Constantin von Tischendorf · 4 of 10

Origin of the Four Gospels · Part 2

According to Eusebius, the choice of Dionysius as Bishop of Corinth occurred in the year 170. The same historian has preserved for us (Euseb. iv. 23) some fragments of letters and other documents from the pen of Dionysius. To one church he sent in the epistolary form expositions of Scripture; and to the Romans he wrote, after animadverting severely upon the efforts to discredit the genuineness of his own letters, that it was not at all strange that men sought to discredit the Gospels, since these too were documents whose value was so great that their authenticity should be indisputable. The expression, Holy Scriptures, might not necessarily refer to the New Testament; but the word which Dionysius employs—writings respecting the Lord,—the same term which Clemens of Alexandria uses (Strom. vii. 1)—has the same signification with the expression New Testament, and relates evidently to the books which were then accepted as constituting the New Testament canon.

The Apology written by Athenagoras of Athens, in the year 177, contains several quotations from Matthew and Luke; it displays also unmistakable marks of being influenced by John's Gospel; as, for example, in the passages which speak of the Logos as the Word of God, and which allude to the Son of God who is in the Father as the Father is in the Son. It contains the very expression found in the first chapter of John, third verse, "All things were made by him," and in the seventeenth chapter, twenty-first verse, "as thou, Father, art in me and I in thee."

I have taken these witnesses to the credibility of our Gospels from the epoch prior to Irenæus and Tertullian, and just at the threshold of the Irenæan period, the second and third decade after the middle of the second century. There are, however, left to us other witnesses much earlier, and, like those just quoted, men who speak to us right from the very bosom of the church.

Between the apostolic epoch and that which followed there intervene the so-called apostolic Fathers; for as direct disciples of the apostles they must be reckoned as in immediate connection with the apostolic age. If in the little which these men have left us we do not find anything which can be construed as definite testimony as to the authenticity of the Gospels, still we are not to conclude from their silence that the Gospels were not in existence before their time. But should there be in their writings a constant use of the Old Testament, and not the slightest use of the New, in spite of the fact that the latter lay so much nearer to hand, the probability must be accepted as great that at that time the Gospels were not accepted as of equal weight with the Old Testament.

And this appears to have been the case with the epistle of the Roman Clement, written in the second or third decade before the close of the first century, and about a decade after the destruction of Jerusalem. At that time no canon of the Gospels was in existence. It is indeed unquestionable that in his epistle, rich in quotations from the Old Testament, Clement refers here and there to passages in the Pauline Epistles, which have indeed chronologically priority over the Gospels, though not in any other sense.

It is otherwise with those other constituents of this literature to whose discussion we now come,—the epistles of Ignatius and that of Polycarp. The first of these have reached us various in extent and variously edited. Three extant only in Latin are manifestly later additions to the older literature; and so too are five others, written in Greek, Latin, and Armenian, their authenticity being disowned by the fact that Eusebius makes no allusion to them. There are besides seven epistles, which are extant in a longer and a shorter form: of the longer one, there is also an ancient Latin version; of the shorter, a Latin version and Syriac, and Armenian ones as well. With this is to be joined the fact that twenty years ago a Syriac version of three of these seven epistles was discovered, more brief than the short Greek text. After the debate respecting the longer and the shorter epistles had been decisively settled in favor of the shorter, the question arose whether the three extant in the Syriac translation are not to be preferred to these seven shorter ones. When several scholars declared themselves in favor of this, others defended the earlier origin of the seven Greek epistles, insisting that the three in Syriac were a mere extract, intended for devotional uses. We hold this to be the more correct view. Similar occurrences are not unknown in the apocryphal writings of the New Testament. An extraordinary proof in this case is afforded by the circumstance that these seven epistles are not only recognized by Eusebius (iii. 36), but are alluded to in the letter of Polycarp. In order to escape the force of this testimony, the most decisive passage in the latter epistle, defended as it is by Eusebius himself, must be set aside as unauthentic. Besides this, the assigning of superior value to the three Syriac letters is invalidated by the fragmentary character of many passages; one is so manifestly an excerpt from the Greek text that it must be admitted that one section has been lost through the carelessness of the copyist. We claim the right, therefore, of holding to the authenticity of the seven epistles ascribed by Eusebius and Polycarp to Ignatius, and written while he was on the way from Antioch, through Smyrna and Troas, to his martyrdom at Rome. Examining them with reference to our present theme, we find several allusions to Matthew and John. Take this passage (letter to the Romans, chap. 6): "For what is a man profited if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul?" taken literally from Matt. xvi. In like manner, the passage in his epistle to the people of Smyrna, in which he asserts of Jesus that he was baptized by John in order that all righteousness might be fulfilled by him," reminds one of Matt. iii. 15: "for thus it becometh us to fulfill all righteousness." In the letter to the Romans (chap. 7), he writes, "I want the bread of God, the bread of heaven, the bread of life, which is the body of Jesus Christ the Son of God; . . . and I want the draught of God, the blood of Jesus, which is imperishable love and eternal life." Compare this with the sixth chapter of John, verse 41: "I am the bread which came down from heaven;" verse 48: "I am that bread of life;" verse 51: "And the bread that I will give is my flesh;" verse 54: "Whoso eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood hath eternal life." To the Philadelphians he writes (chap. 7), "What if some wished to lead me astray after the flesh? but the Spirit is not enticed; he is from God; he knows wherever he cometh and whither he goeth, and he brings to punishment that which is hidden." These verses have as their basis John iii. 6 to 8, while the last clause grows out of the twentieth verse. Were these allusions of Ignatius to Matthew and John a mere isolated phenomenon, and one which would be adverse to other points in this discussion on which no doubts rest, they would not have decisive weight. But so far from militating against other points of evidence, they are in full agreement with them, particularly in view of the fact that at the time when the letters were written, between 107, the date generally assigned, and 115, they contain references to two of the most important of the four Gospels.

