Appendix A: Contents
Appendix A - Problems of Authorship and Dating
It is natural for those who are interested in the findings of New Testament criticism to desire as definite
information as possible concerning the origin of the New Testament documents.
If a document can, with certainty, be ascribed to a
writer about whom something is known, if its composition can with confidence be assigned to such and such a date, its
trustworthiness must clearly be affected.
The New Testament writers, however, were almost wholly unconcerned with such matters.
No single document is
dated; and the historical books, as opposed to the letters, are anonymous.
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I. THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS AND THE ACTS OF THE APOSTLES
It was, however, not long before venerable names were attached to the anonymous books.
By the end of the
second century all four gospels were attributed directly or indirectly to apostolic authors, and were, at least relatively, dated.
St. Matthew wrote the first Gospel, and this was the earliest of the four.
St. Mark was the next to write a gospel, and it was not
his gospel at all, but St. Peter's.
St. Luke was the author of the third Gospel and of the Acts of the Apostles; and, since he was
the companion of St. Paul, his gospel was, in fact, St. Paul's.
Finally, St. John, the disciple of the Lord, published his gospel
at Ephesus; and this was the last authentic gospel to be written.
Thus the church at the end of the second century was confident
that it possessed in the four gospels four apostolic accounts of the Lord's life, death and resurrection.
This tradition appears in the writings of several of the early fathers, and it is clear that it was known and
accepted in different parts of the Church.
Irenaeus of Lyons (about AD 140 to about AD 211),
Clement of Alexandria (about AD 150 to about AD 215),
Origen of Alexandria and Caesarea (AD 185‑254),
and the unknown author of the Muratorian Fragment (perhaps written at Rome about AD 200),
agree in general, though not in detail, in thus reconstructing the origin of the gospels.
So do what are called the Anti‑Marcionite Gospel Prologues ‑
Prologues to Mark, Luke and John, which have been known for many years but only recently recognized as having
certainly been written between AD 160 and AD 180.
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The chief passages are as follows:
II. IRENAEUS
'Matthew published his gospel among the Hebrews in their own language, while Peter and Paul were preaching the gospel and founding the church in Rome.
After their departure (? death) Mark, the disciple and interpreter of Peter, also transmitted to us in writing those things which Peter was wont to proclaim.
And Luke, the attendant of Paul, recorded in a book the gospel, which Paul had declared.
Afterwards John, the disciple of the Lord, who also reclined on his bosom, published the gospel, while residing at Ephesus in Asia.'
['Against the Heresies', III, 1, 1; quoted by Eusebius of Caesarea (about AD 265 to about 340) in his 'Ecclesiastical History', V, 8, 2‑4.]
III. THE MURATORIAN CANON
[The meaning of the words in italics is uncertain]
'... But at some he (? St. Mark) was present, and he set them down thus.
'The third book of the gospel, that according to Luke, Luke, the well‑known physician, wrote in his own name in order, after the ascension of Christ, when Paul had associated him with himself as one studious of right.
Yet neither did he himself see the Lord in the flesh;
and he, according as he was able to accomplish it, began his narrative with the nativity of John.
The fourth gospel is that of John, one of the disciples.'
(Here follows an account of the occasion of his writing this gospel.)
The Muratorian Fragment was published by the Italian scholar Muratori in 1740.
It is now in the Ambrosian
Library at Milan.
It is written in barbarous Latin.
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IV. CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA
'Again, in the same books, Clement gives the tradition of the earliest presbyters, as to the order of the gospels, in the following manner: The gospels containing the genealogies, he says, were written first.
'The gospel according to Mark came into being in this manner:
When Peter had preached the Word publicly at Rome, and declared the gospel by the Spirit, many who were present requested that Mark, who had followed him for a long time and remembered his sayings, should write them out.
And having composed the gospel he gave it to those who had requested it.
When Peter learned of this, he neither directly forbade nor encouraged it.
But, last of all, John, perceiving that the external facts had been made plain in the gospels, being urged by his friends, and inspired by the Spirit, composed a spiritual gospel.
This is the account of Clement.'
[Quoted by Eusebius, E.H. VI, 14, 5‑7, from the lost 'Hypotyposeis' (sketches).]
V. ORIGEN
'In his first book on Matthew's gospel, maintaining the canon of the church, he testifies that he knows only four gospels, writing somewhat as follows:
'Among the four gospels, which are the only indisputable ones in the church of God under heaven, I have learned by tradition that the first to be written was that by Matthew, who was once a publican, but afterwards an apostle of Jesus Christ, and it was prepared for the converts from Judaism, and published in the Hebrew language.
