The description of the passion in the First Epistle of Peter (I Pet.ii.21) shows that in the church at the end of the first century the life and death of Jesus were recounted in the context of the Old Testament scriptures; it shows also that it was this that gave to the Christians their assurance of salvation and redemption, and imposed upon them a peculiarly intense moral demand. It is clear also from this passage and from others in the Pauline epistles, in the Epistle to the Hebrews, and in the Johannine writings, that the outstanding men in the primitive church found no difficulty in using the Old Testament to interpret the life, death and resurrection of Jesus and to explain to the Christians what was involved in their calling. In fact, Old Testament conceptions, once adopted, lent themselves admirably for this purpose.
If, therefore, it was the Old Testament context that gave redemptive significance to the life and death of Jesus, it is obviously the duty of the historian to trace back this close interweaving of Old and New, in order to discover whether there is any evidence in the New Testament of a period when nothing was known of this interweaving. Such evidence would suggest that the historical Jesus was unencumbered with this heavy significance. The claim has been made that it is precisely this discovery that results from the application to the gospels of modern methods of historical and literary criticism. It is claimed that historical criticism rids the Jesus of history of any redemptive significance, and in particular rids his death of that peculiar importance which primitive Christian piety attached to it. This removal of the encumbrance with which the writers of the New Testament or the church are supposed to have loaded the Jesus of history gave the sanction of critical scholarship to the modern distinction between Jesus and the church, and set modern writers and modern preachers free to place him in the context of humanitarian idealism or in the context of popular ideas about evolution. This whole procedure is justifiable only if Jesus can be detached from the Old Testament background, since the Old Testament writers are completely controlled by belief in the particular historical revelation of the living God. Modern humanitarian idealism is not only foreign to the Old Testament, but is incompatible with it. So great a weight has been placed upon the 'assured results' of the older criticism that it is necessary to test these results and to call attention to the direction in which more recent criticism is moving. Work upon the first three gospels is here all‑important; for the reconstruction of the Jesus of history must be grounded upon a critical investigation of these documents.
As they stand, the synoptic gospels portray the life and death of Jesus in the context of the Old Testament scriptures exactly as they are portrayed in the other New Testament books. The subtlety of this Old Testament penetration is not usually recognized. A most striking illustration is found in the influence of the twenty‑second psalm upon the passion narratives (Ps.x.). This psalm is in itself a remarkable poem, treating of the affliction of 'the afflicted'; his rejection by men, and apparent forsaking by God. The Psalm ends with a declaration of faith in God, and an assurance of justification by him, attended with a consequent penitent conversion of mankind.
(It is of no present importance that the Psalm is composite: it was so long before the time of Jesus.)
It treats, in fact, of an idea very similar to that found in the sufferings of the slave of God in Isaiah, and may be closely connected with it.
In the first place the Psalm is used several times by Mark.
They that passed by railed on him, wagging their heads,
just as those that saw the sufferer of the Psalm
shook the head
(Mk.xv.29.; Ps.x.7.).
The soldiers
part his garments among them, casting lots upon them, what each should take,
just as in the Psalm
they parted my garments among them, and cast lots upon my raiment
(Mk.xv.24.; Ps.x.18.).
The author of the fourth Gospel elaborates the episode and makes the fulfilment of the Psalm explicit:
The soldiers therefore, when they had crucified Jesus,
took his garments, and made four parts,
to every soldier a part;
and also the coat:
now the coat was without seam, woven from the top throughout.
They said therefore one to another,
Let us not rend it, but cast lots for it, whose it shall be:
that the scripture might be fulfilled, which saith,
They parted my garments among them and upon my vesture did they cast lots.
Jn.xix.23 f.)
In the first Gospel it is further recorded that the Scribes taunted Jesus, saying,
He trusted in God;
let him deliver him now, if he desireth him! (Mt.xxvii.43.)
just as in the Psalm the bystanders cried out,
He hoped in the Lord; let him deliver him now, because he desireth him!
(Ps.x.8.)
And Luke adds:
All the people stood beholding, and the rulers also scoffed at him, (Lk.xi.35.)
using the same words as the Psalm:
All they that beheld me scoffed at me, (Ps.x.7.)
thereby declaring him evidently to be
a reproach of men, and despised of the people. (Ps.x.6.)
This consistent tendency to describe events of the passion in the language of the Psalm in four different documents presents a problem which is brought to a head when Mark and Matthew record that
at the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice,
Eloi eloi, lama sabachthani?