The letter of Polycarp to the Philippians connects itself most closely with those of Ignatius. According to his own testimony, it was written very soon after the martyrdom of Ignatius; that is, between 107 and 115. It contains very brief quotations from Matthew, as, for example, in chap. 2: "Think on the Lord how he said, Judge not, that ye be not judged [Matt. vii. 1]. Forgive, and it shall be forgiven you [similar to Matt. vi. 14]. Be merciful, that you may obtain mercy [compare with Matt. v. 7]. And with what measure ye mete it shall be measured to you again [a literal quotation from Matt. vii. 2]. And blessed are the poor, and they which are persecuted for righteousness' sake; for theirs is the kingdom of heaven" [taken almost verbatim from Matt. v. 3 and 10]. Further, chap. 7: "We will implore the Omniscient God not to lead us into temptation, remembering the words of the Lord, The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak" [compare Matt. vi. 13 and xxvi. 41]. Special weight must be ascribed to that passage in Polycarp's letter which clearly manifests the use of the First Epistle of John. Polycarp writes, chap. 7: "For every one who does not confess that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is antichrist:" in John (iv. 3) the passage runs, "Every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God; and this is that spirit of antichrist." The importance of this use by Polycarp of the Epistle of John is based upon this, that—although the heroes of doubt bring into suspicion even that which is really indisputable—the Epistle and the Gospel of John are shown, by their essential unity of incident and language, to have necessarily had the same author; and thus the use of the Epistle argues the use of the Gospel as well. I have shown above, from Polycarp's intimate relation to John, how valuable is his testimony: it has such great weight as scarcely to allow a word to be uttered in disavowal of the writings which he confirms. The unworthy skill of modern scholars has not shrunk, however, from setting aside the fact of Polycarp's testimony and unnerving its strength. A writer of much acuteness says, "We are not compelled to regard the words of Polycarp as an actual quotation from John, for that may have been a sentence which had come into circulation in the church, and may have been committed to paper by John just as well as by Polycarp, without compelling the latter to learn it from the former." Before this conjecture had been bruited, a fellow-believer had fallen upon another way out of the difficulty: "Can the thing not be reversed? May not the author of the Johannean Gospel, which is as little genuine as so much else that has for two thousand years received the reverent homage of Christendom,—may not this false John have cited as well from Polycarp?" It requires a great deal of courage to give utterance to such an idle fancy; yet there are men of learning who are not lacking in this courage. But the universal and radical medicament which must be relied on at the last admits in this iIstanc3 of a double application. If the Gospel of John can be thrown overboard so easily, the Epistle of Polycarp can not so readily be disposed of. Polycarp, then, did not write the epistle. Yet the disciple of Polycarp, Irenæus, believed and gave his witness to just the contrary. But there are never lacking specious grounds for a false position; and the professors of the nineteenth century have the art of putting out of sight even an Irenæus and his fellows.

