RAST
 
 18 
 
 CONTRAST " 
 
 OR 
 
 A PROPHET AND A FORGER 
 
 BY 
 
 EDWIN A. ABBOTT 
 
 u Having the truth of honour " 
 
 Shakespeare 
 
 LONDON 
 
 ADAM AND CHARLES BLACK 
 
 1903
 
 Cambridge: 
 
 PRINTED BY J. AND C. F. CLAY, 
 AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS.
 
 PREFACE 
 
 THIS book, or skeleton of a book, came into being 
 in the following circumstances. The preparation 
 of a work on the Four Gospels strengthened my 
 conviction based before, as it appeared to me, on 
 solid evidence that the author of the Fourth Gospel 
 is often, historically as well as spiritually, closer than 
 the Synoptic Evangelists to the truthful conception of 
 the birth, nature, life, and resurrection of our Lord. 
 At the same time I retained the equally firm conviction 
 that the author was not the son of Zebedee nor an 
 eye-witness of the facts he relates. 
 
 Obviously, then, I was confronted with the objection 
 that I was placing the Synoptists below an Evangelist 
 who, according to my own admission, implied that he 
 was what he was not, namely, the son of Zebedee, 
 and who definitely declared that he had "seen" what 
 he did not "see"- for example, the flow of blood and 
 water from the body of Jesus upon the Cross. Many 
 years ago, in a series of papers published in the 
 Expositor, I had described the author of the so-called 
 " Second Epistle of St Peter " as a forger, partly 
 
 iii a 2 
 
 2095137
 
 PREFACE 
 
 because he had done much the same thing, that is 
 to say, he declared that he had "heard" the Voice 
 from Heaven at the Transfiguration, which, according 
 to my conviction, he had not heard. How, then, could 
 I escape the charge of unfairness if I applied the name 
 of " forger " to the writer of the Epistle and shrank 
 from applying it to the writer of the Gospel ? 
 
 In order to meet this charge, I devoted a separate 
 Introduction to the explanation of my views about the 
 honesty of the Fourth Evangelist, attempting to shew 
 the difficulties that beset him in his endeavour to attain 
 the truth, his method of overcoming them, and the 
 probability that in many cases, where one might suppose 
 him to be inventing facts, dialogues, and discourses, he 
 is not really " inventing," but only incorporating apos- 
 tolic traditions, perhaps derived from John the son of 
 Zebedee, whose pen he considered himself to be. 
 
 This view of the Evangelist's truthfulness, of what 
 Shakespeare might call his " truth of honour," loyalty 
 to spiritual truth, appeared to me considering the 
 difficulties and uncertainties surrounding him quite 
 consistent with frequent unveracity, that is to say, 
 deviation from historical truth, and even carelessness 
 about it. But I could not come to the same conclusion 
 about the Epistle-writer. He, on the contrary, seemed 
 to me, beside being unveracious, to be absolutely 
 untrue. Untruthfulness permeated him. He professed 
 to be an apostle, but was no apostle, not even a prophet. 
 He had no message of his own to deliver, and con- 
 
 iv
 
 PREFACE 
 
 sequently, when he pretended a message, he was driven 
 to pretend a style. Or rather he pretended patches of 
 messages and expressed them in patches of different 
 styles, pilfered from different authors, much as an 
 Indian writer, years ago, deplored the death of "a 
 statesman of the highest specific gravity distilled with 
 febrile wing from a debris of mourning friends and 
 relatives into the interminable azure of the past." In 
 such a writer as this, there was not a trace of the 
 directness that may be found in every other book of 
 the Greek New Testament, and in almost every book 
 of the Old. In the style of the Fourth Gospel 
 though inspired art lies deep below there is an 
 inspired naturalness of language, and a spontaneous 
 unity, or harmony, of expression and arrangement. 
 It has "the show and seal of nature's truth." The 
 style of the Second Epistle of St Peter has the "show 
 and seal " of ambitious pretentiousness, of spiritual, 
 intellectual, and literary untruth. 
 
 The mischief, moral as well as intellectual, arising 
 from this Pseudo-Petrine blemish on our Canonical 
 Scriptures, and, more especially, its indirectly mis- 
 leading influence upon the criticism of the Fourth 
 Gospel, appeared to me to necessitate in my new 
 work an Appendix calling attention to Dr Chase's 
 valuable article on the Epistle in Hastings' Dictionary 
 of the Bible, and justifying my course in contrasting 
 the Evangelist as a prophet with the Epistle-writer as 
 a forger. 
 
 v
 
 PREFACE 
 
 Later on, when I was preparing- my volume for the 
 press and selecting specimen sheets for distribution 
 among the public, it occurred to me that some, who 
 might not have leisure or energy for the study of the 
 complete work, might like to read in a separate form 
 the Introduction and the Appendix that set forth the 
 distinction between the so-called " Gospel according 
 to St John" and the so-called "Second Epistle of 
 St Peter." At the same time, by adding the Second 
 Introduction, explaining the objects and methods of 
 the volume, and the Table of Contents, giving 
 summaries of the conclusions arrived at in the 
 volume, it appeared feasible to give them a com- 
 pendious view of the whole subject to be treated in 
 the larger work, of which the title will be found on 
 the last page of the treatise now in the reader's 
 hands. 
 
 IVellside, 
 
 Hampstead. 
 21 Feb. 1903. 
 
 VI
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Contents, References, and Abbreviations, of " From 
 
 Letter to Spirit" ...... ix-xxxii 
 
 INTRODUCTION I i-n 
 
 II 12-24 
 
 APPENDIX V 25-41 
 
 Title-page of " From Letter to Spirit " . . 43 
 
 vn
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 REFERENCES AND ABBREVIATIONS 
 
 INTRODUCTION I (ON THE HONESTY OF THE 
 FOURTH GOSPEL) 
 
 Summary. The Fourth Gospel may have been 
 written by one who considered himself but the pen 
 of John the son of Zebedee, and who gave unity to 
 the preaching and revelations of the latter ; and this 
 theory may be illustrated from the Targums of the 
 Pentateuch 
 
 INTRODUCTION II (ON THE SUBJECTS DISCUSSED 
 
 IN THIS WORK) 
 
 Summary. Why does John omit the Voice from 
 Heaven in his account of the Baptism ? Why does he 
 omit the whole narrative of the Transfiguration (in- 
 cluding the Voice) ? Why do the Synoptists omit the 
 Johannine Voice? Why do Luke and John alone 
 mention prayer as occurring before the Voice? How 
 account for the evangelistic differences as to Christ's 
 single short prayer ? What use can be made of non- 
 canonical accounts of the Baptism and the Trans- 
 figuration ? 
 