The second is by Mark, who composed it according to the instructions of Peter, who in his Catholic Epistle acknowledges him as a son, saying, "The church that is at Babylon elected together with you, saluteth you, and so does Mark, my son."
And the third by Luke, the gospel commended by Paul, and composed for gentile converts.
Last of all that by John.'
[Quoted by Eusebius, E.H., VI, 25, 3‑6, from Origen's commentary upon St. Matthew's gospel.]
VI. THE MARCAN PROLOGUE
'[So] Mark asserted, who is called the "stumpy‑fingered", because his fingers were too small in comparison with the rest of his body.
He was Peter's interpreter [?expounder], [and], after Peter himself had departed [?died] he wrote this same gospel down, in the parts of Italy.'
VII. THE LUCAN PROLOGUE
'Luke was a Syrian of Antioch and a doctor by profession.
He became a disciple of the Apostles and finally a close companion of Paul until his martyrdom.
Having served the Lord without ceasing he died unmarried and childless, in Boeotia, at the age of eighty‑four, full of the Holy Ghost.
Although there were already Gospels in existence ‑
that according to Matthew written in Judaea, and that according to Mark in Italy ‑
Luke was moved by the Holy Spirit to compile the whole of this Gospel, in the country round Achaia.
He pointed out in his prologue that others had been written before this one, but that it was essential to set forth an accurate record for the faithful among the gentiles to prevent their being led astray by Jewish legends or deceived by heretical and empty opinions, and so come wide of the truth...'
We are fortunately able to track the tradition concerning Matthew and Mark further back.
Eusebius possessed a
book, now lost, which had been written by Papias, Bishop of Hierapolis, shortly before AD 150.
The book was entitled Explanations
of the Sayings of the Lord, and was divided into five parts.
From this book Eusebius quoted the following passages:
'and thus "Mark, having become the translator (? interpreter) of Peter, wrote down accurately, though not however in order, whatever he remembered of the things said or done by the Lord.
For he neither heard the Lord nor followed him, but afterwards, as I said, he followed Peter, who adjusted his teaching to the needs of his hearers, but gave no connected account of the sayings of the Lord.
Mark therefore made no mistake in thus writing down some things as he remembered them.
For he was especially careful not to omit any of the things he heard nor to make any false statement."
These things are recorded by Papias concerning Mark.
But concerning Matthew he says:
"So, then, Matthew did arrange in order the sayings in the Hebrew (Aramaic) language, and each man translated (interpreted) them as he was able." '
[Eusebius, E.H., III, 39, 15 f.]
Here then is the origin of the tradition of the church concerning Matthew and Mark, for it seems certain that
the early fathers depend upon Papias, and that they had no independent knowledge.
The variations in the tradition are due simply
to different expansions and interpretations of what Papias had said.
Everything then depends upon the accuracy of Papias.
What
Papias means in general seems perfectly clear.
Mark is to be trusted absolutely.
He was not an original disciple of the Lord, and
therefore possessed no personal memories.
But he was accustomed to translate Peter's teaching, and was his disciple.
Consequently
everything that Mark wrote was really Peter's;
and the very disorderliness of Mark's gospel reflects the practice of Peter;
for
Peter's teaching consisted in fragmentary memories gathered together to encourage the faith of his hearers and meet their needs.
Matthew's gospel, however, was quite different.
An apostle wrote it;
it was written in Hebrew or Aramaic;
and there was originally
no authorized translation of it.
Those who wished to use it had to make the best translation they could.
It seems impossible to think that Papias meant his readers to understand anything else.
And if so, he meant
his readers to understand that the first Gospel, now familiar to Christians in its Greek form, had been originally written by the
apostle Matthew in Hebrew or in Aramaic.
At first, however, there existed no adequate translation of this apostolic work.
But
Papias carefully stated that the tradition was not his, but the elder's.
That is to say, it goes back behind Papias into the first
century, and is attached to the authoritative figure of the elder John.
How much of the tradition was the elder's and how much was
due to Papias' retelling of it, we cannot tell.
What then happens to this tradition when it is set side by side with the results of a critical analysis of
the gospels themselves?
We cannot escape from the conclusion that the synoptic gospels stand in a literary relationship to one
another.
According to the tradition, however, they emanated independently, each from an apostle.
