I. Commentaries on Hebrews by Chrysostom (d. 407, e Jrmhneiva, in 34 Homilies publ. after his death by an Antioch. presbyter, Constantinus); Theodoret (d. 457); Oecumenius (10th cent.); Theophylact (11th cent.); Thomas Aquinas (d. 1274); Erasmus (d. 1536, Annotationes in N.T., with his Greek Test., 1516 and often, and Paraphrasis in N.T., 1522 and often); Card. Cajetanus (Epistolae Pauli, etc., 1531); Calvin (d. 1564, Com. in omnes P. Ep. atque etiam in Ep. ad Hebraeos, 1539 and often, also Halle, 1831); Beza (d. 1605, transl. and notes, 1557 and often; had much influence on King Jame's Version); Hyperius (at Marburg, d. 1564); Dav. Pareus (d. 1615, Com. in Ep. ad Hebr.); Corn. A Lapide (Jesuit, d. 1637, Com. in omnes Pauli Epp., 1627 and often); Guil. Estius (R. C. Prof. at Douai, 1614, etc.); Jac. Cappellus (Sedan, 1624); Lud. Cappellus (Geneva, 1632); Grotius (d. 1645, Arminian, a great classical and general scholar); Joh. Gerhard (d. 1637); John Owen (the great Puritan divine, d. 1683, Exercitations on the Epistle to the Hebrews, London, 1668-80, in 4 vols. fol., Lat. transl., Amsterd., 1700 [new Engl. ed. in 7 vols., in his Works, Lond., 1826, 21 vols.; Edinb. ed. of Works by W. H. Goold, 1850-55; 24 vols., Philad. reprint, 1869], a work of gigantic strength as well as gigantic size, as Chalmers called it, and containing a whole system of Puritan theology); Jac. Pierce (Non-conformist, d. 1726); Sykes (d. 1756); Carpzov (d. 1803, Exercitat., etc., 1750); J. D. Michaelis (2d ed., 1780-86, 2 vols.); Rosenmueller (1793); Storr (d. 1805; Tueb., 1789); Boehme (Lips., 1825); Mos. Stuart (Andover, 1827, 2 vols., 4th ed., abridged and revised by Robbins, 1860); Kuehnoel (1831); Friedrich Bleek (Prof. in Bonn., d. 1859; the large Com. in 3 vols., Berlin, 1836-40, an exegetical masterpiece, most learned, critical, candid, judicious, and reverential, though free; his Lectures on Hebrews were ed., after his death, by Windrath, 1868); Tholuck (Hamburg, 1836, dedicated to Bunsen, 3d ed., 1850, transl. by James Hamilton, Edinb., 1852); Stier (1842); De Wette (1847, 2d ed.); Ebrard (1850, in Olshausen's Com., vol. v.; Engl. transl., Edinb., 1853); Turner (new ed. N. Y., 1855); Sampson (ed. by Dabney, N. Y., 1856); Luenemann (in Meyer's Com., 1857, 4th ed., 1878); Delitzsch (1857, transl. by Th. L. Kingsbury, Edinb., 1868, 2 vols.); John Brown (Edinb., 1862, 2 vols.); Reuss (in French, 1862); Lindsay (Edinb., 1867, 2 vols.); Moll (in Lange's Com., translated and enlarged by Kendrick, 1868); Ripley (1868); Kurtz (1869); Ewald (1870); Hofmann (1873); Biesenthal (1878); Bloomfield; Alford; Wordsworth; W. Kay (in the Speaker's Com. N. T, vol. iv., 1882); Moulton (in Ellicott's Com. for English Readers); A. B. Davidson (of the New College, Edinburgh. 1882); Angus (1883); Sam. T. Lowrie (1884); Weiss (1888).

II. The doctrinal system of the Ep. has been most fully expounded by Riehm (d. 1888 in Halle): Der Lehrbegriff des Hebraeerbriefs, Basel und Ludwigsburg, 1858-59, 2 vols.; new ed., 1867, in 1 vol. (899 pages). Comp. the expositions of Neander, Messner, Baur, Reuss, and Weiss. On the use of the O. T., see Tholuck: Das A. T. im N., Hamb., 3d ed., 1849; on the Christology of the Epistle, Beyerschlag: Christologie des N.T. (1866), 176 sqq.; on the Melchisedek priesthood, Auberlen, in Studien und Kritiken for 1857, pp. 453 sqq. Pfleiderer, in his Paulinismus (pp. 324-366), treats of Hebrews, together with Colossians and the Epistle of Barnabas, as representing Paulinism under the influence of Alexandrinism.

III. On the introductory questions, comp. Norton in the: Christian Examiner (Boston), 1827-29; Olshausen: De auctore Ep. ad Hebraeos (in Opusc. theol., 1834); Wieseler: Untersuchung ueber den Hebraeerbrief, Kiel, 1861; J. H. Thayer: Authorship and Canonicity of the to the Hebrews, in the Bibliotheca Sacra, Andover, 1867; Zahn, in Herzog's Encykl., vol. v. (1879), pp. 656-671; and articles in Bible Dictionaries, and in Encycl. Brit., 9th ed., vol. xi., 602 sqq.

The anonymous Epistle to the Hebrews, like the Book of Job, belongs to the order of Melchizedek, combining priestly unction and royal dignity, but being without father, without mother, without pedigree, having neither beginning of days nor end of life (Heb. 7:1-3). Obscure in its origin, it is clear and deep in its knowledge of Christ. Hailing from the second generation of Christians (2:3), it is full of pentecostal inspiration. Traceable to no apostle, it teaches, exhorts, and warns with apostolic authority and power. Though not of Paul's pen, it has, somehow, the impress of his genius and influence, and is altogether worthy to occupy a place in the canon, after his Epistles, or between them and the Catholic Epistles. Pauline in spirit, it is catholic or encyclical in its aim.

Contents.

The Epistle to the Hebrews is not an ordinary letter. It has, indeed, the direct personal appeals, closing messages, and salutations of a letter; but it is more, it is a homily, or rather a theological discourse, aiming to strengthen the readers in their Christian faith, and to protect them against the danger of apostasy from Christianity. It is a profound argument for the superiority of Christ over the angels, over Moses, and over the Levitical priesthood, and for the finality of the second covenant. It unfolds far more fully than any other book the great idea of the eternal priesthood and sacrifice of Christ, offered once and forever for the redemption of the world, as distinct from the national and transient character of the Mosaic priesthood and the ever-repeated sacrifices of the Tabernacle and the Temple. The author draws his arguments from the Old Testament itself, showing that, by its whole character and express declarations, it is a preparatory dispensation for the gospel salvation, a significant type and prophecy of Christianity, and hence destined to pass away like a transient shadow of the abiding substance. He implies that the Mosaic oeconomy was still existing, with its priests and daily sacrifices, but in process of decay, and looks forward to the fearful judgment which a few years, afterward destroyed the Temple forever. He interweaves pathetic admonitions and precious consolations with doctrinal expositions, and every exhortation leads him to a new exposition. Paul puts the hortatory part usually at the end.

The author undoubtedly belonged to the Pauline school, which emphasized the great distinction between the Old and the New Covenant; while yet fully acknowledging the divine origin and paedagogic use of the former. But he brings out the superiority of Christ's priesthood and sacrifice to the Mosaic priesthood and sacrifice; while Paul dwells mainly on the distinction between the law and the gospel. He lays chief stress on faith, but he presents it in its general aspect as trust in God, in its prospective reference to the future and invisible, and in its connection with hope and perseverance under suffering; while Paul describes faith, in its specific evangelical character, as a hearty trust in Christ and his atoning merits, and in its justifying effect, in opposition to legalistic reliance on works. Faith is defined, or at least described, as assurance (u Jpovstasi ) of things hoped for, a conviction (e[legco ) of things not seen (11:1). This applies to the Old Testament as well as the New, and hence appropriately opens the catalogue of patriarchs and prophets, who encourage Christian believers in their conflict; but they are to look still more to Jesus as the author and perfecter of our faith (12:2), who is, after all, the unchanging object of our faith, the same yesterday, and to-day, and for ever (13:8).

The Epistle is eminently Christological. It resembles in this respect Colossians and Philippians, and forms a stepping-stone to the Christology of John. From the sublime description of the exaltation and majesty of Christ in Heb. 1:1-4 (comp. Col. 1:15-20), there is only one step to the prologue of the fourth Gospel. The exposition of the high priesthood of Christ reminds one of the sacerdotal prayer (John 17).

The use of proof-texts from the Old Testament seems at times contrary to the obvious historical import of the passage, but is always ingenious, and was, no doubt, convincing to Jewish readers. The writer does not distinguish between typical and direct prophecies. He recognizes the typical, or rather antitypical, character of the Tabernacle and its services, as reflecting the archetype seen by Moses in the mount, but all the Messianic prophecies are explained as direct (Heb. 1:5-14; 2:11-13; 10:5-10). He betrays throughout a high order of Greek culture, profound knowledge of the Greek Scriptures, and the symbolical import of the Mosaic worship. He was also familiar with the Alexandrian theosophy of Philo,1 but he never introduces foreign ideas into the Scriptures, as Philo did by his allegorical interpretation. His exhortations and warnings go to the quick of the moral sensibility; and yet his tone is also cheering and encouraging. He had the charisma of exhortation and consolation in the highest degree. Altogether, he was a man full of faith and the Holy Spirit, and gifted with a tongue of fire.

The Style.

Hebrews is written in purer Greek than any book of the New Testament, except those portions of Luke where he is independent of prior documents. The Epistle begins, like the third Gospel, with a rich and elegant period of classic construction. The description of the heroes of faith in the eleventh chapter is one of the most eloquent and sublime in the entire history of religious literature. He often reasons a minori ad majus (eij... povsw/ ma'llon). He uses a number of rare and choice terms which occur nowhere else in the New Testament.

As compared with the undoubted Epistles of Paul, the style of Hebrews is less fiery and forcible, but smoother, more correct, rhetorical, rhythmical, and free from anacolutha and solecisms. There is not that rush and vehemence which bursts through ordinary rules, but a calm and regular flow of speech. The sentences are skilfully constructed and well rounded. Paul is bent exclusively on the thought; the author of Hebrews evidently paid great attention to the form. Though not strictly classical, his style is as pure as the Hellenistic dialect and the close affinity with the Septuagint permit.

All these considerations exclude the idea of a translation from a supposed Hebrew original.

The Readers.

The Epistle is addressed to the Hebrew Christians, that is, according to the usual distinction between Hebrews and Hellenists (Acts 6:1; 9:27), to the converted Jews in Palestine, chiefly to those in Jerusalem. To them it is especially adapted. They lived in sight of the Temple, and were exposed to the persecution of the hierarchy and the temptation of apostasy. This has been the prevailing view from the time of Chrysostom to Bleek. The objection that the Epistle quotes the Old Testament uniformly after the Septuagint is not conclusive, since the Septuagint was undoubtedly used in Palestine alongside with the Hebrew original.

Other views more or less improbable need only be mentioned: (1) All the Christian Jews as distinct from the Gentiles;1 (2) the Jews of Jerusalem alone;1 (3) the Jews of Alexandria;1 (4) the Jews of Antioch;1 (5) the Jews of Rome;1 (6) some community of the dispersion in the East (but not Jerusalem).

Occasion and Aim.

The Epistle was prompted by the desire to strengthen and comfort the readers in their trials and persecutions (Heb. 10:32-39; Heb. 11 and 12), but especially to warn them against the danger of apostasy to Judaism (2:2, 3; 3:6, 14; 4:1, 14; 6:1-8; 10:23, 26-31). And this could be done best by showing the infinite superiority of Christianity, and the awful guilt of neglecting so great a salvation.

Strange that but thirty years after the resurrection and the pentecostal effusion of the Spirit, there should have been such a danger of apostasy in the very mother church of Christendom. And yet not strange, if we realize the condition of things, between 60 and 70. The Christians in Jerusalem were the most conservative of all believers, and adhered as closely as possible to the traditions of their fathers. They were contented with the elementary doctrines, and needed to be pressed on to perfection (5:12; 6:1-4). The Epistle of James represents their doctrinal stand-point. The strange advice which he gave to his brother Paul, on his last visit, reflects their timidity and narrowness. Although numbered by myriads, they made no attempt in that critical moment to rescue the great apostle from the hands of the fanatical Jews; they were all zealous for the law, and afraid of the radicalism of Paul on hearing that he was teaching the Jews of the Dispersion to forsake Moses, telling them not to circumcise their children, neither to walk after the customs ( Acts 21:20, 21).

They hoped against hope for the conversion of their people. When that hope vanished more and more, when some of their teachers had suffered martyrdom (Heb. 13:7), when James, their revered leader, was stoned by the Jews (62), and when the patriotic movement for the deliverance of Palestine from the hated yoke of the heathen Romans rose higher and higher, till it burst out at last in open rebellion (66), it was very natural that those timid Christians should feel strongly tempted to apostatize from the poor, persecuted sect to the national religion, which they at heart still believed to be the best part of Christianity. The solemn services of the Temple, the ritual pomp and splendor of the Aaronic priesthood, the daily sacrifices, and all the sacred associations of the past had still a great charm for them, and allured them to their embrace. The danger was very strong, and the warning of the Epistle fearfully solemn.

Similar dangers have occurred again and again in critical periods of history.

Time and Place of Composition.

The Epistle hails and sends greetings from some place in Italy, at a time when Timothy, Paul's disciple, was set at liberty, and the writer was on the point of paying, with Timothy, a visit to his readers (13:23, 24). The passage, Remember them that are in bonds, as bound with them (13:3), does not necessarily imply that he himself was in prison, indeed 13:23 seems to imply his freedom. These notices naturally suggest the close of Paul's first Roman imprisonment, in the spring of the year 63, or soon after; for Timothy and Luke were with him there, and the writer himself evidently belonged to the circle of his friends and fellow-workers.

There is further internal evidence that the letter was written before the destruction of Jerusalem (70), before the outbreak of the Jewish war (66), before the Neronian persecution (in July, 64), and before Paul's martyrdom. None of these important events are even alluded to;1 on the contrary, as already remarked, the Temple was still standing, with its daily sacrifices regularly going on, and the doom of the theocracy was still in the future, though nigh to a curse, becoming old and ready to vanish away; it was shaken and about to be removed; the day of the fearful judgment was drawing nigh.

The place of composition was either Rome or some place in Southern Italy, if we assume that the writer had already started on his journey to the East. Others assign it to Alexandria, or Antioch, or Ephesus.

Authorship.

This is still a matter of dispute, and will probably never be decided with absolute certainty. The obscurity of its origin is the reason why the Epistle to the Hebrews was ranked among the seven Antilegomena of the ante-Nicene church. The controversy ceased after the adoption of the traditional canon in 397, but revived again at the time of the Reformation. The different theories may be arranged under three heads: (1) sole authorship of Paul; (2) sole authorship of one of his pupils; (3) joint authorship of Paul and one of his pupils. Among the pupils again the views are subdivided between Luke, Barnabas, Clement of Rome, Silvanus, and Apollos.

1. The Pauline Authorship was the prevailing opinion of the church from the fourth century to the eighteenth, with the exception of the Reformers, and was once almost an article of faith, but has now very few defenders among scholars. It rests on the following arguments:

(a) The unanimous tradition of the Eastern church, to which the letter was in all probability directed; yet with the important qualification which weakens the force of this testimony, that there was a widely prevailing perception of a difference of style, and consequent supposition of a Hebrew original, of which there is no historic basis whatever. Clement of Alexandria ascribed the Greek composition to Luke. Origen observes the greater purity of the Greek style,1 and mentions Luke and Clement, besides Paul, as possible authors, but confesses his own ignorance.

(b) The mention of Timothy and the reference to a release from captivity (Heb. 13:23) point to Paul. Not necessarily, but only to the circle of Paul. The alleged reference to Paul's own captivity in 10:34 rests on a false reading (desmoi' mou, E. V., in my bonds, instead of the one now generally adopted, toi' desmivoi, those that were in bonds ). Nor does the request 13:18, 19, imply that the writer was a prisoner at the time of composition; for 13:23 rather points to his freedom, as he expected, shortly to see his readers in company with Timothy.

(c) The agreement of the Epistle with Paul's system of doctrine, the tone of apostolic authority, and the depth and unction which raises the Epistle to a par with his genuine writings. But all that can be said in praise of this wonderful Epistle at best proves only its inspiration and canonicity, which must be extended beyond the circle of the apostles so as to embrace the writings of Luke, Mark, James, and Jude.

2. The Non-Pauline Authorship is supported by the following arguments:

(a) The Western tradition, both Roman and North African, down to the time of Augustine, is decidedly against the Pauline authorship. This has all the more weight from the fact that the earliest traces of the Epistle to the Hebrews are found in the Roman church, where it was known before the close of the first century. Clement of Rome makes very extensive use of it, but nowhere under the name of Paul. The Muratorian Canon enumerates only thirteen Epistles of Paul and omits Hebrews. So does Gaius, a Roman presbyter, at the beginning of the third century. Tertullian ascribed the Epistle to Barnabas. According to the testimony of Eusebius, the Roman church did not regard the Epistle as Pauline at his day (he died 340). Philastrius of Brescia (d. about 387) mentions that some denied the Pauline authorship, because the passage 6:4-6 favored the heresy and excessive disciplinary rigor of the Novatians, but he himself believed it to be Paul's, and so did Ambrose of Milan. Jerome (d. 419) can be quoted on both sides. He wavered in his own view, but expressly says: The Latin custom (Latina consuetudo) does not receive it among the canonical Scriptures; and in another place: All the Greeks receive the Epistle to the Hebrews, and some Latins (et nonnulli Latinorum). Augustine, a profound divine, but neither linguist nor critic, likewise wavered, but leaned strongly toward the Pauline origin. The prevailing opinion in the West ascribed only thirteen Epistles to Paul. The Synod of Hippo (393) and the third Synod of Carthage (397), under the commanding influence of Augustine, marked a transition of opinion in favor of fourteen. This opinion prevailed until Erasmus and the Reformers revived the doubts of the early Fathers. The Council of Trent sanctioned it.

(b) The absence of the customary name and salutation. This has been explained from modesty, as Paul was sent to the Gentiles rather than the Jews (Pantaenus), or from prudence and the desire to secure a better hearing from Jews who were strongly prejudiced against Paul (Clement of Alexandria). Very unsatisfactory and set aside by the authoritative tone of the Epistle.

(c) In 2:3 the writer expressly distinguishes himself from the apostles, and reckons himself with the second generation of Christians, to whom the word of the Lord was confirmed by them that heard it at the first from the Lord. Paul, on the contrary, puts himself on a par with the other apostles, and derives his doctrine directly from Christ, without any human intervention (Gal. 1:1, 12, 15, 16). This passage alone is conclusive, and decided Luther, Calvin, and Beza against the Pauline authorship.

(d) The difference, not in the substance, but in the form and method of teaching and arguing.

(e) The difference of style (which has already been discussed). This argument does not rest on the number of peculiar words for such are found in every book of the New Testament, but in the superior purity, correctness, and rhetorical finish of style.

(f) The difference in the quotations from the Old Testament. The author of Hebrews follows uniformly the Septuagint, even with its departures from the Hebrew; while Paul is more independent, and often corrects the Septuagint from the Hebrew. Bleek has also discovered the important fact that the former used the text of Codex Alexandrinus, the latter the text of Codex Vaticanus. It is incredible that Paul, writing to the church of Jerusalem, should not have made use of his Hebrew and rabbinical learning in quoting the Scriptures.

3 Conjectures concerning the probable author. Four Pauline disciples and co-workers have been proposed, either as sole or as joint authors with Paul, three with some support in tradition Barnabas, Luke, and Clement one without any Apollos. Silvanus also has a few advocates.

(a) Barnabas. He has in his favor the tradition of the African church (at least Tertullian), his Levitical training, his intimacy with Paul, his close relation to the church in Jerusalem, and his almost apostolic authority. As the ui Jo; paraklhvsew (Acts 4:36), he may have written the lovgo paraklhvsew (Heb. 13:22). But in this case he cannot be the author of the Epistle which goes by his name, and which, although belonging to the Pauline and strongly anti-Judaizing tendency, is yet far inferior to Hebrews in spirit and wisdom. Moreover, Barnabas was a primitive disciple, and cannot be included in the second generation (2:3).