 In his differences from his predecessors as to (r) the 
 Baptism, (2) the Transfiguration, (3) Christ's prayer, 
 (4) "glory," and (from Matthew and Luke) as to (5) the 
 nature of the divine Sonship, John is probably closer 
 than the Synoptists to the historical and the spiritual 
 truth 12 24 
 
 ix
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 BOOK I 
 THE BAPTISM 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 DIFFERENT ACCOUNTS OF THE BAPTISM 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I The texts in English : the arrangement (553), Synoptists 
 (554), John (555), Arabic Diatessaron (556), Justin 
 Martyr t557 9), Celsus (5605), Testament of the 
 XII Patriarchs (5669), Gospel of the Hebrews or 
 Nazarenes (5702), Ephrem Syrus (5737), Gospel of 
 the Ebionites (57881), Sibylline Oracles (5825), 
 Epiphanius (58691) 
 
 2 The differences to be considered : What was said by the 
 Voice ? What was seen ? Who saw it ? (592 6) 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 WHAT PRECEDED THE BAPTISM? 
 
 i Canonical accounts: (Matthew) "to be baptized" (597 8) 
 
 2 Non-canonical accounts: "beseeching," or "not needing," 
 to be baptized (599605) 
 
 3 "I need to be baptized by thee," origin of this tradition 
 (6069) 
 
 Summary. " Was baptized " originated " to be bap- 
 tized " ; this gave rise to various traditions about Jesus 
 "nof needing" to be baptized, and about the Baptist 
 "beseeching" to be baptized 
 
 x
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 THE PLACE OF THE BAPTISM 
 
 PAGE 
 
 i Divergences (6101) --. 
 
 2 Where was Jesus baptized ? (6126) .... 
 
 Summary. Hebrew ambiguity originated various 
 traditions, such as, "in Jordan," " near Jordan," "by the 
 side of Jordan," and "beyond Jordan, 1 ' and also Luke's 
 tradition about "people." The place was not known in 
 Origen's time and is not known in ours ; but " near 
 Jordan " is more probably correct than "in Jordan " . 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 "GOING UP FROM THE WATER" 
 
 i "Fire "or" Light "(617 25) 
 
 2 Parallels or precedents (6268) 
 
 3 The Original may have mentioned " the going up of the 
 Oblation" (629) 
 
 4 Traditions resulting from this (6309) .... 
 
 Summary. In the Answer from Heaven to Elijah's 
 sacrifice, a phrase about "going up" and "water" is 
 erroneously substituted by the Codex Alexandrinus for 
 "at the time of the evening oblation." If the latter 
 were the original here, it would explain a large number 
 of traditions, and, among them, " The Lamb of God that 
 taketh away the sin of the world'''' 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 THE RENDING OF THE HEAVENS 
 
 i "Rending," or " opening"? 
 2 Why omitted by several authorities ? (643 4) . 
 3 Who saw the vision ? (64552) ... 
 
 xi
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 4 (Jn i. 51) "the heaven set-open''' (653 61) 
 
 Summary. "Rending" was probably the earliest 
 tradition but was altered to "opening" owing to the 
 singularity of the former expression, and owing to 
 Hebrew corruption. The difficulty of deciding between 
 "rending" and "opening" led to the question "What 
 was spiritually implied by this vision?" 
 
 John concluded that the "rending* was a rudi- 
 mentary vision granted to the Baptist. He therefore 
 omitted it here, as being implied in the descent of the 
 Spirit, and also as being exaggerated by some Christians. 
 But he inserted, a little later on, a statement of Jesus 
 that the heaven would be permanently opened in the 
 course of a continuous communication between heaven 
 and earth .... 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 THE DESCENT OF THE SPIRIT 
 
 i What descended ? (66276) 
 
 2 How? And with what result? The different traditions 
 (6778) 
 
 3 "Into " Jesus, or " on " Him ? (67984) .... 
 
 Summary. The Original described the descent of 
 "the Spirit of the Lord" as in Isaiah (xi. 2) ; but, owing 
 to various interpretations of that passage, and discussions 
 as to the "spirits" or "spirit" indicated thereby, the 
 Synoptists used different terms. John preferred Mark's. 
 There was early difference of opinion as to whether the 
 Spirit came "into" Jesus or "on" Him. The choice 
 of phrases would be influenced by notions of the 
 "dove" 
 
 Xll
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 THE DOVE 
 
 PAGE 
 i The Dove in Jewish literature (6858) .... 
 
 2 The Dove in Gentile literature (68991) .... 
 3 Obstacles to the acceptance of the tradition of the Dove 
 
 (6924) 
 
 4 "Dove" might be confused with "resting" (695 6) 
 
 5 The " Dove " and Joseph's " rod," the legends (697702). 
 
 6 The "Dove" and Joseph's "rod? the legends explained 
 
 (70310) 
 
 7 "Resting," how interpreted by Justin Martyr and Ter- 
 
 tullian (7115) 
 
 8 Other circumstances that might favour the introduction 
 
 of the Dove (7169) 
 
 9 Conclusion as to the Dove (720 4) 
 
 Summary. In Jewish literature, the Dove was the 
 symbol of repentance, mourning, and timorousness : in 
 Greek literature, it was the symbol of love and peace. 
 Greeks were accustomed to symbolize the gods and 
 their messengers as birds : Jews were not. Some nar- 
 ratives that omit "dove" add that the Spirit "rested" 
 (or " abode ") : some that insert " dove " omit " rested." 
 The Hebrew for " rested" closely resembles that for 
 " dove."'' The antiquity of some tradition about "resting " 
 is proved by very early apocryphal writings connecting 
 the "resting^ of a " dove " with " the rod of Jesse " taken 
 as meaning the rod of Joseph, the descendant of Jesse 
 and father of Jesus: but by the "dove" these apo- 
 cryphal writers meant, not the Holy Spirit, but Mary the 
 wife of Joseph. Justin and Tertullian explain "resting" 
 as " ceased? i.e. passed away from the Jews. 
 
