James Hope Moulton: The title I have given for this talk is almost absurd. I hardly know how I dared to set it down! It suggests a handbook of at least a hundred pages, which might serve for a popular outline of a subject I am now to deal with in something less than fifty minutes! I propose this morning to be discursive and selective, picking out a few things here and there, that by so doing I may illustrate the salient features of a most important question.
Let me remark first that though most important for helping us in the face of the world `to give a reason for our hope,' (1 Peter 3:15) the question of this morning is not absolutely the first in rank for us. We ask how we got those four pamphlets which tell us what we know of the earthly life of Jesus, the Carpenter of Nazareth, the Son of God. But we have to ask something more vital first. We must begin with the twentieth century and find out what Jesus Christ is doing to-day, and start our Christian evidences from what is seen and heard and known here in our midst now. Till we have done this it is not proved worth while, except as a mere literary problem, to trace the history of four little books which might be printed in extenso in a single issue of some daily papers.
For the present we may assume it as proved that the message of the Gospels is still profoundly influencing the world. It is therefore worth our while to test them; and we may be sure in advance that the test will be futile if it does not enable us to understand to some degree the secret of their unique authority; a test which only comes to negative results is self-condemned. The great Bishop Westcott, a friend and colleague of my father's on the New Testament Revision Company, observed once that, when he began the study of the Bible, he determined to treat it just like any other book, and that it was in this way that he found it was not like any other book. That is the brave utterance of a man who thought first of Truth, and not of his own favorite presuppositions.
If we believe in the Book, we shall not be afraid of anything that is called `criticism.' The word I have just pronounced is a terrible bugbear to many good people. It has, we may admit, a somewhat unhappy suggestion of a superior person talking down something that is below him. But that is what we put into the word, not what it really means.
`Criticism' comes from an adjective attached to the Greek word for `judge'; and of all people in creation, the judge, if he knows his business, has to be most impartial, most rigid in his reasoning. He must give over all made-up opinions and investigate the evidence himself; and the truth is the one and only thing he cares about. And this is exactly what the attitude of the `critic' ought to be. Critics may form very different conclusions. One comes to conservative results, and one to revolutionary results. So long as the critic is honest, I do not think it matters very much, for the things that matter most in these Gospels are strong enough to survive anything. We may differ about minor issues without endangering what is central.
What I propose to say this morning in an attempt to cover my title will be partly on `lower' criticism and partly on `higher.' `Higher criticism' asks the question when and how and where these books were written, who wrote them, and why they were written.
`Lower criticism' meets the stream lower down, and asks how, after they left their authors' hands, they came down to us, how far we can be sure that we have them in their original form. Beginning, as is natural, high up at the source, I will try to summarize in a sentence or two what is now almost universally held among scholars with regard to the external history of our first three Gospels. It is agreed to-day that our oldest Gospel is the Gospel of Mark. That Gospel was written, according to very early tradition, and a tradition which seems to have everything in its favor, by a man who had had special relation to the Apostle Peter; and this book was the historical basis of the two later Gospels, called after Matthew and Luke respectively.
Since, however, there is a large amount of matter, almost exclusively sayings of Jesus, common to Matthew and Luke, but not found in Mark, we postulate the use of another document [now called `Q'], which must have been lost very soon after the evangelists worked up its material. When we have recognized these two sources, we have still to allow for other sources, written or oral, which the authors of Matthew and Luke had to themselves severally, to account for narratives and discourses found in one Gospel alone.
This is, in a few bald sentences, the view of the beginnings of our Gospels which is held by nearly all scholars to-day, and is likely to remain in possession, with modifications mainly in detail. Before I say anything more about it I want to start with another part of the New Testament, from which we secure evidence that is of vital importance for the history of the Gospels.