The first is claimed to be the
direct work of St. Matthew;
the second to be St. Mark's reproduction of St. Peter's teaching;
the third to be St. Luke's
presentation of the preaching of St. Paul.
Tradition made no claim to date these three gospels, beyond asserting that St. Matthew
was the first to write and supposing that Mark wrote either while St. Peter was still alive, or soon after his death.
Luke's
writing is nowhere dated.
It is, then, quite clear that the tradition is not, as it stands, compatible with what is demanded by
the literary analysis of the gospels themselves.
Since Matthew is dependent upon Mark, it must have been subsequent to Mark;
and
since its author corrected Mark's Greek, it must have been written originally in Greek and in no other language.
In the light of
the literary analysis of the gospels, the problem of date and authorship has to be approached from a different angle.
Luke and
Matthew are the result of careful editing of Mark and of another source; and each also contains special material, which may be
named 'special Matthew' and 'special Luke'.
The making of Matthew and Luke has therefore a somewhat complicated history behind it,
which is roughly demonstrated in the following diagram.
The queried lines represent relations, which the authors of this book do not accept as proven, but which have some weight of evidence to substantiate them.
The gospels of Matthew and Luke can hardly have been written later than the end of the first century.
Otherwise it is almost impossible to explain the apparent citations of Matthew in the apostolic fathers in the first half of the
second century, or the attitude of Marcion to the Lucan writings in the middle of the second century, or the procedure of Tatian,
who became a Christian in Rome about 160, and who combined not only the first three gospels but also the fourth into one
continuous narrative or harmony, called the Diatessaron.
It will be seen then that a considerable literary activity must have taken place in the Church behind the
making of Matthew and Luke.
Three questions therefore arise:
(1) Do the results of literary criticism entirely destroy the evidence of tradition?
Or does some of that
evidence throw light upon the intricate literary relations of the synoptic gospels?
In particular, does the statement of Papias,
that Matthew composed the sayings in the Hebrew language, and that each one interpreted them as he could, throw any light upon the
curious fact that Matthew's name came to be attached to the first gospel?
(2) Does the internal evidence of Mark conflict with or confirm the tradition that he reproduced the teaching
of St. Peter?
(3) Does the internal evidence of Luke confirm or disturb the tradition that 'Luke the Physician' wrote Luke‑Acts?
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VIII. MATTHEW
The evidence of Papias concerning Matthew is singularly difficult to handle because of the uncertainty of the
meaning of the Greek.
In the short sentence ‑
'So, then, Matthew did arrange in order the sayings in the Hebrew language,
and each translated them as he was able' ‑
each of the words in italics is a not quite certain rendering of the Greek,
especially if the passage be taken as independent of what Papias had written of Mark.
(a) Did arrange in order:
The Greek might mean simply 'composed' in the broad sense of 'wrote'.
(b) Sayings:
The Greek might mean merely 'words' or 'brief' utterances'.
In classical usage it
sometimes meant divine oracles, as, e.g. 'the Sibylline Oracles'.
It was similarly used in the Old Testament with the special
significance of 'the utterances of God'.
Josephus used it for the 'prophecies of God' in the Old Testament, and Philo, for the
'Ten Commandments'.
In the New Testament it was similarly used for 'oracles of God', but in various ways.
In Acts vii.38 and in
Romans iii.2 it is used of the oracles delivered by God in the Old Testament.
In Hebrews v.12 and in I Peter iv.11 it is used of
the substance of the Christian religion and for the utterances of God through Christian teachers.
The first Epistle of Clement to
the Corinthians contains a similar use.
But Polycarp uses it of the precepts of Christ, and the interpolator of the Epistle of
Ignatius to the Smyrneans uses it of the New Testament scriptures.
(c) Interpreted:
as in English, this might mean either translated (into Greek) or expounded,
for homiletic purposes.
Owing to this elasticity in meaning of at least three words in this short statement of Papias it has been
possible to offer very various interpretations of its evidence with some degree of confidence.
It is necessary to mention here
only those, which find some justification in the results of synoptic criticism.
When it was discovered that Matthew and Luke had used a common source, and that this common source was
largely composed of sayings, it was tempting to conjecture that the account of Papias justified the supposition that St. Matthew
had collected, perhaps into some sort of order, short sayings of Jesus.
This collection was at first translated into Greek 'as
best they could' by the Christian missionaries.
But subsequently a translation was in general circulation and this, the authors of
the first and third gospels used, because of its known apostolic origin, to supplement the narrative of Mark.
