CHAPTER XIII.INTEGRITY OF THE GOSPELS.

As stated in former chapters, this is to be presumed till the contrary is shown. There is, however, strong confirmation from many sources.

First.—The writings of the Apostolic Fathers present to our view the Christ of the Gospels, in his advent and life, ministry and teaching, death and resurrection. In particular, his resurrection from the dead is cited by Clement (A.D. 97) as an earnest of that of his followers, and as a proof that he came forth from God. The greatest of miracles, and the central fact of Christianity, appears in the earliest writings (outside of the New Testament), the date of which can be determined. Judge Waite, in his “wonderful hundred[1]years of silence by Christian writers” concerning the miracles of Christ, is oblivious of what he had before stated, that aside from the Gospels, there are left of the first century “only the Epistles of Paul, the one Epistle of Clement of Rome, some slight notices by Jewish and heathen writers, and the few legends and traditions preserved in the writings of the Fathers.” Such an argument from silence,where there are no writings extant, is not befittinga judge.

Second.—The earliest quotations substantially agree with the Canonical Gospels. Some of those by Justin Martyr have been given in chapters five and six, and those by Clement may be found in the Note.[2]These quotations by Apostolic and Christian Fathers, afford ample[3]means for comparison, and no variations appear to indicate any changes to affect the character or teachings of our Lord. Professor Fisher says[4]ofJustin’sreferences, that they embrace “not more” than two sayings of Jesus that have not substantial parallels in the four Evangelists. The first is, “In whatthings I shall apprehend you, in these will I judge you,” which is found also in Clement of Alexandria, and Hippolytus. The second is, “There shall be schisms and heresies,” a prediction referred also to Christ by Tertullian. These sayings may have come fromtradition. It seems not improbable that they were current expressions, embodying what Jesus taught[5]respecting the standard by which men shall be judged according to the light which they have received, and divisions in the same household. (Seecc. 6 to 8ante).

Third.—The facts in Christ’s history referred to by the Fathers, with very rare exceptions (the most of which were stated and explained in chapter seven), correspond with the Evangelists. The exceptional facts are such as would naturally have been derived from tradition, and they in no way change the life or character of our Lord as they appear in the Gospels. The marvel is, that they should be so few and unimportant, considering that some of the writers lived at a time when[6]“traditionary reminiscences must have possessed all their freshness.”

Fourth.—Marcion’s Gospel (written as early as the year 145), except in intentional omissions and mutilations, for which he was sharply called to an account by Tertullian, presents a substantial agreement with Luke’s Gospel. Judge Waite claims that it was earlier than Luke’s; but the almost unanimous verdict of scholars is against him. Indeed, Professor Fisher, in the March number of thePrinceton Reviewfor 1881 (p. 217), says: “That Marcion’s Gospel was an abridgment of our Luke isnow conceded on all hands, even by the author of ‘Supernatural Religion.’ Dr. Sanday has not only demonstrated this by a linguistic argument, but has proved by a comparison of texts that the Gospel of the Canon must have been for some time in use, and have attained to a considerable circulation, before Marcion applied to it his pruning-knife. There is no reason to doubt that he took for his purpose a Gospel of established authority in the Church.” Professor Curtiss also says that “the weight of scholarship isoverwhelmingly in favor of the priority of Luke.” And he quotes from the last edition of the “Supernatural Religion,” the admission referred to by Professor Fisher. Its anonymous author says that Dr. Sanday’s very able examination “has convinced us that our earlier hypothesis is untenable; that the portions of our third Synoptic, excluded from Marcion’s Gospel, were really written by the same pen which composed the mass of the work; and, consequently, that our third Synoptic existed in his time, and was substantially in the hands of Marcion.” Dr. Sanday[7]shows, as he expresses it, that Marcion’s Gospel stands to Luke’s “entirely in the relation ofdefect. We may say entirely, for the additions are so insignificant—some thirty words in all, and those for the most part supported by other authority—that for practical purposes they are not to be reckoned. With the exception of these thirty words inserted, and also some slight alterations of phrase, Marcion’s Gospel presents simply anabridgmentof our St. Luke.” That Marcion’s Gospel was not one of Justin’s “Memoirs,” is plain from his calling him a wolf,[7]“sent forth by the devil.” Although Marcion’s Gospel is not in existence, except as reproduced from the works of Tertullian and Epiphanius, its agreement with Luke (with the exceptions which they pointed out) becomes important evidence that Luke is to-day as it was in the year one hundred and forty-five.