The Book of Acts contains, as you know very well, considerable sections in which the intrusion of the first personal pronoun tells us that we have in our hands the diary of a man who was present himself at the events he records. We call this part of Acts the `we-sections,' and even the most revolutionary critics allow that they come from a companion of Paul, who set down his experience of travels with the apostle. Here, then, we have firm ground to build upon, for in claiming the presence of an eye-witness at this point of the story we are supported by men who will grant very little of the case we are accustomed to regard as undisputed. You will see why I lay such stress on the `we-sections' when I go on to say that of late the unity of these passages with the rest of the Book of the Acts and the Gospel of Luke has been asserted by scholars who are entirely beyond the suspicion of having prejudices on the orthodox side.
The famous theologian Professor Harnack, of Berlin, has written four books lately on the Third Gospel and Acts, and has lent the great weight of his authority to a thesis which had been regarded by not a few prominent German scholars as a mere prejudice of old-fashioned orthodoxy, viz. that the man who wrote the `we-sections' wrote also the whole book in which they are embedded and its companion volume the Gospel.
I confess, as a Briton, to some patriotic satisfaction [Britain and Ireland were at that time united] at tardy justice done to an Irish scholar, Dr. Hobart, who wrote some thirty years since a most admirable work entitled The Medical Language of St. Luke, only to meet with quite contemptuous treatment from an army of critics who never read him. Dr. Hobart's method was to illustrate Luke's language and style from the medical literature of the Greeks. That wonderful people, to whom we owe the foundation of every art and every science, and the earliest masterpieces of literature, include among their triumphs the first beginnings of medicine and surgery. We have, even from the fifth century before Christ, great works on medicine showing marvelous research and true scientific observation.
Now Luke was a doctor; `Luke the beloved physician' is mentioned in Paul's Epistle to the Colossians. And according to second-century tradition it was this `Dr. Lucas' who wrote the two books which together make up the largest individual contribution to the library of the New Testament.
Dr. Hobart put this tradition to the test, and he found in the two books, distributed evenly all through them, a large number of characteristic words and phrases which occur especially or exclusively in medical literature. They include not only words appropriate to the diagnosis of disease and to medical or surgical practice, but also more general terminology which happens to be conspicuous in this medical literature. The cumulative effect of the argument is very strong. It makes it practically certain that the writer not merely of the `we-sections,' but also of the books as a whole, was a diligent reader of Greek medical works. To postulate another doctor as the author when by a marvelous independent choice tradition has given us the name of `the beloved physician' would be simply fatuous.
Professor Harnack has endorsed this argument of Hobart's, and he has strengthened the case by his own examination of Luke's phraseology, all tending to emphasize the individuality of the author's style throughout. I may add from some work of my own that the grammar tells the same story.
We have, then, the assured result that these two books were written throughout by one man, a doctor, and one who actually travelled with Paul. That his name was really Luke may be regarded as certain. It is a certainty if only because of the complete obscurity of the man. He is only mentioned three times. Why should the Church pitch on that particular name, out of all the names of Paul's companions, and father the book upon him?
Let me go on to mention two directions in which fresh light has been cast on Luke. One is the suggestion of Sir William Ramsay that when Paul saw the vision at Troas, and the `man from Macedonia' cried out to him, saying, `Come over into Macedonia and help us,' it was the vision of his new friend Luke that he saw. You remember that the author went with Paul from Troas to Philippi. and then the `we' passages stop. They do not recommence until Paul gets back to Philippi, and then they begin again without any statement on the part of the writer, who is not concerned to talk about himself. Clearly he remained at Philippi, in Macedonia - a town named after the famous Philip of Macedon - until Paul came through again. It is natural to suppose that this was Luke's home, so that he was a member of the best-loved of all Paul's churches.
We may suppose that Paul made Luke's acquaintance at Troas, and felt at once that affinity of mind and heart which marked them out as friends. What more natural than that when he went to bed he should dream of his friend, and see him standing by him to utter an entreaty like this?
Then over the morning meal Paul told his dream. We may be sure that Luke was quick to reply,
`That must be a divine admonition. You have been kept out of Bithynia, you have been kept out of Asia - and what a field there was in Asia, in Ephesus, and all those crowded cities! What a chance there seemed to be for you in Bithynia! But you have been telling us how you were kept out of the Province of Asia, how a vision of Jesus Himself closed Bithynia, how you were forced down to Troas here, where there is nothing to do but look over the Straits to Europe. Surely it means that you must go on to the west over the sea, and take the gospel to the land where my people dwell.'