This is a
particularly tempting conclusion, not only because it gives the fragments from the common source the prestige of an eyewitness,
but because it explains the procedure of Matthew and Luke by giving a name to their otherwise anonymous source.
But it is no more
than an hypothesis, and it is not a very easy hypothesis to accept.
Papias was almost certainly writing of the origin of our
gospel of Matthew.
If, therefore, the passage correctly reproduces the elder's words, it has to be supposed that Papias
misunderstood them, and that he misunderstood them because Matthew meant to him our Matthew and all knowledge that the apostle had
written something else had been lost, or at least Papias had never heard of it. It is all very difficult.
How did the work of the apostle disappear without Papias or his contemporaries being aware even of its previous existence?
An entirely different interpretation has therefore been put forward.
It has been argued that, since the first
missionary activity was among Jews, or at least among proselytes, who knew the Old Testament scriptures, the early missionaries
must have relied largely upon the quotation of 'proof‑texts', passages from the Old Testament, in order to show that the
ministry and death of Jesus were the fulfilment of Old Testament prophecy.
The Papias tradition might therefore imply that Matthew
drew up a collection of such proof‑texts, which each expounded, or fitted into the Lord's life to the best of his ability.
This again is a very difficult explanation.
It is certainly not what Papias understood.
He contrasted Matthew with Mark; both
wrote, not Old Testament prophecies, but narratives of the Lord's life;
the one was an orderly account, the other was not.
If
Papias misunderstood the elder, he misunderstood him because he had no knowledge of any literary activity of Matthew except the
first Gospel.
Not only was Matthew's original writing lost;
but all memory of it was also lost.
There are other solutions.
But these two suffice to show how very pliable the evidence is.
The point is that,
though we may say that the procedure of Luke and Matthew is more easy to understand if they used in addition to Mark another
document which had been originally written by the apostle Matthew, containing mainly sayings of Jesus arranged in orderly fashion,
and that the name Matthew slipped from this second source to denote the first Gospel, this must remain only an hypothesis.
It
cannot be taken as an assured result of modern criticism.
Still less can we assume that the apostle Matthew drew up a list of Old
Testament messianic texts, and that the author of our first Gospel used this older document, extracting from it his Old Testament
citations, and that this explains the survival of the name Matthew.
It must therefore be concluded that the evidence of Papias does not enable a scholarly judgement to be made
either upon the authorship of the first Gospel ' or upon the origin and authorship of the common source of Matthew and Luke.
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IX. MARK
Do we find firmer ground when we consider the traditional origin of Mark?
Although, as is shown by a comparison of the passages quoted from the fathers of the second and third centuries, there are certain
additions to the Papias tradition, it would be hazardous to make any of these discrepancies the ground for supposing that they
were not all originally elaborations of the tradition, which he presented.
The passage of Papias, then, is, as in the case of the
first Gospel, the crux of the external evidence for the authorship of the second.
This passage is less ambiguous than the passage
about Matthew.
But it is not absolutely certain that Papias thought that St. Mark translated into Greek St. Peter's oral Aramaic
teaching, and that he then, because he was a practised interpreter, proceeded to give it written form.
The word interpreter is
capable of a less precise meaning.
This ambiguity, however, is not strictly relevant to the main question, which is simply whether
the internal evidence of the second Gospel substantiates this very early tradition that it emanated from St. Peter, and that it
represented his disordered method of teaching.
Quite recently the late Professor C. H. Turner made a very interesting research into the gospel of Mark,
which had to some extent been anticipated at an earlier period in Germany.
He brought forward considerable evidence for supposing
that large parts of the narrative framework, although in the third person, show signs of having been originally in the first
person.
The frequent phrases, 'Jesus and his disciples', 'and they come', and such introductions to incidents as 'And while they
were in the way', suggest that the author, unlike Matthew and Luke, pictured the ministry as the movements of a group, Jesus and
his disciples.
Professor Turner held that this would be explained if Mark had heard these stories recounted as reminiscences:
'And
when we drew nigh...' ‑
'And while we were in the way'.
It may also be held to be
significant that the introductory incidents before the call of Peter are recorded more summarily than the rest.
The internal
evidence may be said to admit of the supposition that the author of the second Gospel received the greater part of his information
from an eyewitness.
But it cannot be proven.
More serious is the recognition that the whole book is a carefully constructed
literary unity.
The gospel of Mark is misunderstood if it be treated merely as a compilation of reminiscences or as a compilation
of disordered Petrine teaching.
