(4) After fifteen or twenty years (c. 45-50 a.p.) Christianity began to reach out into the great Roman world by the labours of the Apostle Paul and many others; and it became necessary to translate the Gospel story into Greek, since the non-Palestinian Jews and the Gentiles did not know Aramaic—the language in which the story had arisen, and had thus far been handed down. That this translation took place 50-80 a.p. is proved by our present Greek Gospels and the early disappearance of all Aramaic Gospel documents. Now there is every reason to think that this translation of the Memorabilia of Jesus was a process rather than an act. The data do not permit us to think of one formal, authoritative translation, comprising the whole Gospel story, and passing directly into the use of all the Greek- speaking Christians. Rather there were numerous persons in various places and at different times who translated portions— the same as well as different portions—of the story from the Aramaic into Greek. These individual and fragmentary trans- lations were characterized by various degrees of literalness, differing vocabulary and syntax, loss of original colouring, obscuration of shades of meaning, interpretative modifications and expansions, varying success in reproducing the original ideas, and some adaptation of the sayings (by way of selection, arrangement, and altered expression) to the practical needs of the Churches for whom the respective translations happened to be made. Then these various translations, at first located at the chief centres of the Christian movement, passed into general circulation, and acted and reacted upon each other, mixing the phenomena of the several translations. The features just de- scribed can all of them be traced in our two Gospel records of the Sermon on the Mount.
(5) It isnow generally understood * that, after fifteen or twenty years of circulating and transmitting the utterances of Jesus by word of mouth, the Gospel Memorabilia were gradually put into writing. We have in Eusebius (ZZ iii. 39. 16) the important testimony of Papias, which is regarded by most scholars as trustworthy, that the Apostle Matthew composed (cvverdéaro, al. coveypeoro, cf, Lk 11 cvareéZeobes) a collection of the sayings (Aéyix) of Jesus, in the Hebrew (i.e. the Aramaic?) language. If Papias’ statement, and the common interpretation of it as a written account, are correct, then we have a distinct witness that there was a written record of Jesus’ teaching, which we may assign to c. 50 a.p. That it was in Aramaic(?) shows an adoption of writing, even by the Palestinian Christians, as a
T, K. Abbott (Essays chiefly on the Original Teats of the oT and NT, 1891, ch. 5). The contrary, that Jesus taught in Aramaic, has been shown by Neubauer, Studia Biblica, i. 39- 74 (1885); A. Meyer, Jesu Muttersprache (1896); Zahn, Hinleit- ung t. ad. NT, i. 1-51 (1897); Dalman, Worte Jesu, i. 1-72 (1898) : see also art. LANGUAGE OF THE NEW TESTAMENT, VOI. iii.
* Although there still remain a few earnest advocates of an exclusively oral tradition.
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means of collecting, circulating, and preserving the Memo- rabilia of Jesus. But whether Papias’ statement is correct or incorrect, it is practically certain that when the Gentiles received the story of Jesus they committed it to writing, for they were not accustomed to the oral transmission of extended material. This change of oral to written records was informal, unauthor- ized, and gradual, like the translation already described. But it is probable that soon after 50 A.D. there were many written portions of the Gospel Memorabilia in existenceand use. These documents then grew in number and extent until atter twenty to fifty years our canonical Gospels absorbed them and became recognized as the final records of Jesus’ ministry (cf. Lk 11-4), There are also indications that the oral tradition continued along with the written tradition through the whole period until our Gospels were composed (and indeed afterwards also), and furnished a larger or smaller amount of the material which went into them.
‘The history here sketched of the transmission of the entire Gospel story is at the same time the history of the transmission of the Sermon on the Mount, which was one of the most valuable sections of the Memorabilia of Jesus. The whole process has left its marks upon our two accounts of the Sermon, for to it are to be attributed in the main the difference of setting, content, arrangement, variety of literary expression, and divergence of
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part, by different persons and in several localities : then these complete or fragmentary translations had each its own history for about 30 years, during which they experienced the vicissitudes of trans- mission. When the First and Third Evangelists came to prepare their Gospels in c. 80-85 A.D. there were in circulation and use these various Greek forms of the Matthzan Logia. The two authors adopted different forms, according to the usage of the locality in which each wrote, or, less likely, according to their judgment of which form was best historically.
(2) In addition to this basal Logian source of both our accounts of the Sermon, there were prob- ably other lines of transmission of the discourse in both oral and written tradition. Many disciples had heard the Sermon when Jesus gave it, and for years afterwards had told of it. There must thus have grown up variant reports—one used in one church or circle of churches, and another in another. These further reports also ave likely to have been handed down, and some of them may well have come under the notice vf the two