The early years of the third century

In reviewing this period, it will be convenient to subdivide. Further, under each subdivision the evidence as to the use of the Gospels and as to that of other writings of the NT should be separately examined. There is more than one reason for proceeding thus.

It is probable that, even before a comprehensive collection of the sacred writings of the new dispensation was thought of, its forma- tion was being advanced through the independent formation of groups of writings which afterwards became important constituent elements of the whole body, as well as by the recognition of the authority of individual writings which might or might not belong to these groups.

‘Two of these minor collections, the making of which must readily have suggested itself, would seem to have been that of the Four Gospels and that of the Epistles of St. Paul. The rolls on which the writings of these two classes were written were commonly kept, we may imagine, each in its own roll-case. The evidence as to the reception of the Gospels is affected by special circumstances.

Owing to the nature of their subject-matter—the occurrence of the same sayings and incidents in different Gospels, the possibility that some of these may have been found also in other documents or orally reported—it may not be open to us to infer with certainty the use of any particular Gospel from parallelisms of statement and of language between them and early Christian writers.

On the other hand, when a striking, unusual sentence or phrase found in one of the other writings of NT appears in a work of post-apostolic times, even though it may not be introduced as a quotation, there can generally be little doubt that there is a literary relationship between the two, and that it was not the NT writer who was the borrower. But this is not all. The facts of the life and death and resurrection of Jesus Christ and His words made up the substance of the Gospel.

Owing to the sublimity of the subject, men’s eyes were turned at first solely to it, and away from the witnesses and the form of the records. The substance was felt to be everything. For some time little sense is shown of the importance of reproducing accurately the individual testimony of different writers. There was also a very natural disposition to combine various accounts with a view to greater fulness or succinctness.

Not a few probable illustrations of this tendency might be given, and a very elaborate effort of the kind was made soon after the middle of the 2nd century. The manner in which τὸ εὐαγγέλιον is used (sing. and with def. art.) is another illustration of the same or similar habits of thought. It occurs where the existence of the evangelic history in a written form is implied; and some have inferred that those who so expressed themselves knew only of one such document.

But there seems to be no ground for this. The mode of speech in question shows only that the characteristics of the several written embodiments of the Gospel were but slightly regarded in comparison with its general contents and purport. Writers who unquestion- ably were acguainted with several works of the NEW TESTAMENT CANON 531 nature of Gospels continued so to express them- selves.

And there is a survival of it to this day in the titles of our Gospels—rd εὐαγγέλιον κατά, ‘the Gospel according to,’ this or that evangelist. i. THE SUB-APOSTOLIC AGE, i.e. the generation immediately following that of the apostles. As belonging to this time, we will take only the Ep. of Clement to the Corinthians, the Seven Epp. of Ignatius, in the short Greek or Vossian form, and the Ep. of Polycarp.

Some critics of the highest repute would, besides, assign to it the recently recovered Didaché and the Ep. of Barnabas, and a few more would also include the Shepherd of Hermas. But in an inquiry of this kind it is better to understate than to overstate evidence. Moreover, the present writer is personally inclined to place the composition of these last three writings in the second quarter of the 2nd cent.

And it will be very generally admitted now that the case for placing them earlier than this is far less strong than that for the others, and that they do not, by their authorship, create the same kind of link with the apostolic age. Those writings before mentioned may, indeed, with great confidence be declared to be the genuine works of the men with whose names they are connected.

Two of the writers at least, and probably all three, had known apostles, and held positions of eminence in the Church at the close of the first and near the be- ginning of the 2nd cent. There are very strong reasons for believing that the Ep. written to the Church of Corinth in the name of that of Rome, which has from very early times been attributed to Clement, is really his work, and for referring it to the close of the reign of Domitian, c. A.D. 95 (see Lightfoot, Clem. Rom. i. p. 346 ff.

, and Harnack, Chronol. i. p. 251 ff.) Again, the genuineness of the Seven Epp. of Ignatius dis- covered by Voss in the Medicean MS has been firmly established by the labours of Zahn and Lightfoot. This is fully admitted by Harnack (Chronol. i. p. 381 ff.) Their exact date cannot be quite so clearly determined. Lightfoot sup- poses it to be δ. A.D. 110. Harnack was a few years ago inclined to place them near to A.D. 140 (see Expos. for 1886, pp.