Am I pressing too far the suggestion of that tell-tale `we' that comes in here for the first time? `When he had seen the vision, we immediately planned to set out for Macedonia, concluding that God had called us to evangelize them.' (Acts 16:10)
Then just one other point about Luke's personality. Professor Souter, of Aberdeen University, hit upon a point a few years ago which is obvious enough when once suggested. It is simply a matter of translation. If you will turn to 2 Cor. 8:18 you will find, after a mention of Titus's eagerness to visit Corinth, the statement that Paul had sent with him `the brother.' So it is read in Authorized and Revised Versions. But Dr. Souter has rightly pointed out that `his brother' is a much more natural translation. This applies even more to 2 Cor. 12:18, where we should read, `I exhorted Titus, and sent his brother with him.' What a very strange phrase `the brother' is there! (I might add a further instance in Rom. 16:23, `Erastus the city treasurer, and Quartus his brother.') Who, then, was Titus's brother, `whose praise in the telling of the Gospel story extends through all the churches'? What was this brother's name? Now it is an old conjecture that the description just quoted from 2 Cor. 8:18 was meant for no other than Luke. It is a natural conjecture in itself, but it gains greatly by being associated with the amended rendering. For it gives a key to one of the notable difficulties of the Book of Acts.
People have often said, `We know from Paul's letters that one of the most important of all the early Christians was Titus. What a very strange thing it is that Titus is never mentioned in the Book of Acts!' But if Titus was Luke's brother he did not mention him any more than he mentioned himself. It is just a part of a great man's humility, content to shrink into the background.
Luke was one of the company of those who wrote the New Testament; and if you want a motto for the writers of the New Testament - yes, of the Old Testament, too - it is, `And they said, Who art thou? ... And he said, I am a voice.' Vox et Praeterea nihil. (A voice and otherwise nothing.) In your own Whittier's words:
What matter - I or they?
Mine or another's day,
So the right word be said,
And life the sweeter made?
It does not matter. Those men were not in it for fame. They did not care whether after ages knew that they had written little books which were going to turn the world upside down. The only thing they cared about was how the message of Jesus Christ was to be brought to men's hearts. They thought little about literary form; less than nothing about writing books that would be admired. They were not out for admiration. They only thought of their story, and rejoiced to know that their names were written in heaven, even though they might never be known on earth.
How far have we advanced now? We have shown that no impartial person can question the claim made for `Dr. Lucas' as author of the two books dedicated to Theophilus, who, when the first of them was written, was addressed as `Excellency,' as a member of the Roman public service. We pass now to the older Gospel from which, as every student has long believed, Luke took so much of his narrative.
How do we know that Mark wrote that Gospel? There is one reason, I think, which is quite enough by itself. Suppose the Church had set to work to guess which of the early Christians whose names they knew had written this book, which set in rough but wonderfully vivid language the story of Jesus, who do you think is about the last of them they would have thought of? Why, surely, the man about whom it was recorded in the Book of Acts that he had gone forth as `attendant' with Paul and Barnabas, and that as soon as ever they got into a difficult place, when they were just coming up against the high passes of the Taurus Mountains, infested by the robbers of whom Paul tells us, a dangerous place where a strong young man had his chance of service, his heart failed him, and he ran away back to Jerusalem. The man of whom that could be said is not the man whom the Church would have picked out as the man best qualified to write a Gospel.
Not a bit of it.
You and I could have made many better guesses. The reason why Mark's name is attached to that Gospel is again a very simple reason, like that which helped us to the authorship of the book that stands next to it. Mark wrote the book - that is all!
Now about Mark we have some traditions. We have one from Papias, one of the very earliest of Christian writers. He was the Bishop of Hierapolis, near Colossae. It is recorded of him by Eusebius, the historian, that he was `a man of very narrow understanding.' We have quotations from him which entirely bear this out.