 The conclusion is that " as a dove? if part of the 
 Original, did not refer to visible shape, but meant "as 
 a bird seeking its home? More probably, however, 
 " dove " was not a part of the Original, but was intro- 
 duced, by error, as a Hebrew corruption for "rested." 
 John, though not absolutely suppressing the tradition, 
 excludes it from the message of God to the Baptist, so 
 as to indicate that it was not an essential part of the 
 foreordained sign by which the Baptist was to discern 
 the Messiah ......... 
 
 xiii
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 BOOK II 
 BATH KOL 
 
 OR 
 
 VOICES FROM HEAVEN IN JEWISH TRADITION 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 BATH KOL BEFORE THE GOSPEL 
 
 PAGE 
 
 i " Bath Kol," or " Voice from Heaven " (7256) 
 2 " The Voice of the Lord " in the Bible (7279) 
 3 John Hyrcanus and Hillel (7308) 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 BATH KOL IN FAVOUR 
 
 i Bath Kol in the Targums of Jonathan ben Uzziel 
 (73942) 
 
 2 Bath Kol in Siphra, Siphri, and Mishna (7436) . 
 
 3 Bath Kol expressing (i) celestial decisions (747 52) 
 
 4 Bath Kol expressing (2) celestial judgments (753 5) 
 
 5 The Bath Kol for Hillel against Shammai (75662) 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 BATH KOL ON ITS DEFENCE 
 
 i " One does not trouble oneself about Bath Kol " (76375) 
 
 2 Apologies for Bath Kol (7769) 
 
 3 Bath Kol as an echo (7805) 
 
 xiv
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Summary of Book II. The attitude of Jewish writers 
 towards Bath Kol appears often to have been determined 
 by doctrinal and personal considerations. The Jeru- 
 salem and the Babylonian Talmuds, where they happen 
 to describe the same Voice from Heaven (which is 
 seldom the case), sometimes take different views of it. 
 But towards the end of the first century a protest was 
 made against the application of Bath Kol to doctrinal 
 questions, or to teachers discussing them. This protest 
 found favour with many Jewish teachers, and may very 
 naturally have influenced the Fourth Evangelist, both 
 negatively, in omitting the Synoptic Voices, and posi- 
 tively, in inserting a Voice, of a different kind, peculiar 
 to the Fourth Gospel ....... 
 
 BOOK III 
 
 VOICES FROM HEAVEN IN SYNOPTIC 
 TRADITION 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 "BELOVED SON" 
 
 I Canonical traditions (786 91) 
 
 2 Non-canonical traditions (792 7) 
 
 3 Negative conclusion : the Synoptic tradition probably 
 erroneous (798801) 
 
 4 "Beloved? in Matthew, a mistranslation of "chosen" in 
 Isaiah (8024) 
 
 5 "Son," in the Synoptists, a mistranslation of "servant" 
 in Isaiah (80511) 
 
 6 Evidence, apart from Isaiah, that the Messiah was once 
 called " Chosen " (8124) 
 
 7 Disuse of " Chosen" as a name for the Messiah (815 6) 
 
 XV
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 Summary. The early doubt as to the precise words 
 of the Voice at the Baptism gave rise to various versions 
 based on various texts of Scripture. 
 
 The evidence of Luke (ix. 35), in the account of the 
 Voice at the Transfiguration, points to an original 
 " Chosen". John also, who says that the Baptist called 
 himself a Voice, adds that the Baptist described Jesus, 
 if we accept the Syro-Sinaitic reading, not as " Son of 
 God," but as (i. 34) " the chosen of God." These and 
 other facts indicate that the Synoptic Voice was based 
 on Isaiah xlii. I ("my Chosen"). Owing to the simi- 
 larity of the Hebrew for " my Chosen " and the Hebrew 
 for " in my beloved? Matthew (xii. 18) has mistranslated 
 " Chosen " as if it were " Beloved" The context of 
 Isaiah (xlii. i "my Servant. ..my Chosen") calls the 
 Messiah " Servant." This is rendered by the LXX 
 "boy" meaning ''Servant" but liable to be taken to 
 mean " Son". The Synoptists have mostly taken it thus, 
 converting Isaiah's " Chosen. ..Servant" into " Beloved 
 Son." This confusion was facilitated by the fact that 
 the Hebrew "my beloved" literally means "my only 
 0ne," but is specially applied to a " son " . . 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 " HEAR YE HIM " 
 
 i The phrase introduces a "Messenger" in Exodus and 
 a ^Prophet" in Deuteronomy (8178) .... 
 
 2 Jewish traditions concerning the "Messenger" and the 
 "Prophet" (81929) . . . . 
 
 3 Christian canonical traditions concerning the "Messenger" 
 (8305) 
 
 4 Christian non-canonical traditions concerning the "Mes- 
 senger" (83640) 
 
 5 Christian traditions concerning the "Prophet* (841 7) . 
 6 "Moses "and "Elijah" (848 9) 
 
 Summary. The words " Hear ye him" introduce a 
 future Messenger or Angel in Exodus, and a future 
 Prophet in Deuteronomy. Malachi, too, speaks of a 
 
 xvi
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 future Messenger, who is to prepare the way of the 
 Lord : but this is in such ambiguous terms that some 
 regarded the Messenger as Elijah, others as Messiah. 
 
 Early Jewish tradition varies as to the Messenger in 
 Exodus, and interprets the prophet in Deuteronomy as 
 being no particular prophet, but a prophet from time to 
 time inspired with the spirit that inspired Moses. 
 