15-22); but he now speaks in a very hesitating manner (Chronol. i. p. 395 f.) The only reason for questioning the genuineness of the Ep. of Polycarp falls to the ground when that of Epp. of Ignatius is admitted, and its date is fixed by a reference in it as only later by a few weeks than theirs. (1) Evidence as to the use of the Gospels.—Sayings of Christ are cited in the writings now before us, as spoken by Him, but not as from a written source or sources.

From the first days of the Church the Lord’s Words must have been treasured as Divine Oracles. And as a sense of their authority must have preceded their being com- mitted to writing, so also after this it would naturally be independent of that of the record, and the habit of referring to them directly, with- out considering the intermediary through whom or which they were delivered, might continue.

The facts just noticed in connexion with the writings of the Apostolic Fathers are an illustration of this. Their usage is still that of St. Paul in 1 Co 7", or in the Address to the Elders at Miletus (Ac 20° They may, in spite of this, have taken their quota- tions from documents, and those, too, our Gospels. It is a point not easy to decide. In the Ep. of Clem.

sayings are quoted as the Lord’s closely corresponding, indeed, in substance with such as are recorded in our Gospels, but which differ from them to a greater or less degree in form. It is to be observed, too, that Polycarp (c. ii.) quotes in part the same sayings as Clement in the former of these passages, with the same divergences from our CANON NEW TESTAMENT Gospels [μνημονεύοντες δὲ ὧν εἶπεν ὁ Κύριος διδάσκων " .

Μὴ κρίνετε, ἵνα μὴ κριθῆτε " ἀφίετε καὶ ἀφεθήσεται ὑμῖν" ἐλεᾶτε, ἵνα ἐλεηθῆτε" ᾧ μέτρῳ μετρεῖτε ἀντιμετρηθήσεται ὑμῖν "᾿ καὶ ὅτι ' Μακάριοι οἱ πτωχοὶ καὶ οἱ διωκόμενοι ἕνεκεν δικαιοσύνης, ὅτι αὐτῶν ἐστιν ἡ βασιλεία τοῦ Geod’ | ; while, to pass for a moment beyond our present period, the whole piece of Christ’s teaching which | occurs in Clem. Rom. ec. xiii. is given in the same form by Clement of Alexandria (Strom. ii. 18).

It has been argued that these peculiarities, recur- ring in more than one writer, point to a docu- mentary source other than our Gospels.

If, how- ever, the passages in question are examined, it will be seen that they appear to have the character of summaries, and that their differences from the Gospels ay well be accounted for as the effects of compression and of the combination of phrases derived from the parallel passages in our Gospels, or in documents which have been embodied in our Gospels. General considerations which have already occupied us have prepared us for this phenomenon.

For such traits as cannot be ex- plained in this way, and which ought not to be re- garded as accidental variations, there would seem to be a sufficient explanation in the influence of Oral Tradition, which was doubtless still powerful in the Sub-apostolic Age. Further, the persistence of certain features, which has been noticed, in the quotations of sayings and collections of sayings, mnay reasonably be traced to catechetical instruc- tion and the impressions left by it.

Such com- pendia of precepts, from the Sermon on the Mount and other parts of our Lord’s teaching, may well have been imprinted thus upon the memory of Christians generally, and consequently quoted by writers who were familiar with the Gospels, as Clem. Alex. was. In Polye. vii. we have a clause of the Lord’s Prayer, as given both in Mt and Lk, with the difference only that it is turned into the indirect form; also words spoken by our Lord in Gethsemane, exactly as in Mt and Mk.

[δεήσεσιν αἰτούμενοι τὸν παντεπόπτην θεὸν ‘uh εἰσενεγκεῖν ἡμᾶς εἰς πειρασμόν." καθὼς εἶπεν ὁ Κύριος " "τὸ μὲν πνεῦμα πρόθυμον, ἡ δὲ σὰρξ ἀσθενής᾽ (cf. Mt 63 or Lk 114; Mt 2641 or Mk eed; For further parallelisms with the language of the Gospels and for allusions to incidents in the life of Christ in the two writings so far considered, see among other passages—Clem. Rom. xvi. end (Mt 11%-®), xxiv. (Mt 138, Mk 48, Lk 8°); Polyc. v. (Mk 935, Mt 2078), xii. (Mt 5).