And yet, this is what the Papias tradition declares the second Gospel to be.
The gospel may be
resting upon Petrine teaching, but the author has constructed from such teaching, whether Petrine or more general oral tradition,
a carefully ordered narrative.
The Petrine background of the Marcan gospel is then not demanded by the gospel itself
Was the author John Mark?
The answer to this question depends upon the certainty with which the contents of the gospel can be taken back to St. Peter.
According to the Acts, St. Peter's immediate destination after his miraculous release from prison [Acts
.12] was the house of Mary the mother of John Mark.
The first Epistle of Peter [I Pet.v.13] also
rather significantly couples Mark with Peter, for it ends with this salutation: 'She that is in Babylon, elect together with you,
saluteth you; and so doth Mark my son.'
There is New Testament evidence, then, for supposing that Mark was closely associated with
St. Peter.
But Acts also records [Acts .25 etc. cf. 2 Tim.iv.11] that John Mark was the
companion of St. Paul on his first missionary journey.
If this was so, may there not have been a Pauline influence upon the second Gospel?
The whole question bristles with difficulties.
If Mark wrote the second Gospel, is he depending solely on Petrine teaching?
Or is he setting down general oral tradition in which Petrine teaching played a large part?
We do not know.
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X. LUKE‑ACTS
It is well known that Dr. Harnack reacted suddenly to a belief that 'Luke the Physician', that is, the Luke
mentioned in the Epistles of St. Paul to the Colossians and to Philemon, and in the second Epistle to Timothy, [Col.iv.14; Philem.24; 2 Tim.iv.11] was the author of the third Gospel and of the Acts of the Apostles.
The third Gospel and the Acts of the Apostles had, at least from the time of the Muratorian Canon, been attributed to the same
author.
Their style is similar;
the one starts where the other leaves off;
each is begun with a formal preface addressed to 'Theophilus'.
They also show a similarity of doctrinal tendency which makes it almost impossible to
doubt that Acts was the work of the author of the third Gospel.
Now Acts contains a number of passages marked by the use of the first person plural.
These are the celebrated 'We Passages'.
[Acts xvi.10‑17; xx.5‑15; 17; xxi.1-18.; xxviii.10‑16;
In codex
Bezae and in a small number of Latin manuscripts supported by Augustine, Acts xi.28 is also a 'We Passage'.]
It is difficult, if not impossible, to distinguish the style of these passages from Luke‑Acts as a whole.
Hence it is
assumed by many critics that a companion of St. Paul wrote Luke‑Acts.
And since tradition gives us the name Luke, why not trust the tradition?
All that we are here concerned to point out is that the attribution to Luke is a critical deduction;
it is not a certainty.
Far more important, and far more doubtful, is the further deduction that is made from this ascription of Luke‑Acts
to St. Luke, the companion of St. Paul.
It is often supposed that, since he was at Caesarea with St. Paul, [Acts xxi.8 is a 'We Passage'.] St. Luke must have had admirable opportunities of collecting information
concerning Jesus at first hand, and that therefore 'special Luke', that is that part of Luke which is not dependent upon Mark or
upon the source common to him and to Matthew, is to be accepted as containing very reliable information.
But it is troublesome and disturbing to find that, though the author of Acts seems quite well enough informed
about the actual movements of St. Paul to have been his companion, his reports of St. Paul's speeches fail to give a convincing
indication of his teaching.
We should have no conception of what St. Paul taught if we had to depend for our information upon Acts
alone.
There are echoes in Acts of the teaching in the epistles, but they are not more than echoes.
The impression gained from a
study of Luke‑Acts is that the author was an artist and a literary man, and that he was concerned, in part to write an
apology for the Christian religion, and in part to present Christian history to intelligent Greek readers.
This seems to be the
reason why in the gospel he omits material which he supposes to be intelligible only to Jews, and why in Acts he glosses over, for
example, the situation caused in Jerusalem by the conversion of the Gentiles as a result of the mission of St. Paul and Barnabas,
and replaces it by a council which is extremely difficult to reconcile with the tension of the Pauline epistles.
This does not
mean that Luke was a bad historian, or that his evidence for the history of Jesus and of the early church is worthless.
But it
does mean that he was capable of smoothing out the roughness of the history and simplifying the difficult elements in the
tradition and in the teaching of St. Paul.
The author writes as a Christian of the second generation.
He may well have been
conversant with eyewitnesses;
he may have been one of St. Paul's companions;
but he wrote in a definitely sub‑apostolic
atmosphere.
