GOSPEL AND GOSPELS.
The Missionary Stimulus (§ 6). Mark's Gospel (§ 7). Luke's Gospel (§ 8). Matthew's Gospel (§ 9). Gospel According to the Hebrews (§ 10).
Background of Fourth Gospel (§ 11). Character of Fourth Gospel (§ 12). Authorship, Date, and Place of
Fourth Gospel (§ 13). Conclusion (§ 14).
The Gospels are something more than individual books and can not be treated adequately as independent literary units. The Synoptic problem is the result of a unique literary situation. It straightway suggests a set of conditions which must be made the background for the study of the individual Gospels. Even the Fourth Gosi. The Gos- pel, great as are its differences from pels a Single the Synoptists, has none the less cer- Literature. tain fundamental qualities in common with them. It is necessary, then, to treat the Gospels as a group of books organically related, and this on two main grounds. First, from
the literary side. In the field of comparative literature the Synoptists are unique. They must be treated, not only as single books found within the canon of the Scriptures, but as together constituting a single book. There is no great literature where the common life behind the books is more necessary to their understanding. The second ground is from the side of introduction. The very existence of the Synoptic problem indicates an extraordinary literary method underlying them. The closest parallel is the Pentateuchal problem. But even this parallel is not wholly sufficient. In the Pentateuch are found literary strata; the Synop-
RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
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Gospel and Gospels
tics are books that have distinct individualities while they are indissolubly connected. They are three, yet one. The more intimate our knowledge, the more compelling becomes the problem, and the less easy of solution certain elements in it. To make the outstanding facts more certain, to put the unsolved questions in the best light, the Gospels must be treated as a single literature.
To the student reasonably acquainted with literature as a whole, the Synoptics suggest a kind of authorship deeply differing from that now prevailing. They possess a remarkable impersonality;
the author hardly appears. Even 2. The the Fourth Gospel, though it is ex- Gospels a tremely self-conscious, is nevertheless Prophetic anonymous and the individual author Response, seems to count for very little. The
Gospels require for their explanation an authorship which is in some sense corporate. The deepest element for the understanding of their peculiar genius is found in the fact that they are the literary products of a prophetic community. St. Peter preaching on Joel (Acts ii.) introduces the situation. Our Lord has founded a society in which prophetic power inheres as an intrinsic quality. The new prophetism differs from that of the old dispensation in that prophetic inspiration no longer belongs to certain gifted individuals, but to the entire community (cf. Paul in I Cor. xii. and xiv.). The literary history of a community is, therefore, the object of study. To use a distinction drawn by literary critics, the literary study of the Gospels is not the history of a literature, but a literary history of a great community which uses certain individuals as its instruments. The closest literary parallel is the Periclean age. Greater than the individual Athenians who wrote the classic books is the great Athenian community, the polis or Church-State, whose extraordinary civic and corporate qualities made the individual genius possible. But the parallel is imperfect; the individual author is full-grown in Athens, he hardly exists in the field of the Gospels. Corporate consciousness and the corporate mood are all-controlling. An indication of this state of things is found in the title of the Gospels. They are entitled the Gospel according to Mark, etc. The meaning of kata is in part identical with the same prepositions in the editions of Homer put forth by famous editors. But there is more at stake. The kata carries the mind back from the second century into the prophetic age, when the Gospel was a corporate mood and a corporate message and the book-gospel of the second century was not thought of.
Here is found the explanation of the style of the Gospels, their noble and sustained simplicity, and their extraordinary adaptability for translation. While their style is molded by the Old Testament and by the Aramaic language and mind, the soul
of it is the genius of a supreme commu-
3. Applied nity. The Gospels are, like Homer, the
to Corporate creations of an age, and of conditions
Needs. where the bookish habits of our time
were wholly lacking. The Homeric singer was one with his audience, and the poem was lived before it was written. So with the Gospels.
The individual author was one with his audience, and the Gospel was lived before it was written. Hence, also, the relations between the Gospels. One of the solid results of criticism is the conclusion that the text of the Gospels took fixed form slowly and that, while it was fixing itself, it was played upon by the unwritten Gospel. This is the truth within the abandoned theory of an oral Gospel. In its original form this theory has become impossible, for the reason that a text formed by the natural memory, without the help of books, resists change far more successfully than a written text. The text of the Gospels, while forming, was for a long time plastic, and the living memories of a prophetic age which was far larger than its literature played upon the text and molded it. A corporate mood controlled the Gospels; consequently, in one sense they have a corporate author. Put in another way, this means that the Gospels constitute a literature which in its origins and in the forces and motives leading to publication closely resembles law. Law, in its deeper moments, is free from academic processes and motives. The literary individual plays an exceedingly small part. Law is the expression of the community's needs, hence it travels no faster than it is driven. But the literary individual is more or less detached from corporate needs. He writes for the pleasure of expression, and seeks a systematic theory for his own mental satisfaction. But law is forced into expression and publication by the needs of the corporate life. Similarly the Gospels, in a very real sense, were published as law is published. They were built up with and shaped within the Apostolic Church.
There are two main conditions for the rise of the Gospels. First, the Christian Church from the first day had a Bible under its hand — it inherited the Hebrew Scriptures. Second, it was a prophetic community, inspired with creative hope and moral passion, and, consequently, the process of gospelbuilding was entirely free. The need of new Scriptures was not consciously felt. The 4. Causes of law of the new community was the the Rise of Old Testament plus the Savior's words, the Gospels, the Logia of Jesus the Messias (Acts vii. 38, logia zonta). As late as I. Clement (90-95 a.d.?) this situation continues. The eschatologic passion which dominated the Apostolic Age — the intense and vivid belief in the speedy return of the Savior (see Millenarianism, Millennium), and in the triumph of his community— hindered the growth of the Gospels. But this passion was chastened by the knowledge of the Christ of history and sobered by the growing governmental responsibilities of the Church. It may be supposed that small and imperfect collections of the saving words appeared at a fairly early date. The Jewish-Christian community, as it began to come under strain, had to prove its right to exist. It was inevitable that it should do this by the argument from Prophecy, by searching the Scriptures (John v. 39; Acts xvii. 2-3, 11), by proving that the life of Jesus tallied with the Messianic oracles of the Old Testament. It was equally inevitable that, in order to know its own mind so far as that
Gospel and Gospels