 Some early Christian traditions applied to Christ 
 prophecies about the Messenger or Angel; but the 
 application was not persevered in, probably as giving 
 Him an inadequate title. The Deuteronornic prediction 
 about the prophet was applied by the Acts of the 
 Apostles to Christ in a distorted shape, and, through 
 the Acts, by several Ante-Nicene Fathers, who dis- 
 torted it still more. 
 
 The Synoptic Voice from Heaven, " Hear ye him" 
 appears to have been part of a narrative describing how 
 Christ was revealed to Peter and his companions as 
 being both the Messenger in Exodus and the Prophet 
 in Deuteronomy. Identifying the Messenger in Exodus 
 with the Messenger in Malachi, i.e. Elijah, some early 
 Christians may have believed that Christ was revealed 
 to the disciples both as "the Prophets" (Elijah) and as 
 "the Law" (Moses), and that "Hear ye him" meant 
 "Hear ye him as Messenger and as Prophet." But 
 others, improving on this, said that He was to be heard 
 as the Son of God, including in Himself the Law an<L 
 the Prophets, i.e. the glory of Moses and the glory of 
 Elijah 
 
 XV11
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 BOOK IV 
 THE SILENCE OF JOHN 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE VOICE AT THE BAPTISM 
 WHY OMITTED BY JOHN ? 
 
 I The Baptist's mission as described by Luke (850 3) 
 
 2 The Baptist's mission as described by John (854 6) 
 
 3 The Original? The "Refiner"'? (857) . 
 
 4 Ambiguities connected with the "Refiner" (85861) 
 
 5 " Refiner? perhaps, superseded by " Chosen " or "Son" 
 (8624) 
 
 Summary. The New Hebrew word for "son" is 
 identical with forms of a Biblical word that might mean 
 ''purified" "chosen" which might be used to denote a 
 Purifier, or Refiner, like the Messenger predicted by 
 Malachi. 
 
 John omits the Synoptic Voice from Heaven at the 
 Baptism (" Beloved Son "), ist, because it did not come 
 direct from Heaven, but indirectly through the Baptist, 
 who described himself as a Voice and who received a 
 message from Heaven ; 2nd, because the Baptist's 
 testimony did not include the word " Son". If the word 
 mentioned by the Baptist was "the Refinerl\ it would 
 naturally be converted into " the Chosen One", meaning 
 the Messiah, and that again into " the Son " . 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 THE VOICE AT THE TRANSFIGURATION 
 WHY OMITTED BY JOHN ? 
 
 $ i A physical hypothesis, unsatisfactory (8658) 
 2 Origen's view : the Transfiguration subjective (869 74) . 
 3 Mark lends itself to the subjective hypothesis (875 9) . 
 
 xviii
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 4 St Paul favours the subjective hypothesis (880 4) . 
 
 5 Conflict of opinion as to Lk. ix. 33 " Not knowing what 
 he was saying" (88590) 
 
 6 The " three tabernacles 1 ' ($81 5) 
 
 7 The Transfiguration compared with the Mosaic Theo- 
 phany (Exod. xxxiii. 23) (896907) .... 
 
 Summary. If the Transfiguration had actually 
 occurred on an actual mountain, it might perhaps be 
 explained, like the phenomenon witnessed on the hills 
 of the Brocken and elsewhere, as being an apparition 
 in which Peter, keeping watch between the two sons of 
 Zebedee, about sun-rise, saw three figures, the central 
 one with a halo round its head, shadowed on a cloud 
 coming from the West. But that is not so probable as 
 an explanation from linguistic error, which has changed 
 a manifestation of spiritual glory into one of material 
 splendour. 
 
 Mark's text shews signs of an original narrative in 
 which the manifestation was of a subjective nature. 
 St Paul, in his apparent allusion to the Transfiguration 
 or Transformation, and in his precepts bidding the 
 disciples to be "transfigured", favours a subjective 
 hypothesis. Origen who in this instance may guide 
 us to historical as well as to spiritual truth emphasizes 
 the truth that Christ may be transfigured for some, and 
 not for others, among a number of simultaneous spec- 
 tators. Clement of Alexandria has remarks of the same 
 tendency. 
 
 The solid basis of historical fact in the Synoptic 
 narrative is Peter's ecstatic cry, ''Let us make three 
 tabernacles, one for thee, one for Moses, and one for 
 Elijah." This could neither be invented, nor be 
 created by accretion ; for the Synoptists apologize as 
 it were for it, and it caused scandal in very early times. 
 Origen inveighs against Peter's utterance, as dividing 
 things that should be undivided, and as coming from 
 the devil. But the Synoptists imply elsewhere that 
 Christ appeared to some Elijah, to others the prophet 
 like Moses : and Peter, in a moment of inspiration, may 
 have said, in effect, "Thou art, for us, Moses, the Law. 
 Thou art, for us, Elijah, the Prophet. Thou art, for us, 
 
 xix b 2
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 thyself, the Priest, the Holy One of God, to whom point 
 the Law and the Prophets. For Moses be the court of 
 the people ! For Elijah, the Holy Place ! For thee, 
 the Holy of Holies!" 
 
 But all this is lost or obscured in the extant Synoptic 
 narratives partly because they have taken "He ap- 
 peared [as] Moses and Elijah unto them " as meaning 
 " There-appeared Moses and Elijah unto them? which 
 has led them into distracting details. But a greater 
 obscuration consists in the stress laid on manifestations 
 of physical splendour, such as " sun," " white," " light," 
 " fuller," while there is scarcely an indication or sugges- 
 tion (except in Luke) of the true glory that of self- 
 sacrifice. Hence the Synoptic Transfiguration, regarded 
 as a manifestation of divine glory, is greatly inferior to 
 the Mosaic Theophany in which, answering the Law- 
 giver's petition, " Shew me thy glory" God replied " I 
 will make all my GOODNESS pass before thee." For 
 these reasons John rejected the whole of the narrative 
 of the Transfiguration, as being not only historically 
 false but also spiritually inadequate. 
 