But even if he was a bit of a fool, his early date - he was born before the first century was over - gives him an authority that cannot be questioned. The two or three brief sentences we possess from his Expositions as to the Gospel origins have supplied texts for the longest sermons criticism has ever known. One is the story which he gives us of the birth of the Gospel of Mark.
I need only refer there to the fact that he tells us Mark `had been the interpreter of Peter.' He had been in special relation with Peter, and therefore he got his Gospel story primarily from Peter. There is only one reason I have ever heard against that, and it is typical of a certain class of criticism. I do not know whether it was invented by Professor Jülicher, but I am taking it from him. The Church says that Mark was the interpreter of Peter, and that Peter, therefore, stands behind the Second Gospel. This Peter was an eye-witness - he was actually a companion of Jesus. But the Second Gospel tells us of many miracles, and `miracles do not happen.' Therefore you cannot suppose that an eye-witness recorded them, and therefore you must give up Mark's connection with Peter. `Q.E.D.!' one is supposed to say, after the style of Euclid.
But I want to come to another question which I have never heard asked. It might be suggestive for our object. What was the purpose for which Mark accompanied Paul and Barnabas, and for which Luke later accompanied Paul and Silas? We are told that Mark was the `attendant' of Paul and Barnabas. What was he there for? I do not know what you have thought about it. I rather fancy that if I had put my own impressions into words a few years ago I should have said that Mark went with them as a younger man to look after their luggage, to see their passages were got on ships, and to help them in every way he could so as to set the missionaries free to concentrate on their preaching.
I take a very different view now, and I get it from reading again more carefully those four verses which are more important than anything else in the New Testament when you want to ask the question, `What does Inspiration involve?' I mean the first four verses of the Gospel of Luke, that priceless little preface which tells us how an inspired writer set to work - how instead of finding inspiration to save him trouble, he found it gave him trouble! Because he was inspired, and because he had to write about something more important than anything the world had ever seen before, he had to work his subject up and `trace over again the whole story carefully.' That was the way in which Luke wrote.
Now he says he wants to do this in accordance with what he learnt from men who from the beginning were `eye-witnesses and ministers of the Word.' This word minister or attendant is the word used in Acts 13:5, which I was quoting just now. So these men were the `servants of the Gospel' - let us put `Gospel' instead of `Word.'
The Gospel, so to speak, was their business. That was what they had given their lives to. Let us try to use our imagination, and see how this works out. When Paul went to a new place, what was his modus operandi? We know he went to the synagogue first. There he found people who knew the Old Testament. That was the best preparation for the New. In the synagogue there were always a few people whose hearts the Lord had touched, who would recognize instantly that in this Gospel of the newly manifested Messiah they had the key to the Old Testament Scripture that they knew so well. Not many Jews were of this `honorable' sort which has made the synagogue at Beroea proverbial. Paul found more opponents than friends, but he was well satisfied if he won a few who were prepared by the study of the Old Testament, and these people he could use in his own way.
From the synagogue he would go out into the market-place, just as Socrates had done five hundred years before, and he would soon gather a curious crowd together and make a speech telling them about Jesus of Nazareth. Out of the crowd, when the talk was over, Paul would collect a varying number of inquirers, eager to hear more of this wonderful story. They wanted to hear all about Jesus - His parables, His works, His life, and more and ever more about His death. Now if Paul had spent the rest of his time in that place talking to such converts, he never would have had an hour to spare for the unreached masses outside. What did he do? He had with him a man who had not the same gift of preaching to the unconverted, but who had an excellent memory, and full knowledge of all those great events which were being told among them; and he turned over the catechumens to this `attendant' or `minister.' Mark would take the inquirers aside, and in some quiet place he would begin to tell the story of the Gospel in detail. He would meet them again and again for as long as they were in the place. Necessarily, as he did not know how long he would stay there - they might be driven out by the Jews or the mob any time - he would tell them the most important things first.