(b) Luke. He answers the description of 2:3, writes pure Greek, and has many affinities in style. But against him is the fact that the author of Hebrews was, no doubt, a native Jew, while Luke was a Gentile (Col. 4:11, 14). This objection, however, ceases in a measure if Luke wrote in the name and under the instruction of Paul.

(c) Clemens Romanus. He makes thorough use of Hebrews and interweaves passages from the Epistle with his own ideas, but evidently as an imitator, far inferior in originality and force.

(d) Apollos. A happy guess of the genius of Luther, suggested by the description given of Apollos in the Acts 18:24-28, and by Paul (1 Cor. 1:12; 3:4-6, 22; 4:6; 16:12; Tit. 3:13). Apollos was a Jew of Alexandria, mighty in the Scriptures, fervent in spirit, eloquent in speech, powerfully confuting the Jews, a friend of Paul, and independently working with him in the same cause at Ephesus, Corinth, Crete. So far every thing seems to fit. But this hypothesis has not a shadow of support in tradition, which could hardly have omitted Apollos in silence among the three or four probable authors. Clement names him once,1 but not as the author of the Epistle which he so freely uses. Nor is there any trace of his ever having been in Rome, and having stood in so close a relationship to the Hebrew Christians in Palestine.

The learned discussion of modern divines has led to no certain and unanimous conclusion, but is, nevertheless, very valuable, and sheds light in different directions. The following points may be regarded as made certain, or at least in the highest degree probable: the author of Hebrews was a Jew by birth; a Hellenist, not a Palestinian; thoroughly at home in the Greek Scriptures (less so, if at all, in the Hebrew original); familiar with the Alexandrian Jewish theology (less so, if at all, with the rabbinical learning of Palestine); a pupil of the apostles (not himself an apostle); an independent disciple and coworker of Paul; a friend of Timothy; in close relation with the Hebrew Christians of Palestine, and, when he wrote, on the point of visiting them; an inspired man of apostolic insight, power, and authority, and hence worthy of a position in the canon as the great unknown.

Beyond these marks we cannot go with safety. The writer purposely withholds his name. The arguments for Barnabas, Luke, and Apollos, as well as the objections against them, are equally strong, and we have no data to decide between them, not to mention other less known workers of the apostolic age. We must still confess with Origen that God only knows the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews.

On the Lit. and life of John, see 40 and 41 (this vol.); on the authorship of the Apoc. and the time of composition, 37 (this vol.); 41 (this vol.); and 84 (this vol.)

1. Modern Critical, works of German and French scholars on the Apocalypse: Luecke (Voltstaendige Einleitung, etc., 2d ed., 1852; 1,074 pages of introductory matter, critical and historical; compare with it the review of Bleek in the Studien and Kritiken for 1854 and 1855); De Wette Com., 1848, with a remarkable preface, 3d ed. by Moeller, 1862); Bleek (Posthumous Lectures, ed. by Hossbach, 1862); Ewald (Die Johann. Schriften, vol. II, 1862; besides his older Latin Com., 1828); Duesterdieck (in Meyer's Com., 3d ed., 1877); Renan (L'Antechrist, 1873); Reuss (1878). A. Sabatier, in Lichtenberger's Encyclopedie, I. 396-407. E. Vischer: Die Offenb. Joh. eine Jued. Apok. in christl. Bearbeitung, Leipz., 1886. F. Spitta: Die Offenb. Joh. untersucht, Halle, 1889.

2. For Doctrinal and Practical exposition, the Commentaries of Hengstenberg (1849, spoiled by false prophecies and arbitrary fancies) Auberlen (on Daniel and Revelation, 2d ed., 1854); Gaussen (Daniel le prophEte, 1850); Ebrard (in Olshausen's Com., 1853); Luthardt (1861); J. C. K. Hofmann (1844 and 1862); J. L. Fueller (follows Hofmann, 1874); Lange (1871, Am. ed. enlarged by Craven, 1874); Gebhardt (Lehrbegriff der Apok., 1873); Kliefoth (1874). Comp. also Rougemont: La Revelation de St. Jean expliquant l'histoire (1866). Godet: Essay upon the Apoc., in his Studies on the N.T., translated from the French by W. H. Lyttleton, London, 1876, 294-398.

3. English Com.: E. H. Elliott (d. 1875, Horae Apoc., 5th ed., 1862, 4 vols.); Wordsworth (4th ed., 1866); Alford (3d ed., 1866); C. J. Vaughan (3d ed., 1870, practical); William Lee (Archdeacon in Dublin, in the Speaker's Com. N.T., vol. iv., 1881, pp. 405-844) E. Huntingford (Lond., 1882); Milligan (1883 and 1886 the best). Trench: The Epistles to the Seven Churches (2d ed., 1861), and Plumptre: Expos. of the Epp. to the Seven Ch. (Lond. and N. Y., 1877).

4. American Com. by Moses Stuart (1845, 2 vols., new ed., 1864, with an Excursus on the Number of the Beast, II. 452); Cowles (1871).

5. Of Older Commentaries, the most important and valuable are the following:

(a) Greek: Andreas of Caesarea in Cappadocia (5th cent.; the first continuous Com. on the Apoc., publ. 1596, also in the works of Chrysostom; see Luecke, p. 983); Arethas Of Caes. in Cappad. (not of the 6th cent., as stated by Luecke, p. 990, and others, but of the 10th, according to Otto, and Harnack, in Altchristl. Liter., 1882, pp, 36 sqq.; his suvvnoyi scolikhv, ed. by J. A. Cramner, in his Catenae Graec. Patr. in N.T., Oxon., 1840, vol. VIII.; and in the works of Oecumenius); 0ecumenius (10th cent., see Luecke, p. 991).

(b) Rom. Cath.: Lud. Ab Alcasar (a Jesuit, 1614); Cornelius A Lapide (1662); Bossuet (1690, and in Oeuvres, vol. III., 1819); Bisping (1876).

(c) Protestant: Jos. Mede (Clavis Apocalyptica, Cambr., 1632; Engl. transl. by More, 1643; a new transl. by R. B. Cooper, Lond., 1833); Hugo Grotius (first, 1644); Vitringa (1705, 1719, 1721); Bengel (1740); Bishop Thomas Newton (in Dissertations on the Prophecies, 8 vols., 1758).

This list is a small selection. The literature on the Apocalypse, especially in English, is immense, but mostly impository rather than expository, and hence worthless or even mischievous, because confounding and misleading. Darling's list of English works on the Apocalypse contains nearly fifty-four columns (I., 1732-1786).

General Character of the Apocalypse.

The Revelation of John, or rather of Jesus Christ through John,1 appropriately closes the New Testament. It is the one and only prophetic book, but based upon the discourses of our Lord on the destruction of Jerusalem and the end of the world, and his second advent (Matt. 24). It has one face turned back to the prophecies of old, the other gazing into the future. It combines the beginning and the end in Him who is the Alpha and the Omega. It reminds one of the mysterious sphinx keeping ceaseless watch, with staring eyes, at the base of the Great Pyramid. As many words as many mysteries, says Jerome; Nobody knows what is in it, adds Luther. No book has been more misunderstood and abused; none calls for greater modesty and reserve in interpretation.

The opening and closing chapters are as clear and dazzling as sunlight, and furnish spiritual nourishment and encouragement to the plainest Christian; but the intervening visions are, to most readers, as dark as midnight, yet with many stars and the full moon illuminating the darkness. The Epistles to the Seven Churches, the description of the heavenly Jerusalem, and the anthems and doxologies1 which are interspersed through the mysterious visions, and glister like brilliant jewels on a canopy of richest black, are among the most beautiful, sublime, edifying, and inspiring portions of the Bible, and they ought to guard us against a hasty judgment of those chapters which we may be unable to understand. The Old Testament prophets were not clearly understood until the fulfilment cast its light upon them, and yet they served a most useful purpose as books of warning, comfort, and hope for the coming Messiah. The Revelation will be fully revealed when the new heavens and the new earth appear not before.

A prophet (says the sceptical De Wette in his Commentary on Revelation, which was his last work) is essentially an inspired man, an interpreter of God, who announces the Word of God to men in accordance with, and within the limits of, the divine truth already revealed through Moses in the Old Testament, through Christ in the New (the ajpokavluyi musthrivou, Rom. 16:25. Prophecy rests on faith in a continuous providence of God ruling over the whole world, and with peculiar efficacy over Israel and the congregation of Christ, according to the moral laws revealed through Moses and Christ especially the laws of retribution. According to the secular view, all changes in human affairs proceed partly from man's power and prudence, partly from accident and the hidden stubbornness of fate; but according to the prophetic view, every thing happens through the agency of God and in harmony with his counsels of eternal and unchangeable justice, and man is the maker of his own fortunes by obeying or resisting the will of God.

The prophecy of the Bible meets the natural desire to know the future, and this desire is most intense in great critical periods that are pregnant with fears and hopes. But it widely differs from the oracles of the heathen, and the conjectures of farseeing men. It rests on revelation, not on human sagacity and guesses; it gives certainty, not mere probability; it is general, not specific; it does not gratify curiosity, but is intended to edify and improve. The prophets are not merely revealers of secrets, but also preachers of repentance, revivalists, comforters, rebuking sin, strengthening faith, encouraging hope.

The Apocalypse is in the New Testament what the Book of Daniel is in the Old, and differs from it as the New Testament differs from the Old. Both are prophetic utterances of the will of God concerning the future of his kingdom on earth. Both are books of the church militant, and engage heaven and earth, divine, human, and satanic powers, in a conflict for life and death. They march on as a terrible army with banners. They reverberate with thunderings and reflect the lightning flashes from the throne. But while Daniel looks to the first advent of the Messiah as the heir of the preceding world-monarchies, John looks to the second advent of Christ and the new heavens and the new earth. He gathers up all the former prophecies and sends them enriched to the future. He assures us of the final fulfilment of the prophecy of the serpent-bruiser, which was given to our first parents immediately after the fall as a guiding star of hope in the dark night of sin. He blends the glories of creation and redemption in the finale of the new Jerusalem from heaven.

The Apocalypse, as to its style of composition, is written in prose, like Daniel, but belongs to prophetic poetry, which is peculiar to the Bible and takes there the place of the epic poetry of the Greeks; God himself being the hero, as it were, who rules over the destinies of man. It is an inspired work of art, and requires for its understanding a poetic imagination, which is seldom found among commentators and critics; but the imagination must be under the restraint of sober judgment, or it is apt to run into fantastic comments which themselves need a commentary. The apocalyptic vision is the last and most complete form of the prophetic poetry of the Bible. The strong resemblance between the Revelation and Daniel, Ezekiel and Zechariah is admitted, and without them it cannot be understood.

But we may compare it also, as to its poetic form and arrangement, with the book of Job. Both present a conflict on earth, controlled by invisible powers in heaven. In Job it is the struggle of an individual servant of God with Satan, the arch-slanderer and persecutor of man, who, with the permission of God, uses temporal losses, bodily sufferings, mental anguish, harassing doubt, domestic affliction, false and unfeeling friends to secure his ruin. In the Apocalypse it is the conflict of Christ and his church with the anti-Christian world. In both the scene begins in heaven; in both the war ends in victory but in Job long life and temporal prosperity of the individual sufferer is the price, in the Apocalypse redeemed humanity in the new heavens and the new earth. Both are arranged in three parts: a prologue, the battle with successive encounters, and an epilogue. In both the invisible power presiding over the action is the divine counsel of wisdom and mercy, in the place of the dark impersonal fate of the Greek drama.

A comparison between the Apocalypse and the pseudo-apocalyptic Jewish and Christian literature the Fourth Book of Esdras, the Book of Enoch, the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, the Apocalypse of Baruch, the Sibylline Oracles, etc. opens a wide field on which we cannot enter without passing far beyond the limits of this work. We may only say that the relation is the same as that between the canonical Gospels and the apocryphal pseudo-Gospels, between real history and the dreamland of fable, between the truth of God and the fiction of man.

The theme of the Apocalypse is: I come quickly, and the proper attitude of the church toward it is the holy longing of a bride for her spouse, as expressed in the response (Rev. 22:20): Amen: come, Lord Jesus. It gives us the assurance that Christ is coming in every great event, and rules and overrules all things for the ultimate triumph of his kingdom; that the state of the church on earth is one of continual conflict with hostile powers, but that she is continually gaining victories and will at last completely and finally triumph over all her foes and enjoy unspeakable bliss in communion with her Lord. From the concluding chapters Christian poetry has drawn rich inspiration, and the choicest hymns on the heavenly home of the saints are echoes of John's description of the new Jerusalem. The whole atmosphere of the book is bracing, and makes one feel fearless and hopeful in the face of the devil and the beasts from the abyss. The Gospels lay the foundation in faith, the Acts and Epistles build upon it a holy life; the Apocalypse is the book of hope to the struggling Christian and the militant church, and insures final victory and rest. This has been its mission; this will be its mission till the Lord come in his own good time.

Analysis of Contents.

The Apocalypse consists of a Prologue, the Revelation proper, and an Epilogue. We may compare this arrangement to that of the Fourth Gospel, where John 1:1-18 forms the Prologue, John 21 the Epilogue, and the intervening chapters contain the evangelical history from the gathering of the disciples to the Resurrection.

I. The Prologue and the Epistles to the Seven Churches, Rev. 1-3. The introductory notice; John's salutation and dedication to the Seven Churches in Asia; the vision of Christ in his glory, and the Seven Churches; the Seven Epistles addressed to them and through them to the whole church, in its various states.

II. The Revelation proper or the Prophetic Vision of the Church of the Future, 4:1-22:5. It consists chiefly of seven Visions, which are again subdivided according to a symmetrical plan in which the numbers seven, three, four, and twelve are used with symbolic significance. There are intervening scenes of rest and triumph. Sometimes the vision goes back to the beginning and takes a new departure.

(1) The Prelude in heaven, Rev. 4 and 5. (a) The appearance of the throne of God (Rev. 4). (b) The appearance of the Lamb who takes and opens the sealed book (Rev. 5).

(2) The vision of the seven seals, with two episodes between the sixth and seventh seals, 6:1-8:1.

(3) The vision of the seven trumpets of vengeance, 8:2-11:19.

(4) The vision of the woman (the church) and her three enemies, 12:1-13:18. The three enemies are the dragon (12:3-17), the beast from the sea (12:18-13:10), and the beast from the earth, or the false prophet (13:11-18).

(5) The group of visions in Rev 14: (a) the vision of the Lamb on Mount Zion (14:1-5); (b) of the three angels of judgment (14:6-11), followed by an episode (14:12, 13); (c) the vision of the harvest and the vintage of the earth (14:14-20).

(6) The vision of the seven vials of wrath, 15:1-16:21.

(7) The vision of the final triumph, 17:1-22:5: (a) the fall of Babylon (17:1-19:10); (b) the overthrow of Satan (19:11-20:10), with the millennial reign intervening (20:1-6); (c) the universal judgment (20:11-15); (d) the new heavens and the new earth, and the glories of the heavenly Jerusalem (21:1-22:5).

III. The Epilogue, 22:6-21. The divine attestation, threats, and promises.

Authorship and Canonicity.

The question of authorship has already been discussed in connection with John's Gospel. The Apocalypse professes to be the work of John, who assumes a commanding position over the churches of Asia. History knows only one such character, the Apostle and Evangelist, and to him it is ascribed by the earliest and most trustworthy witnesses, going back to the lifetime of many friends and pupils of the author. It is one of the best authenticated books of the New Testament.

And yet, owing to its enigmatical obscurity, it is the most disputed of the seven Antilegomena; and this internal difficulty has suggested the hypothesis of the authorship of Presbyter John, whose very existence is doubtful (being based on a somewhat obscure passage of Papias), and who at all events could not occupy a rival position of superintendency over the churches in Asia during the lifetime of the great John. The Apocalypse was a stumbling-block to the spiritualism of the Alexandrian fathers, and to the realism of the Reformers (at least Luther and Zwingli), and to not a few of eminent modern divines; and yet it has attracted again and again the most intense curiosity and engaged the most patient study of devout scholars; while humble Christians of every age are cheered by its heroic tone and magnificent close in their pilgrimage to the heavenly Jerusalem. Rejected by many as unapostolic and uncanonical, and assigned to a mythical Presbyter John, it is now recognized by the severest school of critics as an undoubted production of the historical Apostle John.

If so, it challenges for this reason alone our profound reverence. For who was better fitted to be the historian of the past and the seer of the future than the bosom friend of our Lord and Saviour? Able scholars, rationalistic as well as orthodox, have by thorough and patient investigation discovered or fully confirmed its poetic beauty and grandeur, the consummate art in its plan and execution. They have indeed not been able to clear up all the mysteries of this book, but have strengthened rather than weakened its claim to the position which it has ever occupied in the canon of the New Testament.

It is true, the sceptical critics who so confidently vindicate the apostolic origin of the Apocalypse, derive from this very fact their strongest weapon against the apostolic origin of the fourth Gospel. But the differences of language and spirit which have been urged are by no means irreconcilable, and are overruled by stronger resemblances in the theology and christology and even in the style of the two books. A proper estimate of John's character enables us to see that he was not only able, but eminently fitted to write both; especially if we take into consideration the intervening distance of twenty or thirty years, the difference of the subject (prospective prophecy in one, and retrospective history in the other), and the difference of the state of mind, now borne along in ecstacy (ejn preuvmati) from vision to vision and recording what the Spirit dictated, now calmly collecting his reminiscences in full, clear self-consciousness (ejn noi>v).

The Time of Composition.

The traditional date of composition at the end of Domitian's reign (95 or 96) rests on the clear and weighty testimony of Irenaeus, is confirmed by Eusebius and Jerome, and has still its learned defenders,1 but the internal evidence strongly favors an earlier date between the death of Nero (June 9, 68) and the destruction of Jerusalem (August 10, 70). This helps us at the same time more easily to explain the difference between the fiery energy of the Apocalypse and the calm repose of the fourth Gospel, which was composed in extreme old age. The Apocalypse forms the natural transition from the Synoptic Gospels to the fourth Gospel. The condition of the Seven Churches was indeed different from that which existed a few years before when Paul wrote to the Ephesians; but the movement in the apostolic age was very rapid. Six or seven years intervened to account for the changes. The Epistle to the Hebrews implies a similar spiritual decline among its readers in 63 or 64. Great revivals of religion are very apt to be quickly followed by a reaction of worldliness or indifference.

The arguments for the early date are the following:

1. Jerusalem was still standing, and the seer was directed to measure the Temple and the altar (Rev. 11:1), but the destruction is predicted as approaching. The Gentiles shall tread (pathvsousin) the holy city under foot forty and two months (11:2; Comp. Luke 21:24), and the dead bodies shall lie in the street of the great city, which spiritually is called Sodom and Egypt, where also their Lord was crucified (Rev. 11:8). The existence of the twelve tribes seems also to be assumed in 7:4-8. The advocates of the traditional date understand these passages in a figurative sense. But the allusion to the crucifixion compels us to think of the historical Jerusalem.

2. The book was written not long after the death of the fifth Roman emperor, that is, Nero, when the empire had received a deadly wound (comp. 13:3, 12, 14). This is the natural interpretation of 17:10, where it is stated that the seven heads of the scarlet-colored beast, i.e., heathen Rome, are seven kings; the five are fallen, the one is, the other is not yet come, and when he comes, he must continue a little while. The first five emperors were Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, and Nero, with whom the gens Julia ingloriously perished. Next came Galba, a mere usurper (seventy-three years old), who ruled but a short time, from June, 68, to January, 69, and was followed by two other usurpers, Otho and Vitellius, till Vespasian, in 70, restored the empire after an interregnum of two years, and left the completion of the conquest of the Jews and the destruction of Jerusalem to his son Titus. Vespasian may therefore be regarded as the sixth head, the three rebels not being counted; and thus the composition of the Apocalypse would fall in the spring (perhaps Easter) of the year 70. This is confirmed by 13:3, 12, 14, where the deadly wound of the beast is represented as being already healed. But if the usurpers are counted, Galba is the sixth head, and the Revelation was written in 68. In either case Julius Caesar must be excluded from the series of emperors (contrary to Josephus).

