Constantin von Tischendorf · 9 of 10

Origin of the Four Gospels · Part 7

From that part of Papias's work which Eusebius thought was worth preserving, I have already cited the story of the resurrection from the dead which the daughters of Philip asserted that they had heard of their father, and also the account of Justus Barsabbas and the poison. In a third passage, where the Gospel of the Hebrews gives its corroborative evidence, he repeats the story of a woman who had been accused before Jesus of sin. In like manner it was stated in his book, as we learn of Catenen and Œkumenius, that Judas the betrayer was of such monstrous corpulence that he was crushed by a carriage in a narrow street, and that his bowels gushed out in consequence. Regarding the further contents of the book, Eusebius informs us, as already remarked, that, in addition to a few matters altogether fabulous, it contained a few parables and sayings of our Lord, hitherto unknown but utterly unworthy of being recorded; and no ecclesiastical writer has done so, excepting in the case of Irenæus's strange account of the kingdom which should last a thousand years. In addition to this, Anastasius Sinaita has called attention to the fact that Papias has made the days of creation and paradise refer to Christ and the church; and Andrew the Cappadocian, in his Commentary on the Apocalypse, quoted a remark of Papias respecting the angels who had been unfaithful to their trust in the government of the world. The latter writer, as does Arethas also, cites the authority of Papias in support of the credibility (Arethas uses the word "inspiration") of the Apocalypse.

In view of all that has been said above, is Papias's book one which can be accepted as throwing important light upon the history of our Gospels? The judgment of Eusebius respecting the man, that he was of limited understanding, is justified not only by the details which are brought into view, but confirmed by the fact that his alleged contributions to our evangelical literature have been utterly disregarded by the church. What would not a single parable of the Lord be worth if its authenticity could be substantiated! But no one has taken the slightest notice of all that has been recorded by Papias; the fabulous character which Eusebius charges upon the book—a man himself characterized by extreme critical acumen—has adhered to the whole work, and it is very unfair to trace this charge to a prepossession in favor of the Chiliasts. The question which has been raised we must answer in the negative, in view not only of the character of the man but also of the tendency of his book, although the passage referring to Matthew and Mark shows that that sort of matter was not absolutely excluded. However much to be wished, however important it is to see light thrown upon that very early Christian literature of which we find indications in the preface to Luke, in order to enable us to see the origin and the mutual relation of our synoptic Gospels cleared up, yet there is no use to be made of Papias's statements so far as they stand alone and in contradiction to the sufficiently authenticated facts of his time. If he has nevertheless become a torch-bearer of critical theology in our time, and a leader under whose guidance we can be content to see the first two Gospels divided up into what are called their authentic and unauthentic constituent parts, there is little result gained thereby other than the rearing of an undeserved memorial to the bishop of Hierapolis.

Papias is the most acceptable and important ally of the opponents of John's Gospel. And why? Papias is silent respecting this Gospel. Strauss and Renan, with their followers, make great account of this silence as opposed to the belief in the authenticity of John's Gospel, and evidently consider it something which can not be surmounted. I fear that my readers would not find it so after what has been said above respecting the value of Papias's book. Does it not betray—I ask the reader himself—complete ignorance of what Papias has said regarding his own undertaking, to quote him as evidence against the Gospel of John? His remarks respecting Mark and Matthew make no difference in the character of his whole book. It is insisted, however, that Papias can not, from his silence, have known anything about the Gospel of John, still less have acknowledged its authenticity. Naturally here was supposed to be nothing less than decisive evidence against the genuineness of this Gospel yet Papias, the bishop of Hierapolis, belonged even to the neighborhood of Ephesus, whence John's Gospel must have gone forth into the world, and his work can scarcely have been written prior to the middle of the second century. A more groundless and trivial demand can hardly be made than to grant that the silence of Papias respecting the Gospel of John constitutes a strong argument against its genuineness. For, in the first place, to give evidence respecting this Gospel formed no part whatever of the plan of Papias; and in the second place, from the fact that Eusebius has cited nothing from Papias's book respecting it, no inference can justly be drawn that there was nothing in that book which related to John's Gospel. The remarks respecting Mark and Matthew are not cited by Eusebius in confirmation of the genuineness of their Gospels, but simply in consequence of certain facts which they touch upon. In the case of John—and this is the only inference which can be rationally drawn from the silence of Eusebius—there were no circumstances which made it necessary to cite what related to him.

