to acknowledge that the Gospel which contains this erroneous prediction, appeared in its present form before Jerusalem was captured by Titus, or before the year 70. It must have been written as early as thirty or forty years after the Saviour's death. No Gospel writer would set forth, without explanation, a prediction of a great event, which all his readers would know had not been verified. No writer in the year 80, or 90, or 100, would fix the date of the end of the world at the destruction of Jerusalem, in a document which he wished to be believed.

We may even take a step farther. If some interpretation of the passages in Matthew be adopted, which recognizes an infallible accuracy in the Synoptical reports of the Saviour's teaching, yet it may be safely held that had the Evangelist been writing at a later time, some explanation would have been thrown in to remove the seeming discrepancy between prophecy and fulfillment. If it be supposed, for example, that in the perspective opened to the prophetic vision, two grand events, though parted in reality by a long interval, were brought together as distant mountain peaks, when approached, are found to be far apart, yet it would be natural to expect that when the interval had actually disclosed itself to the observer, some intimation of the fact would be dropped. So that even. on the orthodox, as well as on the skeptical, interpretation of the eschatology in the Synoptics, their early date is manifest.

It remains for us to notice the Tübingen hypotheses concerning Matthew. Baur's general theory is not the mythical theory, but "the tendency-theory." He has discussed and pointed out the weakness of the procedure of Strauss in his attempt to disprove the statements of the Fourth Gospel by opposing to them the authority of the Synoptics, and at the same time to contradict the Synoptics by quoting the Fourth Gospel against them. If there is to be any positive construction of the evangelical history, as Baur perceived, there must be gained somewhere a firm standing-place. This he finds in the First Gospel. Not that even this Gospel is fully authentic and historical. Yet there is in Matthew a substantial kernel of historical truth. All of the Gospels are, more or less, the pro

duct of a theological tendency; that is, they result from the artificial recasting and amplifying of the veritable history, in order to suit the views of some theological party or interest in the primitive church. In Matthew, the Jewish Christian side is the prevailing motive determining the cast and tone of the narrative. Luke represents the opposite, or Gentile, party. But the First Gospel is less inspired by a definite, dogmatical interest, which leads in the other Gospels to the conscious alteration and fabrication of history; and Baur is disposed to concede to Strauss that there is a larger admixture of the myth or the unconscious creations of feeling in Matthew, than is true of the remaining Gospels.

وو

When we come to inquire for a precise explanation of the origin of the First Gospel, we are met with very divergent responses from the various choir-leaders of the Tübingen school. In fact, with respect to the whole of the special criticism by which they seek to convict the Gospels of being tendenz-schriften, they are hardly less at variance with each other, than with the Christian world generally. Passages that are confidently quoted by one critic in proof of a certain "tendency," are alleged by another as illustrations of a "tendency exactly opposite. With regard to Matthew, Hilgenfeld, who agrees, in this particular, with Strauss, does not limit the sense of the logia of Papias, so as to exclude narrative matter; yet he pretends to be able to dissect the First Gospel and to separate a primitive Matthew-an Ur-Matthäus-from later accretions. We are absolved from the necessity of following him in the baseless and arbitrary division which he seeks to run through the contents of Matthew, since his construction has gained so little applause even from his master. But we may attend for a moment to Baur's own view. He appears to take the logia in the restricted meaning, and to attach some importance to the supposed tradition of a collection of logia, forming the basis of our Matthew. This hypothesis we have already examined. Baur's effort to bring down the date of the Gospel into the second century is a bad failure. Desirous of holding that the Second Advent is foretold as immediately subsequent to the predicted destruction of Jerusalem, he is

obliged to refer the latter prediction to some other war than that of Titus. Accordingly, he interprets it as applying to the war of Hadrian in the year 131 or 132, and therefore fixes the date of the composition of the Gospel between 130-134! It is unfortunate for this bold assertion, that our Matthew was an anthoritative writing among Christians, and read as such in their assemblies "in city and country," in the time of Justin Martyr, who was born before the end of the first century. But aside from this historical testimony, which it is vain to attempt to invalidate, Baur's interpretation can be easily proved to be palpably false. In the destruction of Jerusalem foretold in Matthew (xxiv. 1-4) the temple was to be laid in ruins. This was accomplished by Titus, and not by Hadrian. With what face then can the prophecy be referred to the war of Hadrian? It is doubtful, indeed, whether, in this last war, there was even a destruction of the city. The parallel passages in the other Evangelists, (see Luke xxi. 5-7, 12, 20), determine the reference of the prediction to the war of Titus, beyond the possibility of doubt. Moreover, "this generation" was not to pass away before this event was to occur Baur claims that this phase-arn yɛvsά-may cover a period as long as a century. But this claim is void of truth. The phase everywhere signifies, in the New Testament, the average term of human life, and was held, according to the Greek usage, to be equivalent to a third of a century. Besides, explanatory expressions occur in the prophetic passages of Matthew, which define the meaning of the phrase in the way we have stated. The difficulty presented by these passages, we are firmly convinced, is not to be escaped by affixing another than the proper and uniform meaning to this phrase.