The attack on the authenticity of Polycarp's epistle is all the more worth refuting, because, if successful, it does away no less with the genuineness of Ignatius's epistles, all the more troublesome if they are to be accepted in the limits which Polycarp and Eusebius assigned to them. On this account the latest outbreaks of critical presumption and audacity have been directed against the whole Polycarp-Ignatius literature. What one of these critical heroes does not venture, another does. One goes to work more in '^root and branch" fashion, another more artistically. The one contents himself with rejecting on his own authority all those passages ill Polycarp's letter which allude to the person and epistles of Ignatius, imputing them to a forger known to have lived long before Eusebius's time; the other, on the contrary, casts away the whole letter. In like manner, the one satisfies himself with regarding the three shortest Syrian epistles of Ignatius as genuine; the other holds it more advisable to assert that not a single one of the collective letters of Ignatius is genuine. Such dealings as this would soon convert the temple of God into a common ruin.

For my own part, I do not hesitate to advance further in the period of Polycarp. Justin the Martyr, even before his violent death in Rome in 166 made his memory dear to the church, had attained to great celebrity through his writings. Three of his works are still extant in the complete form, and their authenticity is undisputed,—the two apologies and the dialogue with the Jew Tryphon. Eusebius displays perfect familiarity with the two which were written to defend Christianity against the attacks of high pagan authorities, and speaks of them as two separate works, one of which was dedicated to the Emperor Antoninus, the other to Marcus Aurelius. Jerome repeats the statement of Eusebius, and most scholars down to the present day have coincided with him. The first work must be assigned to the year 138 or 139, the other to the year 161, the first year of the reign of Marcus Aurelius. Respecting the first, however, it should be said that it was in 139 that Marcus Aurelius (Berissimus) was named as Cæsar, yet the inscription does not address him with the imperial title. Very recently there have been new views taken respecting this matter, and there has been unjustified evidence brought forward to support the assigning of the year 147 to the production of the first of the two works in question: some, moreover, have felt themselves justified in taking a position not warranted by Eusebius and Jerome, and in regarding the second apology as no independent production, but a mere appendix to the first. Neither the one view nor the other appears to me to be thoroughly grounded. Still, the value of Justin's testimony is very little affected by the question whether he wrote a few years prior or subsequently to the year 140. Yet the fact that these two works of Justin's were written prior to the middle of the second century makes the question one of great interest whether he discussed our Gospels in them. It is a topic which has been treated in our time by many persons, and with great variance of opinion. What is the essential result gained from these investigations? That Justin often quotes from our own Matthew, is indisputable. That in various passages he follows Mark and Luke, is extremely probable. Yet this fact has been invalidated by the efforts of some to show that Justin did not use our Gospels as his basis, but writings very like them in character, perhaps the Gospel of the Hebrews, or, according to some, the Gospel of Peter, which was derived from the latter, but which, with the exception of a few passages, has remained entirely unknown to us to the present time. One support for this view is found in the fact that some quotations of Justin are also found in the pseudo-Clementine homilies, having there the same or similar differences from the readings in the canonical text. The supposition is, perhaps, an admissible one, that Justin, at the very earliest times, drew that Gospel of the Hebrews, which contained such repeated references to Matthew, into the circle of his evangelical quotations in one of his first works; for we have Eusebius's authority, in the first half of the fourth century, for the fact that at his time this Gospel was reckoned by several authorities as belonging to the canon. On the other hand, it is a manifest and groundless exercise of arbitrary authority to hold that such of his quotations as harmonize more or less closely with our received text are taken from a source respecting which we are left to conjecture alone. Such a view is all the more inadmissible from the fact that free extracts from our Gospels are fully in accordance with the character of the times in which they fall; and this is the same epoch, the first half of the second century, to which we trace the main origin of the diverse materials which enter into the canon, and more especially the Gospels. With equal freedom Justin makes his quotations from the Old Testament, even if he may not be proved to take his text exclusively from the standard Septuagint. And the fact is not to be overlooked, that the passages quoted by Justin from the Gospels can not be judged by the documents comprising the New Testament text which has come down to us, and which forms the substance of our usual editions; it is clear that many of our most widely diffused readings have proceeded from earlier or more recent corruptions in the primitive text; the Gospels especially were subject to arbitrary changes within the very first ten years after they had been committed to writing.