(Mk.xv.34.)
the actual opening verse of the Psalm:
My God, my God ... why hast thou forsaken me? (Ps.x.1.)
The problem is capable of precise formulation.
Did Jesus set his passion in the context of Old Testament scripture?
And did an intention of fulfilment condition his words and actions?
If this is so, the evangelists are merely drawing out the implications of his passion and emphasizing them clearly in their
narratives. Or does the initiative lie rather with the church, in which case it must be supposed that the evangelists, moved by
the needs of the faithful Christians, attached a peculiar significance to the death of the Lord, and placed in his mouth words
that sanctioned their procedure?
Old Testament allusions are, however, not found only in the passion narratives:
they are woven into the whole Gospel material in various ways and in a very subtle manner. They are found most obviously in the
first Gospel, in which a number of stories are recorded with the addition of a pendant in order to show that they fulfilled this
or that Old Testament prediction.
The author, for instance, remarks that the events connected with the miraculous birth of Jesus 'came to pass, that it might be
fulfilled, which was spoken by the Lord through the prophet, saying:
Behold a virgin shall be with child
And shall bring forth a son,
And they shall call his name Emmanuel.
(Mt.i.22, 23; Cf. Is.vii.14.)
Sometimes the relevance of the prophecy is not obvious, as when it is shown that Jesus came and dwelt in a city called Nazareth: 'that it might be fulfilled which was spoken through the prophets, that he should be called a Nazarene' (Mt.ii.23.), and that, later, 'he came and dwelt in Capernaum, which is by the sea, in the borders of Zebulon: that it might be fulfilled which was spoken through Isaiah the prophet, saying:
The land of Zebulon and the land of Naphtali,
The way of the sea, beyond Jordan,
Galilee of the Gentiles,
The people which sat in darkness
Saw a great light,
And to them which sat in the region and shadow of death,
To them did light spring up.
(Mt.iv13‑16; cf. Is.ix.1, 2.)
So far the uneasiness of the argument does not affect the narrative to which it is fastened. But in at least one instance the history is disturbed in order to approximate it more closely to an Old Testament passage.
Mark and Luke both relate that, when Jesus made his entry into Jerusalem, he sent disciples to borrow a colt
for him to ride upon (Mk.xi.1‑8.; Lk.xix.29‑35.).
According to the first Gospel, however, two animals were brought ‑ an ass and her colt (Mt.xxi.1‑7.).
And this 'came to pass that it might be fulfilled which was spoken through the prophet saying:
Tell ye the daughter of Zion,
Behold, thy King cometh unto thee,
Meek, and riding upon an ass,
And upon a colt the foal of an ass.
(Zech.ix.9.)
In the original prophecy the duplication of the animals is due merely to the parallelism of Semitic poetry.
(A convenient illustration of a similar parallel occurs in Ps.viii.4:
What is man, that thou art mindful of him?
And the son of man, that thou visitest him?
'Man' and 'son of man' both represent mankind; they do not differentiate between two classes of people. Whatever subtle distinction of emphasis there may be, the variation is primarily due to the idiom of Hebrew poetry.)
The prophet therefore never intended his readers to understand that the king would enter the city riding in
triumph upon two asses. In order, however, to make clear that Jesus did fulfil this particular prophecy the evangelist soberly
introduces the second animal. But it must not for one moment be imagined that the evangelist created the connexion between the
prophecy of Zechariah and an episode in the life of Jesus. Mark and Luke also clearly had this prophecy in mind when they
described the incident. The historical problem lies behind the evangelists.
Did Jesus enter Jerusalem riding upon an ass in order to draw attention to an ancient prophecy?
And if so, what was involved in this public action?
The argument from the Old Testament is by no means confined to Matthew, though there it is most crudely obvious. It conditions also the gospel of Luke, in which it is made plain that Jesus is the Christ foretold by prophecy: the evangelist states the thesis openly in the e.g. narrative of the birth, and confirms it repeatedly in the stories of the post‑resurrection appearances (e.g., Lk.i.33, 35; xxiv, 25,44.). Moreover, this intention is so sub tie that it affects the actual language in which the gospel is written. When Luke (Lk.i.1‑4.) passes from his preface to his narrative, he passes abruptly from literary Greek into Old Testament idiom and phraseology. The story is filled with Old Testament allusions, as, for instance, when he writes:
And Jesus, advanced in wisdom and stature,
and in favour with God and man,
(Lk.ii.52.)
echoing
And the child Samuel grew on,
and was in favour both with the Lord,
and also with men.