Since, however, the opponents of John's Gospel have made so much account of the silence of Eusebius in this matter, I can not refrain from laying before the reader the great error into which they have fallen. They completely overlook the purpose which Eusebius had in view in writing. Respecting his object he expresses himself plainly enough (iii. 3: 2), where he says that he wanted to trace in the ecclesiastical writers what portion of the Antilegomena of the New Testament they had made use of, and what they have said about the Homologoumena, as well as what does not fall under this head. Every one can see that this does not mean that he meant to inquire which writings, both of the Antileogomena as well as the Homologoumena, they had used. In the case of the Antilegomena, or New Testament writings of doubtful authority, the object is to indicate the use of passages cited, and in this way to make clear that this or that document was recognized. A similar effort is not made by him in the case of the Homologoumena, or writings invariably recognized as authentic, but he seeks as earnestly as in the case of the other class, to collect ancient references to them, and what was anciently known respecting them. That this construction of his purpose is the only correct one, Eusebius shows not only in the case of Papias, but of all other writers who happen to come under his notice. He never says respecting any one of the Gospels, This one or that one has made use of it: this is much oftener the case in the allusion to the Catholic Epistles, than to the Hebrews and the Apocalypse. But when he cites what he finds in the older writers relative to the Gospels, he brings forward all that refers to their origin, the time when they were written, and the occasion which gave them birth. This is the ease with Irenæus, of whom Eusebius writes (v. 8) the following: "Matthew wrote his Gospel among the Hebrews, in their own language, while Peter and Paul were preaching in Rome and strengthening the church. After their death, Mark, the disciple aid interpreter of Peter, wrote, recording what Peter had preached. Luke, the companion of Paul, took down the Gospel as it was announced by the latter, and subsequently John, the disciple who lay on the Lord's breast, wrote his Gospel during his sojourn at Ephesus." Very instructive, moreover, are the extracts from Clement. Eusebius says (vi. 14) that Clement briefly treats in his Hypotyposa all the biblical writings, not passing over the Antilegomena. "I mean," he goes on to say literally, "the Epistle of Jude, the other Catholic Epistles, that of Barnabas, and the Revelation ascribed to Peter." He allows the Epistle to the Hebrews to have been written by Paul, but in the Hebrew language. After further remarks respecting this Epistle, Eusebius goes on to say: "But in the same treatise Clement communicates a tradition of the following import respecting the true order of the Gospels; those were first written which contain a genealogical record. Mark's Gospel, moreover, had the following origin: When Peter was publicly preaching in Rome, and, filled with the Spirit, was announcing the Gospel, Mark was urged by many who were present, to put on record the statements of Peter, since he had long been Peter's companion and could remember the substance of his discourses; and when in accordance with this request he wrote his Gospel, he communicated it to those who had asked for it. Peter on his part, when he learned what Mark was doing, neither took ground against it, nor urged him to continue in it. And John, when he saw that that physical, active side of the Saviour had been fully delineated in the first three Gospels, gratified the wish of friends that he should portray Jesus on the spiritual sides This is what Clemens communicates." We add to this what Eusebius (vi. 35) has taken, of, similar purport, from Origen: that from tradition he had gathered that one of the four Gospels which had universal credence in God's church on earth, the one bearing the name of Matthew, at first a collector of customs and then an apostle of Jesus, was the one first written; and that it was composed in the Hebrew tongue and dedicated to believers who had come out from Judaism. The second in the order of the writing was Mark's, who had followed Peter's lead, and whom Peter himself recognizes in his catholic epistle as his son,—"My son Mark greeteth you." The third was Luke's, defended by Paul, and prepared for the use of those who were converted from heathendom. All these were followed by the one which bears the name of John.