What would be the first chapter of Mark that would get itself spoken? Why, of course, the fifteenth, the story of the Death, the death by which men live. That is the start, from which he would work back to tell other things about the life of Jesus. There would be no particular order in these lessons, any more than there is any particular order in the sermons a minister would preach to his congregation to-day. He does not arrange his topics chronologically. Neither does Mark. He learnt, as he told the tale in place after place, which narratives most vividly impressed his audience and drew them into full discipleship. So a selection gradually evolved itself from experience.
Meanwhile, as men grew older they felt the need of fixing these stories in writing for use by the churches in after-time. So, I take it, when Peter had gone to his reward, and his `attendant' or `interpreter' was no longer young, Mark wrote out his oral lessons for later `gospellers' to use when he was gone.
I must say a few words about the Gospel that stands first. Papias tells us that `Matthew composed the oracles in Hebrew, and every one interpreted them as best he could.' There is a sentence upon which enormous arguments have been elaborated. It is the earliest mention of Matthew as an evangelist; and the name at once reminds us of other authorships which would never have been guessed. Luke was obscure. Mark had been a cowardly deserter. Matthew had been a tax-gatherer. And the tax-gatherers of that age and country were outcasts, and they deserved to be. They were men who entered into the service of the alien, and could only make their living by grinding the faces of the poor. Matthew was the only apostle whose past was shady, and whose record was preserved. Surely he was the very last of the eleven whom the Church would have picked out as the man to write anything like a Gospel. Therefore I come back to the simplest explanation of the choice of Matthew's name.
He must really have written what Papias assigns to him. He did not write the Gospel of Matthew as we have it; but he made the collection of the Sayings of Jesus, and this collection became the principal basis of the important book which is called `The Gospel according to Matthew.' This book, like so many others in Old Testament and New, comes down to us without any certainty who wrote it.
As before, `Who art thou?' `I am a voice.'
But I must abruptly leave the higher criticism. There is still much to say about the First Gospel, and everything to say about the Fourth. But it would be absurd to begin such a story in ten minutes.
I had better use my remaining time on an easier subject, the transmission of the text of the Gospels - what we call lower, or textual, criticism. I want us to realize in this matter that the Gospels are very different indeed from any other books in history. That is not singular; there are a great many other points in which they differ. The special point I mean is this. Our ordinary books, even in antiquity, have come to us very nearly as they left their authors' hands. This is due to the method of reproduction. The manuscript passed to a scriptorium, or copying establishment maintained by a publisher. In that house there were some hundreds of slaves, slaves well skilled in writing, who spent their whole life copying manuscripts. In that way, since slave labor was inexpensive, it was possible to turn out books very much more cheaply than we should expect when they were all written out in full by hand. All ordinary books were produced in that sway. You can see that such a method of production differed from our results achieved by printing, in that there were large possibilities of textual error from the very first.
If you have ever tried to copy a long passage from a book, and then checked what you have written by comparison with the printed book, you know what I mean. It is an amazingly difficult thing to keep a passage absolutely as it is written. And one thing that you will notice about it is that the best way to copy exactly is to write mechanically or even unintelligently.
There is a story about a compositor in Sheffield who was a skilful workman, very rapid and very accurate. People suspected that he hardly knew anything of what he had set up. So his mates in the office one day played a trick upon him. They gave him copy which was the account of a most blood-curdling murder that had been committed on the moors just outside Sheffield, and the murdered person was this man's wife, he himself being the murderer. A most detailed account of this murder was given. He set it up without turning a hair. Then they struck off one copy of the paper, and said, `Hello, Bill! Have you seen this bit in the paper?' He read it, and was very much astonished indeed. It never occurred to him that he had set up that copy. But that, I gather, is the best way of doing it.
Now our manuscripts of the New Testament were hand-copied, of course, but not on this principle. They could not go into the regular publishing houses. Remember that when the New Testament began to be circulated it was copied in times of persecution; and if that precious book had ever been put into the hands of the regular publishing houses some one would have informed the authorities and every copy of it would have been destroyed, and the publisher would have found himself in dire trouble.