(I Sam.ii.26.)
The Greek reader is at once removed from the Greek world and is set firmly within the sphere of Jewish messianic hope. This is not mere literary artistry, the geographical and historical sympathy of a sensitive author: it is a declaration to his cultured Greek readers that salvation is of the Jews.
Both Matthew and Luke are concerned to show that the life and death of Jesus are properly intelligible only in the context of the Old Testament scriptures. The same characteristic, however, controls the Marcan narrative also. If it were merely a question of noticing actual quotations from the Old Testament scriptures it would only be necessary to draw attention to the different type used for this purpose in the Westcott and Hort Greek text of the gospel, or, indeed, to the marginal references provided in the more elaborate editions of the Authorized and Revised English Versions. Westcott and Hort in the short gospel of Mark note 71 quotations from the Old Testament. But, impressive as this list is, it may be misleading, for passages containing no direct quotations may prove, on further examination, to be pregnant with Old Testament allusions. The tracking down of such allusions is not an unprofitable piece of work, but one that must be done if the Marcan gospel is to speak to us as it spoke to those who did not look up Old Testament allusions but had the Old Testament in their constitution. For where such allusions are implicit in the narrative, failure to recognize them may seriously damage interpretation. Thus there is an indispensable allusion to the prophecy of Zechariah in the Marcan version of the entry into Jerusalem (Mk.xi.1‑8; cf. Zech.ix.9.), although no word of it is actually quoted. Again, in the midst of a great storm at sea, Jesus lies in a boat asleep upon a cushion: 'And they rouse him, and say to him, Master, carest thou not that we perish?' (Mk.iv.38.) A reader familiar with the Old Testament can hardly fail to be reminded of the tense sense of affliction and yearning for salvation which permeates so much of the Old Testament literature and in particular the Psalter, and which is voiced in such a cry as
Awake, why sleepest thou, O Lord?
Arise, cast us not off for ever.
Wherefore hidest thou thy face?
And forgettest our affliction and oppression...
(Ps.xliv.23 f.)
The cry of the disciples rests, in the Marcan story, upon the same general background, even though it may not be an echo of the psalmist's words.
Sometimes this method of analysis produces results that seem to be outrageous. For example, Mark alone records that, after the arrest in Gethsemane,
A certain young man followed with him, having a linen cloth cast about him, over his naked body: and they lay hold on him; but he left the linen cloth, and fled naked.
(Mk.xiv.51 f.)
This statement has often been explained on the supposition that the author is referring to himself. Only one who had experienced it, it is said, would record such an insignificant detail. Taken in connexion with the tradition that St. Mark wrote the gospel, it is deduced that this passage is a reminiscence by the author of an event in his own life. And so, indeed, it may have been. But other commentators are impatient of such a network of suppositions, and suggest different reasons for its inclusion. Loisy follows Keim in recalling a verse of Amos:
He that is courageous among the mighty shall flee away naked in that day,
saith the Lord.
(Amos.ii.16.)
(Loisy A. R, Les Evangiles synoptiques, vol. 2. pp. 589‑91. Loisy points out that the Hebrew text, as against the Greek of the Septuagint, reads shall flee naked. He cites Rev.xvi.15 as another possible allusion to the same passage of Amos.)
Far from agreeing that the incident is an historical reminiscence, Loisy suggests that it has actually been created by the application of this Old Testament prophecy interpreted messianically. Just when the reader seems to be standing firmly on palpably historical ground, his position is thrown into question by an interpretation that he may well dismiss as fantastic, but which remains none the less disquieting.
Again, it has often been said of Mark's brief account of the temptation that the mention of wild beasts is merely a homely detail based upon the reminiscence of one who had heard Jesus describe his ordeal. Mark wrote:
And he was in the wilderness forty days, tempted of Satan;
and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels ministered unto him.
(Mk.i.13.)
The psalter, however, contains the following passage:
He shall give his angels charge over thee,
To keep thee in all thy ways.
They shall bear thee in their hands,
Lest thou dash thy foot against a stone.
Thou shalt tread upon the lion and adder:
The young lion and the serpent
Shalt thou trample under thy feet.
(Ps.xci.11‑13.)
