1

ἔτι λαλεῖ. Certainly even this devout phase of literary personation raises an ethical problem, a problem which is not rendered any more manageable by the intrusion of modern ideas upon literary property and authorship, least of all by suggestions of fraud and forgery. The reconciliation of pseudonymity and "inspiration," however, is a difficulty which must be left to the disposal of dogmatic theology, with the proviso that the hypothesis can only be ruled out by a priori notions of its unworthiness and inconsistency as a method of revelation. As a matter of fact, upon this point as upon many others, the more thoroughly the NT literature is studied in its origin and contemporary relations, any theory of its isolation becomes less and less tenable. The NT is a thing in rerum natura; its literature is subject to the conditions of its age. No amount of good faith or pure intention, no weight or preciousness of their messages, could have insulated the NT writers from the influence of methods by which their contemporaries thought and spoke and wrote. In this particular matter of pseudonymity, they did not shrink from suppressing their personalities in order to win greater currency and scope for ideas and counsels which in all honesty they believed were spiritual products of the men whose names they used. The practice was neither more nor less than an innocent method of conveying their message. "Fraudulent dealing, forgery in literature, always involves the conscious and deliberate use of methods calculated to impose on others, methods other than those sanctioned by the literary conscience of the time." 2 Hence the proper route to approach the NT pseudepigrapha starts not from a modern estimate of pseudepigraphy, but from such a volume as Deuteronomy, where any suggestion of "forgery" would be irreverent and unhistorical. Similarly with the writers of any NT books in that class. There is no reason for imagining that pseudonymity was barred out from their

3

And so

1 "St. John gives our Lord's meaning in his own way. At that time the third person was not so commonly used in history as now. Thucydides uses the dramatic method, yet Spartan and Athenian speak in Thucydidean Greek. every clause of our Lord's speeches in St. John may be in St. John's Greek, yet every clause may contain the matter which our Lord spoke in Aramaic. Again, St. John might and did select or condense (as being inspired for the purpose) the matter of our Lord's discourses, as that with Nicodemus, and thereby the wording might be St. John's, though the matter might still be our Lord's" (Newman, quoted by Plummer, CGT, "St. John," p. 100). But of course the matter is just the crux of the whole question. This suggestion offers a partial aid, but merely shows the first stages of what becomes in the end full-blown pseudonymity. Besides, the interchange of singular and plural in passages like Jo 311. 12 94 denotes the consciousness of the early church that she could speak in the name of Jesus. His actual words and those which his spirit inspired in men were not strictly distinguished. Over and again, his utterances and the reflections of the fourth evangelist pass into one another, till the line of demarcation often eludes all search.

2 Gore, preface to Lux Mundi (12th ed. 1891), pp. xx-xxv. The italics are his own. I am not so sure of the criterion which he suggests, namely, that a pseudonymous writing is a forgery if the author could not have afforded to disclose the secret. Would this be true of Deuteronomy, for example? Could its author or promoter really have afforded to let Josiah know the history of its origin? On the contrary, I suspect that there, as in the case of the NT pseudepigrapha, the disclosure would have tempted contemporaries to reject such a volume-to their own loss as well as to ours. There is still educative value in Cheyne's Jeremiah, chap. vii., "Fraud or needful Illusion." The failure to discuss the meaning and function of pseudonymity in the NT literature is the one flaw in Dr. Chase's excellent article on 2 Peter (DB, iii.), although he candidly admits the existence of this literary fact. 3 The degrees and objects varied, naturally. It is, for example, quite legitimate to argue that an author who wrote under an honoured apostolic name would feel less inclination to emphasise his nom-de-plume if he merely wrote for hortatory purposes

habits of composition any more than solecisms and vulgar idioms from their style, or textual errors from their MSS. It is with the literature of revelation as occasionally with the conduct and ideas of the men concerned in its history; allowance has to be made for certain practices inevitable to the time or place, which a modern mind is less able to regard with approval or equanimity. The adjustment of these with theological ideas and prepossessions is another question. It is a question, too, which does not fall within the scope of this inquiry. Criticism has a simpler and preliminary task. It is entrusted with the business of discovering, sifting, and arranging the facts; but it is also bound to insist that these facts shall be neither twisted nor ignored in the supposed interests of ecclesiasticism or of dogma, any more than in those of fretful, antitraditional prejudice.