Now does not a glance show that all these passages from Irenæus, Clemens and Origen were not quoted by Eusebius for the purpose of proving the genuineness of the Gospels, and just as little what Papias has to say about Mark and Matthew, but that they were recorded merely as interesting facts relative to the distinctive history of each one of the evangelical records?

But we have the most striking confirmation of our view in extracts from writers still older, whose clear and distinct testimony to our Gospels and other Homologoumena, such as the Pauline Epistles, are passed over by Eusebius in accordance with his general design, while he records what seemed to him to support the Antilegomena. Here Papias himself is at the head; at any rate Eusebius remarks expressly respecting him at the end of his treatise, that he had used proof texts from the First Epistle of John, and also from that Of Peter. Further he says (iv. 18: 3) of Justin, that he had borne in mind the Apocalypse of John, and expressly allowed that it was written by the apostle; but of the quotations from the Gospels found in him, he does not have a syllable. From Polycarp's Epistle to the Philippians he draws the statement (iv. 14) that he was indebted for many proof texts to the First Epistle of Peter; but of the far more numerous Pauline, citations, taken from the majority of Paul's Epistles, he says nothing. Of Clemens Romanus he remarks that he had taken many ideas from the Epistle to the Hebrews, and often in the original words, while he passes in silence over all quotations from the Pauline Epistles. From the three books of Theophilus to Autolycus, and from the one directed against the heresy of Hermogenes, he cites (iv. 14) nothing further than that in the latter he makes use of passages in the Apocalypse of John; and yet Theophilus often and unmistakably uses the Pauline Epistles (e. g. Rom. ii. 6, et seq. ad Autolyc. i. 14; Rom. xiii. 7, et sq. ad Autolyc. iii. 14); he even (and this is the most pertinent to our needs) cites the Gospel of John under that very appellation.

With all this, do we not apprehend the aim of what Eusebius records? And may we not steer clear of the long-continued perversion of his purpose? On our part, we are of the firm conviction that it needs only an upright determination to discern the truth as it is in order to see the complete worthlessness of this famous Papias argument against the Gospel of John.

The absurdity of the argument that the unfortunate Bishop of Hierapolis, shortly before the middle of the second century, knew nothing of the writings of Luke and the Epistles of Paul, because, judging by Eusebius's silence, he made no mention of them, has been long perceived; but very recently it has been set aside by those who are the rudest opponents of ecclesiasticism, on the ground that the bishop may have been silent about things which he knew, but which seemed too trivial to mention. Still less trouble has it caused this party that, according to Eusebius's express testimony, Papias made use of the First Epistle of John. In the place, some pages back, where we had. occasion to refer to Polycarp's use of this same Epistle, it was said that the evidence in favor of this Epistle is equally applicable to the Gospels; but we asserted that not only had the identity of authorship in these two treatises been called into question, but that there has been a hasty impulse to cast the Epistle itself overboard. Thus Papias's silence was to bring the Gospel into utter disrepute, while, with his distinct testimony, he could not shield the Epistle from the attacks of overbearing critics.