Several critics refer the seventh head to Nero, and ascribe to the seer the silly expectation of the return of Nero as Antichrist. In this way they understand the passage 17:11: The beast that was, and is not, is himself also an eighth and is of the seven. But John makes a clear distinction between the heads of the beast, of whom Nero was one, and the beast itself, which is the Roman empire. I consider it simply impossible that John could have shared in the heathen delusion of Nero redivivus, which would deprive him of all credit as an inspired prophet. He may have regarded Nero as a fit type and forerunner of Antichrist, but only in the figurative sense in which Babylon of old was the type of heathen Rome.

3. The early date is best suited for the nature and object of the Apocalypse, and facilitates its historical understanding. Christ pointed in his eschatological discourses to the destruction of Jerusalem and the preceding tribulation as the great crisis in the history of the theocracy and the type of the judgment of the world. And there never was a more alarming state of society. The horrors of the French Revolution were confined to one country, but the tribulation of the six years preceding the destruction of Jerusalem extended over the whole Roman empire and embraced wars and rebellions, frequent and unusual conflagrations, earthquakes and famines and plagues, and all sorts of public calamities and miseries untold. It seemed, indeed, that the world, shaken to its very centre, was coming to a close, and every Christian must have felt that the prophecies of Christ were being fulfilled before his eyes.

It was at this unique juncture in the history of mankind that St. John, with the consuming fire in Rome and the infernal spectacle of the Neronian persecution behind him, the terrors of the Jewish war and the Roman interregnum around him, and the catastrophe of Jerusalem and the Jewish theocracy before him, received those wonderful visions of the impending conflicts and final triumphs of the Christian church. His was truly a book of the times and for the times, and administered to the persecuted brethren the one but all-sufficient consolation: Maran atha! Maran atha!

Interpretation.

The different interpretations are reduced by English writers to three systems according as the fulfilment of the prophecy is found in the past, present, or future.

1. The Preterist system applies the Revelation to the destruction of Jerusalem and heathen Rome. So among Roman Catholics: Alcasar (1614), Bossuet (1690). Among Protestants: Hugo Grotius (1644), Hammond (1653), Clericus (1698), Wetstein (1752), Abauzit, Herder, Eichhorn, Ewald, Luecke, Bleek, De Wette, Reuss, Renan, F. D. Maurice, Samuel Davidson, Moses Stuart Cowles, Desprez, etc. Some1 refer it chiefly to the overthrow of the Jewish theocracy, others chiefly to the conflict with the Roman empire, still others to both.

But there is a radical difference between those Preterists who acknowledge a real prophecy and permanent truth in the book, and the rationalistic Preterists who regard it as a dream of a visionary which was falsified by events, inasmuch as Jerusalem, instead of becoming the habitation of saints, remained a heap of ruins, while Rome, after the overthrow of heathenism, became the metropolis of Latin Christendom. This view rests on a literal misunderstanding of Jerusalem.

2. The Continuous (or Historical) system: The Apocalypse is a prophetic compend of church history and covers all Christian centuries to the final consummation. It speaks of things past, present, and future; some of its prophecies are fulfilled, some are now being fulfilled, and others await fulfillment in the yet unknown future. Here belong the great majority of orthodox Protestant commentators and polemics who apply the beast and the mystic Babylon and the mother of harlots drunken with the blood of saints to the church of Rome, either exclusively or chiefly. But they differ widely among themselves in chronology and the application of details. Luther, Bullinger, Collado, Pareus, Brightman, Mede, Robert Fleming, Whiston, Vitringa, Bengel, Isaac Newton, Bishop Newton, Faber, Woodhouse, Elliott, Birks, Gaussen, Auberlen, Hengstenberg, Alford, Wordsworth, Lee.

3. The Futurist system: The events of the Apocalypse from Rev. 4 to the close lie beyond the second advent of Christ. This scheme usually adopts a literal interpretation of Israel, the Temple, and the numbers (the 31 times, 42 months, 1260 days, 3 1/2 years). So Ribera (a Jesuit, 1592), Lacunza (another Jesuit, who wrote under the name of Ben-Ezra On the coming of Messiah in glory and majesty, and taught the premillennial advent, the literal restoration of the ancient Zion, and the future apostasy of the clergy of the Roman church to the camp of Antichrist), S. R. Maitland, De Burgh, Todd, Isaac Williams, W. Kelly.

Another important division of historical interpreters is into Post-Millennarians and Pre-Millennarians, according as the millennium predicted in Rev. 20 is regarded as part or future. Augustine committed the radical error of dating the millennium from the time of the Apocalypse or the beginning of the Christian era (although the seer mentioned it near the end of his book), and his view had great influence; hence the wide expectation of the end of the world at the close of the first millennium of the Christian church. Other post-millennarian interpreters date the millennium from the triumph of Christianity over paganism in Rome at the accession of Constantine the Great (311); still others (as Hengstenberg) from the conversion of the Germanic nations or the age of Charlemagne. All these calculations are refuted by events. The millennium of the Apocalypse must he in the future, and is still an article of hope.

The grammatical and historical interpretation of the Apocalypse, as well as of any other book, is the only safe foundation for all legitimate spiritual and practical application. Much has been done in this direction by the learned commentators of recent times. We must explain it from the standpoint of the author and in view of his surroundings. He wrote out of his time and for his time of things which must shortly come to pass (1:1, 3; 22:20), and he wished to be read and understood by his contemporaries (1:3). Otherwise he would have written in vain, and the solemn warning at the close (22:18, 19) would be unintelligible. In some respects they could understand him better than we; for they were fellow-sufferers of the fiery persecutions and witnesses of the fearful judgments described. Undoubtedly he had in view primarily the overthrow of Jerusalem and heathen Rome, the two great foes of Christianity at that time. He could not possibly ignore that great conflict.

But his vision was not confined to these momentous events. It extends even to the remotest future when death and Hades shall be no more, and a new heaven and a new earth shall appear. And although the fulfilment is predicted as being near at hand, he puts a millennium and a short intervening conflict before the final overthrow of Satan, the beast, and the false prophet. We have an analogy in the prophecy of the Old Testament and the eschatological discourses of our Lord, which furnish the key for the understanding of the Apocalypse. He describes the destruction of Jerusalem and the general judgment in close proximity, as if they were one continuous event. He sees the end from the beginning. The first catastrophe is painted with colors borrowed from the last, and the last appears as a repetition of the first on a grand and universal scale. It is the manner of prophetic vision to bring distant events into close proximity, as in a panorama. To God a thousand years are as one day. Every true prophecy, moreover, admits of an expanding fulfilment. History ever repeats itself, though never in the same way. There is nothing old under the sun, and, in another sense, there is nothing new under the sun.

In the historical interpretation of details we must guard against arbitrary and fanciful schemes, and mathematical calculations, which minister to idle curiosity, belittle the book, and create distrust in sober minds. The Apocalypse is not a prophetical manual of church history and chronology in the sense of a prediction of particular persons, dates, and events. This would have made it useless to the first readers, and would make it useless now to the great mass of Christians. It gives under symbolic figures and for popular edification an outline of the general principles of divine government and the leading forces in the conflict between Christ's kingdom and his foes, which is still going on under ever-varying forms. In this way it teaches, like all the prophetic utterances of the Gospels and Epistles, lessons of warning and encouragement to every age. We must distinguish between the spiritual coming of Christ and his personal arrival or parousia. The former is progressive, the latter instantaneous. The coming began with his ascension to heaven (comp. Matt. 26:64: Henceforth ye shall see the Son of man sitting at the right hand of power, and coming on the clouds of heaven ) and goes on in unbroken succession of judgments and blessings (for the history of the world is a judgment of the world ); hence the alternation of action and repose, of scenes of terror and scenes of joy, of battles and victories. The arrival of the Bridegroom is still in the unknown future, and may be accelerated or delayed by the free action of the church, but it is as certain as the first advent of Christ. The hope of the church will not be disappointed, for it rests on the promise of Him who is called the Amen, the faithful and true witness (Rev. 3:14).

There is no necessary conflict between faith and criticism any more than between revelation and reason or between faith and philosophy. God is the author of both, and he cannot contradict himself. There is an uncritical faith and a faithless criticism as there is a genuine philosophy and a philosophy falsely so called; but this is no argument either against faith or criticism; for the best gifts are liable to abuse and perversion; and the noblest works of art may be caricatured. The apostle of faith directs us to prove all things, and to hold fast that which is good. We believe in order to understand, and true faith is the mother of knowledge. A rational faith in Christianity, as the best and final religion which God gave to mankind, owes it to itself to examine the foundation on which it rests; and it is urged by an irresistible impulse to vindicate the truth against every form of error. Christianity needs no apology. Conscious of its supernatural strength, it can boldly meet every foe and convert him into an ally.

Looking back upon the history of the apostolic age, it appears to us as a vast battle-field of opposite tendencies and schools. Every inch of ground is disputed and has to be reconquered; every fact, as well as every doctrine of revelation, is called in question; every hypothesis is tried; all the resources of learning, acumen, and ingenuity are arrayed against the citadel of the Christian faith. The citadel is impregnable, and victory is certain, but not to those who ignorantly or superciliously underrate the strength of the besieging army. In the sixteenth century the contest was between Roman Catholicism and Evangelical Protestantism; in the nineteenth century the question is Christianity or infidelity. Then both parties believed in the inspiration of the New Testament and the extent of the canon, differing only in the interpretation; now inspiration is denied, and the apostolicity of all but four or five books is assailed. Then the Word of God, with or without tradition, was the final arbiter of religious controversies; now human reason is the ultimate tribunal.

We live in an age of discovery, invention, research, and doubt. Scepticism is well nigh omnipresent in the thinking world. It impregnates the atmosphere. We can no more ignore it than the ancient Fathers could ignore the Gnostic speculations of their day. Nothing is taken for granted; nothing believed on mere authority; every thing must be supported by adequate proof, every thing explained in its natural growth from the seed to the fruit. Roman Catholics believe in an infallible oracle in the Vatican; but whatever the oracle may decree, the earth moves and will continue to move around the sun. Protestants, having safely crossed the Red Sea, cannot go back to the flesh-pots of the land of bondage, but must look forward to the land of promise. In the night, says a proverb, all cattle are black, but the daylight reveals the different colors.

Why did Christ not write the New Testament, as Mohammed wrote the Koran? Writing was not beneath his dignity; he did write once in the sand, though we know not what. God himself wrote the Ten Commandments on two tables of stone. But Moses broke them to pieces when he saw that the people of Israel worshipped the golden calf before the thunders from Sinai had ceased to reverberate in their ears. They might have turned those tables into idols. God buried the great law-giver out of sight and out of the reach of idolatry. The gospel was still less intended to be a dumb idol than the law. It is not a killing letter but a life-giving spirit. It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing; the words of Christ are spirit and are life. A book written by his own unerring hand, unless protected by a perpetual miracle, would have been subject to the same changes and corruptions in the hands of fallible transcribers and printers as the books of his disciples, and the original autograph would have perished with the brittle papyrus. Nor would it have escaped the unmerciful assaults of sceptical and infidel critics, and misinterpretations of commentators and preachers. He himself was crucified by the hierarchy of his own people, whom he came to save. What better fate could have awaited his book? Of course, it would have risen from the dead, in spite of the doubts and conjectures and falsehoods of unbelieving men; but the same is true of the writings of the apostles, though thousands of copies have been burned by heathens and false Christians. Thomas might put his hand into the wound-prints of his risen Lord; but Blessed are they that have not seen and yet have believed.

We must believe in the Holy Spirit who lives and moves in the Church and is the invisible power behind the written and printed word.

The form in which the authentic records of Christianity have come down to us, with their variations and difficulties, is a constant stimulus to study and research and calls into exercise all the intellectual and moral faculties of men. Every one must strive after the best understanding of the truth with a faithful use of his opportunities and privileges, which are multiplying with every generation.

The New Testament is a revelation of spiritual and eternal truth to faith, and faith is the work of the Holy Spirit, though rooted in the deepest wants and aspirations of man. It has to fight its way through an unbelieving world, and the conflict waxes hotter and hotter as the victory comes nearer. For the last half century the apostolic writings have been passing through the purgatory of the most scorching criticism to which a book can be subjected. The opposition is itself a powerful testimony to their vitality and importance.

There are two kinds of scepticism: one represented by Thomas, honest, earnest, seeking and at last finding the truth; the other represented by Sadducees and Pontius Pilate, superficial, worldly, frivolous, indifferent to truth and ending in despair. With the latter even the gods reason in vain. When it takes the trouble to assail the Bible, it deals in sneers and ridicule which admit of no serious answer. The roots of infidelity he in the heart and will rather than in the reason and intellect, and wilful opposition to the truth is deaf to any argument. But honest, truth-loving scepticism always deserves regard and sympathy and demands a patient investigation of the real or imaginary difficulties which are involved in the problem of the origin of Christianity. It may be more useful to the church than an unthinking and unreasoning orthodoxy. One of the ablest and purest sceptical critics of the century (De Wette) made the sad, but honorable confession:

I lived in times of doubt and strife,

When childlike faith was forced to yield;

I struggled to the end of life,

Alas! I did not gain the field.

But he did gain the field, after all, at last; for a few months before his death he wrote and published this significant sentence: I know that in no other name can salvation be found, than in the name of Jesus Christ the Crucified, and there is nothing higher for mankind than the divine humanity (Gottmenschheit) realized in him, and the kingdom of God planted by him. Blessed are those that seek the truth, for they shall find it.

The critical and historical rationalism which was born and matured in this century in the land of Luther, and has spread in Switzerland, France, Holland, England, Scotland, and America, surpasses in depth and breadth of learning, as well as in earnestness of spirit, all older forms of infidelity and heresy. It is not superficial and frivolous, as the rationalism of the eighteenth century; it is not indifferent to truth, but intensely interested in ascertaining the real facts, and tracing the origin and development of Christianity, as a great historical phenomenon. But it arrogantly claims to be the criticism par excellence, as the Gnosticism of the ancient church pretended to have the monopoly of knowledge. There is a historical, conservative, and constructive criticism, as well as an unhistorical, radical, and destructive criticism; and the former must win the fight as sure as God's truth will outlast all error. So there is a believing and Christian Gnosticism as well as an unbelieving and anti- (or pseudo-) Christian Gnosticism.

The negative criticism of the present generation has concentrated its forces upon the life of Christ and the apostolic age, and spent an astonishing amount of patient research upon the minutest details of its history. And its labors have not been in vain; on the contrary, it has done a vast amount of good, as well as evil. Its strength lies in the investigation of the human and literary aspect of the Bible; its weakness in the ignoring of its divine and spiritual character. It forms thus the very antipode of the older orthodoxy, which so overstrained the theory of inspiration as to reduce the human agency to the mechanism of the pen. We must look at both aspects. The Bible is the Word of God and the word of holy men of old. It is a revelation of man, as well as of God. It reveals man in all his phases of development innocence, fall, redemption in all the varieties of character, from heavenly purity to satanic wickedness, with all his virtues and vices, in all his states of experience, and is an ever-flowing spring of inspiration to the poet, the artist, the historian, and divine. It reflects and perpetuates the mystery of the incarnation. It is the word of him who proclaimed himself the Son of Man, as well as the Son of God. Men said from God, being moved by the Holy Spirit. Here all is divine and all is human.

No doubt the New Testament is the result of a gradual growth and conflict of different forces, which were included in the original idea of Christianity and were drawn out as it passed from Christ to his disciples, from the Jews to the Gentiles, from Jerusalem to Antioch and Rome, and as it matured in the mind of the leading apostles. No doubt the Gospels and Epistles were written by certain men, at a certain time, in a certain place, under certain surroundings, and for definite ends; and all these questions are legitimate objects of inquiry and eminently deserving of ever-renewed investigation. Many obscure points have been cleared up, thanks, in part, to these very critics, who intended to destroy, and helped to build up.

The literary history of the apostolic age, like its missionary progress, was guided by a special providence. Christ only finished a part of his work while on earth. He pointed his disciples to greater works, which they would accomplish in his name and by his power, after his resurrection. He promised them his unbroken presence, and the gift of the Holy Spirit, who, as the other Advocate, should lead them into the whole truth and open to them the understanding of all his words. The Acts of the Apostles are a history of the Holy Spirit, or of the post-resurrection work of Christ in establishing his kingdom on earth. Filled with that Spirit, the apostles and evangelists went forth into a hostile world and converted it to Christ by their living word, and they continue their conquering march by their written word.

Unbelieving criticism sees only the outside surface of the greatest movement in history, and is blind to the spiritual forces working from within or refuses to acknowledge them as truly divine. In like manner, the materialistic and atheistic scientists of the age conceive of nature's laws without a lawgiver; of a creature without a creator; and stop with the effect, without rising to the cause, which alone affords a rational explanation of the effect.

And here we touch upon the deepest spring of all forms of rationalism, and upon the gulf which inseparably divides it from supernaturalism. It is the opposition to the supernatural and the miraculous. It denies God in nature and God in history, and, in its ultimate consequences, it denies the very existence of God. Deism and atheism have no place for a miracle; but belief in the existence of an Almighty Maker of all things visible and invisible, as the ultimate and all-sufficient cause of all phenomena in nature and in history, implies the possibility of miracle at any time; not, indeed, as a violation of his own laws, but as a manifestation of his law-giving and creative power over and above (not against) the regular order of events. The reality of the miracle, in any particular case, then, becomes a matter of historical investigation. It cannot be disposed of by a simple denial from a priori philosophical prejudice; but must be fairly examined, and, if sufficiently corroborated by external and internal evidence, it must be admitted.

Now, the miracles of Christ cannot be separated from his person and his teachings. His words are as marvellous as his deeds; both form a harmonious whole, and they stand or fall together. His person is the great miracle, and his miracles are simply his natural works. He is as much elevated above other men as his words and deeds are above ordinary words and deeds. He is separated from all mortals by his absolute freedom from sin. He, himself, claims superhuman origin and supernatural powers; and to deny them is to make him a liar and impostor. It is impossible to maintain his human perfection, which all respectable rationalists admit and even emphasize, and yet to refuse his testimony concerning himself. The Christ of Strauss and of Renan is the most contradictory of all characters; the most incredible of all enigmas. There is no possible scientific mediation between a purely humanitarian conception of Christ, no matter how high he may be raised in the scale of beings, and the faith in Christ as the Son of God, whom Christendom has adored from the beginning and still adores as the Lord and Saviour of the world.

Nor can we eliminate the supernatural element from the Apostolic Church without destroying its very life and resolving it into a gigantic illusion. What becomes of Paul if we deny his conversion, and how shall we account for his conversion without the Resurrection and Ascension? The greatest of modern sceptics paused at the problem, and felt almost forced to admit an actual miracle, as the only rational solution of that conversion. The Holy Spirit was the inspiring and propelling power of the apostolic age, and made the fishers of Galilee fishers of men.

A Christian, who has experienced the power of the gospel in his heart, can have no difficulty with the supernatural. He is as sure of the regenerating and converting agency of the Spirit of God and the saving efficacy of Christ as he is of his own natural existence. He has tasted the medicine and has been healed. He may say with the man who was born blind and made to see: One thing I do know, that, whereas I was blind, now I see. This is a short creed; but stronger than any argument. The fortress of personal experience is impregnable; the logic of stubborn facts is more cogent than the logic of reason. Every genuine conversion from sin to holiness is a psychological miracle, as much so as the conversion of Saul of Tarsus.