The following is a briefly annotated list of the more significant passages in the NT which are brought up for discussion by these hypotheses. Each involves, more or less immediately, considerations of style and structure, but the decision mainly rests upon a sense of the total argument in the context. It is a delicate question to follow the movements of a writer's mind from one topic to another, or to be sure that any given passage is a foreign interpolation, and not an episode or an outburst. The problem becomes trebly difficult, when, as is often the case, external evidence fails. Then especially, it is not easy to get a footing upon reliable arguments. In the case of a letter, above all, the psychological method must be fairly tried before a section or clause is finally abandoned. The connection of thought, particularly in Paul, does not always lie upon the surface; and what is apparently abrupt may ultimately resolve itself now and then into an inner continuity. In employing the hypotheses of interpolation and compilation, it is easy to be arbitrary. Worship of the status quo, it is true, has always plenty of adherents, and the literalist is to be treated with constant suspicion in NT interpretation; but at the same time these hypotheses of interpolation and compilation are often handled with a brilliance that is really specious. A more patient and self-denying criticism, which is content to take the text provisionally as it stands, may succeed in penetrating to what is an actual though not an obvious transition of argument or emotion. Indeed, after working through some hyper-subtle processes of analysis upon the NT writings (particularly Acts and the Apocalypse), it is hardly possible to avoid the feeling that their way of handling the facts is dim and perilous and arid. Ingenuity of this mechanical kind does not always get upon the track of simple and spontaneous expression. Adroitness is useful enough in its own place, but its place is not here; or at least its place is very small. At the same time, as the tendency in this country is to treat analytic criticism far too cavalierly, I have not consciously omitted to notice any passage which is discussed, as it seems to me, with any case or reason by good critics. Minor passages, however, (e.g. 1 Peter), than if he had a polemical aim (Wrede, in his critique of Harnack, ZNW, 1900, pp. 75-85). 2 Peter is on a different level from, say, [Ephesians] or James, should either or both of these be ranked in the same literary class; while the pseudonymity of the pastorals again must be differentiated from all three.

1 For the Pauline letters there is an admirably full monograph by Clemen (Die Einheitlichkeit der paulinischen Briefe an der Hand der bisher mit Bezug auf die aufgestellten Interpolations- und Compilationshypothesen geprüft, 1894), reviewed by von Soden (ThLz, 1895, pp. 128-133) and J. Weiss (SK, 1895, pp. 252-296), unfavourably; also by Dods (CR, 1895, pp. 249 f.) and Schmiedel (LC, 1895, pp. 641-643). More generally, Rovers, Die Anwendung der conjekturalkritik auf den Text der

like the omission of words here and there in the MSS, have been passed over. In the discussion of interpolations and compilation as in most departments of legitimate science, there is ample room for the frolic of paradox and conjecture; one cannot always be sure whether this or that theory is worth any serious attention, or whether it should be allowed to pass quietly, after many another, into "the sepulchre of all the Capulets." În compiling this list, I have thought it fairest for several reasons to lean usually to the former judgment of charity.

One might almost, however, transfer verbatim to this province of NT criticism the well-known sentences of Matthew Arnold upon the proper attitude to a classic. "Truly we must read our classic with open eyes, and not with eyes blinded with superstition. . . . But the use of this criticism is not in itself, it is entirely in its enabling us to have a clearer sense and a deeper enjoyment of what is truly excellent. To trace the labour, the attempts, the weaknesses, the failures of a genuine classic, to acquaint oneself with his time and his life and his historical relationships, is mere literary dilettantism, unless it has that clear sense and deeper enjoyment for its end" (The Study of Poetry). These words point to two essentials-thoroughness and sympathy; and both are requisite in approaching a NT writing also. No amount of work on the details and outworks of the NT, or even upon the secondary and temporary elements in its substance, will lead to much profit, unless it is recognised that these writers had, or believed they had, a gospel. You cannot get the proper focus for understanding them till you share that standpoint. Otherwise the movement and the manner of the books are misconceived. Criticism of language, ideas, and style cannot be too heartily prosecuted; but it is at best subordinate, and one of the most refreshing signs in modern research is to find this frankly recognised by writers like Wrede, Krüger, and Gunkel, whose thoroughness is above suspicion. It is with this aim and this caveat that the following criticism in the Appendix proceeds.