Could there be a better summary of these lines than the few words of Mark? But if Mark's words are a summary, are they not also an allusion to the theme of the Psalm, evoked because the theme of the Psalm is precisely that of the evangelist? For the Psalm treats of one who has confident trust in God, and of the afflictions, physical and spiritual, which he shall overcome if God be his refuge and strength. To recall such a Psalm fills out the Marcan narrative of the temptation. Moreover, it is perhaps possible that the careful linking of the temptation to the story of the descent of the Spirit as a dove upon Jesus echoes the confident assurance of the same psalmist, who prefaces the trials of the righteous with the words:
He shall cover thee with his pinions,
And under his wings shalt thou take refuge.
(Ps.xci.)
Here again, is it entirely satisfactory either to dismiss such allusions as absurd, or to aver that the beasts and the angels are purely historical and insignificant reminiscences? Is it not preferable to conclude‑perhaps even in the case of the young man who fled naked‑that those who formed the synoptic tradition were so steeped in the prophets and the psalms, and so conscious that in the history of Jesus the prophets and the psalms find their realization, so convinced that the day of the Lord has come, that they slipped, half consciously, half unconsciously, into a biblical phraseology when relating what they without doubt accepted as historical events?
They, at any rate, could not speak of insignificant details, for to them every detail re‑echoed their theme and invited them to use the language of the prophets and the psalmists. It is therefore necessary to read the gospels with cars as open for Old Testament allusion as were theirs who wrote them. Doubtless it will sometimes be concluded that the allusion is too nebulous to be conscious ‑ as for instance in the former of the cases just considered ‑ but it may none the less be there. And even if both the cases that have just been considered are wrong illustrations it is none the less important that readers of the New Testament should risk being called fantastic in order that their ears may be opened to these Old Testament echoes when they are not irrelevant but essential.
At times the Old Testament allusion lies nearer the surface and recognition of it is vital for the understanding of the gospel. For instance, the story of the storm is closely linked with the healing of the Gerasene Demoniac (Mk.iv.35). The psalmists frequently used the metaphor of v.20, a storm or of great waters to express the tribulation of the righteous, from which only the intervention of God can save them.
Save me, O Lord, for the waters are come in unto my soul.
(Ps.lxix.1.)
And God alone can save, for
Thou rulest the raging of the sea:
When the waves thereof arise, thou stillest them.
(Ps.lxxxix.9.)
Or again:
The floods have lifted up, O Lord,
The floods have lifted up their voice;
The floods lift up their waves.
Above the voices of many waters,
The mighty breakers of the sea,
The Lord on high is mighty.
(Ps.xciii.3 f.)
And so He can save from the tumult of evil and oppression:
He sent from on high, he took me;
He drew me out of great waters.
He delivered me from my strong enemy,
And from them that hated me,
for they were too mighty for me.
(Ps.xviii.16 f.)By terrible things thou wilt answer us in righteousness,
O God of our salvation;
Thou that art the confidence of all the ends of the earth,
And of them that are afar off upon the sea:
Which by his strength setteth fast the mountains;
Being girded about with might:
Which stilleth the roaring of the seas, the roaring of their waves,
And the tumult of the peoples.
They also that dwell in the uttermost parts are afraid at thy tokens.
(Ps.lxv.5‑8.)
It was, perhaps, familiarity with this metaphor, which led the priestly historian to elaborate the story of Noah as a type of Israel overwhelmed, as it were, in their captivity, by the 'great floods' of Gentile oppression.
(Test. Naph.vi.) And it certainly inspired a later writer to picture the dispersion of the Jews in the same fashion. In the Testament of Naphthali, Naphthali and his brother patriarchs enter a boat. And suddenly there come a storm and a great whirlwind, and their father Jacob is whirled away from the helm and separated from them. The boat fills, is smashed by the waves, and the patriarchs are scattered on planks to the ends of the earth. Then Levi puts on sackcloth and prays to the Lord. Immediately the storm ceases, and the boat, now once more seaworthy, makes the land in peace. And there they find Jacob and rejoice together. So a simple hope that God will cause the stormy dispersion of Israel among the nations to cease, and will gather all the tribes together once more, finds expression in this same metaphor of a storm. The sequence is precisely that of the Psalms. Tumult and oppression pictured as a storm intervention by God‑peace.
Exactly the same sequence occurs in Mark in two consecutive miracles.
First of all the scene is the sea. Jesus and the disciples enter a boat. A whirlwind springs up, the sea rages, and the boat
fills. Jesus, however, is asleep in the bow. In fear they wake him and call upon him. He rebukes the wind and the sea, and
immediately both are calm.
And thereupon they come to the other side and meet a man possessed, whose frenzy, like that of the storm, cannot be tamed or
fettered by man. Jesus drives the devil out, and the man is left clothed and in his right mind, sitting at his feet. (Mk.iv.35‑v.20.)
