CHAPTER XVI.

ON THE ORIGIN OF OUR THREE FIRST CANONICAL

GOSPELS.

THAT our three first canonical gospels have a remarkable similarity to each other; and that the three first evangelists (sc. Matthew, Mark, and Luke) frequently agree, not only in relating the same things in the same manner, but likewise in the same words, is a fact of which every one must be convinced who has read a Greek Harmony of the Gospels. In some cases, all the Evangelists agree word for word, as thus:

MATTHEW, Xxiv. 33.

MARK, xiii. 20.

LUKE, xxi. 31. Now learn a parable] Now learn a parable Behold the fig-tree, of the fig-tree; when his of the fig-tree; when her and all the trees; when branch is yet tender, and branch is yet tender, and they now shoot forth, ye putteth forth leaves, ye putteth forth leaves, ye see and know of your know that summer is know that summer is ownselves, that summer nigh: so likewise, ye, near: so ye, in like man- is now nigh at hand: so when ye shall see allner, when ye shall see likewise, ye, when. ye these things, know that these things come to see these things come to it is near, even at the pass, know that it is pass, know ye that the doors. Verily, I say unto nigh, even at the doors. kingdom of God is nigh you, this generation shall Verily, I say unto you, at hand. Verily, I say not pass, till all these that this generation shall unto you, this generathings be fulfilled. Hea- not pass, till all these tion shall not pass away, ven and earth shall pass things be done. Heaven till all be fulfilled. Heaaway, but my words shall and earth shall pass away, ven and earth shall pass not pass away. but my words shall not away, but my words shall pass away. not pass away.

These phænomena are inexplicable on any other than one of the two following suppositions, either that St. Matthew, St. Mark, and Saint Luke, copied from each other, or that all three drew from a common source.

In Mark xiii. 13 to 32, there is such a close verbal agreement, for twenty verses together, with the parallel passage in St. Matthew's gospel, that the texts of St. Matthew and St. Mark might pass for one and the same text.

"The most eminent critics are at present decidedly of opinion that one of the two suppositions must necessarily be adopted-either that the three evangelists copied from each other, or that all the three drew from a common source, and that the notion of an absolute independence, in respect to the composition of our three first gospels, is no longer tenable. Yet the question, which of these two

suppositions ought to be adopted in preference to the other, is still in agitation; and each of them has such able advocates, that if we were guided by the authority of names, the decision would be extremely difficult.”* ·

Difficult as the decision may be ; to the great end of this general view of the evidence affecting the claims of divine revelation, it is utterly indifferent; since either alternative affords results equally conclusive, and equally militant against the character of those through whose hands these writings have come down to us. In either alternative, they are not original writings; they are not what they purport to be; and the writers stand convicted, at least, of negative imposture, (if indeed the imposture is attributable to them,) in passing their compositions off as original, and attempting to conceal from us the help they borrowed from each other, or what the common source was from which they each of them drew.

Le Clerc, in his Historia Critica, published at Amsterdam, A. D. 1716, seems to have been the first among modern divines who ventured to put forth the startling supposition that these three gospels were in part derived from either similar or the self-same sources.†

This opinion lay dormant upwards of sixty years, till it was revived by Michaelis, in the third edition of his Introduction, published 1777. Dr. Semler, however, was the first writer who made it known to the public that our three first evangelists used in common a Hebrew or Syriac document or documents, from which they derived the principal materials of their history; in a treatise published at Halle, in 1783; but he has delivered it only in a cursory manner; and as the thought was then new, he does not appear to have had any very determinate opinion on the subject. The probability is, that he dared not at that time have ventured to put forth a determinate opinion on the subject. We find Bishop Marsh himself, even in this learned dissertation, the highest authority I could adduce on the subject, confessing that the easiest and the most prudent part that he could take, would be merely to relate the opinions of others, without hazarding an opinion of his own. There was little fear that so high a dignitary of the church would, for any opinion he might hazard, be liable to be dealt with as an humbler heretic of his com

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*Bishop Marsh's Michaelis, vol. 3, part 2, p. 170.

† Quidni credamus tria hæc evangelia partim petita esse ex similibus, aut iisdem fontibus.-Le Clerc, Hist. Crit. in loco.

munion. The episcopal palace of Peterborough is far enough from Oakham Gaol; yet, for all that, a bishop will never be found wanting of the virtue of prudence.

The express declaration of Eusebius, that the Therapeutæ described by Philo were Christians, and that their sacred scriptures were our Gospels, after having lain dormant for fourteen hundred years, now at length rises, upon the admissions of these learned divines, into the dimensions of its real importance. From these sacred legends, of a sect so long anterier to the epocha assigned to Christ and his apostles, our Christian scriptures have been plagiarised; and the first position of the Manifesto of the Christian Evidence Society, for the public maintenance of which the author of this DIEGESIS endures the fate of felony and crime, is nothing more than had in other words been previously published, by the learned bishop in whose diocese he is a prisoner.

"Committunt eadem diverso crimina fato

Ille crucem sceleris pretium tulit, hic diadema."'*

Eusebius, however, is not alone, even among the ancients, in betraying the fact of this GREAT PLAGIARISM. Hints and inuendoes occur in a thousand places, pointing out the same fact, to those who were entitled by learning and office to be intrusted with what Origen significantly calls the ARCANA IMPERII, or secrets of the management; while, as the custody of the sacred books was never committed to the people, and they were expressly forbidden to examine into the foundations of their faith, nothing was more facile, nothing more practicable, than for the heads and rulers of the church to modify and adopt those previously existing romances, whose effect in subduing the reason of mankind had been found by long experience, and which were too ancient to be found out, too sacred to be suspected, and too mysterious to be understood.