Ignatius was led by his controversy with Docet- ism to dwell upon the facts of our Lord’s human life and sufferings rather than upon His teaching ; and the only saying of Christ which he expressly quotes is one asserting the verity of His corporeal nature after His resurrection [ὅτε πρὸς τοὺς περὶ Πέτρον ἦλθεν, ἔφη αὐτοῖς " " Λάβετε, ψΨηλαφήσατέ με καὶ ἴδετε ὅτι οὐκ εἰμὶ δαιμόνιον ἀσώματον" (Smyrn. iii.)]

The incident referred to seems to be that recorded in Lk 24%, where the words of our Lord are similar in substance and partly in form. According to Origen, however (de Princ. pref. 8), they were contained in The Preaching of Peter in the same form as in Ignatius. Eusebius, on the other hand (HE iii. 36), who notes the fact that Ignatius has the saying, declares that he does not know whence it was taken; while Jerome (de Vir. Illustr. 16) says that it occurred in the Gospel acc. to the Hebrews.

It is possible that a writing which con- tained the saying may have existed in the time of Ignatius, and that he may have obtained it thence ; | but it is at least an equally probable supposition that he derived it from oral tradition; and that from the same source it passed into one or more Apocryphal Gospels. We shall have occasion to recur to the question of the use made of apocryphal writings in the 2nd century. NEW TESTAMENT CANON There are in the Epp.

of Ignatius several allu- sions to incidents in the life of Christ which are recorded in our Gospels as well as parallelisms of expression with them, and among these, in two places, some remarkable coincidences with the thought and language of Jn. See Eph. xiv. (Mt 12%, Lk 6); Trall. xi. (Mt 1618); Rom. vii. (Jn 4%) ; Philad. vii. (Jn 38); Smyrn. i. (Mt 315 and other points); Smyrn. vi. (Mt 1913}; Polye. ii. (Mt 10"). See also Magn. xi. and Trail. ix. In Philad. ν.

his language suggests the idea that he was thinking of the Gospel as embodied in a written form; for he speaks of it as something to which Christians could as it were turn, and refers in the same context to the prophets. At the same time a passage in c. viii. of the same Ep. seems to show the difference between the position which any written Gospels had so far attained and that of the OT (comp. Lightfoot, Epp. of Ignat. ad loc. and also ib. vol. i. p. 388).

(2) The evidence as to the use of other writings of NT at this time may be treated much more briefly —St. Paul’s first Ep. to the Corinthians is expressly referred to in the Ep. of Clement to the same Church (xlvii.), and St. Paul’s Ep. to the Philippians in that of Polyearp (xi.)

Thus NT writings are actually mentioned in two of the cases in which it is most natural that they should be ; these are exceptions which, if they do not explain, are consistent with, the habit of not quoting by name where there was not the same kind of reason for it. Coincidences of phrase with various NT Epp., so striking from their character or number as to leave no doubt whence they are derived, occur in the three writers under consideration: in Clem. Rom. with He (xxxvi. and xliii.)

; in Polye. with 1 P (i. ii. v. vii. viii. x.) and 1 Jn (vii.) ; in Jgnat. with 1 Co (Zphes. xvi. xviii.) and with Eph (Polye. y.) Indications more or less clear of a knowledge of other NT writings might be named, e.g. of 2 Co, Gal, and 1 and 2 Ti in Polycarp. All these facts, while interesting and important as regards the books of NT immediately concerned, also have a bearing on the question of the use of the Gospels.

They show that absence of direct citation in this age can have little weight for proving want of know- ledge. Further, the sign of acquaintance with 1 Jn in Ep. of Polyc. has significance in regard to the Gospel ace. to Jn also. On internal grounds there is strong reason for attributing these to the same author, and the circulation of the one cannot have been separated by any great interval from that of the other.

The signs of knowledge of the apostolic writings in Polyearp are, it may be observed in conclusion, remarkable, and far greater than in Clement or Ignatius, in spite of his Epistle being far shorter. This may be reasonably accounted for by the con- sideration that he was in all probability a much younger man, and that he had acquired familiarity with those writings from his youth. ii, THE SECOND QUARTER OF THE SECOND