The secret or open hostility to the supernatural is the moving spring of infidel criticism. We may freely admit that certain difficulties about the time and place of composition and other minor details of the Gospels and Epistles are not, and perhaps never can be, satisfactorily solved; but it is, nevertheless, true that they are far better authenticated by internal and external evidence than any books of the great Greek and Roman classics, or of Philo and Josephus, which are accepted by scholars without a doubt. As early as the middle of the second century, that is, fifty years after the death of the Apostle John, when yet many of his personal pupils and friends must have been living, the four Canonical Gospels, no more and no less, were recognized and read in public worship as sacred books, in the churches of Syria, Asia Minor, Egypt, Italy, and Gaul; and such universal acceptance and authority in the face of Jewish and heathen hostility and heretical perversion can only be explained on the ground that they were known and used long before. Some of them, Matthew and John, were quoted and used in the first quarter of the second century by Orthodox and Gnostic writers. Every new discovery, as the last book of the pseudo-"Clementine Homilies, the Philosophumena of Hippolytus, the Diatessaron of Tatian, and every deeper investigation of the Gospel Memoirs of Justin Martyr, and the Gospel of Marcion in its relation to Luke, have strengthened the cause of historical and conservative criticism and inflicted bleeding wounds on destructive criticism. If quotations from the end of the first and the beginning of the second century are very rare, we must remember that we have only a handful of literary documents from that period, and that the second generation of Christians was not a race of scholars and scribes and critics, but of humble, illiterate confessors and martyrs, who still breathed the bracing air of the living teaching, and personal reminiscences of the apostles and evangelists.

But the Synoptical Gospels bear the strongest internal marks of having been composed before the destruction of Jerusalem (a.d. 70), which is therein prophesied by Christ as a future event and as the sign of the fast approaching judgment of the world, in a manner that is consistent only with such early composition. The Epistle to the Hebrews, likewise, was written when the Temple was still standing, and sacrifices were offered from day to day. Yet, as this early date is not conceded by all, we will leave the Epistle out of view. The Apocalypse of John is very confidently assigned to the year 68 or 69 by Baur, Renan, and others, who would put the Gospels down to a much later date. They also concede the Pauline authorship of the great anti-Judaic Epistles to the Galatians, Romans, and Corinthians, and make them the very basis of their assaults upon the minor Pauline Epistles and the Acts of the Apostles, on the ground of exaggerated or purely imaginary differences. Those Epistles of Paul were written twelve or fourteen years before the destruction of Jerusalem. This brings us within less than thirty years of the resurrection of Christ and the birthday of the church.

Now, if we confine ourselves to these five books, which the most exacting and rigorous criticism admits to be apostolic the four Pauline Epistles and the Apocalypse they alone are sufficient to establish the foundation of historical faith; for they confirm by direct statement or allusion every important fact and doctrine in the gospel history, without referring to the written Gospels. The memory and personal experience of the writers Paul and John goes back to the vision of Damascus, to the scenes of the Resurrection and Crucifixion, and the first call of the disciples on the banks of the Jordan and the shores of the Lake of Galilee. Criticism must first reason Paul and John out of history, or deny that they ever wrote a line, before it can expect sensible men to surrender a single chapter of the Gospels.

Strong as the external evidence is, the internal evidence of the truth and credibility of the apostolic writings is still stronger, and may be felt to this day by the unlearned as well as the scholar. They widely differ in style and spirit from all post-apostolic productions, and occupy a conspicuous isolation even among the best of books. This position they have occupied for eighteen centuries among the most civilized nations of the globe; and from this position they are not likely to be deposed.

We must interpret persons and events not only by themselves, but also in the light of subsequent history. By their fruits ye shall know them. Christianity can stand this test better than any other religion, and better than any system of philosophy.

Taking our position at the close of the apostolic age, and looking back to its fountain-head and forward to succeeding generations, we cannot but be amazed at the magnitude of the effects produced by the brief public ministry of Jesus of Nazareth, which sends its blessings through centuries as an unbroken and ever-expanding river of life. There is absolutely nothing like it in the annals of the race. The Roman empire embraced, at the birth of Christ, over one hundred millions of men, conquered by force, and, after having persecuted his religion for three hundred years, it died away without the possibility of a resurrection. The Christian church now numbers four hundred millions, conquered by the love of Christ, and is constantly increasing. The first century is the life and light of history and the turning point of the ages. If ever God revealed himself to man, if ever heaven appeared on earth, it was in the person and work of Jesus of Nazareth. He is, beyond any shadow of doubt, and by the reluctant consent of sceptics and infidels, the wisest of the wise, the purest of the pure, and the mightiest of the mighty. His Cross has become the tree of life to all nations; his teaching is still the highest standard of religious truth; his example the unsurpassed ideal of holiness; the Gospels and Epistles of his Galilean disciples are still the book of books, more powerful than all the classics of human wisdom and genius. No book has attracted so much attention, provoked so much opposition, outlived so many persecutions, called forth so much reverence and gratitude, inspired so many noble thoughts and deeds, administered so much comfort and peace from the cradle to the grave to all classes and conditions of men. It is more than a book; it is an institution, an all-pervading omnipresent force, a converting, sanctifying, transforming agency; it rules from the pulpit and the chair; it presides at the family altar; it is the sacred ark of every household, the written conscience of every Christian man, the pillar of cloud by day, the pillar of light by night in the pilgrimage of life. Mankind is bad enough, and human life dark enough with it; but how much worse and how much darker would they be without it? Christianity might live without the letter of the New Testament, but not without the facts and truths which it records and teaches. Were it possible to banish them from the world, the sun of our civilization would be extinguished, and mankind left to midnight darkness, with the dreary prospect of a dreamless and endless Nirvana.

But no power on earth or in hell can extinguish that sun. There it shines on the horizon, the king of day, obscured at times by clouds great or small, but breaking through again and again, and shedding light and life from east to west, until the darkest corners of the globe shall be illuminated. The past is secure; God will take care of the future.

Magna est veritas et praevalebit.

Christ is the book of life to be read by all. His religion is not an outward letter of command, like the law of Moses, but free, quickening spirit; not a literary production, but a moral creation; not a new system of theology or philosophy for the learned, but a communication of the divine life for the redemption of the whole world. Christ is the personal Word of God, the eternal Logos, who became flesh and dwelt upon earth as the true Shekinah, in the veiled glory of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth. He spoke; and all the words of his mouth were, and still are, spirit and life. The human heart craves not a learned, letter-writing, literary Christ, but a wonder-working, cross-bearing, atoning Redeemer, risen, enthroned in heaven, and ruling the world; furnishing, at the same time, to men and angels an unending theme for meditation, discourse, and praise.

So, too, the Lord chose none of his apostles, with the single exception of Paul, from the ranks of the learned; he did not train them to literary authorship, nor give them, throughout his earthly life, a single express command to labor in that way. Plain fishermen of Galilee, unskilled in the wisdom of this world, but filled with the Holy Spirit of truth and the powers of the world to come, were commissioned to preach the glad tidings of salvation to all nations in the strength and in the name of their glorified Master, who sits on the right hand of God the Father Almighty, and has promised to be with them to the end of time.

The gospel, accordingly, was first propagated and the church founded by the personal oral teaching and exhortation, the preaching, testimony, word, tradition, of the apostles and their disciples; as, in fact, to this day the living word is the indispensable or, at least, the principal means of promoting the Christian religion. Nearly all the books of the New Testament were written between the years 50 and 70, at least twenty years after the resurrection of Christ, and the founding of the church; and the Gospel and Epistles of John still later.

As the apostles' field of labor expanded, it became too large for their personal attention, and required epistolary correspondence. The vital interests of Christianity and the wants of coming generations demanded a faithful record of the life and teaching of Christ by perfectly reliable witnesses. For oral tradition, among fallible men, is liable to so many accidental changes, that it loses in certainty and credibility as its distance from the fountain-head increases, till at last it can no longer be clearly distinguished from the additions and corruptions collected upon it. There was great danger, too, of a wilful distortion of the history and doctrine of Christianity by Judaizing and paganizing errorists, who had already raised their heads during the lifetime of the apostles. An authentic written record of the words and acts of Jesus and his disciples was therefore absolutely indispensable, not indeed to originate the church, but to keep it from corruption and to furnish it with a pure standard of faith and discipline.

Hence seven and twenty books by apostles and apostolic men, written under the special influence and direction of the Holy Spirit. These afford us a truthful picture of the history, the faiths, and the practice of primitive Christianity, for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness.

The collection of these writings into a canon, in distinction both from apocryphal or pseudo-apostolic works, and from orthodox yet merely human productions, was the work of the early church; and in performing it she was likewise guided by the Spirit of God and by a sound sense of truth. It was not finished to the satisfaction of all till the end of the fourth century, down to which time seven New Testament books (the Antilegomena of Eusebius), the second Epistle of Peter, the second and third Epistles of John, the anonymous Epistle to the Hebrews, the Epistles of James and Jude, and in a certain sense also the Apocalypse of John, were by some considered of doubtful authorship or value. But the collection was no doubt begun, on the model of the Old Testament canon, in the first century; and the principal books, the Gospels, the Acts, the thirteen Epistles of Paul, the first Epistle of Peter, and the first of John, in a body, were in general use after the middle of the second century, and were read, either entire or by sections, in public worship, after the manner of the Jewish synagogue, for the edification of the people.

The external testimony of tradition alone cannot (for the Protestant Christian) decide the apostolic origin and canonical character of a book; it must be confirmed by the internal testimony of the book itself. But this is not wanting, and the general voice of Christendom for these eighteen hundred years has recognized in the little volume, which we call the New Testament, a book altogether unique in spiritual power and influence over the mind and heart of man, and of more interest and value than all the ancient and modern classics combined. If ever God spoke and still speaks to man, it is in this book.

In these inspired writings we have, not indeed an equivalent, but a reliable substitute for the personal presence and the oral instruction of Christ and his apostles. The written word differs from the spoken only in form; the substance is the same, and has therefore the same authority and quickening power for us as it had for those who heard it first. Although these books were called forth apparently by special and accidental occasions, and were primarily addressed to particular circles of readers and adapted to peculiar circumstances, yet, as they present the eternal and unchangeable truth in living forms, they suit all circumstances and conditions. Tracts for the times, they are tracts for all times; intended for Jews and Greeks of the first century, they have the same interest for Englishmen and Americans of the nineteenth century. They are to this day not only the sole reliable and pure fountain of primitive Christianity, but also the infallible rule of Christian faith and practice. From this fountain the church has drunk the water of life for more than fifty generations, and will drink it till the end of time. In this rule she has a perpetual corrective for an her faults, and a protective against all error. Theological systems come and go, and draw from that treasury their larger or smaller additions to the stock of our knowledge of the truth; but they can never equal that infallible word of God, which abideth forever.

Our little systems have their day,

They have their day and cease to be:

They are but broken lights of You,

And You, O God, art more than they.

The New Testament evinces its universal design in its very, style, which alone distinguishes it from all the literary productions of earlier and later times. It has a Greek body, a Hebrew soul, and a Christian spirit which rules both. The language is the Hellenistic idiom; that is, the Macedonian Greek as spoken by the Jews of the dispersion in the time of Christ; uniting, in a regenerated Christian form, the two great antagonistic nationalities and religions of the ancient world. The most beautiful language of heathendom and the venerable language of the Hebrews are here combined, and baptized with the spirit of Christianity, and made the picture of silver for the golden apple of the eternal truth of the gospel. The style of the Bible in general is singularly adapted to men of every class and grade of culture, affording the child the simple nourishment for its religious wants, and the profoundest thinker inexhaustible matter of study. The Bible is not simply a popular book, but a book of all nations, and for all societies, classes, and conditions of men. It is more than a book, it is an institution which rules the Christian world.

The New Testament presents, in its way, the same union of the divine and human as the person of Christ. In this sense also the word became flesh, and dwells among us. As Christ was like us in body, soul, and spirit, sin only excepted, so the Scriptures, which bear witness of him, are thoroughly human (though without doctrinal and ethical error) in contents and form, in the mode of their rise, their compilation, their preservation, and transmission; yet at the same time they are thoroughly divine both in thoughts and words, in origin, vitality, energy, and effect, and beneath the human servant-form of the letter, the eye of faith discerns the glory of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth.

The apostolic writings are of three kinds: historical, didactic, and prophetic. To the first class belong the Gospels and Acts; to the second, the Epistles; to the third, the Revelation. They are related to each other as regeneration, sanctification, and glorification; as foundation, house, and dome. Jesus Christ is the beginning, the middle, and the end of all. In the Gospels he walks in human form upon the earth, and accomplishes the work of redemption. In the Acts and Epistles he founds the church, and fills and guides it by his Spirit. And at last, in the visions of the Apocalypse, he comes again in glory, and with his bride, the church of the saints, reigns forever upon the new earth in the city of God.

This order corresponds with the natural progress of the Christian revelation and was universally adopted by the church, with the exception of a difference in the arrangement of the Epistles. The New Testament was not given in the form of a finished volume, but the several books grew together by recognition and use according to the law of internal fitness. Most of the ancient Manuscripts, Versions, and Catalogues arrange the books in the following order: Gospels, Acts, Catholic Epistles, Pauline Epistles, Apocalypse. Some put the Pauline Epistles before the Catholic Epistles. Our English Bible follows the order of the Latin Vulgate.

I. Harmonies of the Gospels.

They begin with Tatian's Diatessaron, a.d. 170. See lists of older works in Fabricius, Bibl. Gr., III. 212; Hase, Leben Jesu, pp. 22-31 (fifth ed.); Robinson, Harmony, pp. v. and vi.; Darling, Cyclopaedia Bibliog. (I. Subjects, cols. 761-767); and Mc Clintock and Strong (Cyclop., IV. 81). We give the chief works from Griesbach to Rushbrooke.

Griesbach (Synopsis, Halle, 1774, etc., 1822); Newcome (Dublin, 1778 and often; also Andover, 1834); Jos. Priestley (in Greek, London, 1778; in English, 1780); Jos. White (Diatessaron, Oxford, 1799, 1803); De Wette and Luecke (1818, 1842); Roediger (1829, 1839); Greswell (Harmonia Evangelica, 1830, 5th ed. Oxford, 1856; Dissertations upon an Harmony, etc., 2d ed., Oxford, 1837, 4 vols.); Macbride (Diatessaron, Oxford, 1837); Wieseler (Chronolog. Synopse, Hamb., 1843); Krafft (d. 1845; Chronologie u. Harmonie der 4 Evang. Erlangen, 1848; edit. by Burger); Tischendorf (Synopsis Evang. Lips., 1851, 1854; 4th ed., 1878); Rud. Anger (Lips., 1852); Stroud (comprising a Synopsis and a Diatessaron, London, 1853) E. Robinson (A Harmony of the Four Gospels in Greek, according to the text of Hahn, Boston, 1845, 1851; revised ed., 1862; in English, 1846); James Strong (in English, New York, 1852; in Greek, 1854); R. Mimpriss (London, 1855); Douglas (1859); Sevin (Wiesbaden, 1866); Fr. Gardiner (A Harmony of the Four Gospels in Greek, according to the text of Tischendorf, with a Collation of the Textus Receptus, etc. Andover, 1876; also his Diatessaron, The Life of our Lord in the Words of the Gospels, Andover, 1871); J. R. Gilmore and Lyman Abbott (The Gospel History: being a Complete Chronological Narrative of the Life of our Lord, New York, 1881); W. G. Rushbrooke (Synopticon: an Exposition of the Common Matter in the Synoptic Gospels, Cambridge, 1880-81, 2 parts; the Greek text of Tischendorf, corrected from Westcott and Hort). The last work is unique and superbly printed. It marks the differences of the narratives by different types and color, namely, the matter common to all Evangelists in red type, the matter common to each pair in black spaced type or capitals, the matter peculiar to each in ordinary black type. It furnishes the best basis for a detailed comparison and critical analysis.

II. Commentaries.

1. Ancient Works: Origen (in Math., Luc., etc., fragmentary); Chrysostom (Hom. in Matth., ed. Fr. Field, 1839); Jerome (in Matth.; in Luc.); Augustine (Quaestionum Evangeliorum libri II.); Theophylact (Comment, in 4 Evang., Gr. et Lat.); Euyourmius Zigabenus (Com. in 4 Evang., Gr. et Lat.); Thomas Aquinas (Catena aurea in Evan.; English edition by Pusey, Keble, and Newman. Oxford, 1841-45, 4 vols.).

2. Since the Reformation: Calvin (Harmonia, and Ev. Joa., 1553; Engl. ed., Edinb., 1846, 3 vols.); Maldonatus (R. Cath., Com. in quatuor Evang., 1615); Pasquier Quesnel (Jansenist; The Four Gospels, French and English, several editions); John Lightfoot (Horae Hebraicae et Talmudicae in quatuor Evangelistas, and Harmonia quatuor Evangelistarum tum inter se, tum cum Veteri Testamento, in his Opera. London, 1684; also Leipz., 1675; Rotterdam, 1686; London, 1825); J. Macknight (Harm. of the Four Gospels, with Paraphrase and Notes. London, 1756; 5th ed., 1819, 2 vols.); George Campbell (d. 1796; The Four Gospels, with Dissertations and Notes. Aberdeen, 1814, 4 vols.; Andover, 1837, 2 vols.).

3. In the nineteenth century: Olshausen (d. 1839; 3d ed., 1837 sqq. revised and completed by Ebrard and others; Engl. transl., Edinb. and Now York); De Wette (d. 1849; Exeget. Handbuch zum N.T., 1837; 5th ed. by Brueckner and others, 1863 sqq.); Bleek (d. 1859; Synopt. Erklaerung der 3 ersten Evang., 1862, 2 vols.); Meyer (d. 1874; 6th ed., 1876-80, Matthew by Meyer Mark, Luke and John revised by Weiss); Lange (Am. ed. enlarged, New York and Edinb., 1864 sqq., 3 vols.); Alford (d. 1871; 6th ed., 1868; new ed., 1877); Wordsworth (5th ed., 1866); Jos. A. Alexander (d. 1859; Mark and Matthew, the latter unfinished); Mc Clellan (The Four Gospels, with the Chronological and Analytical Harmony. London, 1875); Keil (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, 1877-1881); Morison (Matthew and Mark, the latter in a third ed., 1882); Godet (Luke and John, French and English), Strack and Zoeckler (1888). For English readers: Speaker's Com., Ellicott's Com., Schaff's Revision Com., 1882, etc.

Comp. a list of Com. on the Gospels in the English transl. of Meyer on Matthew (Edinb., 1877, pp. xxiv.-xliii).

General Character and Aim of the Gospels.

Christianity is a cheerful religion and brings joy and peace from heaven to earth. The New Testament opens with the gospel, that is with the authentic record of the history of all histories, the glad tidings of salvation through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The four canonical Gospels are only variations of the same theme, a fourfold representation of one and the same gospel, animated by the same spirit. They are not full biographies, but only memoirs or a selection of characteristic features of Christ's life and work as they struck each Evangelist and best suited his purpose and his class of readers. They are not photographs which give only the momentary image in a single attitude, but living pictures from repeated sittings, and reproduce the varied expressions and aspects of Christ's person.

The style is natural, unadorned, straightforward, and objective. Their artless and naive simplicity resembles the earliest historic records in the Old Testament, and has its peculiar and abiding charm for all classes of people and all degrees of culture. The authors, in noble modesty and self-forgetfulness, suppress their personal views and feelings, retire in worshipful silence before their great subject, and strive to set it forth in all its own unaided power.

The first and fourth Gospels were composed by apostles and eye-witnesses, Matthew and John; the second and third, under the influence of Peter and Paul, and by their disciples Mark and Luke, so as to be indirectly likewise of apostolic origin and canonical authority. Hence Mark is often called the Gospel of Peter, and Luke the Gospel of Paul.

The common practical aim of the Evangelists is to lead the reader to a saving faith in Jesus of Nazareth as the promised Messiah and Redeemer of the world.

Common Origin.

The Gospels have their common source in the personal intercourse of two of the writers with Christ, and in the oral tradition of the apostles and other eye-witnesses. Plain fishermen of Galilee could not have drawn such a portrait of Jesus if he had not sat for it. It would take more than a Jesus to invent a Jesus. They did not create the divine original, but they faithfully preserved and reproduced it.

The gospel story, being constantly repeated in public preaching and in private circles, assumed a fixed, stereotyped form; the more readily, on account of the reverence of the first disciples for every word of their divine Master. Hence the striking agreement of the first three, or synoptical Gospels, which, in matter and form, are only variations of the same theme. Luke used, according to his own statement, besides the oral tradition, written documents on certain parts of the life of Jesus, which doubtless appeared early among the first disciples. The Gospel of Mark, the confidant of Peter, is a faithful copy of the gospel preached and otherwise communicated by this apostle; with the use, perhaps, of Hebrew records which Peter may have made from time to time under the fresh impression of the events themselves.

Individual Characteristics.

