Section II

the origin of the gospels in general

The Christian originality of the Gospels is the decided factor by means of which both their unity and diversity, and the wonderful relation resulting from both, must be explained. But when we would explain this originality, we find ourselves almost induced, with respect to the relation of the Gospels to the actual Gospel history, to attribute to each a peculiar kind of origin. Besides, the conviction is pressed upon us, that each Evangelist has, in the appropriation of his matter, preserved his personal dignity, and by his manner of statement, impressed upon it his own peculiarity. Lastly, we find that each Gospel displays a special arrangement, arising from a peculiar plan, depending on special motives and considerations. Thus we obtain a triple impress of originality in the Gospels; they are original in source, in composition, and in plan. It is no wonder, then, that they who have misconceived their peculiarity in all these respects, should have erred in a threefold manner.

The first factor in the composition of the Gospels, is the peculiarity of the sources whence their material was derived. These, in their full extent, include the following particulars: first, direct remembrance; secondly, tradition; thirdly, written memorabilia; fourthly, already existing Gospels.

It is taking a defective view of the resources of an Evangelist, to set up the tradition-hypothesis alone, without duly estimating the great importance of the direct memory of the apostles. Especially must it be taken into account, as forming the basis of the first Gospel, viz., the original Hebrew Gospel, which was the immediate work of Matthew, and of the Gospel of John. It cannot be wholly, at least, denied to Luke; and Mark is as near to it as he was, during his life, to the Apostle Peter, and to the apostolic church at Jerusalem. The powerful effect of the evangelical memory was, however, in each Evangelist, the very motive that induced the composition of a Gospel.

Direct remembrance was completed by tradition. The transition from one to the other is exemplified in those incidents, for the complete knowledge of which tradition was needed even by Matthew and John, the actual witnesses of the life of Jesus. Much which appertains to His history-the occurrences of His childhood, of His retirement, and of His private life-could only have been known to His disciples by communication. Not only their former, but even their present vocation, separated them occasionally from Him, so that the information of one would often need completion by the information of another. Thus fragments of memory and tradition formed various combinations, which gained unity from the fact that the memory of each individual disciple was continually excited by, and came in contact with, the general memory of the whole Church. Tradition then, intimately united indeed with apostolic remembrance, appears to have been the actual source of those Evangelists who had had but little, or even no direct intervention in the facts of the Gospel history.

The freshness of this source was maintained by means of the continuous preaching of the Gospel;¹ its purity and brightness, by the Spirit of the Gospel. The agency of this Spirit is of the highest importance in the origin of the Gospels. Without His assistance a disciple could hardly have written a Gospel. He was the remembrancer, not so much with regard to non-essential circumstances, as to the relative distinctness and significance of the several facts of the whole Gospel history. It is in the certainty wherewith He both explains and assumes the perfect actuality of the Gospel history, that the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of God. They who are unable to distinguish between the foreboding, myth-forming spirit, and the Holy Spirit hovering over the completed history, and assuming it as the scent does the full-blown flower, have not yet learned to distinguish between the beginning and the climax of the human race; the historical development of tens of centuries is to them a blank. The Evangelists lived and breathed in the element of this reminding Spirit;-could He then have left them so soon as they began to write Gospels?² Hence it was under the overshadowing of the Holy Ghost that the Word of God solemnized also His literary incarnation.

The Gospel-forming tendency first manifested itself in the production of those lesser evangelical memoirs, which many who had enjoyed the privilege of intercourse with Jesus felt themselves impelled to write, in order to preserve any circumstance which seemed either specially remarkable, or which was at least the subject of direct memory. If it be asked, how such or such an apostle managed to keep this or that difficult discourse in his memory, such a question strikes at the questioner himself. If it be further asked, how these Galileans found time and skill to compile the facts of the Gospel history, the fundamental law is lost sight of, that it is a vital energy which sets quills in motion, whether in the bird or the man. Genius gave the pious Hans Sachs and the profound Jacob Böhm no rest; and that was the reason why these worthy shoemakers became such profuse authors. Undoubtedly, the art of writing itself originated in the impulse to preserve what was worthy of record, and not in accidental scribbling. Nay, man even learned to speak more by the urgency of the desire and necessity which he felt to express his thoughts, than by an experimental play upon his organs, or by the imitation of the lower animals. The remarks which have been made against the primitive records of the Old and New Testament revelation, upon the assumption that the art of authorship was not yet sufficiently understood in the world to account for the production of such memoirs, at such times and places, are expressions of the same lack of spiritual perception which asked concerning Jesus, How knoweth this man letters, having never learned? Never could the necessity of preserving glorious experiences by means of writing, have been more deeply felt than amidst the circle of Christ’s witnesses. Nay, it may, without exaggeration, be maintained, that if the art of writing had not as yet existed in the world, it must have arisen among them. Those apostolic men were not more the men of their age, than they were the men, or the children, of the Spirit of Jesus.