In view of such proceedings, it is a genuine satisfaction to know that there has recently been brought to light a work printed long ago, but quite forgotten, in which Papias and his book give direct testimony in behalf of the Gospel, which is assaulted under the protection of his name. It is a prologue to the Gospel of John in a Latin manuscript of the Vatican (leaf 244), which, by a note in an old hand, is traced back to the possession of the Bohemian, Duke Wenceslaus (iste liber creditur fuisse Divi Venceslai Ducis Boemiæ), and which, according to the appearances of the writing, dates from the ninth century. It is now designated Vat. Alex. No. 14. The prologue discloses that it was composed prior to the time of Jerome, and begins with the words, "Evangelium iohannis manifestatum et datum est ecclesiis ab iohanne adhuc in corpore constituto, sicut papias nomine hierapolitanus discipulus iohannis carus in exotericis id est in extremis quinque libris retulit." There can be no stronger testimony than this that Papias did give evidence in behalf of John's Gospel. The further purport of the prologue is, with all its brevity, rich in surprising facts. That it sprang from the work of Papias seems, however, on more grounds than one, to be doubtful; and on this account the credibility of the other matters which it communicates can not be put on the same footing with the first.

Before leaving Papias, however, we must revert to one source of evidence in favor of John's Gospel, which Irenæus (v. 36: 2) cites even from the lips of the presbyters, those high authorities of Papias: "And on this account they say that the Lord used the expression, 'In my Father's house are many mansions'" (John xiv. 2). As the presbyters put this expression in connection with the degrees of elevation granted to the just in the City of God, in Paradise, in Heaven, according as they bring their thirty, sixty, or a hundred-fold from the harvest, so nothing is more probable than that Irenæus borrowed this whole expression of the presbyter, together with the portraiture already referred to of the kingdom of a thousand years, from the work of Papias. Whether it comes from that source, however, or not, on every ground the authority of the presbyters stands higher than that of Papias; it takes us back unquestionably to the close of the apostolical period. In what way, and with what machinery, the noted men with whom unbelief becomes an art, and whose very efforts to propagate it are labored at with artistic ingenuity, will be able to set aside this evidence in support of John's Gospel, and, together with the testimony of the presbyters, that of Papias in the Latin prologue to John, is not apparent to me; yet I do not doubt that the skill which has defied all efforts to baffle it as yet, will be able to meet and overcome even this obstacle.

And lastly, we have to trace the bearings of New Testament textual criticism on the question under discussion. This is the science which has to do with the primitive documents of the sacred text, the direct bearer of saving truth. Investigation into these primitive documents ought to throw light upon the history of the sacred text; i.e. we ought to learn from them what in all times Christendom has united in finding recorded in the books which contain the New Testament; this, e.g., what Columba, the pious and learned Irish monk of the sixth century; what Ambrose at Milan, and Augustine in Africa, in the fourth century; what Cyprian and Tertullian, in the third and second centuries, found recorded in their Latin copies of the New Testament: in like manner, what Photius, the patriarch of Constantinople, in the tenth; Cyril, the Bishop of Jerusalem, in the fifth; Athanasius and Origen of Alexandria, in the fourth and third centuries, found on record in the Greek copies of their time. The final and highest object of these investigations consists in this, however,—to trace with exactness those expressions and words which the holy apostles either wrote with their own hand or dictated to others. If the New Testament is the most important and most hallowed book in the world, we must certainly lay the greatest value on all efforts to possess the text in which it was originally written in its most perfect state, without omissions, without additions, and without changes. Should it be impossible to attain this result, still the task would at any rate be ours to approximate as closely as possible to the primitive form of the text.

The question will at once recur to many readers, Do our ordinary editions of the Bible not contain the genuine and true text? The German Protestant, with his Luther's Bible in his hand, would ask this question; so would the Catholic, with his Latin Vulgate, or his German or French translation of it; so would the Englishman, with his Authorized Version; so too would the Russian, with his Sclavonic text. The answer to this question, viewed from what side we will, is not light. Every one of these translations has again its own more or less rich text-history, and there is no one which has not enough of the original to insure the degree of faith necessary to salvation. But if the effort be made to see how closely each follows the original, how truly each has preserved the text as it was given by the apostles, it must be compared with the original text, from which, directly or indirectly, all have flowed. We know that the Greek is the original text of the New Testament. And how is it with the genuineness of this text?