But with all their similarity in matter and style, each of the Gospels, above all the fourth, has its peculiarities, answering to the personal character of its author, his special design, and the circumstances of his readers. The several evangelists present the infinite fulness of the life and person of Jesus in different aspects and different relations to mankind; and they complete one another. The symbolical poesy of the church compares them with the four rivers of Paradise, and with the four cherubic representatives of the creation, assigning the man to Matthew, the lion to Mark, the ox to Luke, and the eagle to John.

The apparent contradictions of these narratives, when closely examined, sufficiently solve themselves, in all essential points, and serve only to attest the honesty, impartiality, and credibility of the authors. At the same time the striking combination of resemblances and differences stimulates close observation and minute comparison, and thus impresses the events of the life of Christ more vividly and deeply upon the mind and heart of the reader than a single narrative could do. The immense labor of late years in bringing out the comparative characteristics of the Gospels and in harmonizing their discrepancies has not been in vain, and has left a stronger conviction of their independent worth and mutual completeness.

Matthew wrote for Jews, Mark for Romans, Luke for Greeks, John for advanced Christians; but all are suited for Christians in every age and nation. The first Gospel exhibits Jesus of Nazareth as the Messiah and Lawgiver of the kingdom of heaven who challenges our obedience; the second Gospel as the mighty conqueror and worker of miracles who excites our astonishment; the third Gospel as the sympathizing Friend and Saviour of men who commands our confidence; the fourth Gospel as the eternal Son of God who became flesh for our salvation and claims our adoration and worship, that by believing in him we may have eternal life. The presiding mind which planned this fourfold gospel and employed the agents without a formal agreement and in conformity to their talents, tastes, and spheres of usefulness, is the Spirit of that Lord who is both the Son of Man and the Son of God, the Saviour of us all.

Time Of Composition.

As to the time of composition, external testimony and internal evidence which modern critical speculations have not been able to invalidate, point to the seventh decade of the first century for the Synoptic Gospels, and to the ninth decade for the Gospel of John.

The Synoptic Gospels were certainly written before a.d. 70; for they describe the destruction of Jerusalem as an event still future, though nigh at hand, and connect it immediately with the glorious appearing of our Lord, which it was thought might take place within the generation then living, although no precise date is fixed anywhere, the Lord himself declaring it to be unknown even to him. Had the Evangelists written after that terrible catastrophe, they would naturally have made some allusion to it, or so arranged the eschatological discourses of our Lord (Matt. 24; Mark 13; Luke 21) as to enable the reader clearly to discriminate between the judgment of Jerusalem and the final judgment of the world, as typically foreshadowed by the former.

On the other hand, a considerable number of years must have elapsed after the resurrection. This is indicated by the fact that several imperfect attempts at a gospel history had previously been made (Luke 1:1), and by such a phrase as: until this day (Matt. 27:8; 28:15).

But it is quite impossible to fix the precise year of composition. The silence of the Epistles is no conclusive argument that the Synoptists wrote after the death of James, Peter, and Paul; for there is the same silence in the Acts concerning the Epistles of Paul, and in the Epistles concerning the Acts. The apostles did not quote each other's writings. the only exception is the reference of Peter to the Epistles of Paul. In the multiplicity of their labors the Evangelists may have been engaged for several years in preparing their works until they assumed their present shape. The composition of a life of Christ now may well employ many years of the profoundest study.

The Hebrew Matthew was probably composed first; then Mark; the Greek Matthew and Luke cannot be far apart. If the Acts, which suddenly break off with Paul's imprisonment in Rome (61-63), were written before the death of the apostle, the third Gospel, which is referred to as the first treatise (Acts 1:1), must have been composed before a.d. 65 or 64, perhaps, in Caesarea, where Luke had the best opportunity to gather his material during Paul's imprisonment between 58 and 60; but it was probably not published till a few years afterwards. Whether the later Synoptists knew and used the earlier will be discussed in the next section.

John, according to the universal testimony of antiquity, which is confirmed by internal evidence, wrote his Gospel last, after the fall of Jerusalem and after the final separation of the Christians from the Jews. He evidently presupposes the Synoptic Gospels (although he never refers to them), and omits the eschatological and many other discourses and miracles, even the institution of the sacraments, because they were already sufficiently known throughout the church. But in this case too it is impossible to fix the year of composition. John carried his Gospel in his heart and memory for many years and gradually reduced it to writing in his old age, between a.d. 80 and 100; for he lived to the close of the first century and, perhaps, saw the dawn of the second.

Credibility.

The Gospels make upon every unsophisticated reader the impression of absolute honesty. They tell the story without rhetorical embellishment, without any exclamation of surprise or admiration, without note and comment. They frankly record the weaknesses and failings of the disciples, including themselves, the rebukes which their Master administered to them for their carnal misunderstandings and want of faith, their cowardice and desertion in the most trying hour, their utter despondency after the crucifixion, the ambitious request of John and James, the denial of Peter, the treason of Judas. They dwell even with circumstantial minuteness upon the great sin of the leader of the Twelve, especially the Gospel of Mark, who derived his details no doubt from Peter's own lips. They conceal nothing, they apologize for nothing, they exaggerate nothing. Their authors are utterly unconcerned about their own fame, and withhold their own name; their sole object is to tell the story of Jesus, which carries its own irresistible force and charm to the heart of every truth-loving reader. The very discrepancies in minor details increase confidence and exclude the suspicion of collusion; for it is a generally acknowledged principle in legal evidence that circumstantial variation in the testimony of witnesses confirms their substantial agreement. There is no historical work of ancient times which carries on its very face such a seal of truthfulness as these Gospels.

The credibility of the canonical Gospels receives also negative confirmation from the numerous apocryphal Gospels which by their immeasurable inferiority and childishness prove the utter inability of the human imagination, whether orthodox or heterodox, to produce such a character as the historical Jesus of Nazareth.

No post-apostolic writers could have composed the canonical Gospels, and the apostles themselves could not have composed them without the inspiration of the spirit of Christ.

Critical.

Bernh. Weiss: Das Matthaeusevangelium und seine Lucas-Parallelen erklaert. Halle, 1876. Exceedingly elaborate.

Edw. Byron Nicholson: The Gospel according to the Hebrews. Its Fragments translated and annotated. Lond., 1879.

Exegetical

Commentaries on Matthew by Origen, Jerome, Chrysostom, Melanchthon (1523), Fritzsche, De Wette, Alford, Wordsworth, Schegg (R. Cath., 1856-58, 3 vols.), J. A. Alexander, Lange (trsl. and enlarged by Schaff, N. Y., 1864, etc.), James Morison (of Glasgow, Lond., 1870), Meyer, (6th ed., 1876), Wichelhaus (Halle, 1876), Keil (Leipz., 1877), Plumptre (Lond., 1878), Carr (Cambr., 1879), Nicholson (Lond., 1881), Schaff (N. Y., 1882).

Life of Matthew.

Matthew, formerly called Levi, one of the twelve apostles, was originally a publican or taxgatherer at Capernaum, and hence well acquainted with Greek and Hebrew in bilingual Galilee, and accustomed to keep accounts. This occupation prepared him for writing a Gospel in topical order in both languages. In the three Synoptic lists of the apostles he is associated with Thomas, and forms with him the fourth pair; in Mark and Luke he precedes Thomas, in his own Gospel he is placed after him (perhaps from modesty). Hence the conjecture that he was a twin brother of Thomas (Didymus, i.e., Twin), or associated with him in work. Thomas was an honest and earnest doubter, of a melancholy disposition, yet fully convinced at last when he saw the risen Lord; Matthew was a strong and resolute believer.

Of his apostolic labors we have no certain information. Palestine, Ethiopia, Macedonia, the country of the Euphrates, Persia, and Media are variously assigned to him as missionary fields. He died a natural death according to the oldest tradition, while later accounts make him a martyr.

The first Gospel is his imperishable work, well worthy a long life, yea many lives. Matthew the publican occupies as to time the first place in the order of the Evangelists, as Mary Magdalene, from whom Christ expelled many demons, first proclaimed the glad tidings of the resurrection. Not that it is on that account the best or most important the best comes last, but it naturally precedes the other, as the basis precedes the superstructure.

In his written Gospel he still fulfils the great commission to bring all nations to the school of Christ (Matt. 28:19).

The scanty information of the person and life of Matthew in connection with his Gospel suggests the following probable inferences:

1. Matthew was a Hebrew of the Hebrews, yet comparatively liberal, being a publican who came in frequent contact with merchants from Damascus. This occupation was indeed disreputable in the eyes of the Jews, and scarcely consistent with the national Messianic aspirations; but Capernaum belonged to the tetrarchy of Herod Antipas, and the Herodian family, which, with all its subserviency to heathen Rome, was yet to a certain extent identified with the Jewish nation.

2. He was a man of some means and good social position. His office was lucrative, he owned a house, and gave a farewell banquet to a great multitude of his old associates, at which Jesus presided. It was at the same time his farewell to the world, its wealth, its pleasures and honors. We may conceive what a joyous banquet that was for Matthew, when he marked the words and acts of Jesus, and stored within his memory the scene and the conversation which he was inspired to write according to his clerkly ability for the instruction of the church in all after ages. It was on that occasion that Jesus spoke that word which was especially applicable to Matthew and especially offensive to the Pharisees present: I came not to call the righteous, but sinners. It is remarkable that the first post-apostolic quotation from the Gospel of Matthew is this very passage, and one similar to it (see below).

3. He was a man of decision of character and capable of great sacrifice to his conviction. When called, while sitting in Oriental fashion at his tollbooth, to follow Jesus, he forsook all, rose up, and followed Him, whom he at once recognized and trusted as the true king of Israel. No one can do more than leave his all, no matter how much or how little this may be; and no one can do better than to follow Christ.

Character and Aim of the Gospel.

The first Gospel makes the impression of primitive antiquity. The city of Jerusalem, the temple, the priesthood and sacrifices, the entire religious and political fabric of Judaism are supposed to be still standing, but with an intimation of their speedy downfall. It alone reports the words of Christ that he came not to destroy but to fulfil the law and the prophets, and that he was only sent to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. Hence the best critics put the composition several years before the destruction of Jerusalem.

Matthew's Gospel was evidently written for Hebrews, and Hebrew Christians with the aim to prove that Jesus of Nazareth is the promised Messiah, the last and greatest prophet, priest, and king of Israel. It presupposes a knowledge of Jewish customs and Palestinian localities (which are explained in other Gospels). It is the connecting link between the Old and the New Covenant. It is, as has been well said, the ultimatum of Yahweh to his ancient people: Believe, or prepare to perish! Recognize Jesus as the Messiah, or await Him as your Judge! Hence he so often points out the fulfilment of Messianic prophecy in the evangelical history with his peculiar formula: that it might be fulfilled, or then was fulfilled.

In accordance with this plan, Matthew begins with the genealogy of Jesus, showing him to be the son and heir of David the king, and of Abraham the father, of the Jewish race, to whom the promises were given. The wise men of the East come from a distance to adore the new-born king of the Jews. The dark suspicion and jealousy of Herod is roused, and foreshadows the future persecution of the Messiah. The flight to Egypt and the return from that land both of refuge and bondage are a fulfilment of the typical history of Israel. John the Baptist completes the mission of prophecy in preparing the way for Christ. After the Messianic inauguration and trial Jesus opens his public ministry with the Sermon on the Mount, which is the counterpart of the Sinaitic legislation, and contains the fundamental law of his kingdom. The key-note of this sermon and of the whole Gospel is that Christ came to fulfil the law and the prophets, which implies both the harmony of the two religions and the transcendent superiority of Christianity. His mission assumes an organized institutional form in the kingdom of heaven which he came to establish in the world. Matthew uses this term (h J basileiva tw'n oujranw'n) no less than thirty-two times, while the other Evangelists and Paul speak of the kingdom of God (h J basileiva tou' qeou'). No other Evangelist has so fully developed the idea that Christ and his kingdom are the fulfilment of all the hopes and aspirations of Israel, and so vividly set forth the awful solemnity of the crisis at this turning point in its history.

But while Matthew wrote from the Jewish Christian point of view, he is far from being Judaizing or contracted. He takes the widest range of prophecy. He is the most national and yet the most universal, the most retrospective and yet the most prospective, of Evangelists. At the very cradle of the infant Jesus he introduces the adoring Magi from the far East, as the forerunners of a multitude of believing Gentiles who shall come from the east and the west, and shall sit down with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, in the kingdom of heaven; while the sons of the kingdom shall be cast forth into the outer darkness. The heathen centurion, and the heathen woman of Canaan exhibit a faith the like of which Jesus did not find in Israel. The Messiah is rejected and persecuted by his own people in Galilee and Judaea. He upbraids Chorazin, Bethsaida, and Capernaum, wherein his mighty works were done, because they repented not; He sheds tears over Jerusalem because she would not come to Him; He pronounces his woe over the Jewish hierarchy, and utters the fearful prophecies of the destruction of the theocracy. All this is most fully recorded by Matthew, and he most appropriately and sublimely concludes with the command of the universal evangelization of all nations, and the promise of the unbroken presence of Christ with his people to the end of the world.

Topical Arrangement.

The mode of arrangement is clear and orderly. It is topical rather than chronological. It far surpasses Mark and Luke in the fulness of the discourses of Christ, while it has to be supplemented from them in regard to the succession of events. Matthew groups together the kindred words and works with special reference to Christ's teaching; hence it was properly called by Papias a collection of the Oracles of the Lord. It is emphatically the didactic Gospel.

The first didactic group is the Sermon on the Mount of Beatitudes, which contains the legislation of the kingdom of Christ and an invitation to the whole people to enter, holding out the richest promises to the poor in spirit and the pure in heart (Matt. 5-7. The second group is the instruction to the disciples in their missionary work (Matt. 10). The third is the collection of the parables on the kingdom of God, illustrating its growth, conflict, value, and consummation (Matt. 13). The fourth, the denunciation of the Pharisees (Matt. 23), and the fifth, the prophecy of the destruction of Jerusalem and the end of the world (Matt. 24 and 25).

Between these chief groups are inserted smaller discourses of Christ, on his relation to John the Baptist (11:1-19); the woe on the unrepenting cities of Galilee (11:20-24); the thanksgiving for the revelation to those of a childlike spirit (11:25-27); the invitation to the weary and heavy laden (11:28-30); on the observance of the Sabbath and warning to the Pharisees who were on the way to commit the unpardonable sin by tracing his miracles to Satanic powers (Matt. 12); the attack on the traditions of the elders and the hypocrisy of the Pharisees (Matt. 15 and 16); the prophecy of the founding of the church after the great confession of Peter, with the prediction of his passion as the way to victory (Matt. 16); the discourse on the little children with their lesson of simplicity and humility against the temptations of hierarchial pride; the duty of forgiveness in the kingdom and the parable of the unforgiving servant (Matt. 18); the discourse about divorce, against the Pharisees; the blessing of little children; the warning against the danger of riches; the parable of the Laborers in the Vineyard and the nature of the future rewards (Matt. 19 and 20); the victorious replies of the Lord to the tempting questions of the Pharisees and Sadducees (Matt. 22).

These discourses are connected with narratives of the great miracles of Christ and the events in his life. The miracles are likewise grouped together (as in Matt. 8-9), or briefly summed up (as in 4:23-25). The transfiguration (Matt. 17) forms the turning-point between the active and the passive life; it was a manifestation of heaven on earth, an anticipation of Christ's future glory, a pledge of the resurrection, and it fortified Jesus and his three chosen disciples for the coming crisis, which culminated in the crucifixion and ended in the resurrection.

Peculiar Sections.

Matthew has a number of original sections:

1. Ten Discourses of our Lord, namely, the greater part of the Sermon on the Mount (Matt. 5-7); the thanksgiving for the revelation to babes (11:25-27); the touching invitation to the heavy laden (11:28-30), which is equal to anything in John; the warning against idle words (12:36, 37); the blessing pronounced upon Peter and the prophecy of founding the church (16:17-19); the greater part of the discourse on humility and forgiveness (Matt. 18); the rejection of the Jews (21:43); the denunciation of the scribes and Pharisees (Matt. 23); the description of the final judgment (25:31-46); the great commission and the promise of Christ's presence to the end of time (28:18-20).

2. Ten Parables: the tares; the hidden treasure; the pearl of great price; the draw-net (13:24-50); the unmerciful servant (18:23-35); the laborers in the vineyard (20:1-16); the two sons (21:28-32); the marriage of the king's son (22: 1-14); the ten virgins (25:1-13); the talents (25:14-30).

3. Two Miracles: the cure of two blind men (9:27-31); the stater in the fish's mouth (17:24-27).

4. Facts and Incidents: the adoration of the Magi; the massacre of the innocents; the flight into Egypt; the return from Egypt to Nazareth (all in Matt. 2); the coming of the Pharisees and Sadducees to John's baptism (3:7); Peter's attempt to walk on the sea (14:28-31); the payment of the temple tax (17:24-27); the bargain of Judas, his remorse, and suicide (26:14-16; 27:3-10); the dream of Pilate's wife (27:19); the appearance of departed saints in Jerusalem (27:52); the watch at the sepulchre (27:62-66); the lie of the Sanhedrin and the bribing of the soldiers (28:11-15); the earthquake on the resurrection morning (28:2, a repetition of the shock described in 27:51, and connected with the rolling away of the stone from the sepulchre).

The Style.

The Style of Matthew is simple, unadorned, calm, dignified, even majestic; less vivid and picturesque than that of Mark; more even and uniform than Luke's, because not dependent on written sources. He is Hebraizing, but less so than Mark, and not so much as Luke 1-2. He omits some minor details which escaped his observation, but which Mark heard from Peter, and which Luke learned from eye-witnesses or found in his fragmentary documents. Among his peculiar expressions, besides the constant use of kingdom of heaven, is the designation of God as our heavenly Father, and of Jerusalem as the holy city and the city of the Great King. In the fulness of the teaching of Christ he surpasses all except John. Nothing can be more solemn and impressive than his reports of those words of life and power, which will outlast heaven and earth (24:34). Sentence follows sentence with overwhelming force, like a succession of lightning flashes from the upper world.

Patristic Notices of Matthew.

The first Gospel was well known to the author of the Didache of the Apostles, who wrote between 80 and 100, and made large use of it, especially the Sermon on the Mount.

The next clear allusion to this Gospel is made in the Epistle of Barnabas, who quotes two passages from the Greek Matthew, one from 22:14: Many are called, but few chosen, with the significant formula used only of inspired writings, It is written. This shows clearly that early in the second century, if not before, it was an acknowledged authority in the church. The Gospel of John also indirectly presupposes, by its numerous emissions, the existence of all the Synoptical Gospels.

The Hebrew Matthew.

Next we hear of a Hebrew Matthew from Papias, bishop of Hierapolis, a hearer of John and a companion of Polycarp. He collected from apostles and their disciples a variety of apostolic traditions in his Exposition of Oracles of the Lord, in five books (logivwn kuriakw'n exhvghsi. In a fragment of this lost work preserved by Eusebius, he says distinctly that Matthew composed the oracles [of the Lord] in the Hebrew tongue, and every one interpreted them as best he could.

Unfortunately the Hebrew Matthew, if it ever existed, has disappeared, and consequently there is much difference of opinion about this famous passage, both as regards the proper meaning of oracles (logiva) and the truth of the whole report.

1. The oracles are understood by some to mean only the discourses of our Lord; by others to include also the narrative portions. But in any case the Hebrew Matthew must have been chiefly an orderly collection of discourses. This agrees best with the natural and usual meaning of Logia, and the actual preponderance of the doctrinal element in our canonical Matthew) as compared with our Mark. A parte potiori fit denominatio.

2. The report of a Hebrew original has been set aside altogether as a sheer mistake of Papias, who confounded it with the Ebionite Gospel according to the Hebrews, known to us from a number of fragments. It is said that Papias was a credulous and weak-minded, though pious man. But this does not impair his veracity or invalidate a simple historical notice. It is also said that the universal spread of the Greek language made a Hebrew Gospel superfluous. But the Aramaic was still the vernacular and prevailing language in Palestine (comp. Acts 21:40; 22:2) and in the countries of the Euphrates.

