2. Difficulties of ihe subject. — Fascinating as this study is, it is beset with many peculiar diffi- culties, (n) First among these is the question of language. It is now generally recognized that the language our Lord spoke was Aramaic, the then current colloquial speecii of Palestine. This is, as is well known, revealed in certain expressions in that language quoted in the Gospels, as, for example,
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the words upon the Cross and those spoken at the raising of Jairus' daughter. The fact that our F^ord commonly spoke Aramaic implies, of course, that all the reports of His speeches and conversa- tions are translations, and this at the outset necessarily complicates the question we wish to investigate, for the references that are clearly obvious to the OT or other wiitings may be the work of the translator ; and, on the otlier hand, many traces of OT language present in the original address may now be lost sight of. It is a further question whether and how far the existing Gospels depend upon an Aramaic original or oiiginals. The well-known tradition, derived from Papias, that Matthew's Gospel was originally composed in Aramaic, has been taken as a basis for various theories, that seek to account for existing diver- gences among the Synoptics by the supposition that these consist of ditiereut translations of the same original.
(b) The second difficulty that attaches to the preliminary investigation of the subject is as to whether our Lord HiDiself quoted from the original Hebrew text of the OT, or from tlie, Septu<igint. A knowledge of Hebrew was not usual among the common people, and in the synagogue services the reading of tiie Hebrew text was always accom- panied by that of an Aramaic paraphrase ;* but, of course, it is impossible to tell m hetlier in any one individual case a know ledge of the sacred language might not in some way have been acquired. But the evidence goes to show that the Greek version of the OT was that most commonly in use, and the majority of the quotations in the Gospels are made trom it. Swete has pointed out that the large number of citations common to the three Synoptics, or to two of them, are directly taken from the LXX, while in the case of citations that i are peciiliar to one Gospel a larger proportion show independence of the LXX text. Some of these peculiar instances will be examined in detail later in this article ; but a curious discovery has been made, namely, that certain quotations contained in the Gospels reveal a closer agreement with Cod. A than with anj- other existing text of the Greek | OT — a tendency that has also lieen discovered in the writings of Josephus and of Philo, while Swete also points out that there is an ' occasional tendency in >vT quotations to support Theodotion against the LXX" (Introd. to the OT in Greek, p. 395). It would thus appear that the XT writers may have employed a form of text dift'erent from that of the LXX as now known to us in what we reckon its best textual form ; but whether, of course, this is only a peculiarity of the writer or was also the form of text familiar to and used by our Lord Himself, is impossible to decide.
An interesting illustration of our Lord's apparent intimate acquaintance with the LXX, where that differs from the Hebrew, is jriven by Dr. Horton in the case of the Book of Proverbs. In Pr 912 there is a long addition in the LXX text to that of the ordinary Hebrew, the latter part of which runs as follows : ' For he hath forsaken the ways of his vineyard, and gone astray in the paths of his field ; for he walketh through a desert without water (iixTofiCsr'^i ?<" ittihiay ■.fr.uoii), and over a land that is set in thirsty places ; and with his hands he gathereth that which is without fruit.' The phrase used above for 'through a desert without water' is that employed in the description of the conduct of the unclean spirit in our Lord's parable in Mt 12«. Again, in Pr 421 the LXX, instead of ' Let them not depart from thine eyes,' reads 'in order that thy fountains may not fail thee,' using a metaphor which recurs frequently in the pages of the book (see IS-" 142" 1622), and is frequently employed by our Lord Himself in His language with reference to the ' water of life ' (of. Jn ~^, and what is said of that passage below).
[r) The third difficulty is that which attaches to
* It has been thought that a trace of this Aramaic paraphrase of Pr 1527, which uses the expression ' mammon of unrighteous- i ness.' may be found in our Lord's use of the phrase, Lk 16' 1 (see Expos, iii. \\\. [1S88] p. 112). I
the method of the Evangelists in reporting our Lord's sayings. For instance, in Lk 11-^- '^ our Lord says that no sign shall be given to the men of His own generation save the sign of Jonah ; ' for even,' He adds, ' as Jonah became a sign unto the Ninevites, so shall also the Son of Man be to this genera- tion . . . the men of Xineveh shall stand up in the judgment with this generation and shall con- demn it : for they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and behold a greater than Jonah is here.' It is obvious that in Lk.'s understanding of the saying the parallel between Jonah and Christ is that of the preacher of righteousness, and the result that his preaching had upon his hearers ; but when we turn to the parallel in Mt 12*\ we find the sign distinctly given as the fact of Jonah's being three days and nights in the maw of the sea-monster, and as a jiarallel with the Son of Man's being three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. But the close of the passage is the same as that given by Lk., so that it seems pretty certain that this fantastic and allegorical interpretation was not due to our Lord Himself, but to the Evangelist, a fact that is made the more probable by the con- sideration that He seems never to have hinted at His resurrection except to the immediate circle of His disciples. Another instance is to be found in Mk :"• 12 and its parallel in Mt 15'- ^, where Mk. in the explanation of the custom of Corban makes our Lord say, ' Ye no longer sutler him to do aught for his father or his mother," while Mt. says, 'He shall not honour his father (or his mother).' A further study of these two parallel passages will also reveal the fact that a passage from Isaiah quoted in each of them has a diflerent connexion in each Evangelist, and that either considerable freedom must have been used in reporting our Lord's words, or the Evangelists have themselves intro- duced the passage as appropriate to the occasion. The well-known method of Mt., in particular, of introducing OT passages as illustrative of incidents in our Lord's historj' or as explicative of His teaching, makes it the more difficult in the case of the First Gospel to feel certain when we have our Lord's own words and when the sayings are at- tributable to the writer.