The result was that a large proportion of the copies made in the early days were written by amateurs. They were people who knew and loved the book beyond anything else. They knew it too well!
Suppose, for instance, taking the first example that comes into my head, suppose one of these Christians is copying the beginning of the eleventh chapter of Luke. He comes to the Lord's Prayer, and he finds Luke describing that prayer thus: `Father, hallowed be Thy name. Thy kingdom come. Give us day by day our bread for the coming day; and forgive us our sins, for we ourselves also forgive every one indebted to us; and bring us not into temptation.' The ordinary mechanical scribe would copy that down just exactly as it is. But the Christian who said the Lord's Prayer every day in the early liturgical form given in Matthew would say, `Something is left out.' Then very soon you have got, `Our Father, who art in heaven.' And there is the additional petition, `Thy will come to pass,' and the significant note attached to the three first petitions, `as in heaven, so on earth.' At the end, moreover, came in `But deliver us from evil.'
Similarly, when the scribe was copying the fuller form of Matthew he added the doxology, taken from the Old Testament, `For Thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory for ever and ever.' Men put in what was familiar to them.
I want to insist upon this point because I think it has a great deal to do with the history of our Gospels. The fact is that for some three or four generations the Gospels were not protected by the sort of sanctity that belonged to them afterwards.
In the earliest days there were special conditions endangering the exact preservation of the text as the evangelist left it. Into a church which used a copy of a Gospel there might come any day a travelling missionary who could say, `I remember hearing Peter say so and so,' or, `I remember one time when I was visiting John, and he told me this.'
Now, as a matter of fact, these reminiscences, which came so directly from apostles or eye-witnesses, were not nearly as reliable as the written record. Supposing you say that you remember some great man, whom you saw thirty or forty years or even fifty years ago. Of course you remember seeing him; you remember that he said something to you. I remember thirty years ago having the privilege of a five-minutes' talk with [British Prime Minister] Gladstone.
I remember what the subject was, but I should be very sorry indeed to offer to any biographer of Gladstone my recollections of what he said. It was the man himself that I remember, and that is all I do remember. But people loved these reminiscences, though they were not reliable. When they got hold of them they liked to put them into the margin of their Gospel. The text itself was only precious to them in so far as it preserved a record of the words and deeds of Jesus, and the marginal addition was for them on the same footing as the text.
Then there was another possibility of divergence in the existence of different translations made from an Aramaic text, according to that saying of Papias I quoted not long since.
The result is that in the second century an extraordinary amount of variation sprang up, as witnessed for us still by the quotations from the Gospel story which we find in the Christian writers of that time.
What can we say of this? If you will look in the margin of the Revised Version you will find places in the text especially valued by you that are left out. You will read in the margin, `These words are omitted by the most ancient authorities.' I dare say you may have been resentful, and said, `So much the worse for the most ancient authorities!'
That is human nature.
But I may safely bid you be quite easy. It is true that you have many passages omitted. Here is one in Matt. 16:2, 3, a parable of Jesus about the signs of the weather: `When it is evening, ye say, It will be fair weather; for the heaven is red. And in the morning, It will be foul weather to-day; for the heaven is red and lowering. Ye know how to discern the face of the heaven; but ye cannot discern the signs of the times.' Then you will see in the margin of the Revised Version that these words were omitted by very important ancient authorities.
Quite so; and, frankly, I feel certain that these words were not contained in the Gospel as it left the author's hands. Where, then, did they come from? Why, they were floating tradition. We have been hearing this morning in another lecture about traditional sayings of Jesus preserved by Clement of Alexandria.
To my mind, the wonder is that we have not got very many more. I was telling you about the sayings of Jesus that were preserved in that half sheet of paper from Oxyrhynchus, such as `Raise the stone, and there thou shalt find Me; cleave the wood, and there am I.' Our manuscripts have many sayings like that which came into the text at a later time. Let me mention one which I think - whether I am right or wrong I do not know; I am only guessing - may suggest some useful ideas.
