value in his own devotional r - M ,11 I. d instinct-
ively that its wisdom is for th.: I ^ I ills ■ tlie per-
fect,' or 'full grown,' not fnr ' Im- ^ m ' In i.t , inu.li less for ' them that are without.' Moreover, apart in. in tliis difference in quality between St. John's Gospel and the .Synoptics, the difference in Uterary style must have, even from the first, delayed its adoption in general public use. Tliose who think, thev read or list«n, soon become aware tlml its sini)>licitv ■■ • • -'•--• ' i: - - .1 ■ iMlety
10. A word is necessary as to /// , , i/im:n
the canonical Gospels and the J'ni<j^ii: lU . :.j' mr/i/ Gospel iiuiterial which have already iciiuid tlie patient toil of scholarly excavation in Egypt. In 1892 a fragment of the lost Gospel of Phrr, dis- covered at Akhmim in 1886-7, was jiublislied by U. Bouriant ; and in 1897, Messrs. Greiifell and Hunt published a papyrus containing eight Sayings of Jesus in a more or less fragmentary condition ; and another fragment of five Sayings has since appeared. We are not at all concerned here with the so-called Gospel of Peter. It is con- fessedly the production of a sect of Docetsc imt earlier than the latter htdf of the •2m\ century. It
is undoulitedly interesting and valuable, as illus- trating the beliefs of Gnostics ; but it has no claim whatever to be an original source of in- formation. It is instructive as a harmonistio nar- rative based chiefly on the canonical Gospels.
To (the student of the Gospels, the recovery of the lost Gospel of Peter, or of a portion of it, has the same kind, but not the sjiiiie degree, of interest as the recovery of a ln.st wuik by •lustin Martyr would have: it serves .ts :iii illii-t latiun of the way in which the canonii-il ( ;.i-|,il-, v.cre employed in the 2nd century.- lint tin- i a-r is ilitierent with the newly discovereil Snying.i of Jcsits. These seem to claim to be Gospel material. The question is. Are they bo7ui file Gospel material which has been practically rejected by the responsible thinkers of the Church, or are tliey only pseudo-Gospel material ?
We have seen that a complete 'Gospel' must have contained a narrative of those facts of our Lord's life which have a redemptive significance ; but besides Gospels, it is very probable, indeed almost certain, that there were current in Apostolic times sayings of our Lord, without any note of the occasion when they were spoken. We have one .such saying in Ac 2(P, and in the extant Gospels there are many passages which it is difficult to believe are not based on collections of Sayings. An almost certain case is Lk 16""'*, where we have a group of four Sayings, none of which has any connexion with the otliers, or with the parable that follows.
This example proves that the disconnected nature of the Sayings in the recently discovered papyri ailbrds no presumption against their being genume Ciospel material. Moreover, the record by St. Luke of St. Paul's quotation (Ac 2CF') of a saying of Jesus which is not found in any canonical Gospel, proves that while St. Ltike was no doubt desirous to make his Gosjiel as full as possible, he was yet aware that there were accessible to him sayings besides those of which he made use. So that we cannot reject the papjrri Sayings on the ground that the canonical Gospels must necessarily con- tain all the sayings of Jesus that were known in Apostolic times.
On the other hand, on the principles we have adopted, we must decide that St. Luke, in his selec- tion of sayings and discourses, was guided by the Spirit of Jesus ; and it may be remarked that the fact that he did select is a presumptive proof that he wrote at a time sufficiently early for it to Ije possible for a Christian to consider any authenti- cated saying of Jesus to be not worth preservmg. Contrast the eager anxiety of Papias to gather up every crumb from the recollections of early dis- ciples. At best, the papyri Sayings belong to the same class as the interpolations in Codex D, that is to say, they are rejected Gospel material, rejected because the mind of the Church in the 1st cent, thought it to be unsuitable for preservation. The present conclusion to St. Mark's Gospel, on the other hand, and the Pcricopc adultera;, are in- stances of floating Gospel material which have been stamped with the approval of the mind of the Church.
It may happen, however, that further discoveries and mature consideration will suggest that these papyri Sayings have only a relative value and significance, as being fragments of the very exten- sive religious literature of the 2nd century. If more of this literature had survived to our own day, we should be able to view them in a juster jiroportion. AVe know that, even in the lifetime of the Apostles, Christianity had developed so rapidly tliat there was an exuberant growth of ' divers and strange teachings' (He 13"). Each of these sects, or schools of thouglit and siieculatioii, must have
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)iad both its tuitliorizeil expositions and its literary projjagaiida. We are -Apt to forget that the busi- ness of book production in the first centuries of tlie Christian era was enormous in volume.