The

word as the means of training and informing the mind. well-known remark of Papias (οὐ γὰρ τὰ ἐκ τῶν βιβλίων τοσοῦτόν με ὠφελεῖν ὑπελάμβανον, ὅσον τὰ παρὰ ζώσης φωνῆς καὶ μενούσης 1) is characteristic of Christianity in the first century as a whole. Men felt nearer to the central facts of the faith as they listened to the teaching and reminiscences of the older disciples, than through the medium of any record or composition by way of litera scripta. Still, the reason. of this preference lay in a deeper instinct. For the religion of one who himself wrote nothing and centred everything in the spirit and society of his followers, writing (it was probably felt) must after all be secondary. Before the close of the first century, it is true, Paul's epistles seem to have acquired by their extensive circulation a position of recognised importance and authority, at least in Corinth (Clem. Rom. xlvii), where Zahn (GK. i. pp. 811-839), partly resting upon his absurd date for 2 Peter, argues that a collection of these writings existed by the ninth decade of the century. But even were this established, it would not materially alter the fact that the communication of influence and the maintenance of tradition remained for long oral, so far as its main phases were concerned. Not until far on in the literary development does the beatitude for the reader occur (Apoc 13), or the emphasis upon a scripture's authority (Jo 2124); naturally it is still later when the Christian writings take their place beside the Hebrew scriptures as topics of discussion and reflection (2 Ti 316, 2 Pet 316). Even the two latter passages are entirely occupied, it is to be noted, with the definition of the writings upon the side of their practical bearing and authority within the Christian societies. The whole movement towards this emphasis upon the written scriptures was accelerated by the parallel tendency in contemporary Judaism,

1 Compare the remark in Plato's epistles (vii. 341 c.), where he vindicates personal stimulus and instruction as the best means of learning philosophy : ἐκ πολλῆς συνουσίας γιγνομένης περὶ τὸ πρᾶγμα αὐτὸ καὶ τοῦ συζῆν ἐξαίφνης οἷον ἀπὸ πυρὸς πηδήσαντος ἐξαφθὲν φῶς ἐν τῇ ψυχῇ γενόμενον αὐτὸ ἑαυτὸ ἤδη τρέφει. But the defensive tone of Papias rather suggests that his adherence to oral tradition required some explanation at an age when the written gospels were coming more and more into prominence.

which, after 70 A.D., became more crystallised than ever round the OT canon as its religious standard (cp. the famous passage in 4 Esdras 1421-48). But the comparatively tardy genesis of the historical instinct in the literature of early Christianity was in no sense an uncongenial or surprising feature. It is explicable as we bear in mind the universal adherence to systematic oral testimony, to the reminiscences of eye-witnesses and older men, and not least to the organised worship and social texture of the young Christian societies. That adherence formed the central thread in the strand of early Christianity. As the years passed, however, oral testimony became more and more inadequate, and the task of supplementing it fell to the two great forms of Christian literature, the epistle and the gospel. Both presupposed tradition. Both were the fruit of religious intercourse within the various societies. But in the nature of the case the former had a freer scope; with its superior flexibility and simplicity it established itself as prior in time throughout the churches.

When attention is directed to facts like these, it is brought home to the mind that the NT literature has to be taken as it rose, not symmetrical, monotoned, adamant-"one entire and perfect chrysolite "—but out of a historical process, shaped by varying hopes and needs, and drawn from this or that circle of antipathies and affinities. One palmary inference. follows, namely, the need of surveying the mental and social conditions under which the different books were composed, as well as of using the books for that survey.1 Here, as elsewhere in literature (Heinrici, "Die urchristliche Ueberlieferung u. das NT," ThA, pp. 323-339), the surrounding of a document is valuable, no less than its subject. Just as a

1A writing may actually become a reliable witness to its contemporary period although its references to an earlier period are found to contain some unhistorical traits. The historic value of a document does not depend altogether upon its trustworthiness. The primary question is not, "Are its contents true, or false, or mixed?" but "How did this writing come to be credited and produced at this particular time? What elements in the age made this literary product natural?" The fact that a writing, B, gives an idealised picture of some early period, A, may forbid the complete and unhesitating inferences which might be drawn as to the nature of A; but for all this lack of historicity, it throws fresh light upon the period of B's composition and its relation to A.