 At the same time John accepted from the Synoptists 
 this nucleus of fact, that at a crisis in Christ's life in 
 the moment when our Lord took upon Himself what 
 the Jews call the Yoke of the Kingdom of Heaven, and 
 achieved that great act of self-renunciation or self- 
 sacrifice, which was consummated on the Cross there 
 came a Bath Kol, or Voice from Heaven, which im- 
 parted a revelation to a few, but only a few, of those 
 present. John also agreed with Luke in believing that 
 this Bath Kol was preceded by prayer : but he felt that 
 it was a defect in Luke's knowledge, or judgment, that 
 he omitted to tell us the substance of the prayer. Con- 
 sequently, the Fourth Evangelist, in reconstructing the 
 narrative of this act spiritually considered, the central 
 act of Christ's life, felt it right to attempt to represent 
 in words the essence and spirit of Christ's prayer, and 
 also to give the readers some conception of the nature 
 of the " yoke " (called in the Western Church the 
 "Cross") taken upon Himself by the Saviour in the 
 moment when He laid the invisible foundations of the 
 Spiritual Church 
 
 XX
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 BOOK V 
 
 THE VOICE FROM HEAVEN AN ANSWER 
 TO PRAYER 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 "TROUBLE" PRECEDING PRAYER 
 
 PAGE 
 
 i The object of investigation (90812) .... 
 2 The Johannine Voice from Heaven (9136) 
 3 "Exceeding-sorrowful? " troubled" (911 24) . 
 
 4 John's doctrine of "trouble", truer than that of the Synop- 
 tists (9258) 
 
 Summary. The exact words of the Bath Kol or 
 Voice from Heaven are unimportant as compared with 
 the motive and spirit of Christ's prayer. According to 
 John, the "soul" of Jesus, before His prayer, was 
 "troubled" an expression taken from the same pas- 
 sage of the Psalter from which come the words of 
 Christ given by Mark as uttered in Gethsemane, " My 
 soul is exceeding- sorrowful" 
 
 But Mark, besides apparently mistranslating the 
 words so as to exaggerate the depression suggested by 
 them, leaves us under the impression that Christ feared 
 death for His own sake, and Luke perhaps thinking 
 this erroneous entirely omits the description of " ex- 
 ceeding sorrow". John steps in to emphasize the truth 
 that Christ did feel sorrow, but not such sorrow as 
 might be inferred from Mark. 
 
 Desiring, however, to correct rather than contra- 
 dict the older Evangelists, John avoids the word 
 "sorrow" and substitutes "trouble". This word en- 
 ables him indirectly to contravene the doctrine of 
 Epictetus, then in vogue, that a philosopher must retain, 
 at all costs, "freedom from trouble." Christ, he implies, 
 on the contrary, regarded Himself as sent to bear 
 
 xxi
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 "trouble*. He "troubled Himself" for the mourners at 
 the grave of Lazarus; He was "troubled in spirit" by 
 the treachery of Judas; and here His "soul" was 
 "troubled" at the sight of His Chosen People Israel, 
 finally rejecting their Deliverer in each case, "troubled" 
 not for Himself but for men, His brethren ; or perhaps 
 rather for the whole Family of God, for the Name of 
 the Father darkened by the fear of death, by blindness 
 to truth, and by hatred of goodness .... 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 CHRIST'S ONE PRAYER 
 
 i The Synoptic versions and their meanings (929 32) 
 
 2 The Johannine version (933 40) 
 
 3 Some Synoptic divergences, how explicable (941 56) 
 
 4 The Epistle to the Hebrews, the interpolation in Luke, 
 and the Acts of John (95764) 
 
 5 The first clause of " The Lord's Prayer" (96571) . 
 
 6 John appears closer than the Synoptists to Christ's 
 language about the "cup" (9729) .... 
 
 Summary, (i) Difficulties. The strong phrase "/ 
 will assuredly not (ov /XT)) do [this or that'] " occurs in 
 the Synoptists only once, "/ will assuredly not drink." 
 John has precisely the same. But he refers it to the 
 " cup " of suffering, and as equivalent to an affirmative, 
 "I assuredly will drink": the Synoptists take it nega- 
 tively as referring to " the fruit of the vine ". 
 
 Mark and Luke, in the phrase "remove this cup", 
 use a word that elsewhere, in connection with "cup", 
 means "present", so that the meaning would naturally 
 be "present this cup ", but for the fact that they add 
 "from me ". John has " The cup that the Father hath 
 given me." 
 
 Mark mentions a prayer that, if possible, " the hour 
 might pass away." John has " Why [less prob. What] 
 should I say, 'Father, save me from this hour' ? " 
 
 xxii
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Mark and Matthew have phrases (a) about "if 
 possible", "all things are possible", "not possible"; 
 (b) about repeating prayers twice or thrice, and "sitting", 
 "departing", "coming again' 1 etc. All this is omitted 
 by Luke and John. 
 
 (2) Solutions, (a) If " He prayed [saying] thy [or, 
 His~\ will be done " was represented in Hebrew by " He 
 prayed [saying] [be it] according to thy [or, His] word? 
 the italicized words might be variously interpreted. 
 Taking "His word" as Christ's word, an Evangelist 
 might obtain the meaning, " He prayed according to 
 his [previous] word," i.e. " according to the [same] word 
 [as before]" i.e. repeating His prayer. Or, supplying 
 " it is ", he might obtain, " He prayed, [saying] [the 
 matter is] according to thy word" i.e. "it is all in thy 
 hands," "all things are possible with thee." (b) The 
 Hebrew "stand" may mean "be steadfast", " stand up", 
 or "pray": "sit" is frequently confused by the LXX 
 with "repeating" an action. 
 
 John's extraordinary use of "/ will assuredly not" 
 indicates his conviction that the fervid devotion of 
 Christ's language had been completely misconstrued by 
 the early Evangelists, and suggests that he wished 
 to retain the paradoxical expression, in order to shew 
 how they had been misled. The omission, by Luke and 
 John, of the Synoptic details about the repeated prayers, 
 indicates that they arose from glosses and conflations. 
 
