Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 6.djvu/736

 GOSPEL

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GOSPEL

Of these various orders, the one which St. Jerome embodied in the Latin Vulgate, whence it passed into our modern translations, and even into the Greek edi- tions of the New Testament, is unquestionably the most ancient. It is found in the Canon of Muratori, in St. Irenaeus, in St. Gregory of Nazianzus, in St. Athana- sius, in the lists of the sacred books drawn up by the Councils of Laodicea and of Carthage, and also in the oldest Greek uncial MSS.: the Vatican, the Sinaitic, and the Alexandrine. Its origin is best accounted for by the supposition that whoever formed the Gospel collection wished to arrange the Gospels in accordance with the respective date which tradition assigned to their composition. Thus, the first place was given to St. Matthew's Gospel, because a very early tradition described the work as originally written in Hebrew, that is, in the Aramaic language of Palestine. This, it was thought, proved that it had been composed for the Jewish believers in the Holy Land, at a date when the Apostles had not yet started to preach the glad tidings of salvation outside of Palestine, so that it must be prior to the other Gospels written in Greek and for converts in Greek-speaking countries. In like man- ner, it is clear that St. John's Gospel was assigned the last place, because tradition at a very early date looked upon it as the last in the order of time. As to St. Mark and St. Luke, tradition ever spoke of them as posterior to St. Matthew and anterior to St. John, so that their Gospels were naturally placed between those of St. Matthew and St. John. In this way, as it seems, was obtained the present general order of the Gospels in which we find, at the beginning, an Apostle as author; at the end, the other Apostle; between the two, those who have to derive their authority from Apostles.

The numerous orders which are different from the one most ancient and most generally received can easily be explained by the fact that, after the forma- tion of the collection in which the four Gospels were for the first time united, these writings continued to be diffused, all four separately, in the various Churches, and might thus be found differently placed in the col- lections designed for public reading. It is likewise easy in most cases to make out the special reason for which a particular grouping of the four Gospels was adopted. The very ancient order, for instance, which places the two Apostles (St. Matthew, St. John) before the two disciples of Apostles (St. Mark, St. Luke) may be easily accounted for by the desire of paying a spe- cial honour to the Apostolic dignity. Agam, such an ancient order as Matthew, Mark, John, Luke, bespeaks the intention of coupling each Apostle with an Apos- tolic assistant, and perhaps also that of bringing St. Luke nearer to the Acts, etc.

(5) Classification of the Gospels.— The present order of the Gospels has the twofold advantage of not separating from one another those Evangelical records (St. Matthew, St. Mark, St. Luke) whose mutual re- semblances are obvious and striking, and of placing at the end of the list of the Gospels the narrative (that of St. John) whose relations with the other three is that of dissimilarity rather than of likeness. It thus lends itself well to the classification of the Gospels which is now generally admitted by Biblical scholars. St. Matthew, St. Mark, and St. Luke are usually grouped together, and designated under the common name of the Synoptic Gospels. They derive this name from the fact that their narratives may be arranged and har- monized, section by section, so as to allow the eye to realize at a glance the numerous passages which are common to them, and also the portions which are pe- culiar either to only two, or even to only one, of them. The case stands very differently with regard to our Fourth Gospel. As it narrates but a few incidents in common with the Synoptists, and differs from them in respect to style, language, general plan, etc., its chief parts refuse to be included in a harmony such as may

be framed by means of the first three Gospels. ^^'hiIe, therefore, the Synoptic narratives are naturally put together into one group, St. John's record is rightly considered as standing apart and as, so to speak, making up a class by itself (see Synoptics).

(6) The Gospels and the Oral Gospel. — All recent critics admit that the contents of our four Gospels are intimately connected with more primitive accounts of Christ's life, which may be described, in a general way, as an Oral Gospel. They are well aware that Jesus Himself did not consign to WTiting His own teachings, and directed His Apostles not to write, but to preach, the Gospel to their fellow-men. They regard as an undoubted fact that these first disciples of the Master, faithful to the mission which He had entrusted to them, began, from the day of Pentecost on, boldly to declare by word of mouth what they had seen and heard (cf. Acts, iv, 2), considering as a special duty of theirs "the ministry of the word" (Acts, vi, 4). It is plain, too, that those whom the Apostles immediately selected to help them in the discharge of this most important mission had to be, like the Apostles them- selves, able to bear witness to the life and teachings of Christ (cf. Acts, i, 21 sq.). The substance of the Evangelical narratives would thus be repeated viva voce by the early teachers of Christianity, before any one of them bethought him.self to set it down in writ- ing. It can be readily seen that such Apostolic teach- ing was then inculcated in words w-hich tended to assume a stereotyped form of expression, similar to that which we find in the Synoptic Gospels. In like manner, also, one can easily realize how the Apostles would not be concerned with the exact order of events narrated, and would not aim at completeness in tell- ing what they "had seen and heard". Thus, accord- ing to this opinion, was gradually formed what may be called the "Oral Gospel", that is, a relation of Christ's words and deeds, parallel, in respect to matter and form, to our canonical Gospels. In view of this, critics have endeavoured to find out the general con- tents of this Oral Gospel by means of the second part of the Book of the Acts, by a study of the doctrinal con- tents of the Epistles of St. Paul, and more particularly by a close comparison of the Synoptic narratives; and it may be freely said that their efforts in that direction have met with considerable success. As regards, however, the precise relation which should be admitted between our canonical Gospels and the Oral Gospel, there is still, among contemporary scholars, a variety of views which will be set forth and examined in the special articles on the individual Gospels. Suffice it to say, here, that the theory which regards the canon- ical Gospels as embodying, in substance, the oral teach- ing of the Apostles concerning the words and deeds of Christ is in distinct harmony with the Catholic posi- tion, which affirms both the historical value of these sacred records and the authoritative character of the Apostolic traditions, whether these are actually con- signed to writing or simply enforced by the ever living voice of the Church.

(7) Divergences of the Gospels. — The existence of numerous and, at times, considerable differences be- tween the four canonical Gospels is a fact which has long been noticed and which all scholars readily admit. Unbelievers of all ages have greatly exaggerated the importance of this fact, and have represented many of the actual variations between the Evangelical narra- tives as positive contradictions, in order to disprove the historical value and the inspired character of the sacrctl records of Christ's life. Over against this con- tention, somct imes maintained with a great display of eruililinii, the Church of God, which is "the pillar and ground iif the truth" (I Tim., iii, l.'>), has always pro- claimed her belief in the historical accuracy and con- sequent real harmonv of the canonical C.ospels; and her doctors (notably Eu.sebius of Ca^sarca, St. Jerome, and St. Augustine) and commentators have invariably