The schism aroused by the Judaizing 'troublers' of the Galatians was past history.
The consciousness of election,
which had isolated the early church, was beginning, perhaps unconsciously, to be distilled in the atmosphere of reasoning
apologetic.
The apostles were beginning to be regarded as men whose unheroic lapses ought not to be fully recorded.
The eyes of
the church were turning to the Roman Empire;
and it was hoped that Christianity might be understood and respected, if it could be
presented without undue harshness.
For these reasons, even if the author was Luke, the medical friend of St. Paul, the historian
has to treat him with great care.
In the end, what Luke gives us is not to be accepted because Luke recorded it, but rather
because it may be found to be running back to a tradition, which agrees with that which is known to us from elsewhere.
Where Luke
goes apart from the other strata, it is not in Luke that we can place our confidence.
If it has been found difficult, in spite of a certain amount of evidence, to give names to the authors of the
synoptic gospels, it is much more difficult to assign their writing to definite dates.
Here there is no clear evidence at all; and
accurate dating is simply impossible.
The terminus ad quem must be somewhere about AD 100.
Since Luke and Matthew used Mark, and apparently used him independently,
Mark must have been written some time before the other two gospels.
Luke's editing [Lk.xxi.20‑24] of the eschatological speech in Mark i seems to betray
knowledge of the siege and fall of Jerusalem in AD 70.
If it could be proved that he had read and misunderstood the Antiquities of Josephus, which were published AD 93 (? 94), we should
have an important piece of evidence.
But the relation between Luke and Josephus is completely unproven.
Matthew contains nothing
that enables any definite date to be assigned to it.
Mark i looks at first as though the author knew of the destruction of
Jerusalem;
but when carefully examined it is uncertain whether the language implies more than a prophecy of great tribulation.
Otherwise Mark provides no opportunity for accurate dating.
Nor is it possible to make any definite statement about the date of
the non‑Marcan common source of Matthew and Luke.
Its date and authorship remain as elusive as the authorship and dates of
the synoptic gospels themselves.
All this is very unsatisfactory, and there seems to be no reason to expect that it will remain otherwise than
very unsatisfactory.
The truth is that the synoptic gospels were written as anonymous and undated documents.
They emerged from the
primitive church, and they were thought of as representing the oral tradition of the Church in a more or less orderly form.
They
are therefore best handled as they were intended to be handled and read.
We have no right to think of them as originally
guaranteed by some prominent name.
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XI. THE FOURTH GOSPEL
With the question of the authorship of the fourth Gospel we tread on very delicate ground.
Those who are
convinced that a reconstruction of the Jesus of history is possible on the basis of a critical study of the synoptic gospels, and
that he can be adequately described within the framework of modern humanitarian and ethical idealism, are frankly shocked by the
fourth Gospel.
The whole situation is eased if the fourth Gospel can be removed from all contact with the memory of Jesus.
The
denial of apostolic authorship, and even of a relation to apostolic reminiscence, is felt to be essential.
For those, on the other
hand, who are dissatisfied with this reconstruction, the authorship of the fourth Gospel has provided the supreme battleground.
So
much seemed to hang upon it. If it could be proved that the author was an original disciple of Jesus, or even if it could be
proved that he was in close contact with an original disciple, the whole humanitarian reconstruction would be severely shaken.
For
these reasons liberal and conservative scholars have been on edge whenever the question of the authorship of the fourth Gospel has
been raised.
One of the main aims of this book has been to show that the battleground lies elsewhere.
We are free
therefore to treat the question of authorship and date on purely critical grounds.
The evidence is wholly elusive.
The gospel
contains no definite statement that the author was named John.
It is an anonymous book.
But unlike the synoptic gospels, it
suggests that its author was one of the original disciples, suggests also that the author was the beloved disciple, if these
things in xxi.24 means this book.
But if the reader is intended to understand that the beloved
disciple wrote the book, more than this is, in fact, suggested.
It is suggested that the beloved disciple was the apostle John.
Indeed, it may be said that the phrase whom Jesus loved echoes the meaning of the name Johannes.
But who is the beloved disciple?
He appears in the gospel as the ideal disciple, and pre‑eminently as the great witness, whose witness is comparable only to
the witness of John the Baptist.
He is presented to the reader as a more intimate disciple of Jesus even than Peter.
