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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
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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;