There is an intrinsic probability of a Hebrew Gospel for the early stage of Christianity. And the existence of a Hebrew Matthew rests by no means merely on Papias. It is confirmed by the independent testimonies of most respectable fathers, as Irenaeus, Pantaenus, Origen, Eusebius, Cyril of Jerusalem, Epiphanius, and Jerome.

This Hebrew Matthew must not be identified with the Judaizing Gospel according to the Hebrews, the best among the apocryphal Gospels, of which in all thirty-three fragments remain. Jerome and other fathers clearly distinguish the two. The latter was probably an adaptation of the former to the use of the Ebionites and Nazarenes. Truth always precedes heresy, as the genuine coin precedes the counterfeit, and the real portrait the caricature. Cureton and Tregelles maintain that the Curetonian Syriac fragment is virtually a translation of the Hebrew Matthew, and antedates the Peshito version. But Ewald has proven that it is derived from our Greek Matthew.

Papias says that every body interpreted the Hebrew Matthew as well as he could. He refers no doubt to the use of the Gospel in public discourses before Greek hearers, not to a number of written translations of which we know nothing. The past tense (hjrmhvneuse) moreover seems to imply that such necessity existed no longer at the time when he wrote; in other words, that the authentic Greek Matthew had since appeared and superseded the Aramaic predecessor which was probably less complete. Papias accordingly is an indirect witness of the Greek Matthew in his own age; that is, the early part of the second century (about a.d. 130). At all events the Greek Matthew was in public use even before that time, as is evident from the, quotations in the Didache, and the Epistle of Barnabas (which were written before 120, probably before 100).

The Greek Matthew.

The Greek Matthew, as we have it now, is not a close translation from the Hebrew and bears the marks of an original composition. This appears from genuine Greek words and phrases to which there is no parallel in Hebrew, as the truly classical Those wretches he will wretchedly destroy, and from the discrimination in Old Testament quotations which are freely taken from the Septuagint in the course of the narrative, but conformed to the Hebrew when they convey Messianic prophecies, and are introduced by the solemn formula: that there might be fulfilled, or then was fulfilled.

If then we credit the well nigh unanimous tradition of the ancient church concerning a prior Hebrew Matthew, we must either ascribe the Greek Matthew to some unknown translator who took certain liberties with the original, or, what seems most probable, we must assume that Matthew himself at different periods of his life wrote his Gospel first in Hebrew in Palestine, and afterward in Greek. In doing so, he would not literally translate his own book, but like other historians freely reproduce and improve it. Josephus did the same with his history of the Jewish war, of which only the Greek remains. When the Greek Matthew once was current in the church, it naturally superseded the Hebrew, especially if it was more complete.

Objections are raised to Matthew's authorship of the first canonical Gospel, from real or supposed inaccuracies in the narrative, but they are at best very trifling and easily explained by the fact that Matthew paid most attention to the words of Christ, and probably had a better memory for thoughts than for facts.

But whatever be the view we take of the precise origin of the first canonical Gospel, it was universally received in the ancient church as the work of Matthew. It was our Matthew who is often, though freely, quoted by Justin Martyr as early as a.d. 146 among the Gospel Memoirs; it was one of the four Gospels of which his pupil Tatian compiled a connected Diatessaron; and it was the only Matthew used by Irenaeus and all the fathers that follow.

Commentaries.

George Petter (the largest Com. on M., London, 1661, 2 vols. fol.); C. Fr. A. Fritzsche (Evangelium Marci, Lips., 1830); A. Klostermann (Das Marcusevangelium nach seinem Quellenwer the fuer die evang. Gesch., Goettingen, 1867); B. Weiss (Das Marcusevangelium und seine synopt. Parallelen, Berlin, 1872); Meyer (6th ed. by Weiss, Goett., 1878); Joseph A. Alexander (New York, 1858, and London, 1866); Harvey Goodwin (London, 1860); John H. Godwin (London, 1869); James Morison (Mark's Memoir of Jesus Christ, London and Glasgow, 1873, second ed., 1876, third ed., 1881, one of the very best Com., learned, reverential, and sensible); C. F. Maclear (Cambridge, 1877); Canon Cook (London, 1878); Edwin W. Rich (Philad., 1881); Matthew B. Riddle (New York, 1881).

Life of Mark

The second Evangelist combines in his name, as well as in his mission, the Hebrew and the Roman, and is a connecting link between Peter and Paul, but more especially a pupil and companion of the former, so that his Gospel may properly be called the Gospel of Peter. His original name was John or Johanan (i.e., Yahweh is gracious, Gotthold) his surname was Mark (i.e., Mallet). The surname supplanted the Hebrew name in his later life, as Peter supplanted Simon, and Paul supplanted Saul. The change marked the transition of Christianity from the Jews to the Gentiles. He is frequently mentioned in the Acts and the Epistles.

He was the son of a certain Mary who lived at Jerusalem and offered her house, at great risk no doubt in that critical period of persecution, to the Christian disciples for devotional meetings. Peter repaired to that house after his deliverance from prison (a.d. 44). This accounts for the close intimacy of Mark with Peter; he was probably converted through him, and hence called his spiritual son (1 Pet. 5:13). He may have had a superficial acquaintance with Christ; for he is probably identical with that unnamed young man who, according to his own report, left his linen cloth and fled naked from Gethsemane in the night of betrayal (Mark 14:51). He would hardly have mentioned such a trifling incident, unless it had a special significance for him as the turning-point in his life. Lange ingeniously conjectures that his mother owned the garden of Gethsemane or a house close by.

Mark accompanied Paul and Barnabas as their minister (u Jphrevth ) on their first great missionary journey; but left them half-way, being discouraged, it seems, by the arduous work, and returned to his mother in Jerusalem. For this reason Paul refused to take him on his next tour, while Barnabas was willing to overlook his temporary weakness (Acts 15:38). There was a sharp contention on that occasion between these good men, probably in connection with the more serious collision between Paul and Peter at Antioch (Gal. 2:11 sqq.). Paul was moved by a stern sense of duty; Barnabas by a kindly feeling for his cousin. But the alienation was only temporary. For about ten years afterwards (63) Paul speaks of Mark at Rome as one of his few fellow-workers to the kingdom of God, who had been a comfort to him in his imprisonment; and he commends him to the brethren in Asia Minor on his intended visit (Col. 4:10, 11; Philem. 24). In his last Epistle he charges Timothy to bring Mark with him to Rome on the ground that he was useful to him for ministering (2 Tim. 4:11). We find him again in company with Peter at Baby]on, whether that be on the Euphrates, or, more probably, at Rome (1 Pet. 5:3).

These are the last notices of him in the New Testament. The tradition of the church adds two important facts, that he wrote his Gospel in Rome as the interpreter of Peter, and that afterwards he founded the church of Alexandria. The Coptic patriarch claims to be his successor. The legends of his martyrdom in the eighth year of Nero (this date is given by Jerome) are worthless. In 827 his relics were removed from Egypt to Venice, which built him a magnificent five-domed cathedral on the Place of St. Mark, near the Doge's palace, and chose him with his symbol, the Lion, for the patron saint of the republic.

His Relation to Peter.

Though not an apostle, Mark had the best opportunity in his mother's house and his personal connection with Peter, Paul, Barnabas, and other prominent disciples for gathering the most authentic information concerning the gospel history.

The earliest notice of his Gospel we have from Papias of Hierapolis in the first half of the second century. He reports among the primitive traditions which he collected, that Mark, having become the interpreter of Peter (e Jrmhneuth; Pevtrou genovmeno, wrote down accurately ajkribw' e[grayen) whatever he remembered, without, however, recording in order (taxei) what was either said or done by Christ. For neither did he hear the Lord, nor did he follow Him; but afterwards, as I said, [he followed] Peter, who adapted his instructions to the needs [of his hearers], but not in the way of giving a connected account of the Lord's discourses. So then Mark committed no error in thus writing down such details as he remembered; for he made it his one forethought not to omit or to misrepresent any details that he had heard.

In what sense was Mark an interpreter of Peter? Not as the translator of a written Aramaic Gospel of Peter into the Greek, for of such an Aramaic original there is no trace, and Peter (to judge from his Epistles) wrote better Greek; nor as the translator of his discourses into Latin, for we know not whether he understood that language, and it was scarcely needed even in Rome among Jews and Orientals who spoke Greek; nor in the wider sense, as a mere clerk or amanuensis, who wrote down what Peter dictated; but as the literary editor and publisher of the oral Gospel of his spiritual father and teacher. So Mercury was called the interpreter of the gods, because he communicated to mortals the messages of the gods. It is quite probable, however, that Peter sketched down some of the chief events under the first impression, in his vernacular tongue, and that such brief memoirs, if they existed, would naturally be made use of by Mark.

We learn, then, from Papias that Mark wrote his Gospel from the personal reminiscences of Peter's discourses, which were adapted to the immediate wants of his hearers; that it was not complete (especially in the didactic part, as compared with Matthew or John), nor strictly chronological.

Clement of Alexandria informs us that the people of Rome were so much pleased with the preaching of Peter that they requested Mark, his attendant, to put it down in writing, which Peter neither encouraged nor hindered. Other ancient fathers emphasize the close intimacy of Mark with Peter, and call his Gospel the Gospel of Peter.

The Gospel.

This tradition is confirmed by the book: it is derived from the apostolic preaching of Peter, but is the briefest and so far the least complete of all the Gospels, yet replete with significant details. It reflects the sanguine and impulsive temperament, rapid movement, and vigorous action of Peter. In this respect its favorite particle immediately is exceedingly characteristic. The break-down of Mark in Pamphylia, which provoked the censure of Paul, has a parallel in the denial and inconsistency of Peter; but, like him, he soon rallied, was ready to accompany Paul on his next mission, and persevered faithfully to the end.

He betrays, by omissions and additions, the direct influence of Peter. He informs us that the house of Peter was the house of Simon and Andrew (Mark 1:29). He begins the public ministry of Christ with the calling of these two brothers (1:16) and ends the undoubted part of the Gospel with a message to Peter (16:7), and the supplement almost in the very words of Peter. He tells us that Peter on the Mount of Transfiguration, when he proposed to erect three tabernacles, knew not what to say (9:6). He gives the most minute account of Peter's denial, and alone among the Evangelists records the fact that he warmed himself in the light of the fire so that he could be distinctly seen (14:54), and that the cock crew twice, giving him a second warning (14:72). No one would be more likely to remember and report the fact as a stimulus to humility and gratitude than Peter himself.

On the other hand, Mark omits the laudatory words of Jesus to Peter: You are Rock, and upon this rock I will build my church; while yet he records the succeeding rebuke: Get you behind me, Satan. The humility of the apostle, who himself warns so earnestly against the hierarchical abuse of the former passage, offers the most natural explanation of this conspicuous omission. It is likely, says Eusebius, that Peter maintained silence on these points; hence the silence of Mark.

Character and Aim of Mark.

The second Gospel was according to the unanimous voice of the ancient church, which is sustained by internal evidence written at Rome and primarily for Roman readers, probably before the death of Peter, at all events before the destruction of Jerusalem.

It is a faithful record of Peter's preaching, which Mark must have heard again and again. It is an historical sermon on the text of Peter when addressing the Roman soldier Cornelius: God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power: who went about doing good, and healing all that were oppressed of the devil; for God was with him. It omits the history of the infancy, and rushes at once into the public ministry of our Lord, beginning, like Peter, with the baptism of John, and ending with the ascension. It represents Christ in the fulness of his living energy, as the Son of God and the mighty wonder-worker who excited amazement and carried the people irresistibly before him as a spiritual conqueror. This aspect would most impress the martial mind of the Romans, who were born to conquer and to rule. The teacher is lost in the founder of a kingdom. The heroic element prevails over the prophetic. The victory over Satanic powers in the healing of demoniacs is made very prominent. It is the gospel of divine force manifested in Christ. The symbol of the lion is not inappropriate to the Evangelist who describes Jesus as the Lion of the tribe of Judah.

Mark gives us a Gospel of facts, while Matthew's is a Gospel of divine oracles. He reports few discourses, but many miracles. He unrolls the short public life of our Lord in a series of brief life-pictures in rapid succession. He takes no time to explain and to reveal the inside. He dwells on the outward aspect of that wonderful personality as it struck the multitude. Compared with Matthew and especially with John, he is superficial, but not on that account incorrect or less useful and necessary. He takes the theocratic view of Christ, like Matthew; while Luke and John take the universal view; but while Matthew for his Jewish readers begins with the descent of Christ from David the King and often directs attention to the fulfilment of prophecy, Mark, writing for Gentiles, begins with the Son of God in his independent personality. He rarely quotes prophecy; but, on the other hand, he translates for his Roman readers Aramaic words and Jewish customs and opinions. He exhibits the Son of God in his mighty power and expects the reader to submit to his authority.

Two miracles are peculiar to him, the healing of the deaf and dumb man in Decapolis, which astonished the people beyond measure and made them exclaim: He has done all things well: he maketh even the deaf to hear, and the dumb to speak (Mark 7:31-37). The other miracle is a remarkable specimen of a gradual cure, the healing of the blind man at Bethsaida, who upon the first touch of Christ saw the men around him walking, but indistinctly as trees, and then after the second laying on of hands upon his eyes saw all things clearly (8:22-26). He omits important parables, but alone gives the interesting parable of the seed growing secretly and bearing first the blade, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear (4:26-29).

It is an interesting feature to which Dr. Lange first has directed attention, that Mark lays emphasis on the periods of pause and rest which rhythmically intervene between the several great victories achieved by Christ. He came out from his obscure abode in Nazareth; each fresh advance in his public life is preceded by a retirement, and each retirement is followed by a new and greater victory. The contrast between the contemplative rest and the vigorous action is striking and explains the overpowering effect by revealing its secret spring in the communion with God and with himself. Thus we have after his baptism a retirement to the wilderness in Judaea before he preached in Galilee (1:12); a retirement to the ship (3:7); to the desert on the eastern shore of the lake of Galilee (6:31); to a mountain (6:46); to the border land of Tyre and Sidon (7:24); to Decapolis (7:31); to a high mountain (9:2); to Bethany (11:1); to Gethsemane (14:34); his rest in the grave before the resurrection; and his withdrawal from the world and his reappearance in the victories of the gospel preached by his disciples. The ascension of the Lord forms his last withdrawal, which is to be followed by his final onset and absolute victory.

Doctrinal Position.

Mark has no distinct doctrinal type, but is catholic, irenic, unsectarian, and neutral as regards the party questions within the apostolic church. But this is not the result of calculation or of a tendency to obliterate and conciliate existing differences. Mark simply represents the primitive form of Christianity itself before the circumcision controversy broke out which occasioned the apostolic conference at Jerusalem twenty years after the founding of the church. His Gospel is Petrine without being anti-Pauline, and Pauline without being anti-Petrine. Its doctrinal tone is the same as that of the sermons of Peter in the Acts. It is thoroughly practical. Its preaches Christianity, not theology.

The same is true of the other Gospels, with this difference, however, that Matthew has a special reference to Jewish, Luke to Gentile readers, and that both make their selection accordingly under the guidance of the Spirit and in accordance with their peculiar charisma and aim, but without altering or coloring the facts. Mark stands properly between them just as Peter stood between James and Paul.

The Style.

The style of Mark is unclassical, inelegant, provincial, homely, poor and repetitious in vocabulary, but original, fresh, and picturesque, and enlivened by interesting touches and flickers..

He was a stranger to the arts of rhetoric and unskilled in literary composition, but an attentive listener, a close observer, and faithful recorder of actual events. He is strongly Hebraizing, and uses often the Hebrew and, but seldom the argumentative for. He inserts a number of Latin words, though most of these occur also in Matthew and Luke, and in the Talmud. He uses the particle forthwith or immediately more frequently than all the other Evangelists combined. It is his pet word, and well expresses his haste and rapid transition from event to event, from conquest to conquest. He quotes names and phrases in the original Aramaic, as Abba, Boanerges, Talitha kum, Corban, Ephphasah, and Eloi, Eloi, with a Greek translation. He is fond of the historical present, of the direct instead of the indirect mode of speech, of pictorical participles, and of affectionate diminutives. He observes time and place of important events. He has a number of peculiar expressions not found elsewhere in the New Testament.

Characteristic Details.

Mark inserts many delicate tints and interesting incidents of persons and events which he must have heard from primitive witnesses. They are not the touches of fancy or the reflections of an historian, but the reminiscences of the first impressions. They occur in every chapter. He makes some little contribution to almost every narrative he has in common with Matthew and Luke. He notices the overpowering impression of awe and wonder, joy and delight, which the words and miracles of Jesus and his very appearance made upon the people and the disciples; the actions of the multitude as they were rushing and thronging and pressing upon Him that He might touch and heal them, so that there was scarcely standing room, or time to eat. On one occasion his kinsmen were about forcibly to remove Him from the throng. He directs attention to the human emotions and passions of our Lord, how he was stirred by pity, wonder, grief, anger and indignation. He notices his attitudes, looks and gestures, his sleep and hunger.

He informs us that Jesus, looking upon the rich young ruler, loved him, and that the ruler's countenance fell when he was told to sell all he had and to follow Jesus. Mark, or Peter rather, must have watched the eye of our Lord and read in his face the expression of special interest in that man who notwithstanding his self-righteousness and worldliness had some lovely qualities and was not very far from the kingdom.

The cure of the demoniac and epileptic at the foot of the mount of transfiguration is narrated with greater circumstantiality and dramatic vividness by Mark than by the other Synoptists. He supplies the touching conversation of Jesus with the father of the sufferer, which drew out his weak and struggling faith with the earnest prayer for strong and victorious faith: I believe; help You mine unbelief. We can imagine how eagerly Peter, the confessor, caught this prayer, and how often he repeated it in his preaching, mindful of his own weakness and trials.

All the Synoptists relate on two distinct occasions Christ's love for little children, but Mark alone tells us that He took little children into his arms, and laid his hands upon them.

Many minor details not found in the other Gospels, however insignificant in themselves, are yet most significant as marks of the autopticity of the narrator (Peter). Such are the notices that Jesus entered the house of Simon and Andrew, with James and John (Mark 1:29); that the Pharisees took counsel with the Herodians (3:6); that the raiment of Jesus at the transfiguration became exceeding white as snow so as no fuller on earth can whiten them (9:3); that blind Bartimaeus when called, casting away his garment, leaped up (10:50), and came to Jesus; that Peter and James and John and Andrew asked him privately on the Mount of Olives about the coming events (13:3); that the five thousand sat down in ranks, by hundreds and fifties (6:40); that the Simon who carried the cross of Christ (15:21) was a Cyrenian and the father of Alexander and Rufus (no doubt, two well-known disciples, perhaps at Rome, comp. Rom. 16:13).

We may add, as peculiar to Mark and bewraying Peter, the designation of Christ as the carpenter (Mark 6:3); the name of the blind beggar at Jericho, Bartimaeus (10:46); the cushion in the boat on which Jesus slept (4:38); the green grass on the hill side in spring time (4:39); the one loaf in the ship (8:14); the colt tied at the door without in the open street (11:4); the address to the daughter of Jairus in her mother tongue (5:41); the bilingual Abba, Father, in the prayer at Gethsemane (14:36; comp. Rom. 8:15; Gal. 4:6).

Conclusion.

The natural conclusion from all these peculiarities is that Mark's Gospel, far from being an extract from Matthew or Luke or both, as formerly held, is a thoroughly independent and original work, as has been proven by minute investigations of critics of different schools and aims. It is in all its essential parts a fresh, life-like, and trustworthy record of the persons and events of the gospel history from the lips of honest old Peter and from the pen of his constant attendant and pupil. Jerome hit it in the fourth century, and unbiassed critics in the nineteenth century confirm it: Peter was the narrator, Mark the writer, of the second Gospel.

Some have gone further and maintain that Mark, the interpreter of Peter, simply translated a Hebrew Gospel of his teacher; but tradition knows nothing of a Hebrew Peter, while it speaks of a Hebrew Matthew; and a book is called after its author, not after its translator. It is enough to say Peter was the preacher, Mark the reporter and editor.

The bearing of this fact upon the reliableness of the Synoptic record of the life of Christ is self-evident. It leaves no room for the mythical or legendary hypothesis.

Integrity of the Gospel.