My discussion thus far of the extracts which Justin makes from the Gospels relates solely to those which he draws from the synoptic ones, the first three. Despite the prevailing skepticism in this matter, it is as good as certain that Justin made use of those three Gospels: but all the more obstinate is the assertion that he had no acquaintance with John's Gospel. But what in fact is his relation to John? In. my opinion there are most cogent reasons for believing that John was read and used by Justin. The delineation of the person of Christ, characteristic of John, as, for example, in the opening of the Gospel, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God," and in verse fourteen, "And the Word became flesh," as well as the general designation of Jesus as the Logos or Word of God, appears unmistakably in not a few passages in Justin, such, for instance, as "And Jesus Christ was begotten in a manner wholly peculiar to himself as the Son of God, while he is also the Word (Logos) of the same." "The primeval force (δύναμις) after the Father of All and God the Lord, is the Son, the Word (Logos); and I shall show how he through the incarnation (σαρκοποιηθεὶς) became man." "The Word (Logos) of God is the Son of the same." "As they have not confessed all that belongs to the Logos, which is Christ, they have often uttered what is at variance with itself." "Through the Word (Logos) of God, Jesus Christ our Saviour became flesh (σαρκοποιηθεὶς)." To these passages, taken from the brief second Apology, I add the following, taken from the first (chap. 33): "By the expressions the Holy Ghost and the Power of God in Luke i. 35 [the Holy Ghost shall come upon thee and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee], we are to understand the Logos, which is the' first begotten of God." In the "Dialogue," chap. 105, we find that "the same was begotten by the Father of All after a peculiar manner as the Word (Logos) and Power (δύναμις), becoming flesh through the instrumentality of the Virgin Mary, as we learn from the memorials which I have already displayed." In order to invalidate the proof found here that Justin wrote not independently of John, critics have made an effort to point out the differences between the conceptions of Logos which they both maintained, and to show that Justin had a superficial and merely external view of it. But is it to be supposed that those who first accepted the doctrines of John were able to fathom and exhaust them all? On the contrary, does not the fact that Justin was not able to penetrate to the depths of John's theology show that in his very allusions to it, without fully comprehending it, he was not independent of it? It seems to me that the internal connection between both meets the opponents of the authenticity of John's Gospel in no more convincing manner than in showing how the doctrines of John may be culled from the words of Justin.

There are not wanting passages in John's Gospel, moreover, which may be found specifically reproduced in Justin. In the "Dialogue," chap. 88, he writes of John the Baptist, "The people believed that he was the Christ; but he said to them, I am not Christ, but the voice of a preacher." This is in direct connection with the words of John i. 20 and 23; for the first words in the reply of the Baptist have been reported by no other evangelist than John.

Twice can Justin's expressions only be explained by supposing him to have been familiar with the account in John ix. of the man who had been born blind. He speaks expressly of the miraculous healings effected by Jesus, and says in the first Apology (chap. 22) that the Saviour restored to health one who was born lame, palsied, and blind. In like manner in the "Dialogue" (chap. 69) he declares that Jesus healed those who were blind, deaf, and lame from their birth, giving to one sound limbs, to another hearing, to a third restored sight. What a trick of art is it to take the words "I was born blind," spoken by the man who was a defender of Christ, and who corresponds to the blind man of Jericho, and to make them refer to an unknown source used by Justin, an ostensibly lost authority of the. narrative which he gives elsewhere! To what end is this? To no other than to discredit the Gospel of John, and to deny that it was before Justin when he wrote.

The words of Zechariah xii. 10 Justin quotes (first Apology, 52; also "Dialogue," 14 and 33) precisely in the language of John xix. 37, " they shall look on him whom they pierced." The text of the Seventy, which Jerome expressly confirms, has an entirely different translation of this passage; yet there is one of the older versions given us by Aquila, Symmachus, and Theodotion, which coincides with the language of John and Justin. There is nothing more improbable than that John and Justin were here independent of each other, and followed a translation of the Hebrew text which is unknown to us. Is the acceptance of this theory, one of the most untenable of positions, taken to avoid the manifest connection between the words of Justin and those of John?

To close this part of our discussion, we find in Justin's first Apology, chap. 61, Christ has said, "Unless ye are born again, ye can not enter the kingdom of heaven. It is manifest to every one that those who have been born once can not enter again into their mother's womb." This passage has been the theme of much controversy; but I am fully of the opinion that Justin had in view the passage in John iii. 3 to 5, "Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he can not see the kingdom of God. Nicodemus saith unto him, How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter the second time into his mother's womb and be born? Jesus answered, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit he can not enter into the kingdom of God" [kingdom of heaven according to the Sinaitic Codex and other ancient authorities.] Now what means is there of escaping the inference which the parallelism in these two passages gives rise to? Those who have attempted to do this have quoted Matt. xviii. 3, " Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven," and have given utterance to the suspicion that in some lost Gospel, perhaps that of the Hebrews, to which reference has already been made, this passage was recorded just as Justin has given it, his authority therefor being not John, but some previous writer. In order therefore to avoid what lies directly in our path, we are compelled to have recourse to, some unknown higher authority. The second part of Justin's expression gives all the less reason for appealing from John to Matthew, that the fifth verse in the passage in John (standing in direct connection with the third), "he can not enter into the kingdom of heaven" [Himmelreich], is the apparent basis of Justin's expression, "ye can not enter into the kingdom of heaven." The phrase "kingdom of God" was completely overshadowed by the more usual one, kingdom of heaven. Decisive too of the personal use of John by Justin is that expression of the latter relative to the entering again into the mother's womb and being born, derived from John iii. 4. To suppose such a coincidence of thought and language to have been accidental, is a feat of trickery which can deceive no one capable of forming an independent judgment.

