MR. SANDAY ON THE GOSPELS IN THE SECOND CENTURY.*
MR. SANDAY'S book is not meant to be a popular one, but it is a very important one for the critical side of the question as to the authenticity of the New Testament, and it is hardly possible to conceive of a writer of greater fairness, candour, and scrupulousness. The problem with which he has to deal is the external evidence afforded by quotations or apparent quotations from the canonical Gospels, in the fathers of the second century, of the existence of those Gospels at that time. This problem is a very complicated one, because in the first place, these fathers were in the constant habit of quoting loosely from memory, whenever only short quotations were adduced,—the roll of MS. being by no means as easy to refer to as our pocket Bibles,—and because, in the second place, it is never quite certain whether they might not be quoting from some copy, translation, or other version of the authority referred to, which was slightly different from all the still extant MSS., and yet not more different from them than they are from each other. The Vatican MS. of the canonical Gospels differs materially from the Sinaitic MS. The early Syriac version differs materially from the early Latin version. And so it is quite possible that one of the early fathers may be quoting from a genuine copy or version of one of the canonical Gospels, and yet not from one agreeing with any of the extant MSS. All this makes it a problem of great complexity to judge whether, where one of the canonical Gospels appears to be referred to, it was really one of these, or some quite different authority, partially agreeing with one of these, as these partially agree with each other, from which the quotation was made. A great many things need to be taken into account,—first, the habits of the particular writer when quoting avowedly from sacred works, like the Septuagint or the Hebrew Old Testament; next, the number of peculiar words or phrases in the passage selected which do not occur in any other extant gospel, and do not seem likely to have belonged to any of the apocryphal gospels of which we have any account ; and again, the character of the differences (where they exist) between the quotation and the canonical gospel. All these points Mr. Sanday examines with the greatest care and the utmost candour, and certainly the im- pression he leaves upon us is that his examination demon- strates the existence, in forms quite as like the best extant MSS. as these are to each other, of all the four Gospels early in the second century,—so early as to make it pretty certain that they were really in existence before the end of the first century. Indeed if Mr. Sanday is right in supposing (with some hesitation) that Clement of Rome (who almost certainly wrote before the end of the first century) quoted from Matthew and Luke, and in believing, with much more confidence, that he quoted a peculiar version of a passage in Isaiah which is given in St. Mark's Gospel, through the medium of St. Mark, it will be at once clear on this ground alone that the three synoptic Gospels, or at least the parts of them referred to, were in existence before the end of the first century.
However, the strongest part of this volume is the argument
• The Geipe'i n Me Second Century: an Examination f the Critical Part of a Work entitled "Supernatural Religion." By W. Sendai, Xd. London: Macmillan. derived from Marcion's mutilation of St. Luke, which Mr. Sanday proves conclusively to be a mutilation, by showing that if you derive criteria of St. Luke's style solely from that part of St. Luke which Marcion retained, you find these very same criteria in the most marked form in those parts of St. Luke which Marcion excised. Now there is no doubt that Marcion's Gospel was treated, in his own time, by the Christian writers as a mutilated copy of St. Luke ; but modern critics have ventured to doubt that view of it, and to treat St. Luke as an expanded and increased form of the original Gospel preserved by Marcion. The argument which refutes this view is, to our minds, really final ; nor could it be treated by any calmer or more dispassionate method than Mr. Sanday applies. If, however, it be granted, as it must, we think, be granted, that Marcion's Gospel, which he used freely in Rome about 140 A.D., is a mutilated copy of St. Luke, further inferences as to the age of that Gospel (which was pretty certainly not the earliest of the three synoptics) are legitimate :— 'If Marcion's Gospel was an extract from a manuscript containing our present St. Luke, then not only is it certain that that Gospel was already in existence, but there is further evidence to show that it must have been in existence for some time. The argument in this case is drawn from another branch of Biblical science to which we have already had occasion to appeal,—text-criticism. Marcion's Gospel, it is known, presents certain readings which differ both from the received and other texts It will be observed that the readings given above have all what is called a Western ' character. The Curetonian Syriac is well known to have Western affinities. Cod3. a, b, c, and the fragment of i which extends from Luke x. 6 to =Hi. 10, represent the most primitive typo of the Old Latin version ; e, if, and 1 give a more mixed text. Aa we should expect, the revised Latin text of Cod. f has no representation in Marcion's Gospel. These textual phenomena are highly interesting, but at the same time an exact analpis of them is difficult. No simple hypothesis will account for them. There can be no doubt that Marcion's readings are, in the technical sense, false ; they are a deviation of the pure and unadulterated text. At a certain point, evidently of the re- motest antiquity, in the history of transcription, there was a branching- off which gave rise to those varieties of reading which, though they are not confined to Western manuscripts, still, from their preponderance in these, are called by the general name of 'Western.' But when we come to consider the relations among those Western documents themselves, no regular descent or filiation seems traceable. Certain broad lines indeed we can mark off as between the earlier and later forms of the Old Latin, though even here the outline is in places confused ; but at what point arc we to insert that most remarkable document of antiquity, the Curetonian Syriac? For instance, there are cases (e.g., xvii. 2, xxiii. 