The First Gospel is, as is well known, the most apocalyptically coloured of the Synoptic Gospels. But there are many who do not realize how deeply the apocalyptic element penetrates the book. It is, e.g., urged by E. Buckley * that the presence of passages like 24^^'^'* does not presuppose an early date for the Gospel, because the Evangelist, writing comparatively late, might have preserved such say- ings if he found them in his sources. He might of course have done so, but the question is not one of a few isolated passages ; it affects the whole Gospel. V. H. Stanton t also says that the language of ch. 24 need not make for an early date, because the writer could quite well have left unaltered expres- sions of his source. This misses the whole point. Not only does the editor leave unaltered expressions of his sources, but he also alters St. !Mark in order to bring that Gospel into line w'ith the idea of the nearness of the Parousia which was so prominent in his own mind (cf., e.g., Mt 16^^ y^i^^h. Mk 9^, Mt 24-^ with Mk 13^^). It is not only one or two isolated passages in one of his sources, it is the Evangelist himself giving preference to one eschatologically coloured source (Q) and revising another source (St. Mark) in accordance with its ideas. There are many who think that the prominence of the apoca- lyptic element in the First Gospel is due to the Evangelist forcing it in upon the tradition of Christ's sayings. The truth is rather that the Evangelist had one source full of this element, and that he was so heartily in sympathy with it that he not only preserved large sections of it, but also allowed iiimself to transfer sayings of an apocalyptic nature from it into appropriate sections of St. Mark's Gospel.
That the apocalyptic colouring of the First Gospel, in so far as it is peculiar to that book, is due to the Evangelist himself and not to one of his sources seems wholly incredible. Allow that the Gospel was written about the year A.D. 50 by a Jewish Christian of the party who wished to enforce the keeping of the Law upon the Gentiles, and the Avriter, as one who was anxious to preserve all those sayings of Christ which represented Him as One who tauglit that He was the Messiah of the Jews who would shortly inaugurate the Kingdom, is in his natural place in the development of the
• Introduction to the Synoptic Problem, p. 278. t The Gospels as Historical Documents, ii. 367.
GOSPELS
GOSPELS
475
Church. He is contemporaneous with the apoca- lyptic period of St. Paul's teaching. Would the Church ever have received a book into which the writer had thrust his own conception of Christ as an utterer of apocalyptic fantasies at a later period when they had a Gospel of St. Luke ? Its reception by the Church seems explicable only on the ground that it was a book written early in the history of the Church, received at first in the district where it was written by a community Avhich was in agree- ment with its apocalyptic teaching, and that it thus held a place in the Church from which it could not be deposed.
B. H. Streeter* argues that the Apocalypse, written towards the close of the century, proves that there were at that period circles with a strong liking for apocalyptic literature, and seems to think that the lirst Gospel may therefore have been written comparatively late. But the two cases are not in the least parallel. The Gospel was read in the Church at an early date and everywhere received. The use of the Apocalypse was long con- tested. Moreover, it was one thing for the Church to value an Apocalypse placed in the mouth of the Ascended Christ ; it would have been quite another matter for it at a date when, as the Third and Fourth Gospels show, the tendency was rather to diminish than to enhance the apocalyptic element in the Lord's words, to accept a Gospel in which (according to the theory) there were placed whole- sale in His mouth during His earthly life sayings couched in technical apocalyptic language which He never used. A Gospel so judaized, as would be the First Gospel on this theory, in idea and in language, would have been recognized as alien to the true tradition of Christ's life, and would have stood little chance of being received as an apos- tolic writing.
Notice may be taken here of a few passages which are supposed to suggest a late date.
Chs. 1 and 2 are certainly early. Harnack now recognizes that nothing in them need have been written later than A.D. 70. The sayings about the Church (16''^- IS'*"'-) are certainly early, for they are couched in language in which the Jewish colouring is very remarkable. The word ' Church ' is supposed to betray a late date, but why? About A.D. 52 St. Paul was using it of the Church at Thessalonica. When the Evangelist wanted a Greek word to represent the Aramaic word used by Christ, whatever that may have been, what other word would he be likely to choose than the iKK\ri(xla. of sacred usage ?
'As to the last point [the use of ' Church '] it is enough to note that the word occurs nearly a hundred times in the LXX. Not only is the rest of the vocabulary essentially Jewish, but it must come from a quarter in which the Jewish "origin and rela- tions of Christianity were strongly marked, i.e. from a source near the fountain head.' t