tradition flourished which may be called "Johannine," i.e. a circle of expressions and ideas of which traces are to be found in the synoptists no less than in Ignatius and the pastoral epistles. This evidence points to a common phase of thought of which the fourth gospel was the supreme and classical product, but not to a literary connection between such different writers (von der Goltz, TU, xii. 3, pp. 118 f., 168 f.). that requires attention. Round an author in those days were At the same time the bearing of this principle upon the NT writers as a source of deviation, is considerably less than might be looked for. It is not nearly so much, at any rate, as is evident in the case of their contemporaries, Tacitus and Josephus. The difference between them, indeed, is so great in degree, that it becomes almost a difference in kind; a fact which lends some plausibility to the position of those who object to ranking the NT historians within the same class as those or other ancient writers. It is tempting, certainly, to isolate them, and apply different standards to their productions. For, as one may be reminded, the relation of a narrator to the subject of his narrative has two possible phases. In the one case he has facts; then the main problem concerns his method of treating them. In the other, he is often dependent upon imagination and inventive power for even the so-called facts which underlie his pages. We are familiar with instances of the former class, in which, through passion or prejudice, ancient writers failed to do justice to their subject (Tacit. Ann. 1), or in which the work of modern historians has been perceptibly dominated, not so much by a strong interest in the past for its own sake, as by an irrepressible desire to covertly exalt, or .. 7 mir warn, or vilify some aspect of the men and things by which they were themselves surrounded. Good instances of the latter class again are to be found even in the later Jewish apocrypha and apocalyptic. In that field authors seem to have used the licence of imagination in order to freely handle past events, and thereby clothe, or prove, or support ideas and tendencies which belonged to their own age. By neither propensity can it be fairly said that the NT historical writers were unduly biassed. Their world and work indeed lay within the sphere of conditions which made excesses of that kind possible; but their very juxtaposition with such forms |