The Gospel closes (Mark 16:9-20) with a rapid sketch of the wonders of the resurrection and ascension, and the continued manifestations of power that attend the messengers of Christ in preaching the gospel to the whole creation. This close is upon the whole characteristic of Mark and presents the gospel as a divine power pervading and transforming the world, but it contains some peculiar features, namely: (1) one of the three distinct narratives of Christ's ascension (16:19, he was received up into heaven; the other two being those of Luke 24:51 and Acts 1:9-11), with the additional statement that he sat down at the right hand of God (comp. the similar statement, 1 Pet. 3:22) (2) an emphatic declaration of the necessity of baptism for salvation ( he that believes and is baptized shall be saved ), with the negative clause that unbelief (i.e., the rejection of the gospel offer of salvation) condemns ( he that disbelieves shall be condemned ); (3) the fact that the apostles disbelieved the report of Mary Magdalene until the risen Lord appeared to them personally (Mark 16:11-14; but John intimates the same, John 20:8, 9, especially in regard to Thomas, 20:25, and Matthew mentions that some doubted, Matt. 28:17; comp. Luke 24:37-41); (4) an authoritative promise of supernatural powers and signs which shall accompany the believers (Mark 16:17, 18). Among these is mentioned the pentecostal glossolalia under the unique name of speaking with new tongues.

The genuineness of this closing section is hotly contested, and presents one of the most difficult problems of textual criticism. The arguments are almost equally strong on both sides, but although the section cannot be proven to be a part of the original Gospel, it seems clear: (1) that it belongs to primitive tradition (like the disputed section of the adulteress in John 8); and (2) that Mark cannot have closed his Gospel with Mark 16:8 (gavr) without intending a more appropriate conclusion. The result does not affect the character and credibility of the Gospel. The section may be authentic or correct in its statements, without being genuine or written by Mark. There is nothing in it which, properly understood, does not harmonize with apostolic teaching.

Note on the Disputed Close of Mark, 16:9-20.

I. Reasons against the genuineness:

1. The section is wanting altogether in the two oldest and most valuable uncial manuscripts, the Sinaitic (a ) and the Vatican (B). The latter, it is true, after ending the Gospel with Mark 16:8 and the subscription kata mapkon, leaves the remaining third column blank, which is sufficient space for the twelve verses. Much account is made of this fact by Drs. Burgon and Scrivener; but in the same MS. I find, on examination of the facsimile edition, blank spaces from a few lines up to two-thirds and three-fourths of a column, at the end of Matthew, John, Acts, 1 Pet. (fol. 200), 1 John (fol. 208), Jude (fol. 210), Rom. (fol. 227), Eph. (fol. 262), Col. (fol. 272). In the Old Testament of B, as Dr. Abbot has first noted (in 1872), there are two blank columns at the end of Nehemiah, and a blank column and a half at the end of Tobit. In any case the omission indicates an objection of the copyist of B to the section, or its absence in the earlier manuscript he used.

I add the following private note from Dr. Abbot:, In the Alexandrian MS. a column and a third are left blank at the end of Mark, half a page at the end of John, and a whole page at the end of the Pauline Epistles. (Contrast the ending of Matthew and Acts.) In the Old Testament, note especially in this MS. Leviticus, Isaiah, and the Ep. of Jeremiah, at the end of each of which half a page or more is left blank; contrast Jeremiah, Baruch, Lamentations. There are similar blanks at the end of Ruth, 2 Samuel, and Daniel, but the last leaf of those books ends a quaternion or quire in the MS. In the Sinaitic MS. more than two columns with the whole following page are left blank at the end of the Pauline Epistles, though the two next leaves belong to the same quaternion; so at the end of the Acts a column and two-thirds with the whole of the following page; and at the end of Barnabas a column and a half. These examples show that the matter in question depended largely on the whim of the copyist; and that we can not infer with confidence that the scribe of B knew of any other ending of the Gospel.

There is also a shorter conclusion, unquestionably spurious, which in L and several MSS. of the Aethiopic version immediately follows Mark 16:8, and appears also in the margin of 274, the Harclean Syriac, and the best Coptic MS. of the Gospel, while in k of the Old Latin it takes the place of the longer ending. For details, see Westcott and Hort, II., Append., pp. 30, 38, 44 sq.

2. Eusebius and Jerome state expressly that the section was wanting in almost all the Greek copies of the Gospels. It was not in the copy used by Victor of Antioch. There is also negative patristic evidence against it, particularly strong in the case of Cyril of Jerusalem, Tertullian, and Cyprian, who had special occasion to quote it (see Westcott and Hort, II., Append., pp. 30-38). Jerome's statement, however, is weakened by the fact that he seems to depend upon Eusebius, and that he himself translated the passage in his Vulgate.

3. It is 'wanting in the important MS. k representing the African text of the Old Latin version, which has a different conclusion (like that in L), also in some of the best MSS. of the Armenian version, while in others it follows the usual subscription. It is also wanting in an unpublished Arabic version (made from the Greek) in the Vatican Library, which is likewise noteworthy for reading o{ in 1 Tim. 3:16.

4. The way in which the section begins, and in which it refers to Mary Magdalene, give it the air of a conclusion derived from some extraneous source. It does not record the fulfilment of the promise in Mark 16:7. It uses (16:9) prwvth/ sabbavtou for the Hebraistic th'/ mia'/ tw'n sabbavtwn of 16:2. It has many words or phrases (e.g., poreuvomai used three times) not elsewhere found in Mark, which strengthen the impression that we are dealing with a different writer, and it lacks Mark's usual graphic detail. But the argument from difference of style and vocabulary has been overstrained, and can not be regarded as in itself decisive.

II. Arguments in favor of the genuineness:

1. The section is found in most of the uncial MSS., A C D C G D S, in all the late uncials (in L as a secondary reading), and in all the cursive MSS., including 1, 33, 69, etc.; though a number of the cursives either mark it with an asterisk or note its omission in older copies. Hence the statements of Eusebius and Jerome seem to need some qualification. In MSS 22 (as Dr. Burgon has first pointed out) the liturgical word tevlo denoting the end of a reading lesson, is inserted after both Mark 16:8 and 16:20, while no such word is placed at the end of the other Gospels. This shows that there were two endings of Mark in different copies.

2. Also in most of the ancient versions, the Itala (with the exception of k, or the codex Bobbiensis, used by Columban), the Vulgate, the Curetonian Syriac (last part), the Peshito, the Philoxenian, the Coptic, the Gothic (first part), and the Aethiopic, but in several MSS. only after the spurious shorter conclusion. Of these versions the Itala, the Curetonian and Peshito Syriac, and the Coptic, are older than any of our Greek codices, but the MSS. of the Coptic are not older than the twelfth or tenth century, and may have undergone changes as well as the Greek MSS.; and the MSS. of the Ethiopic are all modern. The best MSS. of the old Latin are mutilated here. The only extant fragment of Mark in the Curetonian Syriac is 16:17-20, so that we cannot tell whether Mark 16:9-20 immediately followed 16:8, or appeared as they do in cod. L. But Aphraates quotes it.

3. In all the existing Greek and Syriac lectionaries or evangeliaries and synaxaries, as far as examined, which contain the Scripture reading lessons for the churches. Dr. Burgon lays great stress on their testimony (ch. X.), but he overrates their antiquity. The lection-systems cannot be traced beyond the middle of the fourth century when great liturgical changes took place. At that time the disputed verses were widely circulated and eagerly seized as a suitable resurrection and ascension lesson.

4. Irenaeus of Lyons, in the second half of the second century, long before Eusebius, expressly quotes Mark 16:19 as a part of the Gospel of Mark (Adv. Haer., III. 10, 6). The still earlier testimony of Justin Martyr (Apol., I. 45) is doubtful (The quotation of Mark 16:17 and 18 in lib. viii., c. 1 of the Apostolic Constitutions is wrongly ascribed to Hippolytus.) Marinus, Macarius Magnes (or at least the heathen writer whom he cites), Didymus, Chrysostom (??), Epiphanius, Nestorius, the apocryphal Gesta Pilati, Ambrose, Augustine, and other later fathers quote from the section.

5. A strong intrinsic argument is derived from the fact that Mark cannot intentionally have concluded his Gospel with the words efobou'nto gavr (Mark 16:8). He must either have himself written the last verses or some other conclusion, which was accidently lost before the book was multiplied by transcription; or he was unexpectedly prevented from finishing his book, and the conclusion was supplied by a friendly hand from oral tradition or some written source.

In view of these facts the critics and exegetes are very much divided. The passage is defended as genuine by Simon, Mill, Bengel, Storr, Matthaei, Hug, Schleiermacher, De Wette, Bleek, Olshausen, Lange, Ebrard, Hilgenfeld, Broadus ( Bapt. Quarterly, Philad., 1869), Burgon (1871), Scrivener, Wordsworth, Mc Clellan, Cook, Morison (1882). It is rejected or questioned by the critical editors, Griesbach, Lachmann, Tischendorf, Tregelles, Alford, Westcott and Hort (though retained by all in the text with or without brackets), and by such critics and Commentators as Fritzsche, Credner, Reuss, Wieseler, Holtzmann, Keim, Scholten, Klostermann, Ewald, Meyer, Weiss, Norton, Davidson. Some of these opponents, however, while denying the composition of the section by Mark, regard the contents as a part of the apostolic tradition. Michelsen surrenders only 16:9-14, and saves 16:15-20. Ewald and Holtzmann conjecture the original conclusion from 16:9, 10 and 16-20; Volkmar invents one from elements of all the Synoptists.

III. Solutions of the problem. All mere conjectures; certainty is impossible in this case.

1. Mark himself added the section in a later edition, issued perhaps in Alexandria, having been interrupted in Rome just as he came to 16:8, either by Peter's imprisonment and martyrdom, or by sickness, or some accident. Incomplete copies got into circulation before he was able to finish the book. So Michaelis, Hug, and others.

2. The original conclusion of Mark was lost by some accident, most probably from the original autograph (where it may have occupied a separate leaf), and the present paragraph was substituted by an anonymous editor or collector in the second century. So Griesbach, Schulthess, David Schulz.

3. Luke wrote the section. So Hitzig (Johannes Marcus, p. 187).

4. Godet (in his Com. on Luke, p. 8 and p. 513, Engl. transl.) modifies this hypothesis by assuming that a third hand supplied the close, partly from Luke's Gospel, which had appeared in the mean time, and partly (Mark 16:17, 18) from another source. He supposes that Mark was interrupted by the unexpected outbreak of the Neronian persecution in 64 and precipitously fled from the capital, leaving his unfinished Gospel behind, which was afterward completed when Luke's Gospel appeared. In this way Godet accounts for the fact that up to Mark 16:8 Luke had no influence on Mark, while such influence is apparent in the concluding section.

5. It was the end of one of the lost Gospel fragments used by Luke 1:1, and appended to Mark's by the last redactor. Ewald.

6. The section is from the pen of Mark, but was purposely omitted by some scribe in the third century from hierarchical prejudice, because it represents the apostles in an unfavorable light after the resurrection, so that the Lord upbraided them with their unbelief and hardness of heart (Mark 16:14). Lange (Leben Jesu, I. 166). Unlikely.

7. The passage is genuine, but was omitted in some valuable copy by a misunderstanding of the word tevlo which often is found after Mark 16:8 in cursives. So Burgon. According to the Western order, he says (in the Quarterly Review for Oct., 1881), S. Mark occupies the last place. From the earliest period it had been customary to write tevlo (The End) after 16:8, in token that there a famous ecclesiastical lection comes to a close. Let the last leaf of one very ancient archetypal copy have begun at 16:9, and let that last leaf have perished; and all is plain. A faithful copyist will have ended the Gospel perforce as B and a have done at S. Mark 16:8. But this liturgical mark is not old enough to explain the omission in a, B, and the MSS. of Eusebius and Jerome; and a reading lesson would close as abruptly with gavr as the Gospel itself.

8. The passage cannot claim any apostolic authority; but it is doubtless founded on some tradition of the apostolic age. Its authorship and precise date must remain unknown, but it is apparently older than the time when the canonical Gospels were generally received; for although it has points of contact with them all, it contains no attempt to harmonize their various representations of the course of events. So Dr. Hort (II., Appendix, 51). A similar view was held by Dean Alford.

For full information we refer to the critical apparatus of Tischendorf and Tregelles, to the monograph of Weiss on Mark (Das Marcusevang., pp. 512-515), and especially to the exhaustive discussion of Westcott and Hort in the second volume (Append., pp. 29-51). The most elaborate vindication of the genuineness is by Dean Burgon: The Last Twelve Verses o f the Gospel according to S. Mark Vindicated against Recent Critical Objections and Established (Oxford and Lond., 1871, 334 pages), a very learned book, but marred by its over-confident tone and unreasonable hostility to the oldest uncial MSS. (a and B) and the most meritorious textual critics (Lachmann, Tischendorf, Tregelles). For other able defences see Dr. Scrivener (Introd. to the Criticism of the New Test., 3d ed., 1883, pp. 583-590), Dr. Morison (Com. on Mark, pp. 446 and 463 sqq.), and Canon Cook (in Speaker's Com. on Mark, pp. 301-308).

Lachmann gives the disputed section, according to his principle to furnish the text as found in the fourth century, but did not consider it genuine (see his article in Studien und Kritiken for 1830, p. 843). Tischendorf and Tregelles set the twelve verses apart. Alford incloses them in single brackets, Westcott and Hort in double brackets, as an early interpolation; the Revised Version of 1881 retains them with a marginal note, and with a space between Mark 16:8 and 9. Dean Burgon ( Quarterly Rev. for Oct., 1881) holds this note of the Revision (which simply states an acknowledged fact) to be the gravest blot of all, and triumphantly refers the critical editors and Revisionists to his separate treatise extending over 300 pages, which for the best of reasons has never yet been answered, and in which he has demonstrated, as he assures us, that the last twelve verses in Mark are as trustworthy as any other verses which can be named. The infallible organ in the Vatican seems to have a formidable rival in Chichester, but they are in irreconcilable conflict on the true reading of the angelic anthem (Luke 2:14): the Pope chanting with the Vulgate the genitive (eujdokiva, bonae voluntatis), the Dean, in the same article, denouncing this as a grievous perversion of the truth of Scripture, and holding the evidence for the nominative (eujdokiva) to be absolutely decisive, as if the combined testimony of a* A B D, Irenaeus, Origen (lat.), Jerome, all the Latin MSS., and the Latin Gloria in Excelsis were of no account, as compared with his judgment or preference.

Lucas, Evangelii el medicinae munera pandens;

Artibus hinc, illinc religione, valet:

Utilis ille labor, per quem vixere tot aegri;

Utilior, per quem tot didicere mori!

Exegetical.

Commentaries by Origen (in Jerome's Latin translation, with a few Greek fragments), Eusebius (fragments), Cyril of Alexandria (Syriac Version with translation, ed. by Dean Smith, Oxf., 1858 and 1859), Euyourmius Zigabenus, Theophylact. Modern Com.: Bornemann (Scholia in Luc. Ev., 1830), De Wette (Mark and Luke, 3d ed., 1846), Meyer (Mark and Luke, 6th ed., revised by B. Weiss, 1878), James Thomson (Edinb., 1851, 3 vols.), J. J. Van Oosterzee (in Lange, 3d ed., 1867, Engl. ed. by Schaff and Starbuck, N. Y., 1866), Fr. Godet (one of the very best, 2d French ed., 1870, Engl. transl. by Shalders and Cusin, Edinb., 1875, 2 vols., reprinted in N. Y., 1881), Bishop W. B. Jones (in Speaker's Com., Lond. and N. Y., 1878), E. H. Plumptre (in Bp. Ellicott's Com. for English Readers, Lond., 1879), Frederich W. Farrar (Cambridge, 1880), Matthew B. Riddle (1882).

Life of Luke.

As Mark is inseparably associated with Peter, so is Luke with Paul. There was, in both cases, a foreordained correspondence and congeniality between the apostle and the historian or co-laborer. We find such holy and useful friendships in the great formative epochs of the church, notably so in the time of the Reformation, between Luther and Melanchthon, Zwingli and Oecolampadius, Calvin and Beza, Cranmer, Latimer and Ridley; and at a later period between the two Wesleys and Whitefield. Mark, the Hebrew Roman interpreter of the Galilaean fisherman, gave us the shortest, freshest, but least elegant and literary of the Gospels; Luke, the educated Greek, the beloved physician, and faithful companion of Saul of Tarsus, composed the longest and most literary Gospel, and connected it with the great events in secular history under the reigns of Augustus and his successors. If the former was called the Gospel of Peter by the ancients, the latter, in a less direct sense, may be called the Gospel of Paul, for its agreement in spirit with the teaching of the Apostle of the Gentiles. In their accounts of the institution of the Lord's Supper there is even a verbal agreement which points to the same source of information. No doubt there was frequent conference between the two, but no allusion is made to each other's writings, which tends to prove that they were composed independently during the same period, or not far apart.

Luke nowhere mentions his name in the two books which are by the unanimous consent of antiquity ascribed to him, and bear all the marks of the same authorship; but he is modestly concealed under the we of a great portion of the Acts, which is but a continuation of the third Gospel. He is honorably and affectionately mentioned three times by Paul during his imprisonment, as the beloved physician (Col. 4:14), as one of his fellow-laborers (Philem. 24), and as the most faithful friend who remained with him when friend after friend had deserted him (2 Tim. 4:11). His medical profession, although carried on frequently by superior slaves, implies some degree of education and accounts for the accuracy of his medical terms and description of diseases. It gave him access to many families of social position, especially in the East, where physicians are rare. It made him all the more useful to Paul in the infirmities of his flesh and his exhausting labors.

He was a Gentile by birth, though he may have become a proselyte of the gate. His nationality and antecedents are unknown. He was probably a Syrian of Antioch, and one of the earliest converts in that mother church of Gentile Christianity. This conjecture is confirmed by the fact that he gives us much information about the church in Antioch (Acts 11:19-30; 13:1-3; 15:1-3, 22-35), that he traces the origin of the name Christians to that city (11:19), and that in enumerating the seven deacons of Jerusalem he informs us of the Antiochian origin of Nicolas (Acts 6:5), without mentioning the nationality of any of the others.

We meet Luke first as a companion of Paul at Troas, when, after the Macedonian call, Come over and help us, he was about to carry the gospel to Greece on his second great missionary tour. For from that important epoch Luke uses the first personal pronoun in the plural: When he [Paul] had seen the vision, immediately we sought to go forth into Macedonia, concluding that God had called us to preach the gospel to them (Acts 16:10). He accompanied him to Philippi and seems to have remained there after the departure of Paul and Silas for Corinth (a.d. 51), in charge of the infant church; for the we is suddenly replaced by they (17:1). Seven years later (a.d. 58) he joined the apostle again, when he passed through Philippi on his last journey to Jerusalem, stopping a week at Troas (Acts 20:5, 6); for from that moment Luke resumes the we of the narrative. He was with Paul or near him at Jerusalem and two years at Caesarea, accompanied him on his perilous voyage to Rome, of which he gives a most accurate account, and remained with him to the end of his first Roman captivity, with which he closes his record (a.d. 63). He may however, have been temporarily absent on mission work during the four years of Paul's imprisonment. Whether he accompanied him on his intended visit to Spain and to the East, after the year 63, we do not know. The last allusion to him is the word of Paul when on the point of martyrdom: Only Luke is with me (2 Tim. 4:11).

The Bible leaves Luke at the height of his usefulness in the best company, with Paul preaching the gospel in the metropolis of the world.

Post-apostolic tradition, always far below the healyour and certain tone of the New Testament, mostly vague and often contradictory, never reliable, adds that he lived to the age of eighty-four, labored in several countries, was a painter of portraits of Jesus, of the Virgin, and the apostles, and that he was crucified on an olive-tree at Elaea in Greece. His real or supposed remains, together with those of Andrew the apostle, were transferred from Patrae in Achaia to the Church of the Apostles in Constantinople.

The symbolic poetry of the Church assigns to him the sacrificial ox; but the symbol of man is more appropriate; for his Gospel is par excellence the Gospel of the Son of Man.

Sources of Information.