 The interpolation, in Luke, about "an angel strength- 
 ening" Jesus, and the statement in the Epistle to the 
 Hebrews about His " strong crying and tears" , seem to 
 have arisen from the account of Jacob wrestling with 
 the angel in Hosea xii. 3 4 (LXX) "He had strength 
 with the angel... they wept and entreated" 
 
 (3) Conclusion. Almost all these early variations 
 shew a tendency either to materialize the burden of the 
 Agony so that it might be intelligible to the most ordin- 
 ary mind, or else to conform the narrative to prophecy. 
 They give us the impression that Christ feared death 
 and suffered agony for His own sake, and not for the 
 sake of others. 
 
 But, having regard to the Jewish forms of prayer 
 alleged to have been composed by Rabbis of the first 
 
 xxiii
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 century, and also to the general tenor of Christ's utter- 
 ances in all the Gospels, we may regard it as antece- 
 dently probable that Christ's one prayer, as recorded in 
 the Synoptic Original, was an utterance, not of passive 
 resignation, but of active acceptance. John may have 
 known this to be the case and yet may not have known 
 the exact words of the prayer. Amid a conflict of con- 
 fusing traditions, he may have determined to select a 
 version of the opening clause of what is commonly called 
 the Lord's Prayer "Hallowed be thy Name," or, more 
 probably in the Original, "Hallow thy Name." But 
 ''''hallow" was not so clear to the western churches as 
 " glorify". The LXX, in Isaiah, renders "hallowing 
 God" as "glorifying God": and, in the present in- 
 stance, Hebrew variations may have favoured the sub- 
 stitution of the word "glorify". We conclude that both 
 in the prayer "glorify thy Name," and in Christ's 
 language about "the cup" that the Father had "given" 
 Him, John approached if not verbally at all events 
 spiritually closer than the Synoptists to our Lord's 
 actual utterance . .... 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 THE TRUTH ABOUT THE VOICE FROM HEAVEN 
 
 i The truth negatively (9802) 
 
 2 The truth positively (983 9) 
 
 3 The truth as seen by John (9901000) .... 
 
 4 The truth as described by John : (i) the words (100111) 
 
 5 The truth as described by John : (ii) the time (10126) . 
 
 6 The truth as described by John : (lii) the place (101720) 
 
 7 The truth as it is (10218) 
 
 Summary. There was no one Voice, or definite 
 number of Voices, that came from Heaven to Jesus. But 
 Voices responsive to His prayers were constantly 
 coming when He prayed under the burden of men's 
 sufferings, and the still heavier burden of their passive 
 and their active sins. Christ's bitterest sorrow appears 
 
 xxiv
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 to have been for the treachery of Judas. Next to that 
 cause, might be the blindness of "the wise and the 
 prudent," and the restriction of the Gospel to " babes," 
 revealed to Jesus in what might be called a Voice from 
 Heaven to which He answered "Even so, Father, for 
 so it hath seemed good in thy sight." 
 
 John found a multitude of books written, and still, 
 in his days, being written, about the acts of Jesus ; and 
 he appears to have feared lest by the accumulated 
 traditions, largely legendary, about miracles, Voices 
 from Heaven, Elijah, Moses, metamorphosis etc. 
 books might distract faith from the personality of the 
 Son and from the Spirit of Sonship, emphasizing the 
 "glory" of the flesh, and subordinating that "glory" of 
 "grace and of truth" which is developed by trouble and 
 prayer. He therefore desired to concentrate the truth 
 about the Voices from Heaven into an account of one 
 particular Voice in answer to one particular prayer 
 following one particular trouble. At the same time he 
 wished to follow the old traditions where he believed 
 them to be correct, and even to reproduce them with 
 verbal exactness wherever the reproduction might shew 
 how they had been misunderstood by earlier Evan- 
 gelists if he could do this without obtrusively contra- 
 dicting his predecessors. 
 
 Following the words of ancient exposition, perhaps 
 apostolic, of Christ's single prayer, John represents 
 Jesus as asking how He could possibly pray to be de- 
 livered from the hour, since He came for the very 
 purpose of enduring that hour. As regards ''the cufl", 
 he admits that the letter of Christ's utterance was 
 "/ will assuredly not drink z'/" ; but he shews by the 
 context that the meaning was that of a very strong 
 affirmation, and that Christ expressed astonishment at 
 the notion of not drinking the cup "given" to Him by 
 the Father. 
 
 The occasion of Christ's prayer John represents as 
 being the coming of the Greeks to Jesus, just before 
 He finally "departed and was hidden from" the Jews ; 
 and probably the Temple is intended by him to be 
 assumed as the place. In these details he may not be 
 accurate, and perhaps does not aim at accuracy so 
 much as at symbolism, since accuracy may have been 
 
 xxv
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 impossible. But there is abundant reason for thinking 
 him right as to the spirit of Christ's prayer both at 
 Gethsemane and elsewhere, when he gives it shape in 
 the words " Father, glorify thy name" an utterance 
 inspired by the vital conviction that the greatest glory 
 of a father is a good son, and the greatest glory of God 
 is a good man ........ 
 
 APPENDIX I 
 
 NARRATIVES OF THE BAPTISM 
 (Greek and Latin) 
 
 i. The Synoptists (102931) ; ii. John (10323) ; iii. Arabic 
 Diatessaron, see 556 ; iv. Justin Martyr (1034 6) ; 
 v. Celsus (10379); vi. Testament of the XII Pa- 
 triarchs (1040 1) ; vii. Gospel of the Hebrews or 
 Nazarenes (1042) ; viii. Ephrem Syrus (10434) ; 
 ix. Gospel of the Ebionites (1045) ; x. Sibylline Oracles 
 (10468) ; xi. Epiphamus (104950) .... 
 
