Page:The Necessity of Atheism (Brooks).djvu/60

58 from what others said, or from what the friends of "eye-witnesses" had seen.

The Gospel of "Matthew" is an anonymous composition which, on analysis, has been found to incorporate nearly fifty per cent of what is found in Mark. It is now believed by many scholars to have been written between the years 75 and 80 A.D. at Antioch not, of course, by the Apostle Matthew, but by some unknown editor.

The Fourth Gospel, the Gospel of John, is vastly different in style, arrangement, and in the description of the words, actions, and general spiritual character of Jesus. Many scholars believe that it was written in the city of Ephesus, somewhere around the year 100 A.D. "Church tradition ascribed it to the Apostle John, the son of Zebedee, one of the fishermen whom Jesus called to be a disciple. Years ago this view was easily entertained, but there now exists too much refractory evidence against assigning this Greek Gospel to an Aramaic-speaking Galilean. That an untutored fisherman could have written so elaborate and so highly philosophical an account of Jesus has always presented a thorny problem. And so to most scholars John's authorship of the Fourth Gospel is unthinkable."

Not one of the Gospels is the work of an eyewitness, and the four Gospels do not complete each other; they contradict each other ; and when they do not contradict, they repeat each other. The Christ of John is a totally different person from the Christ of Mark, Matthew, and Luke. Loisy, in his "Quelques Lettres" states, "If there is one thing above others that is obvious, but as to which the most powerful of theological interests have caused a deliberate or unconscious blindness, it is the profound, the irreducible incompatibility of the Synoptical Gospels, and the Fourth Gospel. If Jesus spoke