To this result, which confirms the authenticity of the first three Gospels as much as it does the fourth, I must add two points more, which still strengthen my conclusions. One of these is, that Justin is in the habit of alluding to the "Memorabilia of the Apostles, known as Gospels," without specifically mentioning the names of the authors. Yet while doing this he makes particular mention of the fact that the writers were apostles and companions of Jesus, and by speaking of their combined writings as the "Gospel" he leads us to the undoubting conviction that it was invested with full canonical authority: and such an investiture naturally allows the names of the writers to fall into the background and to be unnoticed, while their writings might have general acceptance. In the second place, we have to' notice that Justin, even in his first Apology (chap. 67), asserts that in the Christian congregations the "Memorabilia of the Apostles or the writings of the Prophets" were read every Sunday. Here then is an instance of the Gospels and the prophetical books being placed on the same plane, the first being exalted to the same canonicity which the latter had enjoyed from the first. It is an error or a self-deception to deny that Justin's words do not warrant the acceptance of those books as canonical, on the ground that there were writings read in the church which were not accepted as a part of the canon. There were such books indeed, but they formed a class subordinate to the canon, and pre-supposing the formation of it. Of course there was not at the outset an immediate recognition of the equality of the Christian records with the hallowed books of the Old Testament; but after the church had enlarged the canon by admitting those sacred writings which had sprung from a common source, and had given them equal honor with those previously accepted, there came into view certain books which had more or less claim to recognition as canonical: and thus it came about that some were admitted to the prerogative of being read in the churches, without sharing the same honor which was given to those accepted as fully canonical. At a later period the church found it to be for its interest to assign to these books, to which usage gave a kind of half-canonical character, a rank equal to the highest. That this does not apply in the least to the earliest formation of the Christian canon is shown by the Muratori Fragment which speaks of the Apocalypse of John and of Peter. We accept these, but the last named is not admitted by some of our scholars to the honor of being publicly read in church. This doubt expresses distinctly the want of full canonical authority which led to the rejection of the writing in question. Later usage can not do away with this; and just as little can the fact that in some instances the direct relation of a paper to a single congregation became a source of advantage to the common church, as is testified by Dionysius of Corinth (Euseb., Hist. Eccl. iv. 23) in the case of the letters of Clemens and Soter to the Corinthians. In the Muratori Fragment already referred to, it is stated, toward the end of the Shepherd of Hermas, that he was to be recommended for private use, but not for public worship, and that he was to be included neither in the number of prophets nor apostles.

The manner in which Justin expresses himself in the passage quoted above (first Apology, chap. 67) makes it impossible, in my opinion, to doubt that in his time the Gospels were accepted as of canonical authority. We possess in fact a much earlier testimony of this equality in one of the generally accepted seven short letters, in that to Smyrna, the seventh chapter, where are the words, "It behooves us to give heed to the prophets, and especially to the Gospel, in which the passion and the resurrection are fully portrayed." Here too, as the reader observes, there is a manifest coupling of the prophets and the authors of the Gospels, i. e. the books which in their full extent and defined limits form the Gospel, and a proof that both were in common use in the church.

These are proofs from the first quarter (whether the year be taken as 107 or 115) and from the second quarter (139, or, as some suppose, ten years earlier) of the second century, that at that time the Gospels were held as of equal validity with the prophets, and were admitted to canonical authority, a place being assigned them directly after the prophetical books. What is not told us in detail respecting the various Gospels may be inferred from many other testimonies. I have already shown, from various passages of Justin Martyr's undisputed writings, that our Gospels, without the exception of the fourth, that of John, were admitted to form one Gospel, and to be invested with canonical authority. Is it possible, therefore, for the opinion to be justified that at Justin's time other Gospels than ours were in use as having had a sacred origin, in spite of the fact that, decades after Justin, these, and no others, were in repute through the whole Christian church? Does it not contravene all that we know of the origin of the canon, that at the outset, and even in the age of Justin, only Matthew, Mark, and Luke were regarded as canonical, and that John was subsequently smuggled in?