 APPENDIX II 
 
 ON THE ORIGIN OF THE TRADITION 
 "SUFFER IT TO BE SO NOW " 
 
 i "Setback" (in Mk. xv. 34 " Sabachthanei") may mean 
 " super" (1051 6) 
 
 2 " Heli" might be taken by Evangelists as "Elijah" or 
 "the sun"; " sabach" as "forsake" or "be eclipsed"; 
 " lama " as " why," or " to some extent " (1057-62) 
 
 3 Ramifications from " sabach " (1063 7) .... 
 4 " They know not what they do" origin of (1068) 
 5 " Whether Elijah cometh? origin of (1069) 
 
 Summary, (i) Mark and Matthew, who say that 
 Jesus, on the Cross, uttered the Aramaic word Sabach- 
 thanei, render it " hast thou forsaken me." But the 
 Biblical word for this is Azaphthanei ; and this is 
 substituted for sabachthanei by some of the best MSS. 
 and versions in Mark. Azaphthanei is from azab, 
 
 xxvi
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 which can mean nothing but "forsake." Sabachthanei 
 is from sabach (properly sabaK), an ambiguous word : 
 it may mean (i) "forsake" but may also mean (ii) " let 
 alone? "pass over" "pardon." 
 
 One Greek equivalent of sabach has precisely the 
 same ambiguity as the Aramaic. 
 
 Hence arose a multitude of traditions connecting 
 our Lord's last words with "let alone" "permit" 
 "suffer" "forgive" Mark and Matthew combined 
 with some of these the old and true tradition about 
 "forsaking". But Luke and John adopted the former 
 instead of the latter; and their justification was all the 
 stronger because sabach, in the few instances in which 
 it occurs in the Bible, does not mean "forsake", but means 
 "let alone". 
 
 (2) The Hebrew for "There are some that say" 
 may be the same as for " There were some that said." 
 Hence a gloss (say A.D. 50) "There are some that say, 
 He called for Elijah," might be incorporated in the 
 Gospel (say A.D. 70) as " There were some [of the 
 soldiers] that said, 'He calleth for Elijah 1 ": and this, 
 when combined with variations of "let [ye me~\ alone" 
 "let \thou hini\ alone" might originate in Mark the 
 soldiers' dialogue, justly omitted by Luke and John. 
 
 (3) The interpolation in Luke, " Father, forgive" is 
 a misunderstanding of "Heli, forsake" Heli, i.e. " God", 
 being paraphrased as "Father". 
 
 (4) The tradition that Jesus said to Heli, or Elijah, 
 "let alone," or "suffer" gave rise to a far-fetched sug- 
 gestion that He must have said this lojohn the Baptist, 
 of whom Jesus had said (Mk. xi. 14) "This is Elijah" 
 But the only Synoptic occasion on which Jesus and 
 the Baptist were together was the Baptism of Christ. 
 Hence sprang the legend (only to be found in Matthew) 
 that Jesus said to the Baptist in answer to the latter, 
 who deprecated the proposal that he should baptize the 
 Lord " Suffer it to be so now." 
 
 (5) A similar explanation applies to (Lk. xxii. 51) 
 " Suffer ye thus far," (Jn. xviii. 8) " Suffer ye these to 
 depart," and to Luke's tradition about a "failing", or 
 "eclipse", of the "sun" (Heli being taken for "sun" 
 and sabach for "fail" or "be eclipsed"} . 
 
 xxvii
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 APPENDIX III 
 
 THE TRANSFIGURATION AND THE AGONY 
 
 CANONICAL AND NON-CANONICAL ACCOUNTS 
 
 (Greek) 
 
 PAGE 
 
 i The Transfiguration according to the Synoptists (text as 
 in W.H.) (1070) 
 
 2 The Agony according to the Synoptists (text as in W.H.) 
 (1071) 
 
 3 The corresponding accounts in the Acts of John (ed. 
 James) (1072 4) 
 
 4 The Transfiguration in the Revelation of Peter (ed. James) 
 (1075) 
 
 APPENDIX IV 
 
 BATH KOL IN TARGUMS AND TALMUDS 
 
 (A reprint of Pinner's collection in the 
 Introduction to B. Berachoth, 1842) 
 
 i Instances from the Targums of Jonathan ben Usiel 
 (10767) 
 
 2 Instances from Siphra (1078) 
 
 3 Siphri(1079) 
 
 4 Mischnah (10801) 
 
 5 Jerusalem Talmud (108291) . 
 
 6 Babylonian Talmud (10921109) . 
 
 7 "Erklarungen"(1110 5) 
 
 xxvin
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 APPENDIX V 
 
 "THE SECOND EPISTLE OF ST PETER" 
 
 CONTRASTED WITH 
 " THE GOSPEL OF ST JOHN " 
 
 i The one point of similarity the claim of both to have 
 "seen'' or "heard" (1116 8) 
 
 2 Yet the Evangelist is a true Prophet (111920) . 
 
 3 The Letter-writer has no prophecy of his own (1121 2) 
 
 4 He has no style of his own (1123 5) .... 
 
 5 He writes artificially and grandiloquently (1126 7) 
 
 6 Some of his blunders like those of Baboo English 
 (11289) 
 
 7 His resemblance to the Pseudo-Peter of the Petrine 
 Apocalypse (1130) 
 
 8 His version of the Voice at the Transfiguration (1131) . 
 9 His inane reiterations (1132) ...... 
 
 10 His mention of "all the Epistles" of "our beloved 
 brother Paul " (11334) 
 
 II Not an "imitator" of Josephus, but perhaps a pilferer 
 from him (1135) 
 
 XXIX
 
 REFERENCES AND ABBREVIATIONS 
 
 REFERENCES 
 
 (i) Black Arabic numbers, e.g. (275), refer to subsections indicated 
 in this volume or in the preceding ones entitled, severally, Clue 
 and Corrections : subsections 1 272 belong to Clue, 273552 to 
 Corrections : (275a) means a footnote on subsection 275. 
 
 (ii) The Books of Scripture are referred to by the ordinary ab- 
 breviations, except where specified below. But when it is 
 said that Samuel, Isaiah, Matthew, or any other writer, wrote 
 this or that, it is to be understood as meaning the writer, 
 whoever he may be, of the words in question, and not as 
 meaning that the actual writer was Samuel, Isaiah, or Matthew. 
 
 (iii) The MSS. known severally as the Alexandrian, the Sinaitic, 
 the Vatican, and the Codex Bezae, are called by their usual 
 abbreviations A, K, B, and D. The Syriac version of the Gospels 
 discovered by Mrs Gibson on Mount Sinai is called in the text 
 the "Syro-Sinaitic" or "Sinaitic Syrian," and in the notes is 
 referred to as SS. 
 