He lies on
the bosom of Jesus, and Peter asks him to question the Lord;
he it is, assuming the 'other disciple' to be identical with the
beloved disciple, who enables Peter to enter the house of the high priest;
he alone of the male disciples stands under the cross;
to him the Lord entrusts his mother;
he, not Peter, is the first disciple to declare his belief that Jesus is risen though he had
not seen him;
and finally, he is pictured naturally following the Lord, whilst Peter has to be commanded to follow him.
[Jn. i.23‑26; xviii.15, 16; xix.25‑27; xx.2‑8;
xxi.20‑24]
Yes, but why then should he not be named?
Who is the beloved disciple?
It is all very puzzling.
It appears as though the author wishes his readers to judge that the beloved disciple was the apostle John, but that he does not
dare to say this clearly.
Many explanations of this strange situation have been offered.
It has been said that the author was John
the apostle, but that modesty prevented his naming himself.
But is modesty characteristic of these descriptions of the beloved
disciple, if indeed he wrote these things of himself?
It has been said that the author was a disciple of the apostle.
Perhaps he
was.
It has been said that there was another John, also a disciple, but a young disciple, and that he wrote the book, or that a
disciple of his wrote it.
It has been said that an unknown Christian wrote the book, and that the beloved disciple simply
represents the ideal Christian, and that the author throws his gospel guardedly upon the apostle John, and expects his readers to
know what he is doing.
In other words, no one knows who wrote the Johannine writings:
and it is better to read the fourth Gospel
and the Johannine Epistles, and to discuss the meaning of what is there set down, than to pretend to a knowledge which we do not possess.
The Johannine writings do, however, tell us something about their author.
- He knew the geography of Palestine;
- he wrote in Greek, but he thought in Semitic idiom;
- he knew the Jews and the Jewish religion;
- he was completely at home with the Old Testament scriptures and his allusions to the Old Testament are, if that were possible, more subtle than those in the synoptic gospels.
- But primarily he was a Christian.
This had made him what he is, and he has a piercing insight into the meaning of the earlier tradition about Jesus.
He worked upon
that tradition as it has been set forth in St. Mark's gospel;
perhaps he knew St. Luke's gospel, perhaps also St. Matthew's
gospel.
No doubt he knew more than this.
But whether he was working upon his own reminiscences or upon those of some particular
eyewitness, or upon additional oral tradition, we cannot tell.
In any case, he has mastered the tradition.
But he has mastered it
as a Christian theologian;
and it is as a theologian that he wrote, and as a theologian that he must be judged.
Nor is it possible to assign a definite date to the Johannine writings.
The author knew St. Mark's gospel,
and his gospel is unintelligible if he did not presume that his readers also knew the substance of Mark.
But that does not help us
to date his gospel accurately.
If it could be proved that he presumed a knowledge of all three synoptic gospels we should have roughly AD 90‑100 as a
terminus a quo.
The external evidence to the gospel is rather puzzling.
The apostolic fathers at times use phrases, which we know from the fourth
Gospel.
But it is difficult to pronounce them to be certainly citations from the fourth Gospel.
They may be due to a common
background of Christian language.
The first certain quotation occurs in Justin Martyr (about AD 140).
Origen's commentary presumes
that the fourth Gospel had long been known and accepted in the Church.
The discovery and publication of the Fragments of an
Unknown Gospel (ed. by H. Idris Bell and T. C. Skeat, London, 1935), which, after Professor Dodd's analysis published in the
Bulletin of the Yohn Ryland's Library, January 1936, seems, in spite of the editor's judgement, to be dependent upon the fourth
Gospel, and the discovery and publication of the tiny fragment of a papyrus codex of the fourth Gospel (An Unpublished Fragment
of the Fourth Gospel, ed. by C. H. Roberts, Manchester, 1935), suggest, if indeed they do not prove, not only that the fourth
Gospel was circulating in Egypt during the first half of the second century, but that it was capable of providing the basis for
further development of gospel material.
Apparently it gained its position slowly.
If so, it cannot be dated later than the
beginning of the second century.
This seems also to fit the occasion of the Johannine writings as a whole.
The author is dealing
with a situation similar to that which Ignatius had to face some few years later.
Greek Christians were uneasy concerning the
necessity of maintaining the relation between the Church and the Jesus of history.
They thought that the possession of the Spirit
rid them of the necessity of the control of Jesus in flesh, that is, of the original history.
The author wrote in order to
show that everything depended not only upon the original history, but upon the understanding of it.
In fact, he makes it clear
that the Spirit is given primarily in order that men may understand the meaning of the history of the life and death and teaching
of Jesus.