In this passage I am sure that every one who ever picked up the Revised Version must have had a severe shock. In Luke's account of the Crucifixion we have these words - how sacred they are! - `And Jesus said, Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing.' And then you read in the Revised Version in the margin that these words are omitted by important ancient authorities.
You do not like that?
Well, I must rub it in a little. Not only are those words omitted by very ancient authorities, but really, though efforts to explain the omission have come from some very wise people, I am afraid that I cannot myself doubt that they are omitted by ancient authorities because they were not in Luke's Gospel. Luke did not know of them any more than Matthew or Mark did. How, then, did they come there?
Let us try a little imagination.
Ask yourself, first, Who heard these words? Were they shouted so that the crowd might hear? Was there one single friendly ear there? For it looks as if the words were said just at that first dreadful moment when His friends were still `afar off.' Did nobody hear them? Nobody, except the executioners themselves - the centurion and his four men. They heard them whispered in faint words of utter agony. They heard them.
Now I have mentioned the centurion. What else do we hear about him? Why, we hear that when the day was over and the lifeless form hung there upon the cross, this man, having seen and heard all that had happened, said, `Truly, this man was Son of God.' Son of God! That was the title which was usurped by the Emperor of Rome, and this man who owed allegiance to the Emperor, having seen what he had seen, said of that poor peasant hanging up there; `Truly, this man was Son of God.' What had influenced him - the earthquake, the portents?
No; something much more wonderful. If that man heard the words in which the Lord prayed for the men who were driving the nails through His hands, I think that was more likely to influence him than anything else in the world.
And then I picture that man drafted to military duty at some distant station. In course of time he hears that strange fanatics have come into the place. They are preaching that men should believe in a God such as no one ever thought of before - a Galilean who was crucified in the procuratorship of Pontius Pilate. And then he remembers.
He thinks of something that had been in his mind all through the intervening time. He goes to their meeting. He listens to what they have to say about this Jesus. `Jesus!' says he. `Why, I fixed that name in letters of Hebrew and Greek and Latin upon a cross that day!' Jesus! He rises and tells those breathless worshippers what he had seen and heard. And then he said that at the moment when the other victims of that accursed cruelty were shrieking and cursing, this man said, `Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing.'
Can you fancy what an impression it would make upon the believers in that place? How quickly the words were written in the margin of their Gospel! How quickly the first traveller from that church to some distant place would tell the wonderful story! How very soon it came into all the copies of the Greek Gospel that were to be found everywhere throughout the world!
Yes; the words are not in Luke's original Gospel, but as the great Professor Hort said in regard to the fact that these words cannot be textually defended, `Few if any words in all the Gospels bear more intrinsic witness to the truth of what they relate than these.'
There I must end my effort to sketch some features of the long history of those great little books.
Let me end as I began by reminding you of the supreme attestation beside which all merely historical witness must pale. The Gospels about which we have been speaking are the first among many in a great Divine Library.
`There are also many other things that Jesus did, and if these are written every one, I suppose even the world itself will not contain the books written.' (John 21:25)
They have been written ever since, `on tables that are hearts of flesh,' and the world is full of them to-day. So to the end of time shall that Library gather more treasures. For, as Mr. Glover says, `The Gospels are not four, but ten thousand times ten thousand, and thousands of thousands, and the last word of every one of them is, "Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world."' (Matt. 28:20).
from "Egyptian Rubbish Heaps", Five Popular Lectures on the New Testament with a Sermon, delivered at Northfield, Massachusetts, in August, 1914, by James Hope Moulton, Professor in Manchester University and Tutor at Didsbury Wesleyan College.
James Hope Moulton: "From Egyptian Rubbish Heaps", Northfield, 1914
I. Egyptian Rubbish-Heaps and the Study of the New Testament
II. A Sheaf of Old Letters from Egypt
III. Some Sidelights upon Paul
IV. How We Got Our Gospels
V. The Fullness of the Time
VI. The New Song
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