Fifth.—Our Gospels and Acts before the close of the second century of our era were translated into other languages, and the Syriac, Coptic and Latin versions which have come down to us with some imperfections and slight variations, are in substantial agreement with our present version in all that is material. A translation of a given date presumably represents a text of greater age than itself. Hence the manuscripts from which these translations were made were older than the year two hundred, and probably older than the year one hundred and fifty.

Sixth.—The early and continued multiplication of copiesaffords strong evidence. Those who copied from originals deemed authentic would certainly endeavor to make exact copies. As these Memoirs were read in all the churches, and, doubtless, in Christian families and Christian schools, they soon became very numerous. There was fraternal intercourse between the churches. Any substantial difference in the copies would be noticed. Any such differences would be transmitted in copies made from these copies, and so on, to the manuscripts which have reached us. The number of copies before the tenth persecution (commenced A.D. 300, and lasting ten years) must have reached many thousands.[8]So complete was then supposed to be the extinction of Christianity, that coins were struck and inscriptions set up, recording the fact, that the “Christian superstition” was now utterly exterminated, and the worship of the gods restored by Diocletian, who assumed the name of Jupiter, and Maximian, who took that of Hercules. This persecution, in addition to the destruction of life, was specially[9]directed to the destruction of copies of the Scriptures.

Seventh.—Constantine, their successor, in the year 331, caused fifty copies of the Scriptures to be made for Byzantium, under the care of Eusebius of Cæsarea, the church historian. The manuscript discovered by the celebrated Tischendorf, in 1859, at the convent of St. Catherine, on Mount Sinai, is believed to be one of those copies, and to be the oldest[10]Greek manuscript in existence.Ifone of the fifty, it is more than fifteen hundred years old. It is called the Sinaitic Codex. The second rank belongs to the Vatican Codex. Its date is probably not later than the fourth century. The next in the order of time is the Alexandrian Codex. Its date is the latter part of the fourth century or the beginning of the fifth century. The Vatican has been in the Vatican Library since 1445. The Alexandrian was sent, in 1628, by the Patriarch of Constantinople, to Charles I., and is now in the British Museum. The Sinaitic was presented by its discoverer to the Emperor of Russia. There is nodoubt whatever that these three manuscripts were written back of the “dark ages,” and at a time when the true text could be known with great exactness, and was comparatively free from errors. With these, there are fifty manuscripts that are a thousand years old. There are, it is estimated, more than seventeen hundred manuscripts of the whole, or portions, of the New Testament, ranging in date from the fourth to the sixteenth century. Providence, says Tischendorf, has ordained for the New Testament more sources of the greatest antiquity than are possessed by all the old Greek literature put together. The number of manuscripts of the Greek Classics, says[11]Professor Stowe, is very small compared with the Greek Testament manuscripts, and the oldest of them scarcely reaches nine hundred years. There are such differences between the Sinaitic, Vatican, and Alexandrian manuscripts as indicate that no two of them were taken from the same original. A little reflection will convince any one, that while no single copy may be literally exact from its original, the multiplication of copies adds greatly to substantial accuracy as the result of the whole. For although there is a tendency to a repetition ofsomeerrors, by different copyists from the same original, as where successive sentences end with the same word, yet, in general, different copyists would make different errors, one in one part of the instrument, and the other in another, and, where the copies are numerous, they mutually correct each other. So it happens that in the different manuscripts of the New Testament, with different readings of many thousands (counting all trifles, like the omission to dot anior cross atin English chirography, as different readings), there is substantial agreement. It is a fact to be emphasized, says[12]Professor Fisher, “that the Scriptures are almost utterly free from wilful corruption;” and he endorses the opinion of the great critic, Bentley, that the real text “is competently exact in the worst manuscripts now extant; nor is one article of faith or moral precept either perverted or lost in them.” And examining the subject inhand from a lawyer’s standpoint, theworstmanuscript, or translation, or version, is sufficient for the purposes of the argument. And to cite once more the great authority of Professor Greenleaf,[13]to the genuineness of the Four Gospels: “The entire text of the Corpus Juris Civilis is received as authority in all the courts of Continental Europe, upon much weaker evidence of its genuineness; for the integrity of the Sacred Text has been preserved by the jealousy of opposing sects beyond any moral possibility of corruption; while that of the Roman Civil Law has been preserved only by tacit consent, without the interest of any opposing school to watch over and preserve it from alteration.”