1 Th 214-16-A supposed interpolation'(cp. Schmiedel, HC, ad loc.)? The severe unconciliatory reference to the Jews is considered to be un-Pauline, considering his own career of persecution and his patriotism, and to indicate a situation towards the end of the seventh decade (=Mt 2332, Lk 1149-51 2123). But historical presuppositions can be found much earlier than the siege of Jerusalem, e.g. the famine (Ac 1128), the edict of Claudius (Ac 182), a riot under Cumanus' procuratorship, or generally the obduracy of the Jews (1 Th 56-9, where opyn is again used), and their interference with Paul as he wrote, at Corinth. The reference to Christ's murder corresponds accurately to the tone of the primitive church in Ac 223 314 f. 530 (1 Co 26-8). Nor, in view of Ro 880, Ja 52, is it necessary to take the aorist (peaσev) historically (epbakev is plainly an attempt to ease the difficulty of the passage). The neutestamentlichen Schriften (ZwTh, 1881, p. 385 f.). Cp. Brückner (Chron. pp.

x-xii).

1 Í have not thought it worth while to notice even more considerable and familiar interpolations like those noticed, for example, in the margin of the R. V., which are detected as intruders by the mere aid of textual criticism. This class includes passages such as Ro 1624, Mk 716 944. 46. 49b 1126 1528, Mt 613b (1247) (162b. 3) 1721 1811 (199) (2144) 2314 (apud 2749), Lk 955b 112e 40 1736 2317 (2334a) (2412) (2440) (2451b-52a), Ac 837 1534 246c-8a 2829 [1 Jn 56. 7, the three witnesses]. For other reasons no notice has been taken of works like Lisco's dissection of 1 Co i.--iv. (Paulus Antipaulinus, 1895; cp. Schmiedel, ThLz, 1895, pp. 207-210), and Becker's similar treatment of the fourth gospel (SK, 1889, pp. 117-140); these are like Weisse's analytic theories, partly too subjective, partly too minute to be summarised here.

occurrence of 16b in the Test. xii. Patriarch. (Levi 6) affords no decisive ground either against or for the authenticity of the passage here, owing to the uncertain date of the pieces which compose that writing. Still, the contradiction between Ac 175 ((nλwσavres dè oi 'Iovdaîo) and 1 Th 214 (ovμpuλer@v) is noticeable: it is soluble only on the supposition that the trial referred to in the latter passage occurred subsequently (= 33), or that ovμpuλ. includes Jews as well as Gentiles. I suspect, on the whole, that 166 is an interpolation or editorial comment, like Ro 119. 10, 10, written after 70 A.D. (So most recently Dr. Drummond, IH, ii. p. 5.)

1 Th 527-Quite intelligible as it stands, but suspected by Hitzig, Schmiedel, and J. Weiss (SK, 1892), as the addition of a reader (in the second century?) when the apostolic letters came to be widely circulated and specially authoritative.

2 Th 2-12-For reasons similar to those urged on 1 Th 214-16, this vivid and surprising piece of polemic is put (previous to Apoc 13), as an interpolation, into 66-70A.D. by Schmidt, Der erste Thess. nebst einem Excurs über den Zweiten gleichnamigen Brief. (1885), p. 111f. But this sketch of defection and lawlessness might be paralleled by the facts underlying 1 Th 214-16 along with the OT postulates of antichrist and his black, pitiless empire. Spitta takes the passage as a fragment (c. 40 A.D.) incorporated by Paul or his amanuensis, Timotheus (Urc. i. p. 135 f.). In Schmiedel's view, the whole of the epistle falls in the period between Nero's death (June 9, 68) and the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem (August 70), so that this passage and the Apocalypse (131-10 178-11) refer to the same situation. Spitta (loc. cit.), however, is at once more moderate and less convincing; he regards 25-12 as an apocalypse of Jewish origin in the time of Caligula (vûv, ver. 6 = Ac 182), which Timotheus has recast into a Christian apocalypse, in which the "secret of iniquity" becomes the enmity of the Jews (1 Th 214-16) to the gospel. There is a contradiction on paper between the view expressed here and that afterwards elaborated in Ro 11, but in either passage or in both we have probably the expression of a mood. It would be psychologically false to deny the compatibility of both positions at different periods within a single personality. Yet the "tension" of this passage in 2 Th is not between Paul and his "Jewish past" (Weiss, NTTh, i. pp. 306–308), but between Paul and his Jewish contemporaries. By the time that Ro 11 came to be written, he was more dispassionate and patriotic. [Hausrath takes 21-12 as probably a genuine fragment.]