When the discovery of printing, in the first quarter of the sixteenth century, was applied to the publication of the Greek New Testament, Erasmus, at Bâle, and Cardinal Ximenes, at Alcala, took as the basis of the work such manuscripts as were at their command. Their editions were repeated elsewhere, often with slight modification of the original text, according to other manuscripts. The learned Parisian printer, Robert Stephens, introduced some such modifications; the Elzevir followed, the work of a Leyden printer; and soon the force of usage became so powerful that the theologians accepted the text as it was established by the Erasmus, Elzevir, and Robert Etienne editions as a kind of authorized general edition. In the mean time, scholars had begun to trace new sources,—Greek manuscripts written in the first century, as well as manuscripts prepared for the translations effected in the first five centuries into Latin, Gothic, Coptic, Ethiopian, Armenian; to these may be added the textual readings which are found recorded in the works of the church Fathers of the second century. From this there issued at last the result that, under the hand of the various transcribers, learned as well as unlearned, the New Testament text has assumed extraordinary diversity in its readings. And, although this diversity is, in thousands of passages, limited to merely grammatical forms, having no relation to the sense, there is no lack of places which involve more important matters, and which are of historical and dogmatic value. After this had gone on so far that the whole of Christendom was interested in the highest degree in the matter, earnest men, with whom it was a sacred duty to ascertain what is truth rather than to conform with established usage, conceived that it was their especial task to reform the ordinary text by incorporating upon it the results of examining the ancient but later discovered manuscripts. Still, it is only in the most recent period that men have dared to lay aside the ordinary text, which had no scientific guaranty of authenticity, and to bring into exclusive use the text of the earliest documents. For it needs no proof that the oldest documents, those which run back to within a few centuries of the first composition, must be truer to the original than those which were written a thousand years or more subsequently to the first composition. In giving the preference to the most ancient documents, however, there is the rigid duty of examining them most carefully in respect to their intrinsic character and their mutual relations. With this is to be coupled the fact that our various most ancient manuscripts give the text with a great diversity of readings, through which cause their use is made much more difficult in establishing the original text given by the apostles. All the more necessary was it, therefore, to seek the oldest and most trustworthy of them all. In order to do this, Richard Bentley considered it important to give the preference to that text which shows the closest accordance with the oldest Greek documents and the Latin text of the fourth century. In accordance with Bentley's judgment, Carl Lachmann undertook, with very few aids, the restoration of the text which was generally diffused in the fourth century; for there seems to be no possibility of reaching any documentary evidence which goes back of that age. There is no doubt that the earliest Latin translation of the Gospels—to limit ourselves to this—was written soon after the middle of the second century; for, as I have had occasion to remark above, the Latin translator of Irenæus, before the close of the second century, and Tertullian in the last decade of the same century, appear to have been in undisputed dependence upon it. This oldest translation we possess at the present time,—certainly in its main body; for our oldest documents, reaching back to the fifth century, and which bear relation to the text which was prepared in North Africa, the home of Tertullian, find a frequent confirmation of their readings in the two witnesses already mentioned, the translators of Irenæus and Tertullian. And on this account, in behalf of those texts which men have not recorded in their writings, it must be admitted that they correspond to the very earliest edition, or are very nearly allied to it. By the discovery of the Sinaitic manuscript we have advanced yet' farther; for this text, which, on palæographical grounds, has been assigned by competent scholars to the middle of the fourth century, stands in such surprising alliance with the oldest Latin translation that it is really to be regarded as coincident with the text which, soon after the middle of the second century, served the first Latin translator, the preserver of the so-called Itala, as a foundation. And that this text was not an isolated one is manifest from the fact that the oldest Syrian text, contained in a manuscript of the fifth century, lately discovered in the Nitrian desert, as well as Origen and others of the earliest Fathers, stands in specially close connection with it. The Syrian text just mentioned possesses on its side a power of carrying conviction quite analogous to the Itala, and manifesting it in that double way which I have endeavored to set forth; for the latest investigations leave no doubt that the Peshito, which is universally ascribed to the close of the second century, presupposes the existence of the Nitrian text, so that the latter must have arisen about the middle of the second century.