He rivets the church to the control of that particular history and to the apostolic understanding of it.
The fourth Gospel, then, like the first three, remains in respect of authorship an enigma and of precise date
uncertain.
But it may be doubted whether this uncertainty detracts anything from the significance and importance of its contents,
when they are treated critically, and when they are set in the context of the New Testament as a whole.
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. THE PAULINE EPISTLES,
THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS,
AND THE FIRST EPISTLE OF PETER
Questions of date and authorship hardly arise in connexion with the other New Testament documents referred to
in this book.
The Pauline epistles fall into more or less distinct groups:
I Thessalonians.
II Thessalonians.
Galatians.
I Corinthians.
II Corinthians.
Romans.
Philippians.
Colossians.
Philemon.
Ephesians.
I Timothy.
II Timothy.
Titus.
This grouping does not refer to date, but to similarities of expression, occasion, and subject‑matter.
With the exception of the Epistle to the Ephesians and of the last group, known as the Pastoral Epistles, all may be quite
confidently pronounced to have been written either by St. Paul himself or at his dictation.
A question has been raised concerning II Thessalonians, but there is no sufficient reason to doubt its authenticity.
Ephesians has
a less clear and precise historical situation than any of the other Pauline epistles and may be a sub‑Pauline compendium of
his teaching.
But it is so subtly linked to Colossians, and the interpretation of the one is so much more easy when read side by
side with the other, that it is probably better to take Ephesians as definitely Pauline, than to suppose that it was written by
someone else on the basis of the Colossian epistle.
The Pastoral Epistles are much more doubtful.
They are difficult to fit into the known framework of St. Paul's life, though this may be due to our ignorance of the
circumstances of his death.
More serious is the vocabulary.
The Pastoral epistles are filled with words that occur nowhere else in the Pauline epistles.
No modern critic is quite happy in
treating these letters as Pauline in their present form.
With regard to dating, the certainly genuine epistles fall quite naturally into the Lucan story of St. Paul's
journeys, and may be dated somewhere between AD 44 and AD 66.
They are therefore the earliest surviving Christian documents.
If Galatians be written to the Christians whose conversion is described in Acts i and xiv, immediately after their conversion, Galatians is the earliest Pauline epistle in spite of the overlapping of its subject‑matter with Romans and I and 2 Corinthians.
The Epistle to the Hebrews and the First Epistle of Peter bring us back again to anonymous documents.
Hebrews is, as it stands, anonymous.
The readers must, however, presumably have known who wrote it, since i.22‑5 is a personal
note.
But we do not know who he was.
Nor do we know when it was written, or precisely why it was written.
Everywhere there are references to the Temple ritual; and it would be natural to suppose that the Temple was still standing.
But this does not seem to be a necessary conclusion, since the author is arguing less upon existing sacrificial practice than upon
the sacrificial system as set forth in the Old Testament scriptures.
Nor is it certain to whom the Epistle was written.
The author
may have been writing to Jewish Christians who were contemplating a return to Judaism, or he may have been writing to Christians,
whether Jewish or Gentile, who were in danger of lapsing under the threat of persecution.
There are great difficulties in accepting the first Epistle of Peter as the work of the apostle.
It is
probably a pseudonymous general letter composed towards the end of the first century.
And yet, when this is said, the mention of Silvanus in v.12 as the actual writer of the Epistle,
may mean, not that he wrote at the apostle's dictation, but that he composed the Epistle as a disciple of the apostle.
Silas and
Judas are named in Acts xv.22‑29, as the bearers of the letter from the apostles and elders
at Jerusalem to the church at Antioch.
It is possible therefore that there is a genuine Petrine background to I Peter, though its direct literary affinities are with the
Pauline epistles.
The purpose of this very inadequate appendix is to show how delicate and difficult are all these questions of
date and authorship.
There are here no assured results, nor indeed can there be.
The evidence is far too slender.
The modern
critic is thus thrown back upon the documents themselves.
The question for him is not primarily who wrote these documents or when
precisely they were written or where they were written.
The question is whether these documents do more than bear witness to the
life of the primitive church.
Do they also bear witness to Jesus of Nazareth?
This book has been written to show that they do bear
unmistakable witness to him, and that they are otherwise in the end unintelligible.
We have, consequently, touched upon matters of
date and authorship only in an appendix, in order that the real problem of the New Testament may be displayed without the
disturbance of problems that are ultimately irrelevant.
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