On Bousset's theory (cp. above, p. 143), the eschatology here is not genuinely Christian, but due to a Jewish tradition of antichrist, represented later in 4 Esdras, which was in existence esoterically prior to the conflict with Rome. The inference is that while, of course, Paul followed

1 No particular decade during the first century is needed to render these passages luminous. At any time the position of the Jews in the Roman Empire would have made the references historically intelligible; indeed, they were even apt, ever since Tiberius had vented his anger and spite upon them (Tacit. Annal. ii. 42, 43, 71, 85; Joseph. Antiq. xviii. 3, 4), especially in 19 A.D. The vulgar anti-Semitism of Apion must have found in many Roman quarters a welcome and an echo during the subsequent decades. But in Palestine the state of matters previous to 50 A.D. amply bore out the allusion of the apostle. Caligula's policy had set the Zealots-those implacable Nihilists of Judaism-aflame, and the days of peace in Judaea were numbered. "The last decades," i.e. preceding 50 A.D., "had exhibited the nation as a captive who, continually visited by his jailer, rattles at his fetters with the strength of despair, until he wrenches them asunder" (Graetz, History of Jews (Eng. tr.), ii. p. 234; cp. also Mommsen, Gesch. Rom. v. p. 527). In fact, since Herod Agrippa's death (44 A.D.) the flood-gates of dissension and feud in Judaea had been open.

the tradition and interpreted the restraining power as Rome, subsequent events in the seventh decade completely altered the Jewish and Christian attitude to the Empire. Now it was the foe, not the bulwark. It became antichrist itself, especially in the weird form of the Neronic saga. The Apocalypse of John represents this normal position; but in one of its sources, as in 2 Thess, a trace of the older view has been presented. If such a hypothesis is accepted, it obviously removes one or two of the historical objections to the authenticity of 2 Thess, which have hitherto proved rather serious.

Galatians.—The epistle is commonly regarded, except by the extreme school, as a thorough unity in its extant form, the difficult transitions and abrupt parentheses being explicable upon a fair view of the author's agitation and vivid energy at the time of writing. Clemen, however (Einheitlichheit, pp. 112, 124, 125), regards as interpolations or glosses 218 611 for the following inconclusive reasons :

Gal 218 interrupts the direct connection of vers. 17 and 19 in the apostle's argument: it is the gloss of an unskilled copyist (so Weisse). The yàp is certainly strange, but the verse is perfectly natural, if not necessary. It refutes the wrong conclusion by rejecting the presuppositions upon which it rests (cp. Sieffert or Lightfoot, ad loc., but especially Gercke, GGA, 1894, pp. 596-599).

1

Gal 611-ypaya, Clemen thinks, cannot refer to the whole of the letter, for in that case it would have stood at the close. Besides, Paul did not write his own letters. Nor can the phrase refer (as the epistolary aorist) to ver. 11 f., for in the usage of the NT this refers to the preceding matter (Philemon 19). On these extremely untenable grounds he considers the verse a gloss. But there seems no sufficient reason for abandon✔ing the ordinary view that vers. 11-18 contain an emphatically personal postscript crowded with deliberate touches of the writer's individuality, and the motive for adding ver. 11 as a gloss would be very difficult to conjecture (cp. Deissmann, op. cit. pp. 262-264).

1 Co 924-27-Suspected by Schmiedel (HC, II. i. pp. 145, 146), as a misplaced passage, owing to its loose connection with the preceding and succeeding paragraphs; the idea of the passage is excellent (= Phil 312-14), but the conception of "herald" and "runner" (ver. 27) are contradictory. Ver. 26 depends on ver. 24 rather than on 25, and the whole conception is confused. This, however, is to press the details a little too hardly the passage might stand quite well as it is, interpreted freely and generously (vide Heinrici or G. G. Findlay, ad loc., and Clemen, op. cit. pp. 40-42), though it certainly has the appearance of being a marginal note.

1 Co 1433b-36.-Vers. 34, 35 are inserted in some MSS (DEFG, Ambrosiaster, Sedulius) after ver. 40, and ver. 33b upon the whole goes better with the following than with the preceding words. The passage is therefore taken as a marginal gloss by the Dutch school, Hilgenfeld, Holsten (Evglm. Paulus, I. p. 495 f.), etc.; even Schmiedel (HC, ad loc.) regards vers. 33b-35 as an unauthentic interpolation due to the same church interests which appear in 1 Tim 211-13; and Dr. Drummond brackets vers. 34, 35 as a prohibition borrowed from the synagogue (IH, ii. p. 118). The chief reasons for this hypothesis are the abruptness with which the reference to women is

1 Like Cramer, Zahn (Einl. i. pp. 120-122) maintains this indefensible position. It is justified neither by grammar nor by the internal probabilities of the epistle. The quotation from Ambrose (ed. Ben. II. 753, to the Emperor Gratian) is interesting but not apposite: "Scripsisti tua totam epistolam manu, ut ipsi apices fidem tuam pietatemque loquerentur."