What now follows from all these considerations in the way of answering the question which has been raised? Two things we have to make use of and apply in the most emphatic manner. At the very outset of this work I have indicated it as a noteworthy fact, that soon after the middle, and even about the middle, of the second century, the four Gospels underwent an undoubted common translation, and appeared in a Latin as well as in a Syriac version. These translations not only prove the same thing which the harmonistic treatment of the Gospels by Tatian of Syria and by Theophilus at almost the same epoch proves; they prove at the same time much more, namely, that as the Gospels of Luke and John were in existence at that time in the same form in which we have them now, so were those of Matthew and Mark. If isolated citations from the oldest epoch allow the suspicion that instead of our Matthew, the nearly related and only subsequently discriminated Gospel of the Hebrews was perhaps used, or that even our Mark had then taken that primitive form which is indicated in the recent investigations of Papias's account, yet the oldest Latin texts of these Gospels completely exclude this suspicion, at least so far as. the middle of the second century is concerned. They give thoughtful investigators as little ground for believing that these texts might shortly before have been developed by unknown hands from a previous form, and now in an unskillful fashion, after the change which has been wrought upon them by the Latin Church, are held to be the original draft. Even here the Nitrian text stands by the side of the Itala in confirmation of it, omitting, however, the Gospel of Mark, with the exception of the last four verses. It is well known that the discoverer and editor of this text uttered his conviction, and strengthened it with plausible proofs, that in the case of the Gospel of Matthew this text may have sprung from the original Hebrew form. In opposition to this decidedly erroneous impression, the agreement of the same Syrian text with our oldest Greek and Latin documents confirms in the most striking manner our conclusion in relation to the Greek text of Matthew, as well as the conclusion that in the middle of the second century there was no other text of Matthew than the one which we possess. And so far as Mark is concerned, this Syrian translator bears witness in support of the closing verses already employed by Irenæus, which, according to decisive critical authority, are not genuine, but which were appended to the accepted text of Mark's Gospel.

But I have yet another matter of textual criticism to take note of, which in my judgment affords evidence that our collective Gospels are to be traced back at least to the beginning of the second or the end of the first century. As on the one side the text of the Sinaitic manuscript, together with the oldest Itala text, is to be assigned specifically to the use of the second century, so on the other side it is easy to establish that that same text, in spite of all its superiority over other documents, had assumed even their differences in many respects from the primitive purity of the reading, and that it even then presupposed a complete text-history. We are not directed in this exclusively to the Codex Sinaiticus and one or another of the Itala manuscripts, together with Irenæus and Tertullian: but we can accept all these documents, which we must assign, partly from necessity and partly with the greatest probability, to the second century; the fact is undeniable that there was even then a rich text-history. We mean by this that even prior to the second half of the second century, while copy after copy of our Gospels was made, not only are there many errors of transcribers to be found, but the phraseology and the sense in particular places are changed, and larger or smaller additions are made from apocryphal and oral sources. With all this, such changes are not excluded which were the result of putting together separate parallel passages, and these testify in a striking manner to the early union of our Gospels in a single canon. If this is really the case, there is an important stadium of the textual history of our four Gospels prior to the middle of the second century, prior to the time when canonical authority, together with the more settled ecclesiastical order, made arbitrary changes in the sacred text more and more difficult,—this I shall take occasion to show fully at another time,—and for the lapse of this history we must assume at least a half century. According to this, must not—I dare not say the origin of the Gospels, but—the establishment of the evangelical canon be set at the close of the first century? And is not this result all the more certain from the coincidence with it of all the historical factors of the second century, which we have reviewed without any reserve?