Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 39.djvu/575

Rh by Matthew and understood according to Schleiermacher's interpretation of Papias and the priority of Mark, which may be regarded as an incontestable conclusion of recent gospel criticism, furnish the key to the solution of the problem of the relation of the synoptic Gospels." Mark, according to this view, wrote his Gospel "in the last years of the sixties," probably at Rome, from notes on St. Peter's sermon, the logia by Matthew, and oral tradition. We can only partially indorse this opinion. We doubt whether Mark furnished as much of the materials of our present Gospel as our author thinks; but his view of Matthew we may safely adopt. The Logia of Jesus, which Papias says Matthew wrote in Aramaic, the Gospel of Mark, and oral tradition doubtless constituted the substrata of our present Gospel, which was written in Greek some time between 70 and 100. Dr. Cone says that the Gospel, as it now stands, contains legendary matter. "Such are probably the accounts of the birth and infancy of Jesus, the details of the temptation in the desert, the episode of Peter's walking on the water, the story of the piece of money to be found in the mouth of a fish, the rending of the veil of the temple, the resurrection of the saints at the time of the crucifixion, and the corruption of the guard placed at the tomb." The author accepts the traditional authorship of Luke's Gospel, holding that it was written by St. Paul's companion about 90. We can not subscribe to this opinion, for neither the external nor the internal evidence seems to us to justify it. Luke probably furnished the substrata of the Acts and the third Gospel (both were written by the same person), which were subsequently wrought up into their present shape by a friend of Theophilus. The prologue to this Gospel, which Dr. Cone somewhat unaccountably ascribes to the hand that composed the rest of the book, differs from it entirely in its style, and is generally believed to have been added to the Gospel by a late redacteur. The work is composite in its character and the product of several hands. Davidson's view of this Gospel is more satisfactory than that of Dr. Cone.

The authorship of the fourth Gospel is the pons asinorum of biblical criticism. The man who holds that St. John the Apostle wrote it is ipso facto excluded from philosophical critics, and placed among the special pleaders for traditionalism. Both the external and the internal evidences are overwhelmingly against the Johannine authorship of the book. No tradition ascribes it to the apostle for a century after he is supposed to have written it, and this late tradition is wholly untrustworthy. There is no adequate evidence to show that it was in existence before Justin Martyr's day, 140. But, above all, the style, the theology, and the general character of the Gospel make it impossible to accept it as the work of John. It is rather the mystic musing of a Philonic philosopher, who may have belonged to the Ephesian school, and have got fragments of the apostle's teaching and woven them into his work during the first quarter of the second century. Dr. Cone nowhere shows more critical ability and philosophic insight and discrimination than in his cautious yet masterful discussion of the Johannine problem. He concludes that "the problem of the authorship of the fourth Gospel is not one to be solved offhand by radical criticism, or to be pronounced upon ex cathedra by conservative dogmatism. If the external evidences are indecisive of its early origin (and he thinks they are); if from internal grounds we can not regard it as the work of an apostle; if it plainly has a composite character—then the unbiased critic may still be just to the ancient tradition of the Ephesian Church and to the profound spiritual sayings of the Gospel in holding that, while on any hypothesis of its origin many critical problems remain unsolved, there is at least a strong probability for a Johannine nucleus in the book, for frequent 'words of the Lord,' handed down from the apostle without connection, probably, and without a historical setting, which have in this remarkable work found a literary embodiment in the midst of much mysticism, it is true, and overlaid by Greek-Christian, second-century speculations, but distinguishable from these by their unique quality and surprising originality."

After discussing, with much clearness and satisfaction, the eschatology of the Gospels, Baur's celebrated "