conception of the satiric spirit in its numerons forms is essential to the right understanding of authors like Petronius, Juvenal, and Tacitus, who drew breath in it during the latter half of the first century; just as the historical writers of the Empire were liable to be affected by the habit of recitation which helped to create for them a literary climate; so is it with the historical narratives of the NT. Their characteristics are intelligible only in the light of the distinctively "religious' tendencies current in the latter half of the first century (cp. Norden, Antike Kunstprosa, pp. 451-479), for the satisfaction of which they were composed. Consequently some account has to be taken of these as well as of the less obvious features of their mental climate-the prevailing ethnic and Jewish beliefs in the miraculous, the cosmic and psychic ideas of angelology,1 demonology, and cosmogony, the relation of the material and the spiritual, the Messianic conceptions, the tendencies of current ethics, the popularity of the OT, the apocalyptic effluvia of Judaism, and so forth. Otherwise one will be missing at point after point what ranks as a primary requisite for the study of the NT. For before this life and literature can be strictly estimated, one must look into them and win some feeling of their range and limits, of the successive light and shade, the run and dip of the slopes, the general outlines and broader characteristics of usage and opinion, which are suggested in the extant records. To secure and sustain this mental habit is the sesame of vision and advance. Apart from it, study is generally dull and frequently trifling. Nor is there anything in the method which can be said to be specially elaborate or irksome. Even in the least local writings there is usually some help yielded to the patience and insight of a modern mind bent on reaching the actual incidents and ideas which were at the conception of the writing, or on extricating its antecedents, its relationships, and its neighbourhood.2 Obviously this method

1 The influence of Jewish angel-worship on early Christianity is traced by Lüken in his recent monograph on Michael (1898).

2 Once for all, by way of summary. To realise that the central materials of the gospels were mainly drawn up and collected during the three or four decades

makes for the intelligibility of the NT as a religious authority, just as it is an axiom of the expositor. But our concern here is mainly with its value for presenting the NT as a series of historical documents. The method puts the reader unequivocally at the right standpoint, and prompts him to ask the right questions. The inquiry must be not only, "What do these pages mean?" but-π Te σvvéσtη kai Õπη каì оπжs—“Why was this book written in this particular way, at this particular time? Why now and not earlier? or not later? Why precisely in this temper, style, spirit? Is there any special significance in its method, omissions, date, character? and if so, what?" Questions like these have often to be left imperfectly or dubiously answered. They bring more in some quarters than in others, and it is hardly possible to be explicit anywhere on detail after detail. Some writings have a flavour of the soil in them, due either to the connection of their author with his time, or to the contemporary nature of their subjects. Upon occasion a book actually dates itself and illuminates its period. But other writings seem, at least on a first impression of their contents, to be in the air.1 Others, again, are more definite, yet exhibit

which followed the death of Jesus, and that the gospels themselves were not composed until the period 65-105; to realise these facts will show-(i.) that the gospels are not purely objective records, no mere chronicles of pure crude fact, or of speeches preserved verbatim; (ii.) that they were compiled in and for an age when the church required Christ not as a memory so much as a religious standard, and when it reverenced him as an authority for its ideas and usages; (iii) that they reflect current interests and feelings, and are shaped by the experience and for the circumstances of the church; (iv.) that their conceptions of Christ and Christianity are also moulded to some extent by the activity and expansion of the church between 30 and 60, by its tradition, oral and written, and by its teaching, especially that of Paul. The interval between the death of Jesus and the earliest date at which it can be seriously maintained that a deliberate record of his life existed (c. 65 A.D.), almost exactly corresponds to the interval between the death of Francis of Assisi and the issue of his authoritative biography by Bonaventura, who wrote for practical purposes and under contemporary influence.

1 Allowance must be made for the element of timelessness in some of these early discussions and records. A NT writer was not always keeping his eye on some contemporary phase of thought or action. Also, it is irrelevant to expect in the early Christian literature allusions to events within the Empire which bulk largely in the common history of the age. For example, because an earthquake

conflicting signs of their day and atmosphere, pointing this way and that. Still, although it cannot always be said of a NT writing, ἡ λαλιά σου δῆλόν σε ποιεῖ, this method of historical interrogation, seeking the period as well as the literary product, is richest in aperçus and results, however often it may be baffled. Certainly in the field of NT literature one cannot hope to hear the grass growing. The utmost that can be reasonably expected is to catch and preserve some sense of development upon the whole, and in its more prominent stages. But the method seems to be the one available mode of rendering the history of early Christian thought something better than the mere series of loosely joined enigmas which it too often resembles in current text-books. This literature is not a succession of dark lonely pools; and to take up the books of the NT as isolated pieces of theology or history, to group them on any artificial or a priori principles of criticism, is to court gratuitous error, and often to make such knowledge as may be actually secured, both vain and vague.

One outcome of this method is that a writing has to be taken as a problem before it can be expected to resolve itself into a picture. Primarily, though not exclusively or even chiefly, its function is to give evidence of a stage in the process by which the great movement of thought and experience went forward. How suggestive a clue to the experience and hopes of people at any period is furnished by their literature-the books they produced, the writings they enjoyed, the records on which they were sustained! These, we may be sure, were no mere jeux d'esprit, isolated or capricious. They give a transcript of their origin and vital

is said to have taken place in the Lycus valley during the seventh decade, it is deduced by many scholars that Colossians and the Apocalypse (2–3) must have been written either just before or long after that catastrophe, as it would have been alluded to in these writings if they had been sent to the district shortly afterwards. The inference is untrue. Early Christian writers were not interested in physical geography, nor ought we, in all fairness, to expect from them information upon the outward details of their age. The man who is absorbed in gazing at the stars grows oblivious to the wind upon his face and the mud and insects at his feet.