tion of Christ's Person and work which was domi- nant in the Palestinian Church in the middle of the 1st cent. A.D. To Christians there Jesus was the Jewish King-Messiah. His life on earth was only the prelude to His sovereignty. For He was to come again as Son of Man at the' end of the age, and that was imminent, and would follow immedi- ately upon the tinal downfall of the Jewish polity.
5, Historical value.— So far as the question of the historical value of the detail given in the Gospel is concerned, we may set aside for our present purj^se all that is drawn from St. Mark's Gospel. The value of that is' a consideration for a writer on the Second Gosjiel (see above, p. 133 tt'., and cf. the Dean of Westminster's Study of the Gospels, and Burkitt's The Gospel Ui.itory and its Transmission). The sayings drawn from the Mattha?an Logia have behind them Apostolic authority, and, allowing for some change of emphasis and possible accretion in the process of transmission, may safelv be taken as representing actual utterances of Christ.
The Palestinian traditions peculiar to the Gosjiel are probably not all of equal weight. The nar- rative of the sujiematiu-al bii'th is best attested, because the main fact of the story is sirpported by the tradition known to St. Luke. Of the rest it is difficult to say more tlian that they are early Palestinian traditions, and we must abstain from condemning them upon purely fanciful grounds as legendary.
But the question of historical value can be raised in a different form, and one of much greater im- portance. Allowing the substantial accuracy of the bulk of the detail in the Gosi>el, and without discussing the precise value and impoitance to l>e attached to each separate tradition, how far do the main conceptions of Christ and of His doctrine which run through the Gospel correspond to the historical Christ? Did He teach what is heie ascribed to Him ?
Something may be leameti in this connexion if we consider the method of the Evangelist. He presents to us selections fi'om Christ s sayings, arrangetl in what is clearly often an artificial and literary manner. A good example of this is the Charge to the Twelve. The nucleus of this con- sists of a few sayings, recorded by St. Mark, addressed to the Twelve when Christ sent them forth on a journey of preaching in Palestine. But the editor of the First Gosi^el is so little conceme<l with the actual historical facts that he omits alto- gether the statements descriptive of their going forth and of their return. The local and temporary mission in Palestine merges itself in his mind in the wider and universal mission to all nations. He draws from his sources many other sayings which had reference to this wider mission work, and adds them to St. Mark's short discourse, re- gardless of the fact that some of them were not spoken on that particular occasion. Now, selec- tion and artificial grouping of this kind, useful as it is, inevitably involves overemphasis. Teacii- ing, which would have explainetl and counter- balanced that which is recorded, is left out, and impressions are given which would be qualified, if the selection given had been larger, or the group- ing less artificial. And combined with this feature of arbitrary selection and artificial grouping may be linked the li>cal character of the Gospel, and the early date of its material. For it is clear that the Jewish-Christian disciples in the early Church stood too near to the life of the Christ to be able to form any adequate conception of the tnie mean- ing of His j»erson or His work. Jesus had, we may be sure, said many things that were obscure at the moment of utterance, had sjxiken sometimes in parable, sometimes in syml*. 1, sometimes in
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paradox. And the first Christians of Jerusalem did, it is clear, what, after all, others since them have often done, i.e. they interpreted the life of Christ in the light of their own historical sur- roundings, and selected from His teaching those elements which enabled them to adapt their ideas of His meaning to their own lives, without making an absolute breach with all that life had hitherto meant for them. The development of history is, as we now see, the truest interpreter of much that Christ said, and not until Jerusalem fell could His teaching about the future of Christianity become clear.
We shall expect, then, to find in the Gospel an over-emphasis upon certain points arising from artificial grouping of sayings, and from omission of other aspects of Christ's teaching. We shall also not be surprised to find interpretations of His sayings which the later developments of history have proved to be mistaken. Let us apply this to the chief conceptions of the Gospel.
(1) The permanence of the Law. ~\i we may judge from the general tenor of the NT evidence, Christ laid down no hard and fast rules for dealing with the difficult problem of the obligations of the Mosaic Law. But on sjiecial occasions He seems to have given expression to the idea that par- ticular precepts or sanctions belonged to a by- gone age, and had lost tlieir validity. St. Mark (who is here supported by St. Luke and St. Paul) represents Him as teaching that the tacit sanction of divorce by Dt 24^"* should be set .aside as a con- cession to weakness, and should, from a Christian point of view, be superseded by an ideal view of marriage as a tie Avhich could not be broken. St. Mark again represents Him as implicitly annulling tlie Mosaic distinctions between clean and unclean meats, on the ground that defilement was moral and internal, not external and ceremonial. And the fact that He taught views of the Law which were not those of orthodox Judaism, is suggested by the statements that the Pharisees attempted to entra[) Him into some statement about the Law, or upon subjects with which the Law dealt, which could be used as an accusation again.st Him (Mk 10- [Tretpdfoj/T-es], Mt 22^^ [Trapdfwv]). But the history of tlie early Church proves that it was difficult for the first Jewish . disciples to suppose that the Messiah had ever countenanced the view that any part of the OT Scriptures had lost its original hold upon the consciences of men. This is the standpoint of the editor of the First Gospel. Christ had taught that not a letter should pass from the Law until all had been fulfilled, and that anyone who relaxed the authority of the least commandment of the Law should be least in the Kingdom of heaven (o^^'^"). And not only was there this general statement of the pernianent validity of the Law in general, but special laws had been sanctioned and reaffirmed by Christ as still valid and obligatory. Divorce must be sanc- tioned when tliei-e had been fornication (iropvda) (5^^ 19"). The saying about clean and unclean had reference not to the ]Mosaic Law, but to the Pharisaic traditions about eating witli unwashen hands (15-"). The Christian disciple who had a case against his brother was to take two or three witnesses, that the Mosaic Law might be satisfied (18'"). And in the great tribulation Christians were to pray that their flight might not fall on the Sabbath, lest the Law .should be broken (24-"). It is clear that the editor regarded the Mosaic Law as still binding in all its details on Christian men. Now it is probable that we must make allowance here for some over-emphasis due to local and national prejudice which interpreted Christ's sayings in the direction which the history of the Jewish people seemed to warrant, and wliich took