THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG
The former is afforded by the preface to his Gospel in which he reveals his method as a historian and his zeal for exactness of information and statement; the latter by the character of the Gospel, which evinces itself at every point a sincere and careful narrative resting upon good and well-sifted information. In these circumstances the determination of the precise time when this narrative was actually committed to paper becomes a matter of secondary importance; in any event its material was collected during the period of Paul's missionary activity. It may be confidently maintained, however, that it was also put together during this period, that is to say, during the earlier years of the seventh decade of the century. Confidence in its narrative is strengthened by the complete accord of the portrait of Jesus, which its detailed account exhibits with that which underlies the letters of Paul. Not only are the general traits of the personality identical, but the emphasis falls at the same places. In effect, the Jesus of Luke's narrative is the Christ of Paul's epistles in perfect dramatic presentation, and only two hypotheses offer themselves in possible explanation. Either Luke rests on Paul, and has with consummate art invented a historical basis for Paul's ideal Christ; or else Paul's allusions rest on a historical basis and Luke has preserved that historical basis in his careful detailed narrative. Every line of Luke's narrative refutes the former and demonstrates the latter supposition.
Additional evidence of the trustworthiness of Luke's Gospel as an account of Jesus' acts and teaching is afforded by the presence by its side of other narratives of similar character and accordant contents. These narratives are two in number and have been handed down under the names of members of the earliest circle of Christians — of John Mark, who was from the beginning in the closest touch with the apostolic body, and of
6. Mark Matthew, one of the apostles. On
and comparison of these narratives with
Matthew. Luke's, not only are they found to
present, each with its own peculiar
point of view and purpose, precisely the same
conception and portrait of Jesus, but to have
utilized in large measure also the same sources
of information. Indeed, the entire body of
Mark's Gospel is found to be incorporated also
in Matthew's and Luke's.
This circumstance, in view of the declarations of Luke's preface, is of the utmost significance for an estimate of the trustworthiness of the narrative thus embodied in all three of the " Synoptic " Gospels. In this preface Luke professes to have had for his object the establishment of absolute " certainty," with respect to the things made the object of instruction in Christian circles; and to this end to have grounded his nar- 7. The rative in exact investigation of the
Primitive course of events from the beginning.
Narrative In the prosecution of this task, he
Source." knew himself to be working in a
goodly company to a common end,
namely, the narration of the Christian origins on
the basis of the testimony of those ministers of
the word who had been also " eye-witnesses from the beginning." He does not say whether these fellow narrators had or had not been, some or all of them, eye-witnesses of some or of all the events they narrated; he merely says that the foundation on which all the narratives he has in view rested was the testimony of eye-witnesses. He does not assert for his own treatise superiority to those of his fellow workers; he only claims an honorable place for his own treatise among the others on the ground of the diligence and care he has exercised in ascertaining and recording the facts, through which, he affirms, he has attained a certainty with regard to them on which his readers may depend. Now, on comparing the narrative of Luke with those of Matthew and Mark, it is discovered that one of the main sources on which Luke draws is also one of the main sources on which Matthew draws and practically the sole source on which Mark rests. Thus Luke's judgment of the value and trustworthiness of this source receives the notable support of the judgment of his fellow evangelists, and it can scarcely be doubted that what it contains is the veritable tradition of those who were as well eyewitnesses as ministers of the Word from the beginning, in whose accuracy confidence can be placed. If the three Synoptic Gospels do not give three independent testimonies to the facts which they record, they give what is, perhaps, better, — three independent witnesses to the trustworthiness of the narrative, which they all incorporate into their own as resting on autoptic testimony and thoroughly deserving of credit. A narrative lying at the basis of all three of these Gospels, themselves written certainly not later than the seventh decade of the century, must in any event be early in date, and in that sense must emanate from the first followers of Christ; and in the circumstances — of the large and confident use made of it by all .three of these Gospels — can not fail to be an authentic statement of what was the conviction of the earliest circles of Christians.
By the side of this ancient body of narrative must be placed another equally, or, perhaps, even more ancient source, consisting largely, 8. The but not exclusively, of reports of " say- " Sayings ings of Jesus." This underlies much of Jesus." 0f the fabric of Luke and Matthew where Mark fails, and by their employment of it is authenticated as containing, as Luke asserts, the trustworthy testimony of eye-witnesses. Its great antiquity is universally allowed, and there is no doubt that it comes from the very bosom of the Apostolical circle, bearing independent but thoroughly consentient testimony, with the narrative source which underlies all three of the Synoptists, of what was understood by the primitive Christian community to be the facts regarding Jesus. This is the fundamental fact about these two sources — that the Jesus which they present is the same Jesus; and that this Jesus is precisely the same Jesus found in the Synoptic Gospels themselves, presented, moreover, in precisely the same fashion and with the emphases in precisely the same places. This latter could, of course, not fail to be the case