2) where Marcion and the Old Latin are opposed to the Old Syriac, whore the latter has undoubtedly preserved the correct reading. To judge from these alone, we should naturally conclude that the Syriac was simply an older and purer type than Marcion's Gospel and the Latin. But then again, on the other hand, there are cases (such as the omission of xxi. 18) where Marcion and the Syriac are combined, and the Old Latin adheres to the truer typo. This will tend to show that, even at that early period, there mast have been some comparison and correction —a convergence as well as a divergence—of manuscripts, and not always a more reproduction of the particular copy which the scribe had before him ; at the same time, it will also show that Marcion's Gospel, so far from being an original document, has behind it a deep historical background, and stands at the head of a series of copies which have already passed through a number of hands, and been caposed to a proportionate amount of corruption. Our author [the author of Supernatural Religion] is inclined to lay stress upon the slow multiplication and dissemination of MSS.' Perhaps he may some- what exaggerate this, as antiquarians give us a surprising account of the ease and rapidity with which hooks were produced by the aid of slave-labour. But even at Rome the publishing trade upon this large scale was a novelty dating back no further than Atticus, the friend of Cicero, and we should naturally expect that among the Christians—a poor and widely scattered body, whose tenets would cut them off from tho use of such public machinery—the multiplication of MSS. would be slower and more attended with difficulty. But the slower it was the more certainly do such phenomena as these of Marcion's text throw back tho origin of the prototype from which that text was derived. In the year 140 A.D. Marcion possesses a Gospel which is already in an advanced stage of transcription—which has not only undergone those changes which in some regions the text under- went before it was translated into Latin, but has undergone other changes besides. Some of its peculiarities are not those of the earliest form of the Latin version, but of that version in what may be called its second stage (e.g., xvi. 12). It has also affinities to another version kindred to the Latin, and occupying a similar place to the Old Latin among the Churches of Syria. These circumstances together point to an antiquity fully as great as any that an orthodox critic would claim."
Here, then, we have phenomena of textual corruption in the mutilated copy of St. Luke used by Marcion, which point to a considerable history of comparison and revision among the earlier MSS. and versions. No evidence can be more satisfactory in favour of the very early existence of that one of the three synoptic Gospels, which was, in all probability, the last of the three to assume the form in which we now have it.
Mr. Sanday draws the same inference from the quotations in Justin Martyr, the publication of whose works may be dated about 145 A.D., or about five years before the middle of the second century. There is ample proof that Justin used either all the three synoptics, sometimes borrowing from one and sometimes from another ; or that if this be not the exact account of the phe.. nomena, that at least he frequently used the latest of the three texts, —the text, for instance, adopted in St. Luke, when that text is clearly a corruption of the earlier text common to Matthew and Mark. Thus
in the passage where our Lord says that in the resurrection men neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels in
heaven, Matthew and Mark both have Zig yyEAot, while Luke has iciriyyrAst (" equal to the angels "), a form which occurs nowhere else in the New Testament, and "so far as we know," says Mr.
Sanday, "nowhere else in Greek before this passage," and which had probably been coined by the third Evangelist. Now, it is re- markable that in this instance, Justin uses the phrase of the third Evangelist, and not thatof the two earlier ones,—a convincing proof that if he had not all three, his authorities were, at least, not more authentic and earlier than the earlier of the Gospels, but less so. So that Mr. Sanday contends :—
"We are thus brought once more to the old result. If Justin did not use our Gospels in their present shape as they have come down to us, lie used them in a later shape, not in an earlier. His resemblances to them cannot be accounted for by the supposition that he had access to the materials out of which they were composed, because he reproduces features which by the nature of the case cannot have been present in those originals, but of which we are still able to trace the authorship and the exact point of their insertion. Our Gospels form a secondary stage in the history of the text, Justin's quotations a tertiary. In order to reach the state in which it is found in Justin, the road lies through our Gospels, and not outside them."
And this conclusion is not that of an apologist anxious to s train every point in favour of the authority of our Gospels. Nothing can be less like Mr. Sanday than that. Here, for instance, is his admission of the probability that Justin Martyr, besides using our Gospels, used also some apocryphal gospel or gospels, though he cannot determine what they were :—
"And yet large as is the approximation to Justin's text that may be made without stirring beyond the bounds of attested readings within the Canon, I still retain the opinion previously expressed that he did also make use of some extra-canonical book or books, though what the precise document was the data are far too insufficient to enable us to determine. So far as the history of our present Gospels is concerned, I have only to insist upon the alternative that Justin either used those Gospels themselves, or else a later work, of the nature of a harmony based upon them. The theory (if it is really held) that he was ignorant of our Gospels in any shape seems to me, in view of the facts, wholly =tenable."
On the whole, we may safely say that no one can follow Mr. Sanday through this painstaking and laborious work, withoutbeing struck by his conscientiousness, impartiality, and complete can- dour; and that no one can follow him without coming to the con- clusion that the four Gospels were really in constant use very early in the second century, and this, too, in forms to make it all but certain that they were in existence in the first. That being granted, it is a question of internal criticism to which part of the first century we should refer them. And for our own parts, we should have no hesitation, judging by the complete absence of any account of the resurrection in the second Gospel, —which really ends at the finding of the empty tomb,—and the mere fragment of an account in the first, — and judging further by the evident confusion in both gospels between the prophecy of the destruction of Jerusalem and the prophecy of the last judgment,—in referring both the first two Gospels to a period very much earlier than the destruction of Jerusalem, in the year 70 A.D. It is all but impossible that Gospels com- posed after that event, and at the end of the century, should have treated the resurrection and the predicted destruction of Jerusa- lem in the way in which they are treated by the Gospels bearing the names of Matthew and Mark.
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