Even the women who accompanied our Lord, may also have written from their own point of view, that, as priestesses of His Spirit, they might preserve in written records His precious memory. The Spirit of Christ poured out upon His disciples at the completion of His ministry, nay, proceeding from Him at all times, must indeed have often impelled those who were acquainted with His life, to commit to writing some of His sayings and deeds. It is not to be wondered at, that there were many, as St Luke assures us, who took such works in hand. Could the spring-tide of a new religion, nay, of a new humanity, the marriage feast of the reconciliation between heaven and earth, pass by without the guests and witnesses of this glorious life feeling constrained to preserve its most important circumstances in writing? At all events, a multitude of such memoirs did arise. These many lesser primitive Gospels, then, naturally formed the firm and fixed centre of evangelical memory and tradition within the circle of the apostolic Church. It is probable that a selection of such writings as St Luke had to deal with, was at the disposal of each of the Evangelists. These Gospel memoirs form the transition between tradition and those complete Gospels, into which the written announcement of the Gospel has settled. These Gospels arose one after another during a short period of time, and within a circumscribed sphere. Hence it may have been possible that one Evangelist was acquainted with the work of another, that the later might make use of the labours of the former. Mark might perhaps have known that of Luke, or at all events the Hebrew original of Matthew. According to tradition, John was acquainted with all the synoptical Gospels.

When we take into account the true communion of the Spirit in the apostolic Church, and the manner in which the life of Christ was interwoven into its life, we can easily understand how, from all the various sources, a living unity of general tradition, a special manner of viewing and narrating the Gospel history, would be formed, in which all the apostles and Evangelists would have more or less resemblance to each other. The spirit of their faith, of their blessedness, of their worship, who made them all to be of one heart and of one soul, formed a mutual and most delicate rapport, in which the very phraseology of the Gospel, the whole manner of its announcement, received a peculiar and singular stamp. This unity of view and statement, occasioned as it was by oneness of spirit, supreme simplicity, memory, mutual co-operation, and common written authorities, was the cause of that extraordinary unity which is perceived in the narratives and style of the Gospels, and especially of the synoptical Gospels.

This phenomenon is therefore caused by the marvellous agency of the Spirit of sacred Gospel remembrance in the primitive apostolic Church. Hence, they who look upon the precious fruit, which bears witness to the fulness of apostolic vitality, as the mere dead production of the poorest kind of compilation, are soon puzzled by the fact, that the originality of the several Evangelists everywhere animates this admirable unity, by touches of the richest variety. The critic would fain seize and handle this living unity as a mere dead uniformity; but when the rich play of Gospel individuality which forms its other side is perceived, his peace is at an end, and the terrible problem drives him like a restless spirit though the region of hypotheses.

It is part of the notion of Christianity, that by its sanctifying operations it should awaken and bring to perfection, on one hand, the whole unity of individualities; on the other, their entire variety. Hence the four Gospels contribute, even in their form, to the glorification of the Christian spirit, by exhibiting in large and plastic forms that vital congruity by which the Christian spirit is proved to be such. Hence the sacred originality of the Evangelists may be designated as the second factor of the Gospels, and of the peculiarity of their mutual relations. The authenticity of the four Gospels being assumed, it might fairly be expected that each should exhibit a definite and significant character. This is involved, first, in the notion of such evangelists as the Church could appropriate. Evangelists of such a kind could not but be prominent characters, and must consequently express themselves in a characteristic manner. But it is also involved in the notion of the mature primitive Christian, that he should exhibit his peculiarity in his work; for the spirit of Christianity, by means of its horror of annihilation, introduces individuality into a new life, and causes it to appear in the full glory of its definiteness. But if important characters appear in their full freedom, they will be distinguished from each other by strong peculiarity of feature. Thus the Gospels must be looked upon as the writings of distinct, important, and definite characters. It is by the exhibition of their originality that they manifest themselves to be the effects of such original forces. Hence each must of necessity appear in its full peculiarity; and that criticism which would pass sentence upon them without a notion of this circumstance, must, for that very reason, be characterized as incapable or unchristian. But when it goes so far as to attribute the delicate manifestations of vital originality found in the Gospels to death, all that play of feature pertaining to living personality to the convulsive efforts of paralysed and half-dead individuals, such representations arise as those which make, e.g., the ardent expressions of Mark, choice ‘printing’—the deeply significant and lyrically beautiful impulses of John, tedious prolixities. A true appreciation of the Gospels must be preceded by an appreciation of their writers. In this place, however, we can but state this principle, and must treat of the characteristics of the several Evangelists in another part of this work.

