Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 10.djvu/837

Rh Date of synoptic Gospels. INTERNAL EviDr:NeE.] the synoptic Gospels makes 1t necessary to distinguish care- fully between the date of the compilation of each collective treatise and the date of the composition of the several parts of which that treatise may be composed. The original tradition has been shown to have existed before any of the three synoptics; some common document of the words of the Lord has been shown to have probably existed before Matthew’s or Luke’s narrative ; other docu- ments or traditions might also possibly be shown to exist embedded in each of the synoptists, and the date of each of these parts would be earlier than the date of the whole. Therefore, even if the date of Matthew, or Mark, or Luke could be exactly determined, it would by no means deter- mine the date of the traditions which they contain. It is even possible that a later Gospel may retain in some cases an earlier version of the common tradition of the words of the Lord, as we have seen in the case of Luke’s version of the Lord’s Prayer (see p. 798 above). There is no internal evidence for exactly determining the date of any one of the synoptics. The supposed references in Mark to the death of James, the capture of Jerusalem, or any special earthquakes which might deter- mine the date (Renan’s ]s'van,r/iles, p. 123), are so shadowy as scarcely to deserve consideration. The reference to the death of Zachariah the son of Baruch, shortly before the capture of Jerusalem (J oseph., B. J., iv. 5, 4), supposed to be found in Mat. xxiii. 35, is still more improbable. Still the marked difference between the detailed prediction (in Lu. xxi. l8—25) of the fall of the city and the scatter- ing of the people, and the more general predictions in corresponding passages in Matthew and Mark, indicates that Luke’s description is modiﬁed by reminiscences of the siege of Jerusalem; while 1Iatthew’s and Mark’s accounts are not thus, or at all events not equally, modified. It is an almost certain inference that Luke compiled after 70 A.D. As regards Matthew and Mark inferences cannot be drawn with equal certainty; for of course a compiler may compile at a late date, and yet preserve traditions in their earliest shape; but it is at least a reasonable inference that the compilers of the First and Second Gospels wrote before Luke ; and there is a balance of probability in favour of the supposition that they wrote before the fall of Jerusalem. Coming to more general evidence, we ﬁnd (see p. 791) that (1) Mark, at least in many passages, includes the original tradition from which both Matthew and Luke borrowed; his language, less polished than that of Matthew and Luke, appears more natural for an earlier Gospel in the first and rudest age of the church; (3) Mark’s version of the tradition contains many expressions which might naturally be considered “stumbling-blocks,” and which, in fact, were rejected or not inserted in the other Gospels; (4) the omission of all account of the manifestations of Jesus after the resurrection indicates a very early date; and though it may be said that this omission arises from the fact that the Second Gospel was accidentally left incomplete, yet this answer will not account for the omission of the genealogies, and of all account of the birth and infancy of Jesus; the inter- polated appendix describing the resurrection of Jesus, quoted as it is by Ircn:eus, shows that even in the time of Irenaeus (170 A.D.) the Gospel had been long enough in use to admit of widespread interpolations. All these facts lead to the inference that Mark was compiled earlier than any of the other Gospels, and probably some time before 70 A.D. It is almost impossible to ﬁx any date (worth stating) after which the compilation must have taken place. Those who accept as literally true Mark’s accounts of the feeding of the four thousand and ﬁve thousand, the walking on the waves, and the exorcism of the Gadarene, GOSPELS 8135 may naturally carry back his history to the ﬁrst years of the Galilean church; and even those who interpret these accounts symbolically are ready to admit that a very short space of time is often quite sufficient, by misunderstanding and accretion, to erect supernatural narratives on a basis of natural and symbolic story. But any approximation to a date after which the Gospel was compiled nmst be def erred till we consider the external evidence. The narrative of Matthew does not leave us quite so uncertain. The mention of “the Jews,” which is so frequent in the Fourth Gospel, is justly regarded as a. proof that the author was writing in times when the Christian church was regarded as deﬁnitely and antago- nistically separated from the Jewish nation. In the synoptists it is the “ Pharisees,” not the “ Jews,” who are in conflict with Jesus. But in his account of the resur- rection Matthew (xxviii. 15) uses the word in this anta- gonistic sense. Further, be twice (xxvii. 8; xxviii. 15) uses the expression “ even to this day,” of events occurring shortly before or after the death of J esus,—thereby showing that a long interval had occurred between the death of Jesus and the compilation of the narrative. The tone of the Gospel, as compared with Luke, indicates a period when the Jews still existed as a nation, and when the abrogation of the law and the destruction of the temple were not yet accepted as recognized facts ; but the number of parables upon the end of the world and the judgment, the tendency to dwell on exclusion rather than inclusion, on the “many” that are shut out rather than on the “few ” that are chosen, and the atmosphere of gloom generally characterizing the Gospel, point perhaps to the crisis immediately preceding the siege of Jerusalem. The additions concerning the birth and incarnation may seem to imply a later date; but when we reﬂect how natural it was that in very early times the church should attach importance to these subjects, the wonder will be, not that these narratives were written so soon, but that they were deferred to so late a period as forty years after 011r Lord’s death. It is also extremely ren1arkable—and a mark of early date as compared with Luke—that even in this developed fonn of the Gospel the accounts of manifestation of our Lord after His resurrection should be so scanty, doubtful, and vague. In Luke the signs of later date abound :—(l) the pre- existence and implied failure of many “ attempts ” to set forth continuous narratives of the things “ surely believed ;”' the mention of the “tradition” of the eye-witnesses and ministers of the word as past, not as present (-n-ape'8oo-av) (i. 2) ; (3) the dedication of the Gospel to a man of rank (ﬁctitious or otherwise), who is supposed to have been “ catechized ” in Christian truth ; (4) the attempt at literary style and at improvement of the “ 11sus ecclesiasti- cus” of the common tradition; (5) the composition of something like the commencement of a Christian hymno- logy; (6) the development of the genealogy and the higher tone of the narrative of the incarnation ; (7) the insertion of many passages mentioning our Lord as 6 mﬁpcoc, not in address, but in narrative; (8) the distinction, more sharply drawn, between the fall of Jerusalem and the ﬁnal coming ; the detailed prediction of the fall of J crusalem, implying reminiscences of its fulﬁlment; (l0) the very great development of the manifestations of Jesus after the resurrection The inference from all this evidence would be that Luke was not written till about 80 A D. at earliest. If it could be further demonstrated that Luke used any" Greek Apocryphal book (Judith, for example), and if it could be shown that the book in question was written after a certain date (Renan suggests 80 A.D. for the date of the book of Judith), it might be necessary to place Luke much later; but no such demonstration has been hitherto produced.