oral, not documentary, tr&nfllllission. The frequent minuteness and unim- portanoe, as one would sa.y, of the differenoes are often almost inexplicable on the supposition that the evangelists had written doouments before them which they altered. It might be the oase in one or two plaoes, but that they should make suoh minute alterations throughout seems most improbable.' On the supposition of transmission by word of mouth, on the contrary, suoh differences a.re explained at once.' A sentence would be transmitted aocu- rately t,o the first and almost, but probably not quite, as a.oourately to the second person. The latter, in his turn, would transmit all save that whioh was of the least importance. The result would be that, after.a seotion had gone through many mouths, the central thought of a passage or of a sentence -the more important words, that is to say-would still be present; but there would be numberless variations of greater and less importanoe, the character of which would depend largely upon the position and standpoint of the individuals through whom the section had been transmitted. , If it were now written down by two or three persons who had received it by different lines of transmission, it is reasonable to suppose that the results w.ould be very like the three forms of the common part of the Framework contained in the synoptists, or the two forms of those sayings peculiar to any two of them. Whether, indeed, this writing down had at all taken plaoe befor~ the synoptists wrote, so that they used the oral teaching in written fori:;ns, cannot be shown. There seems to be no case in the Greek, in which variations may so certainly be traced to " errors of sight" .as to cowpel us to believe that they used a common document in Greek, and the only direot reason that exists for supposing that the sources whioh they used had, been crystallized into writing lies in the preface to the Third Gospel. St. J:.uke knew of suoh. But whether either he or the other evangelists used them for their Gospels, we cannot say. In one case, indeed, that.of the genea- logies, it might be thought that such written documents must have been used. But even this is not necessary. It may be granted that genealogies were at that time usually written down, and that documents of this kind may have been employed by the evangelists, but, whatever St. Luke may have done, the form of the genealogy found in the First Gospel, by its artificial and almost inaccurate arrangement into three seotions of fourteen generations each, points to oral rather than documentary transmission. 0 1 For reference to cases where e. document written in BOme kind of Arame.io ·seems t4)
underlie the ve.riations in the Gospels, see § 13. • _ • Cf. the ve.ris.tions noticed wpra, p. 2. It mllSt, however, be confessed that Dr. Plummer', illnatre.tions from Church chronicles, in the Ezpositur for July, 1889, make the theory of alteration from documents much easier to believe. ' • For e.n extraordinary exe.mple of powers of memory trained to remember long passe.ges tierbatim, see E1188bius, 'Me.rt. Pe.l,' § xiii Godet (Luke ii., p. 444) se.ys Basil the Grce.t (' De Bp. Se.net.,' :uvii. § 66) e.ffirms that in the fourth century the Church he.d no written Liturgy, but he probe.bly millllnderste.ndi, Basil's le.nguage (eee Mr. St. John TyrwhHt, in Smith's 'Dictione.ry of Ohristia.n Antiquities,' ii. p. 1007). THE GOBP.EL AOCORDING TO BT. MATI'HEW. D
IIL THE AUTHOR OF THZ PBFJJENT GOSPZL. Having considered the constituent parts of the Fil'flt Goepel, and the p1·obable eourcee from which they were derived, it is natural to ask who it was that united them-who, that ie to say, was the author of this Goepel? It will conduce to clearness if the subject be considered, first of all, without any reference to the kindred question of the original language of the Go~pel, It cannot, indeed, be answered fully before the latter question also is touched upon, but it ie well to keep this ae distinct as possible. § 10. Internal evidence. What aeeietance does the Goepel itself give us towards solving the problem of its authorship? That the author was a Jew will be -granted by all. A Gentile Christian never would or could have described the relation of Jesus to the Jews and to their teaching in the way that the author has described it. The fact of his Jewish standpoint is further indicated by his Old Testament quotations. This is hardly the place in which to treat of these in detail; it is sufficient to note that the author kriowe not only the form of the Old Testament quotations that was current among the Greek-speaking Christians,1 but also such interpretations of the original text as would exist only among people trained in Jewish methods, for he quotes it in cases where the reference is, at the best, very remote (cf. oh. ii. 15, 18, notes). It may, then, be accepted as incon- testable that the author was a Jew by birth, versed from his youth in the Hebrew Scriptures, and looking upon them from a Jewish standpoint. Yet, if we except some very slight and doubtful indications of the place and the date of his writing (flide infra, §§ 18, 19), we cannot learn much a.bout the author from the Gospel itself. It is only natural to examine it with the view of finding out whether it contains any marks of an eye- witness. But in doing so ea.re must be taken. For it is evident that signs of an eye-witness recurring in one or two of the other synoptic Gospels belong rather to the sources used than to the author himself. So that not the whole Gospel as it stands, but only those passages and phrases which are peculiar to it, are to be considered. And when this is done the result is almost negative. The contrast to the result of examining the Second Gospel in the same way is enormous. There the innumerable undesigned touches point unmistakably to the presence of an eye-witness; here there is almost if not quite a blank.' Internal evidence, then, says nothing at all personal a.bout the author of the First Gospel, other than that he was a Jewish Christian. It gives 1 As me.y be seen from the quotations found in the Framework e.nd the Disooumes. 1 The pe.sse.ges that show most possibility of being due to e.n eye-witness e.re~h. xiii. 2, "'>'l the bee.eh" e.ml "we.s standing" (of. notes); oh. xii. 49," stretched forth his hand;" eh. xxiv. I, "we.a going on his we.y" ( of. Bishop Westcott, EzpoBitor, third series, v. 249). It may be observed that the objections urged by Davidson (i. 886-890), consisting either in mire.oulons incidents or in difficulties of chronologice.l order, e.re of little weight except to those who are prejudiced by unbelief in the miraculous, or who insist on e. very crude interpretation of e.n evangelist's duty. xii INTRODUOTION TO