The forced and manifestly false interpretation of Baur, which has been noticed above, is due to the straits into which he is brought by his untenable theory. Confronted by unimpeachable historical witnesses, he is not only obliged to ignore, or unjustifiably to disparage, their testimony, but also to resort to shifts in interpretation which only mark the desperation of his cause. There is absolutely nothing to conflict with the supposition that our First Gospel comes down, in its integrity,

from the Apostolic Church; while the positive evidence, both direct and corroborative, fully establishes the fact.

MARK.

The ancient testimonies, of which that of Papias is the first, to the genuineness and early date of the Second Gospel, would seem to preclude the possibility of a question on these points. Mark is declared to have been an attendant of Peter and to have derived his knowledge of the life and ministry of Jesus from the discourses of that Apostle. This is substantially the declaration of all the writers in the second half of the second century; and it has been thought by some good critics that even as early as Justin Martyr, and by Justin himself, the Gospel of Mark was styled Peter's Gospel.

But it has been contended of late that the description of Papias does not answer for our Mark, and must refer to some other work. In the later form of the theory, Papias is made to describe an earlier Mark-an Ur-Markus-which is the germ of our present Gospel.

Now of the existence of this earlier work, there is no intimation in any of the Fathers. How did the fact of its existence escape the knowledge of Irenæus and his contemporaries? Where did all the manuscripts of it disappear? In truth, the theory in this form is preposterous, and even Baur is driven to a different hypothesis. Before attending to this, however, let us revert to the statements of Papias, and see how far they are from lending support to the notion that he had in mind any other work than our Mark.

Papias, or John the Presbyter, his informant, represents that Mark, though a careful and accurate writer, depended on the oral discourses of Peter for his knowledge, and therefore did not dispose his matter-v ráže—in the chronological order. This is all the evidence on which the theory of an earlier Mark is founded! But, in any event, this remark is only the impression of an individual as to the character of the Second Gospel. He doubtless compared Mark with the more consecutive narrative of Matthew. Moreover it is plain that he had in mind the lack of completeness in Mark, which begins abruptly with

the preaching of John. For he afterwards explains that Mark wrote down "some things"-whatever he recollected; though it is added that he left out nothing that he heard. The necessary gaps and omissions constituted in part the want of order -as-which he noticed in Mark.* The Second Gospel did not seem to be a full, systematical digest—a dúvrağıs—of the words and deeds of Christ, like Matthew, but had a more irregular, fragmentary structure. Not that Mark neglected arrangement altogether, and simply pasted together the reports of Peter in the order in which he heard them. This is not at all implied; but only that he had not the means of exactly arranging and filling out his history. To call into existence another work, different from our Mark, in consequence of this observation of Papias, is a folly of criticism.

The Tübingen writers have set up the wholly unsupported assertion, that our Mark is the amplification of an earlier Gospel of Peter;" but, as might be expected, they have little agreement with each other in the forms which they give to their theory. Hilgenfeld is persuaded that Mark is the product of a recasting, in the Petrine interest and that of the Roman church, of the Gospel of Matthew.† Marvelous that this Petrine, Roman Catholic partisan should have left out of his work the passage: "Thou art Peter and on this rock I build my church"! Strange that he should have stricken out the passage which, above all others, was suited to his purpose! Baur, seeing that the supposition of an earlier Gospel of Mark is incredible, on account of the absence of all traces of such a work, and all allusions to it, has invented a new hypothesis which is, if possible, more irrational than Hilgenfeld's. Papias has mixed up, we are told, things that have no connectionthe existence of the Gospel of Mark, with which he was perhaps not even acquainted, and the legend of discourses which

Meyer is plainly wrong in making the "some things "-via-cover only a portion of what Mark set down. The meaning is that only a part of the teachings and works of Christ find a place in his Gospel. The want of order, as we have said before, is predicated as much of the record of the "things done," as of the "things said."

Hilgenfeld's Kanonische Evangelien, S. 148.