474
GOSPELS
GOSPELS
cro^vned "). But while all real opposition between the apostles (whatever may be tlie temporal rela- tion between liomans and James) may be dis- allowed, it need not be denied that the formal ditierences which appear in the Epistles may well have risen from the extremities to which the con- troversy was pushed in the diti'erent schools of thought in the Church {paulinior ipso Pciulo). The Apostle was not oblivious of misinterpretation (Ro 6^- '^), and the school of St. James doubtless had those who carried their master's doctrine to extreme lengths. But in the balance of Holy Scripture, the truths of which St. James and St. Paul are protagonists are not contradictories, but safe and necessary supplementaries in the body of Christian doctrine. (For the relation between the doctrines of St. Paul and St. James re the Law and Faith, reference may be made to Romans^ [ICC], p. 102 fit". ; James [Cambridge Bible, 1878], p. 76 ti.; The General Epistles [Century Bible, 1901], p. 163 ff. ; Motiatt, LNT, p. 465.)
LiTERATiJRE.— Sanday-Headlam, Romans^ {ICC, 1902), pp. 1S4-1S9; J. Denney, Studies in Theology, 1894, p. 100 ff., ' Romans' in EGT, 1900, p. 632 ff., also art ' Law ' in HDB ; R. Rainy in The Evangelical Succession (Lects. in St. George's Free Church, Edinburgh), 1SS2, p. 20 ff. ; A. B. Bruce, The Kingdom of God*, 1891, pp. 63-84, St. Paul's Conception of Christianity, 1894, p. 293 ff.; ExpT vii. [1S95-96] 297 f., sii. [1900-01] 482b, xxi. [1909-10] 497 1. For the Law in Hebrews, see A. S. Peake, Hebrews (Century Bible, 1902), p. 30 ff.
W. M. Grant.
GOSPELS.— I. The First Three Gospels.— i. Date. — («) The central factor here is the date of the Second Gospel. The conspectus of dates given in Motfatt (LNT, p. 213) will show that tliis Gospel is dated by modern writers between A.D. 44 and 130, and that recent opinion narrows these limits to 64-85. Moffatt himself decides on a date soon after 70 on the following grounds: (1) Irenaeus, adv. Hcer. III. i. 1, dates the Gospel after the death of St. Peter and St. Paul. This is doubtful (see below). (2) 'The small apocalypse' (ch. 13) suggests a date soon after 70. This is based on the very precarious inference that Mk 13 could not have been substantial!}^ spoken by Christ. He need not have had more than the prophetic insight of a Jeremiah to have spoken everything contained in this chapter.
Since the publication of Moffatt's book Harnack has re-opened the whole question of the date of the first three Gospels by arguing that Acts was written at the end of St. Paul's imprisonment in Rome.* It would follow, of course, that the Third Gospel must be earlier, and the Second, since it is one of the sources of the Third, earlier still. The funda- mental question here is the evidence of Irenteus. The whole passage should be read carefully. One clause in it has generally been taken to mean that St. Mark wrote his Gospel after the death of St. Peter and St. Paul. But J. Chapman, f and now Harnack, arg-ue that the words ' after the death of ' do not date the writing of the Gospel, but, taken in the ligiit of the whole context, mean tliat the apostolic preaching did not come to an end with the death of the apostles, but was handed down after their death, in written books, about the date of the composition of which nothing is said.
Harnack is thus left free to place the Second Gospel before St. Paul's imprisonment. He thinks that the late evidence of Clement of Alexandria, J which connects tiie Gospel with Rome, may per- haps mean that Mark edited there his previously written Gospel. Harnack does not attempt to date the Second Gospel more narrowly.
But we may carry the argument further. If the writing of Acts at the end of St. Paul's imprison-
• Beilrdge zur Einleitung in dot Neue Testament, iv., Leipzig! 1911. t JThSt vL [1905] 563 ff. I Ap. Eus. HE vi. 14.
ment affords a limit after which the Second Gospel could not have been written, the relationship be- tween the Second Gospel and the First, which pre- supposes it, may furnish another.
(b) The First Gospel is assigned by most modern writers to the period 65-90 (see Moffatt). Harnack thinks that it must have been written near the Fall of Jerusalem, but not necessarily before it. Moffatt is clear that it must have been written after that event.
Apart from its relationship to St. Mark, the in- clination to date the First Gospel relatively late is due to a belief that it reflects the atmosphere of a period in which the Church has become organized and developed. It is, it is argued, 'Catholic' in tone. This method of argument seems wholly due to the fact that modern critics read the Gospel through ' Catholic ' spectacles. Read it from the standpoint of a Jewish Christian of Antioch about the period of the controversy as to the admission of Gentiles into the Church, and everything is in place. In particular, two lines of thought in the Gospel point to this period: (1) the writer's belief in the permanent validity of the Mosaic Law, (2) his eschatology. On the first see St. Matthew^ (ICC, 1912), p. 326, and FxpT xxi. [1909-10] 441. As to the second point, a few words may here be added in addition to what is written in .S'^. Mattlmv^, p. Ixix, and ExpT xxi. 440.