The close sequence of these two miracles, and the movement of the narrative from the storm of the sea to the tumult of the man, and from the calm of the sea to the peace of the man, reproduces the sequence and the movement of the passages cited from the Psalms. Jesus stills the troubled waters and the tribulation of the people. It is difficult to think that this general Old Testament background was absent from the mind of the author of the gospel, and that he did not expect his readers to be aware that the hope of Israel is here being fulfilled. There is more here than a mere record of two episodes in the life of Jesus in their correct chronological order. For, though the literary critic has no reason to dismiss either or both of these miracles as unhistorical and to regard them as allegories or myths, and no reason even to doubt that they may have happened in close sequence, he has good reason to suppose that they belong together not primarily because of an interest in chronological sequence, but because their significance lies in this conjunction. Mark is not here arguing about the fulfilment of Old Testament prophecy; he is simply setting down in writing a material which itself contains the answer to the question of the disciples: 'Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?' But the answer is intelligible only if the Old Testament context be recognized, and the conjunction of these two episodes makes this possible.
Indeed, not these miracles only, but the whole gospel of Mark provokes that
question, and suggests with it the answer to it.
The opening words of the gospel are a bold and provocative proclamation of a thesis. 'The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ,
the Son of God.'(Mk.i.1.) ('the Son of God' is omitted in some
manuscripts. The Marcan gospel is the record of Jesus as the Christ, the Son of God, whether or no the words 'Son of God' are authentic.)
The narrative is knit together so that it supports, still more provocatively, the same thesis. It begins by
showing that John was a prophet (Mk.i.2‑8.), preparing the way of the Lord by prophesying
that a mightier than he will baptize with the Holy Ghost. (Mk.i.10.)
The Holy Ghost descends upon Jesus, and his words and actions declare the presence in the midst of the Jewish people of the mighty
one to whose advent John had borne witness. He resists Satan in the wilderness,
drives him out of his possessions, (Mk.i.13)
restores freedom to those who have been his prey. (Mk.i.26, 34.)
His teaching and his powers alike reveal his authority, (Mk.i.22, 27.) which puzzles those that witness it (Mk.i.24; iii.11; v.7.), but is no
puzzle either to the evangelist or to the powers of evil.
He forgives sins, and exercises authority over the Sabbath (Mk.ii.5, 27 f.).
But his power is misconstrued and his authority doubted.
Accordingly, various misconstructions are illustrated one after another, and immediately refuted.
A leper takes him to be an arbitrary wonder‑worker -
lf you like, you can cleanse me (Mk.i.40.)
‑ and, although indeed cleansed, is roundly rebuked and then sent to show himself to the priest.
Some think that Jesus is beside himself, (Mk.iii.21 f.) others that he is possessed, and he
immediately in their presence indicates his authority both by word and by action.
Can Satan drive out Satan? (Mk.iii.23‑29.)
To credit Jesus with evil power is blasphemy against the Holy Spirit.
He is neither John the Baptist, nor Elijah, nor yet one of the prophets returned from the powers of death (Mk.vi.14
f; 33; viii.28.).
He is not the worldly messiah of Peter's inadequate confession (Mk.viii.29, 33; .35‑37.),
nor the successor of King David expected by the scribes.
Indeed, his works testify as much.
The messiah of common expectation might have healed with the hem of his garment (Mk.v.27‑29.), have
stilled the waves of the sea with a word (Mk.iv.39.), have penetrated the thoughts of men (Mk.ii.8.), but would he have dared to reject the chosen race? (Mk..9;
xi.14.)
Even the disciples of Jesus fail to understand him, although he sets before them the humiliation imposed upon him by divine
necessity and revealed in the Old Testament scriptures (Mk.viii.31; ix.12 f.; x.38; xiv.21, 49.).
So the people reject him; the rulers reject him; the disciples forsake him and flee. And then, in the depth of rejection, when God
too seems to have forsaken him, faith was born. (Mk.xiv.1; xv,11; xiv.50; xv.34.)
When the centurion, who stood over against him, saw that he so gave up the ghost, he said, 'Truly this man was Son of God'. (Mk. xv. 39.)
(Son of God is in the original Greek anarthrous. It is, however, doubtful whether it is for that reason capable of being translated 'a son of God' as in the R.V. margin, since otherwise the anarthrous phrase pneuma Theou in the Matthaean account of the baptism might be translated 'a spirit of God'. (Mt.iii.16.)