But, finally, when we remember that the great characters who wrote the Gospels attained their powers of Gospel authorship by means of definite and special occasions for their exercise in Christian interaction with various persons and circumstances, we have already admitted a third factor in the production and form of the Gospels. The character of the evangelist is neither an egotistical nor a vanishing one. It is on one side infinitely defined, and therefore, on the other, infinitely definable. ‘Love makes him so pliable, that though ever building on the same foundation, he becomes all things to all men; that he preaches quite differently at Athens and at Corinth, for this very reason, that he everywhere preaches the same truth in its essential spirit, while adapting its form to the varying circumstances of his audience. If then we take this Christian principle into account, we cannot but view the peculiar form of each separate Gospel as resulting from the peculiar spiritual state of those for whom the Evangelist wrote. If due allowance is made for this factor, it will be perhaps better understood, e.g., why the Gospel of John and Paul’s Epistle to the Ephesians exhibit so much relationship. This reference of each Gospel to the circle for whom. it was first destined, will explain the Old Testament references of Matthew, the sharply-defined pictures of Mark, intended as they were for the practical mind of the Roman, the catholic characteristics of Luke, and the ideal and theologic views of John. The Pauline Epistles show how variously the various necessities and receptive powers of the different churches could affect the one forcible and determined pen of a Paul. And thus must the various constellations in the kingdom of God have still more powerfully influenced the Evangelists, who, according to the law of liberty, of special vocation, and of love, devoted themselves each to special circles of readers. By the interaction of such situations with the characters of the several Evangelists, were formed, under the leading of the Divine Spirit, the plans of the several Gospels, whose immediate and intended destination was impressed not only on their fundamental characteristics, but also on their separate features ; so that, even in this respect, each separate Gospel could not but receive a different physiognomy.

Notes

The Evangelist Luke has, in the introduction to his Gospel, pointed out the various stages of general Gospel tradition. (1.) Direct tradition, represented by the ἀπ’ ἀρχῆς αύτόπται καὶ ὑπηρέται. (2.) The transition from memory to tradition. The ἀπ’ ἀρχῆς αύτόπται are emphatically so called, and form, as it seems, as eye-witnesses from the beginning of the life of Christ, a contrast to to those who were only αὐτόπται, &c., during a shorter period, and who seem denoted by the word ἡμεῖς. (3.) Tradition, in a narrower sense, pointed out by the words: παρέδοσαν ἡμῖν. (4.) Memoirs; πολλοὶ ἐπεχείρησαν ἀνατάξασθαι διήγησαν, &c. The éreyelpnoay scems to designate not so much the boldness of the attempt, or the insufficiency of the execution, as the first rudiments of Gospel composition.³ (5,) The formation of the comprehensive Gospel: ἔδοξε κἀμοὶ, &c.—Thus the first factor in the formation of a Gospel is stated in its full extent: the second and third are sufficiently indicated in the third and fourth verses.

1) [‘Out of the countless multitude of Christ’s acts, those were gathered, in the ministry of twenty years, which were seen to have the fullest representative significance for the exhibition of His divine life. The oral collection thus formed became in every sense coincident with the “Gospel ;” and our Gospels are the permanent compendium of its contents.’—Westcott’s Introd. p. 155, There are few more interesting chapters in the history either of literature or of the Church, than that which treats of the connection of the Gospels with the apostolic preaching ; and a more adequate exhibition of it cannot be required than that which has been given by Davidson (vol. i. p. 405 ff.).—ED.]

2) The older theology, by its doctrine of inspiration, misconceives the fact that the sacred writers were continually filled with the Spirit, and that their actions, whether of spiritual life or spiritual productivity, were free. The abstraction which would separate the inspiration of the Spirit from the inspiration of the life, is somewhat talmudistic. Modern theologians who oppose the doctrine of inspiration, seem to suppose that God’s messengers, to whom they concede the assistance of the Spirit in the general carrying out of their vocation in life, suddenly descended to the level of uncalled ordinary authors as soon as they took hold of the pen. According to the first notion, the Spirit forsook them if they did not write ; according to the second, if they did.

3) [Westcott (p. 173 of his Introd.) acutely remarks, ‘He finds no fault with the basis on which the earlier writers rested. His own determination is placed on an equal footing with theirs (ἔδοξε κάμοῑ).’—ED.]