This statement can be easily verified by a perusal of recent expositions of their views by representative \ "
to St. Mark being the interpreter of St. Peter, and the actual contents of our earliest Gospel, and how he finds in the Logia of St. Matthew an uncommonly rich and valuable material of Apostolic tradition, which may be placed by the side of St. Mark as a complementary source for a knowledge of the teach- ing of Jesus. Bousset, in his little but important book, Was unssen. wir von Jesiis .', is loud in his praises of the way in which modern research as to the original sources of the Synoptica harmonizes so strikingly with the famous statement of Papias, So, too, von Soden refers to the previous work of Weizsacker and Holtzmann, and speaks of two Un'vangelicn (although he uses this term with some hesitation), which go back one to St. Peter and the other to St. Matthew, and he finds it possible to trace a connexion between the familiar statement of Papias and our Gospels of St Mark and St. Matthew (Die wichtigsten Fragen im Leben Jesu, 1904, pp. 4-2, 62).t
* See also J. Estlin Carpenter, The Bible in the yiiieteenth Century, p. 301, and his remarks on the two-document hypo- thesis. He points out that the conclusion of Weizsacker'3 investigations pointed in the same direction (cf. his Untersuch- ungen iiber die Evangelische Geschichte, 1869, 2nd ed. lilOl).
t Moftatt, Historical NT\ p. 264.
J So, too, Deissmann, ' Evangelium und Urchristentum ' in Beitrdgezur Weiterentvm:klung der christlichen Religion, p. 128. Deissmann seems inclined to attach some considerable weight to oral tradition and its trustworthiness, a very important consideration.
CKITICISM
CRITICISM
It must, of course, be remembered that, like H. Holtzmann, these other writers referred to did not regard the two-document theory as alone sufficient to explain the origin of t he Gospels. Other material was no doubt present in the Synoptics in addition to the two dociunents, as we caji see in the case of St. Luke (cf. art. LUKE).*
And it must also be remembered that Holtzmann did not start with a belief that the sources of the first two Gospels, St. Mark and St. Matthew, must correspond wth the two documents refened to by Papias. On the contrary, the investigation of tlie Gospels showed him that there were two sources at the base of our Synoptic writings, which closely resembled the statements of Papias with regard to the documents which he referred to St. Mark and St. Matthew.
6. But some half dozen years before Holtz- mann's book was published, another, and in many respects a more serious, opposition to the methods of the Tubingen School, had made itself felt in the breaking away of Albrecht Ritschl from his former standpoint. In 1857 this final break was made, and for more than thirty years Kitschl was des- tined to be a great and growing factor of interest in the German theological world. Ritschl was keenly alive to the importance to be attached to the Person of Christ. In his treatment of the books of the NT he was to a great extent con- servative, inasmuch as he accepted the traditional authorship of so many of those books, as, e.g., of the Gospel of St. John.
But, on the other hand, it is urged that Ritschl's own peculiar doctrine and the paramount stress which he laid on our experimental knowledge of Christ's power to confer spiritual freedom and deliverance, no doubt tended to make him inde- pendent of, if not inditlerent to, the results of criticism. Kitschl and his distinguished follower W, Herpmann lay the greatest stress, and would have us lay the greatest stress, upon the impres- sion made upon us by the ' historical ' Christ. But it is not easy to ascertain what is meant by this ' historical ' Christ, by loyalty to whom the true Christian is known. This is the favourite Kitsthlian position, this insistence upon the im- pression which Christ makes upon the soul histori- cally confronted with Him. But we naturally ask, From whence and from what is this impression derived ? Not, surely, from the impression of the earthly life of Jesus alone, as Herrmann main- tained, but from what Kahler has called the ' Biblical Christ ' ; the Christ of the NT is the Christ not only of the Gospels, but of the Epistles and of the Church.
It is ur^ed, indeed, by the Ritschlians repre- sented by Herrmann, that this faith in the his- torical Christ guarantees that, whatever criticism may effect, it cannot interfere with the tnith
• The two-document theory is sharply criticized by M. Lepin {Jisui itessie et Fits de Dieu, p. xxxvi, 1905), although he admits that it is adopted by a certain number of Romanist n-riters. e.g. Loisy, Batiffol, Minocchi, La^^nge. M. Lepin's contention is that the theor>' in question is not in agreement with the most ancient testimony, which regards St. Matthew as the first ot the Gospels, composed for the Jewish Christians of the first days, and as an authentic work of the Apostle. He admits at the same tirae(p. xxxvii :' I ■ mt writers claim to
make this two-documirii i.' full authenticity
of the First Gospel {i.-\ • .t admission is at
least made of the semi-iL ' . ^pel bv those who
claim to recognize in ll. .. nt, the Logia of