If this is to any extent a right impression of the Marcan gospel, the forces that were working upon the
author clearly need further investigation. Mark had been led to write, neither simply by a desire to recount the life of Jesus as
a bare chronological record, nor yet by a demand for a facsimile of his ministry and passion. The chronology of the Gospel may be,
roughly at least, correct. And events may have happened much as he described, yet the narrative is primarily conditioned by the
definite intention of proclaiming the gospel of Jesus Christ. It was this intention that led the evangelist to give form and order
to the material and to emphasize and clarify the tradition that he had received.
But why this particular form?
And why this particular emphasis and clarification?
These are the primary questions to which the critical historian must give an answer.
Did the needs of the primitive church, its preaching, its manner of apologetic, its spiritual experience, the innate conceptions
of its non‑Jewish converts or the peculiar theologizing of St. Paul, cause him to complicate the simple story of the
vigorous life and tragic death of a Jewish reformer, and to invest them with this heavy significance?
Or was there a complication in the material itself, which drove him so to order it, that clearer expression might be given to the
interpretation which it inevitably and unmistakably demanded?
Why, for instance, did he again and again, in portraying his subject, use the medium of Old Testament aspiration?
Was it because the apostolic age had been driven to do so in the hope of compelling the attention of the Jewish world?
Or was it that Old Testament aspiration did in fact condition the teaching and action of Jesus, so that he went to his death
consciously in order that the scripture might be fulfilled, and ordered his ministry to that end?
In other words, is the particular Marcan ordering an imposition upon the original history, or the very essence of it? Why, above
all, was the evangelist occupied primarily with the person of Jesus, rather than with his teaching; or, at least, why did he
regard the teaching as intelligible only to those who perceived the significance of his person?
Was it because the religious needs of early converts, and in particular of Gentile converts, had already distorted the life of a
humane moralist, or of a fanatic proclaiming that the end of the world is at hand in order that they might have an assurance of
salvation and so indulge their longing for eternal life?
Or was it because the moral demands of Jesus were occasioned by the peculiarity of his relation to God, and were therefore final,
ultimate and eschatological?
And was it because the peculiarity of this relation and the ultimate character of his demands were fully manifested only in his
death and resurrection?
These are some of the problems raised by the gospel of Mark, and raised even more clearly by the authors of the gospels of Matthew and Luke when they prefaced the story of the ministry of Jesus by the stories of the nativity, and by St. Paul (Phil.ii.5‑11.) and the authors of the fourth Gospel (Jn.i.1‑14.) and of the Epistle to the Hebrews (Heb.i.1‑3.) when they set Jesus on a cosmological and almost mystical background.
So the result of an examination of the gospels as they stand is that they were written with a clear and unmistakable purpose. They were written in order to declare that the life and death of Jesus were the fulfilment of the promises made by the living God through the prophets and psalmists of Israel. They were written in order to bear witness to the superseding and fulfilment of the Mosaic Law by the gospel, and to the emergence of the new Israel by faith in Jesus. When the author of the fourth Gospel stated in the preface that the, Word was made flesh (Jn.i.14.); that is, that the word which had formerly been written on two tables of stone had now been written in the flesh and blood of Jesus; and when he also declared that whereas the law came by Moses, grace and truth came by Jesus Christ, he gave formal expression to what was everywhere implied in the earlier gospels. The four evangelists agree in setting the life and death of Jesus firmly within the context of the Old Testament scriptures; and each evangelist presumes that no other context can provide an adequate understanding of the nature of the action that God had wrought through his Son, Jesus Christ.
No modern critic can leave the matter here. All that has been so far established is that the evangelists have written their gospels with a purpose. But the four gospels are not independent literary works. Two at least of the evangelists were literary editors rather than authors. The author of the fourth Gospel certainly knew St. Mark's gospel, probably knew also St. Luke's gospel, and perhaps was familiar with all three synoptic gospels. If therefore one main purpose of the historical criticism of the New Testament is to discover the origin of this peculiar interweaving of the Old Testament with the life and death of Jesus of Nazareth, it is imperative that some attempt be made to go behind the synoptic gospels as they stand, in order if possible to lay bare the nature of the tradition concerning Jesus before it was handled by the editors and incorporated in their narratives. This involves a careful investigation of the methods of editing employed by the evangelists where these methods can be tested. The whole problem is commonly called The Synoptic Problem.
For the influence of Psalm x on the passion narratives in the synoptic gospels see Professor Martin Dibelius From Tradition to Gospel, English translation, London, 1934, Chapter VIII.