According to his own confession in the preface, Luke was no eye-witness of the gospel history, but derived his information from oral reports of primitive disciples, and from numerous fragmentary documents then already in circulation. He wrote the Gospel from what he had heard and read, the Acts from, what he had seen and heard. He traced the origin of Christianity accurately from the beginning.

His opportunities were the very best. He visited the principal apostolic churches between Jerusalem and Rome, and came in personal contact with the founders and leaders. He met Peter, Mark, and Barnabas at Antioch, James and his elders at Jerusalem (on Paul's last visit) Philip and his daughters at Caesarea, the early converts in Greece and Rome; and he enjoyed, besides, the benefit of all the information which Paul himself had received by revelation or collected from personal intercourse with his fellow-apostles and other primitive disciples. The sources for the history of the infancy were Jewish-Christian and Aramaean (hence the strongly Hebraizing coloring of Luke 1-2); his information of the activity of Christ in Samaria was probably derived from Philip, who labored there as an evangelist and afterwards in Caesarea. But a man of Luke's historic instinct and conscientiousness would be led to visit also in person the localities in Galilee which are immortalized by the ministry of Christ. From Jerusalem or Caesarea he could reach them all in three or four days.

The question whether Luke also used one or both of the other Synoptic Gospels has already been discussed in a previous section. It is improbable that he included them among his evidently fragmentary sources alluded to in the preface. It is certain that he had no knowledge of our Greek Matthew; on the use of a lost Hebrew Matthew and of Mark the opinion of good scholars is divided, but the resemblance with Mark, though very striking in some sections, is not of such a character that it cannot as well, and even better, be explained from prior oral tradition or autoptical memoirs, especially if we consider that the resemblances are neutralized by unaccountable differences and omissions. The matter is not helped by a reference to a proto-Mark, either Hebrew or Greek, of which we know nothing.

Luke has a great deal of original and most valuable matter, which proves his independence and the variety of his sources. He adds much to our knowledge of the Saviour, and surpasses Matthew and Mark in fulness, accuracy, and chronological order three points which, with all modesty, he claims to have aimed at in his preface. Sometimes he gives special fitness and beauty to a word of Christ by inserting it in its proper place in the narrative, and connecting it with a particular occasion. But there are some exceptions, where Matthew is fuller, and where Mark is more chronological. Considering the fact that about thirty years had elapsed since the occurrence of the events, we need not wonder that some facts and words were dislocated, and that Luke, with all his honest zeal, did not always succeed in giving the original order.

The peculiar sections of Luke are in keeping with the rest. They have not the most remote affinity with apocryphal marvels and fables, nor even with the orthodox traditions and legends of the post-apostolic age, but are in full harmony with the picture of Christ as it shines from the other Gospels and from the Epistles. His accuracy has been put to the severest test, especially in the Acts, where he frequently alludes to secular rulers and events; but while a few chronological difficulties, as that of the census of Quirinius, are not yet satisfactorily removed, he has upon the whole, even in minute particulars, been proven to be a faithful, reliable, and well informed historian.

He is the proper father of Christian church history, and a model well worthy of imitation for his study of the sources, his conscientious accuracy, his modesty and his lofty aim to instruct and confirm in the truth.

Dedication and Object.

The third Gospel, as well as the Acts of the Apostles, is dedicated to a certain Theophilus (i.e., Friend of God), a man of social distinction, perhaps in the service of the government, as appears from his title honorable or most noble. He was either a convert or at least a catechumen in preparation for church membership, and willing to become sponsor and patron of these books. The custom of dedicating books to princes and rich friends of literature was formerly very frequent, and has not died out yet. As to his race and residence we can only conjecture that Theophilus was a Greek of Antioch, where Luke, himself probably an Antiochean, may have previously known him either as his freedman or physician. The pseudo-Clementine Recognitions mention a certain nobleman of that name at Antioch who was converted by Peter and changed his palace into a church and residence of the apostle.

The object of Luke was to confirm Theophilus and through him all his readers in the faith in which he had already been orally instructed, and to lead him to the conviction of the irrefragable certainty of the facts on which Christianity rests.

Luke wrote for Gentile Christians, especially Greeks, as Matthew wrote for Jews, Mark for Romans, John for advanced believers without distinction of nationality. He briefly explains for Gentile readers the position of Palestinian towns, as Nazareth, Capernaum, Arimathaea, and the distance of Mount Olivet and Emmaus from Jerusalem. He does not, like Matthew, look back to the past and point out the fulfilment of ancient prophecy with a view to prove that Jesus of Nazareth is the promised Messiah, but takes a universal view of Christ as the Saviour of all men and fulfiller of the aspirations of every human heart. He brings him in contact with the events of secular history in the vast empire of Augustus, and with the whole human race by tracing his ancestry back to Adam.

These features would suit Gentile readers generally, Romans as well as Greeks. But the long residence of Luke in Greece, and the ancient tradition that he labored and died there, give strength to the view that he had before his mind chiefly readers of that country. According to Jerome the Gospel was written (completed) in Achaia and Boeotia. The whole book is undoubtedly admirably suited to Greek taste. It at once captivates the refined Hellenic ear by a historic prologue of classic construction, resembling the prologues of Herodotus and Thucydides. It is not without interest to compare them.

Luke begins: Forasmuch as many have taken in hand to draw up a narrative concerning those matters which have been fufilled among us, even as they delivered them to us, which from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word: it seemed good to me also, having traced the course of all things accurately from the first, to write to you in order, most noble Theophilus; that you mightest know the certainty concerning the things wherein you wast instructed.

Herodotus: These are the researches of Herodotus of Halicarnassus, which he publishes, in order to preserve from oblivion the remembrance of former deeds of men, and to secure a just tribute of glory to the great and wonderful actions of the Greeks and the barbarians; and withal to put on record what were their grounds of feud.

Thucydides: Thucydides, an Athenian, wrote the history of the war in which the Peloponnesians and the Athenians fought against one another. He began to write when they first took up arms, believing that it would be great and memorable above any previous war. For he argued that both States were then at the full height of their military power, and he saw the rest of the Hellenes either siding or intending to side with one or other of them. No movement ever stirred Hellas more deeply than this; it was shared by many of the barbarians, and might be said even to affect the world at large. (Jowett's translation.)

These prefaces excel alike in brevity, taste, and tact, but with this characteristic difference: the Evangelist modestly withholds his name and writes in the pure interest of truth a record of the gospel of peace for the spiritual welfare of all men; while the great pagan historians are inspired by love of glory, and aim to immortalize the destructive wars and feuds of Greeks and barbarians.

Contents of the Gospel of Luke.

After a historiographic preface, Luke gives us: first a history of the birth and infancy of John the Baptist and Jesus, from Hebrew sources, with an incident from the boyhood of the Saviour (Luke 1 and 2). Then he unfolds the history of the public ministry in chronological order from the baptism in the Jordan to the resurrection and ascension. We need only point out those facts and discourses which are not found in the other Gospels and which complete the Synoptic history at the beginning, middle, and end of the life of our Lord.

Luke supplies the following sections:

I. In the history of the Infancy of John and Christ:

The appearance of the angel of the Lord to Zacharias in the temple announcing the birth of John, Luke 1:5-25.

The annunciation of the birth of Christ to the Virgin Mary, 1:26-38.

The visit of the Virgin Mary to Elizabeth; the salutation of Elizabeth, 1:39-45.

The Magnificat of the Virgin Mary, 1:46-56.

The birth of John the Baptist, 1:57-66.

The Benedictus of Zacharias, 1:67-80.

The birth of Jesus in Bethlehem, 2:1-7.

The appearance of the angels to the shepherds of Bethlehem, and the Gloria in excelsis, 2:8-20.

The circumcision of Jesus, and his presentation in the Temple, 2:21-38.

The visit of Jesus in his twelfth year to the passover in Jerusalem, and his conversation with the Jewish doctors in the Temple, 2:41-52.

To this must be added the genealogy of Christ from Abraham up to Adam; while Matthew begins, in the inverse order, with Abraham, and presents in the parallel section several differences which show their mutual independence, Luke 3:23-38; comp. Matt. 1:1-17.

II. In the Public Life of our Lord a whole group of important events, discourses, and incidents which occurred at different periods, but mostly on a circuitous journey from Capernaum to Jerusalem through Samaria and Peraea (9:51-18:14). This section includes -

1. The following miracles and incidents:

The miraculous draught of fishes, 5:4-11.

The raising of the widow's son at Nain, 7:11-18.

The pardoning of the sinful woman who wept at the feet of Jesus, 7:36-50.

The support of Christ by devout women who are named, 8:2, 3.

The rebuke of the Sons of Thunder in a Samaritan village, 9:51-56.

The Mission and Instruction of the Seventy, 10:1-6.

Entertainment at the house of Martha and Mary; the one thing needful, 10:38-42.

The woman who exclaimed: Blessed is the womb that bare you, 11:27.

The man with the dropsy, 14:1-6.

The ten lepers, 17:11-19.

The visit to Zacchaeus, 19:1-10.

The tears of Jesus over Jerusalem, 19:41-44.

The sifting of Peter, 22:31, 32.

The healing of Malchus, 22:50, 51.

2. Original Parables:

The two Debtors, 7:41-43.

The good Samaritan, 10:25-37.

The importunate Friend, 11:5-8.

The rich Fool, 12:16-21.

The barren Fig-tree, 13:6-9.

The lost Drachma, 15:8-10.

The prodigal Son, 15:11-32.

The unjust Steward, 16:1-13.

Dives and Lazarus, 16:19-31.

The importunate Widow, and the unjust Judge, 18:1-8.

The Pharisee and the Publican 18:10-14.

The ten Pounds, 19:11-28 (not to be identified with the Parable of the Talents in Matt. 25:14-30).

III. In the history of the Crucifixion and Resurrection

The lament of the women on the way to the cross, Luke 23:27-30.

The prayer of Christ for his murderers, 23:3

His conversation with the penitent malefactor and promise of a place in paradise, 23:39-43.

The appearance of the risen Lord to the two Disciples on the way to Emmaus, 24:13-25; briefly mentioned also in the disputed conclusion of Mark, 16:12, 13.

The account of the ascension, Luke 24:50-53; comp. Mark 16:19, 20; and Acts 1:3-12.

Characteristic Features of Luke.

The third Gospel is the Gospel of free salvation to all men. This corresponds to the two cardinal points in the doctrinal system of Paul: gratuitousness and universalness of salvation.

1. It is eminently the Gospel of free salvation by grace through faith. Its motto is: Christ came to save sinners. Saviour and salvation are the most prominent ideas1 Mary, anticipating the birth of her Son, rejoices in God her Saviour (Luke 1:47); and an angel announces to the shepherds of Bethlehem good tidings of great joy which shall be to all the people (2:10), namely, the birth of Jesus as the Saviour of men (not only as the Christ of the Jews). He is throughout represented as the merciful friend of sinners, as the healer of the sick, as the comforter of the broken-hearted, as the shepherd of the lost sheep. The parables peculiar to Luke of the prodigal son, of the lost piece of money, of the publican in the temple, of the good Samaritan exhibit this great truth which Paul so fully sets forth in his Epistles. The parable of the Pharisee and the publican plucks up self-righteousness by the root, and is the foundation of the doctrine of justification by faith. The paralytic and the woman that was a sinner received pardon by faith alone. Luke alone relates the prayer of Christ on the cross for his murderers, and the promise of paradise to the penitent robber, and he ends with a picture of the ascending Saviour lifting up his hands and blessing his disciples.

The other Evangelists do not neglect this aspect of Christ; nothing can be more sweet and comforting than his invitation to sinners in Matthew 11, or his farewell to the disciples in John; but Luke dwells on it with peculiar delight. He is the painter of Christus Salvator and Christus Consolator.

2. It is the Gospel of universal salvation. It is emphatically the Gospel for the Gentiles. Hence the genealogy of Christ is traced back not only to Abraham (as in Matthew), but to Adam, the son of God and the father of all men (Luke 3:38). Christ is the second Adam from heaven, the representative Head of redeemed humanity an idea further developed by Paul. The infant Saviour is greeted by Simeon as a Light for revelation to the Gentiles, and the glory of his people Israel (2:32). The Baptist, in applying the prophecy of Isaiah concerning the voice in the wilderness (Isa. 40), adds the words (from Isa. 52:10): All flesh shall see the salvation of God (Luke 3:6). Luke alone records the mission of the Seventy Disciples who represent the Gentile nations, as the Twelve represent the twelve tribes of Israel. He alone mentions the mission of Elijah to the heathen widow in Sarepta, and the cleansing of Naaman the Syrian by Elisha (4:26, 27). He contrasts the gratitude of the leprous Samaritan with the ingratitude of the nine Jewish lepers (17:12-18). He selects discourses and parables, which exhibit God's mercy to Samaritans and Gentiles1 Yet there is no contradiction, for some of the strongest passages which exhibit Christ's mercy to the Gentiles and humble the Jewish pride are found in Matthew, the Jewish Evangelist. The assertion that the third Gospel is a glorification of the Gentile (Pauline) apostolate, and a covert attack on the Twelve, especially Peter, is a pure fiction of modern hypercriticism.

3. It is the Gospel of the genuine and full humanity of Christ. It gives us the key-note for the construction of a real history of Jesus from infancy to boyhood and manhood. Luke represents him as the purest and fairest among the children of men, who became like to us in all things except sin and error. He follows him through the stages of his growth. He alone tells us that the child Jesus grew and waxed strong, not only physically, but also in wisdom (Luke 2:40); he alone reports the remarkable scene in the temple, informing us that Jesus, when twelve years old, sat as a learner in the midst of the doctors, both hearing them and asking questions; and that, even after that time, He advanced in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and men (2:46, 52). All the Synoptists narrate the temptation in the wilderness, and Mark adds horror to the scene by the remark that Christ was with the wild beasts (Mark 1:12, meta tw'n qhrivwn); but Luke has the peculiar notice that the devil departed from Jesus only for a season. He alone mentions the tears of Jesus over Jerusalem, and the bloody sweat and the strengthening angel in the agony of Gethsemane. As he brings out the gradual growth of Jesus, and the progress of the gospel from Nazareth to Capernaum, from Capernaum to Jerusalem, so afterwards, in the Acts, he traces the growth of the church from Jerusalem to Antioch, from Antioch to Ephesus and Corinth, from Greece to Rome. His is the Gospel of historical development. To him we are indebted for nearly all the hints that link the gospel facts with the contemporary history of the world.

4. It is the Gospel of universal humanity. It breathes the genuine spirit of charity, liberty, equality, which emanate from the Saviour of mankind, but are so often counterfeited by his great antagonist, the devil. It touches the tenderest chords of human sympathy. It delights in recording Christ's love and compassion for the sick, the lowly, the despised, even the harlot and the prodigal. It mentions the beatitudes pronounced on the poor and the hungry, his invitation to the maimed, the halt, and the blind, his prayer on the cross for pardon of the wicked murderers, his promise to the dying robber. It rebukes the spirit of bigotry and intolerance of the Jews against Samaritans, in the parable of the good Samaritan. It reminds the Sons of Thunder when they were about to call fire from heaven upon a Samaritan village that He came not to destroy but to save. It tells us that he who is not against Christ is for Christ, no matter what sectarian or unsectarian name he may bear.

5. It is the Gospel for woman. It weaves the purest types of womanhood into the gospel story: Elizabeth, who saluted the Saviour before his birth; the Virgin, whom all generations call blessed; the aged prophetess Anna, who departed not from the temple; Martha, the busy, hospitable housekeeper, with her quiet, contemplative sister Mary of Bethany; and that noble band of female disciples who ministered of their substance to the temporal wants of the Son of God and his apostles.

It reveals the tender compassion of Christ for all the suffering daughters of Eve: the widow at Nain mourning at the bier of her only son; for the fallen sinner who bathed his feet with her tears; for the poor sick woman, who had wasted all her living upon physicians, and whom he addressed as Daughter; and for the daughters of Jerusalem who followed him weeping to Calvary. If anywhere we may behold the divine humanity of Christ and the perfect union of purity and love, dignity and tender compassion, it is in the conduct of Jesus towards women and children. The scribes and Pharisees gathered up their robes in the streets and synagogues lest they should touch a woman, and held it a crime to look on an unveiled woman in public; our Lord suffered a woman to minister to him out of whom he had cast seven devils.

6. It is the Gospel for children, and all who are of a childlike spirit. It sheds a sacred halo and celestial charm over infancy, as perpetuating the paradise of innocence in a sinful world. It alone relates the birth and growth of John, the particulars of the birth of Christ, his circumcision and presentation in the temple, his obedience to parents, his growth from infancy to boyhood, from boyhood to manhood. Luke 1 2 will always be the favorite chapters for children and all who delight to gather around the manger of Bethlehem and to rejoice with shepherds on the field and angels in heaven.

7. It is the Gospel of poetry. We mean the poetry of religion, the poetry of worship, the poetry of prayer and thanksgiving, a poetry resting not on fiction, but on facts and eternal truth. In such poetry there is more truth than in every-day prose. The whole book is full of dramatic vivacity and interest. It begins and ends with thanksgiving and praise. Luke 1-2 are overflowing with festive joy and gladness; they are a paradise of fragrant flowers, and the air is resonant with the sweet melodies of Hebrew psalmody and Christian hymnody. The Salute of Elizabeth ( Ave Maria ), the Magnificat of Mary, the Benedictus of Zacharias, the Gloria in Excelsis of the Angels, the Nunc Dimittis of Simeon, sound from generation to generation in every tongue, and are a perpetual inspiration for new hymns of praise to the glory of Christ.

No wonder that the third Gospel has been pronounced, from a purely literary and humanitarian standpoint, to be the most beautiful book ever written.

The Style.

Luke is the best Greek writer among the Evangelists. His style shows his general culture. It is free from solecisms, rich in vocabulary, rhythmical in construction. But as a careful and conscientious historian he varies considerably with the subject and according to the nature of his documents.

Matthew begins characteristically with Book of generation or Genealogy (bivblo genevsew ), which looks back to the Hebrew Sepher toledoes (comp. Gen. 5:1; 2:4); Mark with Beginning of the gospel (ajrch tou' eujaggelivou), which introduces the reader at once to the scene of present action; Luke with a historiographic prologue of classical ring, and unsurpassed for brevity, modesty, and dignity. But when he enters upon the history of the infancy, which he derived no doubt from Aramaic traditions or documents, his language has a stronger Hebrew coloring than any other portion of the New Testament. The songs of Zacharias, Elizabeth, Mary, and Simeon, and the anthem of the angelic host, are the last of Hebrew psalms as well as the first of Christian hymns. They can be literally translated back into the Hebrew, without losing their beauty. The same variation in style characterizes the Acts; the first part is Hebrew Greek, the second genuine Greek.

His vocabulary considerably exceeds that of the other Evangelists: he has about 180 terms which occur in his Gospel alone and nowhere else in the New Testament; while Matthew has only about 70, Mark 44, and John 50 peculiar words. Luke's Gospel has 55, the Acts 135 a{pax legovmena, and among them many verbal compounds and rare technical terms.

The medical training and practice of Luke, the beloved physician, familiarized him with medical terms, which appear quite naturally, without any ostentation of professional knowledge, in his descriptions of diseases and miracles of healing, and they agree with the vocabulary of ancient medical writers. Thus he speaks of the great fever of Peter's mother-in-law, with reference to the distinction made between great and small fevers (according to Galen);1 and of fevers and dysentery, of which the father of Publius at Melita was healed (as Hippocrates uses fever in the plural).

He was equally familiar with navigation, not indeed as a professional seaman, but as an experienced traveller and accurate observer. He uses no less than seventeen nautical terms with perfect accuracy. His description of the Voyage and Shipwreck of Paul in Acts 27-28, as explained and confirmed by a scholarly seaman, furnishes an irrefragable argument for the ability and credibility of the author of that book.

Luke is fond of words of joy and gladness. He often mentions the Holy Spirit, and he is the only writer who gives us an account of the pentecostal miracle. Minor peculiarities are the use of the more correct livmnh of the lake of Galilee for qavlassa, nomikov and nomodidavskalo for grammateuv, to; eijrhmevnon in quotations for rjhqevn, nu'n for a[rti, e Jspevra for ojyiva, the frequency of attraction of the relative pronoun and participial construction.