Epiphanius, as long ago as the fourth century, speaking of the verbal harmony of the gospels, which he calls their preaching harmoniously and alike, accounts for it by saying, that they were drawn from the same fountain ; though he has not explained what he meant by the same fountain.

"They commit the same things with a different fate: one hath borne the mitre as the price of his exploit-the other, the cross.

† Συμφώνως και ισως κηρυξαι.—Hæres 51. 6.

† Οτι εξ αυτης της πηγης ωρμηνται.

LESSING'S HYPOTHESIS.

But it was in the year 1784, in the posthumous works of Lessing, published at Berlin, that the hypothesis of a common Syriac or Chaldee origin was decidedly maintained, and put forth to the world with much more precision than the fortitude of Semler had ventured. Lessing was dead first. It is not from living authors, or from those who wish to live, that the world has to look for important discoveries in theology. Those who offer truth to the Christian community, must ever provide for their escape from the consequences of doing so.

NIEMEYER'S HYPOTHESIS.

Six years afterwards (in 1790), the important truth was taken up, and allowed to be spoken, in consequence of meeting the approbation of Dr. Niemeyer, Professor of Divinity in Halle, who, in his Conjectures in illustration of the Silence of most of the Writers of the New Testament, concerning the beginning of the Life of Jesus Christ, says, that "If credit be due to the authority of the Fathers, there existed a most ancient narration of the life of Jesus Christ, written especially for those inhabitants of Palestine who became Christians from among the Jews."*. "This narrative is distinguished by various names, as the GosPEL of the Twelve Apostles-the GOSPEL of the Hebrews-the GOSPEL according to Matthew-the GOSPEL of the Nazarenes; and this same, unless all things deceive me, is to be considered as the fountain from which other writings of this sort have derived their origin, as streams from the spring."

Dr. Niemeyer further adds, in a passage to which Bishop Marsh invokes our especial attention, that "Since this book of which we speak contained the

* Jam si fides habenda est patrum auctoritate antiquissima extitit de vita Jesu Christi narratio, in usum eorum, qui e Judæis Christiani facti erant, Palæstinensium imprimis scripta.

Hæc narratio variis nominibus insignitur, quo pertinent Evangelium duodecim Apostolorum, Hebræorum, Nazaræorum, secundum Matthæum eademque, nisi me omnia fallunt, pro fonte habenda est, e quo reliqua id genus scripta tanquam rivuli originem suam duxerunt.

Cum vero contineret hic liber, de quo quærimus Apostolorum de vita Christi narrationes, non modo propter argumenti gravitatem credibile est, ejus exemplaria in plurimorum christianorum manibus fuisse, quorum maxime debabat interesse divinam magistri sui imaginem intueri, verum etiam singulis exemplaribus ea, quæ quisque aliunde de Christo comperta haberet, tanquam auctaria adscripta esse: ita quidem ut vel Apostolorum ævo, plures extiterunt horum memorabilium recensiones.

Quod si sumitur; multa facillime explicari possunt, quæ, sublata ista hypo

narrations of the apostles concerning the life of Christ, not only is it credible from the importance of its argument, that copies of it should have been in the hands of the generality of Christians, whom it ought chiefly to have concerned to behold the divine image of their master, but that in each particular copy, would be written as a sort of supplement, whatever any one had found to be true concerning Christ from other sources so that indeed, even in the age of the apostles, there might have been several selections of these memoirs which if it be admitted; many things can be most easily explained, which otherwise render the origin of our gospels very obscure. In the first place, the clear agreement of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, in many parts of their gospels, not only in the resemblance of the subjects of which they treat, but in the use of the same words, is understood. Make a hundred men to have been witnesses of the same fact; make the same hundred to have written accounts of what they saw; they will agree in matter, they will differ in words :-nor will any one say that it happened by accident, if even three or four out of their number, had so related the story, as to answer word for word, through a course of many periods.

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"But who is ignorant, that such an agreement is to be observed repeatedly in the commentaries of the Evangelists? But this is not wonderful since they drew from the same fountain. They translated the memorable sayings and actions of Christ, which were written in Hebrew, into Greek, for the use of those who spoke the Greek language. But, how came it that Luke should follow a different thesi, admodum obscuras reddunt evangeliorum nostrorum origines. Primum intelligitur consensus Matthæi, Marci, Lucæ, per plures evangeliorum suorum partes, non modo in rerum quas tractunt similitudine, verum etiam verborum conspiratione perspicuus: Fac centum homines ejusdem facti fuisse testes; Fac centum ipsos quod viderint mandasse literis: Consentient re, different verbis: nec quisquam casu factum esse judicabit, si vel tres aut quatuor ex eorum numero rem ita narraverint, ut per plurimarum periodorum seriem, verbum verbo respondeat. Hoc vero quis ignorat sexcenties observari in evangelistarum commentariis? Atqui hoc mirum non est. Nempe ex eodem hauserunt fonte. Memorabilia Christi et dicta et facta Hebraice scripta, in usum Græce loquentium, Græca fecerunt.

Qui vero factum est, ut Lucas alium sequeretur rerum ordinem, quam Matthæus; ut in Marco plura desiderentur, in Matthæo, cujus vestigia premere videtur obvia? Ut in singulis partibus, alter altero verbosior, in observandis rebus minutis, diligentior reperiatur? Quoniam, ut diximus, mira fuit exemplarium, quæ ista Apostolorum. Απομνευματα complectebantur diversitas. Deinde, quoniam liberum fuit iis, qui ex istis Commentariis sua evangelia coneinnabant, addere quæ sibi aliunde innotuissent, resecare quæ vel sublestæ fidei, vel minus utilia lectoribus, et a suo scribendi consilio remota judicarent.

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