And now (1882) the New Revision, both of the text and of the translation, by scholars who have no superior, and the careful product of ten years’ labor, has been long enough before the world to know the results. Not a single fact or witness to the Resurrection is lost, and not a single doctrine is changed, while many passages are better understood.

[1]He puts the date of the Epistle of Barnabas, A. D. 130, but it is generally placed earlier.[2]“Be merciful that ye may obtain mercy; forgive that it may be forgiven to you; as ye do, so shall it be done unto you; as ye judge so shall ye be judged; as ye are kind so shall kindness be shown to you; with what measure ye mete with the same it shall be measured to you” (c. 13). Matt. vi. 12-15; Matt. vii. 2; Luke vi. 36-38. “This people honoreth me with their lips, but their heart is far from me” (c. 15). Matt. xv. 8; Mark vii. 6. “Woe to that man! It were better for him that he had never been born, than that he should cast a stumbling block before one of my elect, yea it were better for him that a millstone should be hung about his neck, and he should be sunk in the depths of the sea, than that he should cast a stumbling-block before any of my little ones” (c. 46). Matt. xviii. 6; Matt. xxvi. 24; Mark ix, 42; Luke xvii. 2.[3]The entire Gospel could be reproduced from those writings, including Irenæus, Tertullian, Clement of Alexandria, and Origen.[4]ThePrinceton Reviewfor March, 1881, p. 201.[5]Matt. x. 34-36; Luke x. 13-15; Luke xii. 47-53.[6]Bampton Lectures for 1877, p. 221, by the Rev. C. A. Row, M. A., Pembroke College, Oxford, Prebendary of St. Paul’s Cathedral.[7]Ap. I., cc. 22, 58. See also Sanday’s Gospels of the Second Century, p. 214, and “Canonicity,” by A. H. Charteris, D. D., 1880, pp. 76, 393.[8]Norton estimates the number by the close of the second century at sixty thousand, which may be a large estimate.[9]Vol. VII. of McClintock and Strong, p. 966; Neander’s Church History, Vol. I., p. 148. Neander says that Feb. 22, A.D. 303, on one of the great pagan festivals, at the first dawn of day, the magnificent church of Nicomedia (then the imperial residence) was broken open, the copies of the Bible found in it were burned, and the whole church abandoned to plunder and then to destruction. The next day was published an edict that all assembling of Christians for the purpose of religious worship was forbidden; churches were to be demolished to their foundations; all manuscripts of the Bible should be burned; those who held places of honor and rank must renounce their faith, or be degraded; those belonging to the lower walks of private life to be divested of their rights as citizens and freemen; slaves were to be incapable of receiving their freedom so long as they remained Christians; and in judicial proceedings the torture might be used against all Christians of whatsoever rank. “It is quite evident,” says Neander, “that the plan now was to extirpate Christianity from the root.” But it was the darkness which preceded the dawn, for this was thelastof the Pagan persecutions.[10]A facsimile steel engraving forming the frontispiece to Tischendorf’s New Testament, gives specimens of the Greek text in which these three manuscripts are severally written. The difference in the style of the text is one great means by which experts determine the age of the manuscript. The oldest manuscripts are written in large, square, upright capitals; and they are called Uncials. The later manuscripts are written in flowing scripts; they are called Cursives. The proportion of Uncial to Cursive manuscripts is about one to ten. The Cursive was introduced in the tenth century.[11]Origin and History of the Books of the New Testament, by Prof. C. E. Stowe, A.D. 1867, pp. 31, 62.[12]In Scribner’s Monthly for February, 1881, p. 617.[13]An Examination of the Testimony of the Four Evangelists by the rules of Evidence administered in Courts of Justice, etc. By Simon Greenleaf, LL.D., Royal Professor of Law in Harvard University (A.D. 1846), p. 28.

