Page:Dictionary of Christian Biography and Literature (1911).djvu/819

 be seen in a multitude of cases. There ought to be many parables and miracles of which we should be uncertain whether they were common to all the evangelists or special to one, and what place in that one they should occupy. Further, according to Renan's hypothesis, St. Mark's design was more comprehensive than St. Matthew's. St. Matthew only related our Lord's discourses; St. Mark, the "things said or done by Christ," i.e. both discourses and anecdotes. St. Mark's Gospel would thus differ from St. Matthew's by excess and St. Matthew's read like an abridgment of St. Mark's. Exactly the opposite is the case.

We count it a mere blunder to translate λόγια "discourses" as if it were the same as λόγους. In N.T. (Acts vii. 38; Rom. iii. 2; Heb. v. 12; I. Pet. iv. 11) the word has its classical meaning, "oracles," and is applied to the inspired utterances of God in O.T. Nor is there reason to think that when St. Paul, e.g., says that to the Jews were committed the oracles of God, he confined this epithet to those parts of O.T. which contained divine sayings and refused it to those narrative parts from which he so often drew lessons (Rom. iv. 3; I. Cor. x. 1, xi. 8; Gal. iv. 21). Philo quotes as a λόγιον the narrative in Gen. iv. 15, "The Lord set a mark upon Cain," etc., and the words (Deut. x.), "The Lord God is his inheritance." Similarly the Apostolic Fathers. In Clement (I. Cor. 53) τὰ λόγια τοῦ θεοῦ is used as equivalent to τὰς ἱερὰς γραφὰς. (See also c. 19, Polyc. ad Phil. 7.) As Papias's younger contemporary Justin Martyr tells us that the reading of the Gospels had in his time become part of Christian public worship, we may safely pronounce the silent substitution of one Gospel for another a thing inconceivable; and we conclude that, as we learn from Justin that the Gospels had been set on a level with the O.T. in the public reading of the church, so we know from Papias that the ordinary name τὰ λόγια for the O.T. books had in Christian use been extended to the Gospels which were called τὰ κυριακὰ λόγια, the "oracles of our Lord." There is no reason to imagine the work of Papias limited to an exposition of our Lord's discourses; we translate therefore its title Κυριακῶν λογίων ἐξηγήσεις, "Expositions of the Gospels."

The manner in which Papias speaks of St. Mark's Gospel quite agrees with the inspired authority, which the title, as we understand it, implies. Three times in this short fragment he attests St. Mark's perfect accuracy. "Mark wrote down accurately everything that he remembered." "Mark committed no error." "He made it his rule not to omit anything he had heard or to set down any false statement therein." Yet, for some reason, Papias was dissatisfied with St. Mark's arrangement and thought it necessary to apologize for it. No account of the passage is satisfactory which does not explain why, if Papias reverenced St. Mark so much, he was dissatisfied with his order. Here the hypothesis breaks down at once, that Papias only possessed two documents unlike in kind, the one a collection of discourses, the other of anecdotes. Respecting St Mark's accuracy as he did Papias would certainly have accepted his order unless he had some other document to which, in this respect, he attached more value, going over the same ground as St. Mark's but in a different order. If, then, Papias held that St. Mark's Gospel was not written in the right order, what, in his opinion, was the right order? Strauss considers and rejects three answers to this question, as being all irreconcilable at least with the supposition that the Gospel known to Papias as St. Mark's was that which we receive under the name: (1) that the right order was St. John's; (2) that it was St. Matthew's; (3) that Papias meant to deny to St. Mark the merit, not only of the right order, but of any orderly arrangement at all. Lightfoot defended (1) with great ability (Contemp. Rev. Oct. 1875, p. 848). But there remains another answer which we believe the true one—viz. that Papias regarded St. Luke's as the right order. The reason this solution has been generally set aside is that St. Luke's Gospel is not mentioned in any extant fragments of Papias, from which it has been assumed that he was unacquainted with Luke's writings. If we had the whole work of Papias the argument from his silence might be reasonable; but we have no right to assume his silence merely because Eusebius included no statement about St. Luke in the few brief extracts from Papias which he gives. Lightfoot has shewn (Coloss. p. 52) that Eusebius is not wont without some special reason to copy references made by his predecessors to undisputed books of the Canon. Hilgenfeld finds in the preface of Papias echoes of the preface to St. Luke's Gospel which induce him to believe that Papias knew that gospel. To us this argument does not carry conviction, but there is every appearance that Papias was acquainted with the Acts. In one fragment he mentions Justus Barsabas; in another he gives an account of the death of Judas Iscariot which seems plainly intended to reconcile the story in St. Matthew with that in the Acts. One extant fragment appears to have been part of a comment on our Lord's words preserved by St. Luke, "I beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven."

But if Papias knew St. Luke's Gospel, his language with respect to St. Mark's is at once explained. St. Luke's preface declares his intention to write in order, γραψαὶ καθεξῆς; but his order is neither St. Mark's nor St. Matthew's. On this difference we conceive Papias undertook to throw light by his traditional anecdotes. His account is that Mark was but the interpreter of Peter, whose teaching he accurately reported; that Peter had not undertaken at any time to give an orderly account of our Lord's words and deeds, but had merely related some of them from time to time as the immediate needs suggested; that Mark therefore faithfully reported what he had heard, and if his order was not always accurate it was because it had been no part of his plan to aim at accuracy in this respect. With regard to St. Matthew's Gospel, his solution seems to be that the church had not then the Gospel as St. Matthew had written it; that the Greek Matthew was but an unauthorized translation from a Hebrew original which individuals had translated, each for himself as he could. Thus, so far from it being