[1]He puts the date of the Epistle of Barnabas, A. D. 130, but it is generally placed earlier.

[2]“Be merciful that ye may obtain mercy; forgive that it may be forgiven to you; as ye do, so shall it be done unto you; as ye judge so shall ye be judged; as ye are kind so shall kindness be shown to you; with what measure ye mete with the same it shall be measured to you” (c. 13). Matt. vi. 12-15; Matt. vii. 2; Luke vi. 36-38. “This people honoreth me with their lips, but their heart is far from me” (c. 15). Matt. xv. 8; Mark vii. 6. “Woe to that man! It were better for him that he had never been born, than that he should cast a stumbling block before one of my elect, yea it were better for him that a millstone should be hung about his neck, and he should be sunk in the depths of the sea, than that he should cast a stumbling-block before any of my little ones” (c. 46). Matt. xviii. 6; Matt. xxvi. 24; Mark ix, 42; Luke xvii. 2.

[3]The entire Gospel could be reproduced from those writings, including Irenæus, Tertullian, Clement of Alexandria, and Origen.

[4]ThePrinceton Reviewfor March, 1881, p. 201.

[5]Matt. x. 34-36; Luke x. 13-15; Luke xii. 47-53.

[6]Bampton Lectures for 1877, p. 221, by the Rev. C. A. Row, M. A., Pembroke College, Oxford, Prebendary of St. Paul’s Cathedral.

[7]Ap. I., cc. 22, 58. See also Sanday’s Gospels of the Second Century, p. 214, and “Canonicity,” by A. H. Charteris, D. D., 1880, pp. 76, 393.

[8]Norton estimates the number by the close of the second century at sixty thousand, which may be a large estimate.

[9]Vol. VII. of McClintock and Strong, p. 966; Neander’s Church History, Vol. I., p. 148. Neander says that Feb. 22, A.D. 303, on one of the great pagan festivals, at the first dawn of day, the magnificent church of Nicomedia (then the imperial residence) was broken open, the copies of the Bible found in it were burned, and the whole church abandoned to plunder and then to destruction. The next day was published an edict that all assembling of Christians for the purpose of religious worship was forbidden; churches were to be demolished to their foundations; all manuscripts of the Bible should be burned; those who held places of honor and rank must renounce their faith, or be degraded; those belonging to the lower walks of private life to be divested of their rights as citizens and freemen; slaves were to be incapable of receiving their freedom so long as they remained Christians; and in judicial proceedings the torture might be used against all Christians of whatsoever rank. “It is quite evident,” says Neander, “that the plan now was to extirpate Christianity from the root.” But it was the darkness which preceded the dawn, for this was thelastof the Pagan persecutions.

[10]A facsimile steel engraving forming the frontispiece to Tischendorf’s New Testament, gives specimens of the Greek text in which these three manuscripts are severally written. The difference in the style of the text is one great means by which experts determine the age of the manuscript. The oldest manuscripts are written in large, square, upright capitals; and they are called Uncials. The later manuscripts are written in flowing scripts; they are called Cursives. The proportion of Uncial to Cursive manuscripts is about one to ten. The Cursive was introduced in the tenth century.

[11]Origin and History of the Books of the New Testament, by Prof. C. E. Stowe, A.D. 1867, pp. 31, 62.

[12]In Scribner’s Monthly for February, 1881, p. 617.

[13]An Examination of the Testimony of the Four Evangelists by the rules of Evidence administered in Courts of Justice, etc. By Simon Greenleaf, LL.D., Royal Professor of Law in Harvard University (A.D. 1846), p. 28.

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