 (iv) The text of the Greek Old Testament adopted is that of Professor 
 Swete 1 ; of the New, that of Westcott and Hort. 
 
 (v) Modern wc-rks are referred to by the name of the work, or author, 
 the vol., and the page, e.g. Levy iii. 343 a, i.e. column i, page 343, 
 vol. iii. 
 
 ABBREVIATIONS 
 
 A and N, see (iii) above. 
 
 B, see (iii) above. 
 
 B., before a Talmudic tractate, means Babylonian (as distinguished 
 from J. = Jerusalem), e.g. B. Berach. = the Berachoth in the Babylonian 
 Talmud, to which references are mostly made by leaves, e.g. 61 b, i.e. the 
 second side of leaf 61. 
 
 Buhl = Buhl's edition of Gesenius, Leipzic, 1899. 
 
 Chr. Chronicles. 
 
 Clement of Alexandria is referred to by Potter's pages, e.g. Clem. 
 Alex. 42. 
 
 1 This differs greatly from that of most earlier editions, which are usually based 
 on Codex A (Clue 33). 
 
 XXX
 
 REFERENCES AND ABBREVIATIONS 
 
 D, see (iii) above. 
 
 Diatess. = the Arabic Diatessaron, sometimes called Tatian's, trans- 
 lated by Rev. H. W. Hogg, B.D., in the Ante-Nicene Christian Library. 
 
 Ency. = Black's Encyclopaedia Biblica. 
 
 Ephrem = Ephraemus Syrus, ed. Moesinger. 
 
 Esdras, the First Book of, is frequently called, in the text, Esdras. 
 
 Etheridge= Targums on the Pentateuch^ London, Longman, 1862 5. 
 
 Euseb. = (unless otherwise indicated) the Ecclesiastical History of 
 Eusebius. 
 
 Gesen. = the edition of Gesenius now being published by the Oxford 
 University Press. 
 
 Hamburger = Hamburger's Encyclopaedia. 
 
 Hawkins = Hawkins's Horae Synopticae, Oxford, 1899. 
 
 Heb. LXX = that part of the LXX of which there is an extant Hebrew 
 Original. 
 
 Hershon, Genes. Rab. = Hershon's Rabbinical commentary on Genesis, 
 London, 1885. 
 
 Hershon, Genes. Talm. = Hershon's Talmudical commentary on 
 Genesis, London, 1883. 
 
 Hor. Heb. = Horae Hebraicae, by John Lightfoot, 1658 74, ed. 
 Gandell, Oxf. 1859. 
 
 Iren. = the treatise of Irenaeus against Heresies. 
 
 J., before a Talmudic tractate, means Jerusalem (as distinguished 
 from B. = Babylonian), e.g. J. Berach. = the Berachoth in the Jerusalem 
 Talmud, to which references are mostly made by chapters and sections, 
 e.g. iii. 2. 
 
 Jer. Targ. I and 11 = the Targums of "Jonathan Ben Uzziel" and the 
 fragments of the Jerusalem Targum on the Pentateuch. 
 
 K. = Kings. 
 
 leg. = (as in Tromm.) "legerunt," i.e. the LXX "read" so-and-so 
 instead of the present Hebrew text. 
 
 Levy = Levy's Neuhebrdisches und Chalddisches Worterbuch, 4 vols., 
 Leipzic, 1889; Levy Ch. = his Chalddisches Worterbuch, 2 vols., Leipzic, 
 1881. 
 
 L.S. = Liddell and Scott's Greek Lexicon. 
 
 Onk. = the Targum of Onkelos on the Pentateuch. 
 
 Oxf. Cone. = The Oxford Concordance to the Septuagint. 
 
 Philo is referred to by Mangey's volume and page, e.g. Philo ii. 234. 
 
 Resch = Resch's Paralleltexte (4 vols.), except where the Agrapha, or 
 Logia Jesu, are expressly mentioned. 
 
 S. = Samuel. 
 
 Schottg. = Schottgen's Horae Hebraicae, Dresden and Leipzic, 1733. 
 
 Sir. = the work of Ben Sira, i.e. the son of Sira. It is commonly called 
 Ecclesiasticus (see 20^). The original Hebrew has been edited, in part, 
 
 xxxi
 
 REFERENCES AND ABBREVIATIONS 
 
 by Cowley and Neubauer, Oxf. 1897 ; in part, by Schechter and Taylor, 
 Camb. 1899. 
 
 SS, see (iii) above. 
 
 Talmud, see B. Berach. and J. Berach. above. 
 
 Tisch. =Tischendorfs New Testament. 
 
 Tromm. = Trommius' Concordance to the Septuagint. 
 
 Tryph. =the Dialogue between Justin Martyr and Trypho the Jew. 
 
 Wetst. =Wetstein's Commentary on the New Testament, Amsterdam, 
 1751. 
 
 W.H. = Westcott and Hort's New Testament. 
 
 (a) A bracketed Arabic number, following the sign =, and connecting 
 a Hebrew and a Greek word, indicates the number of instances in which 
 that Hebrew word is represented by that Greek word in the LXX e.g. 
 fco (13), eoko6pfi>a> (23), a7rdXAu/w (2). 
 
 (b) In cases where the verses of the Hebrew, the Greek, and the 
 Revised Version, are numbered differently, the numbering of the Revised 
 Version is, for the most part, given alone. 
 
 XXXll
 
 INTRODUCTION I 
 
 ON THE HONESTY OF THE FOURTH GOSPEL 
 
 APART from other subordinate objects, enumerated in a 
 subsequent Introduction of a more personal nature, the aim 
 of this work is to demonstrate the honesty, and the historical 
 as well as the spiritual worth, of what is commonly called 
 " The Gospel according to St John." Evidence prevents me 
 from believing that it was written by the son of Zebedee or 
 by any eye-witness of the acts of our Lord, and forces me to 
 suspect or deny the literal accuracy of some of its statements ; 
 but I most earnestly desire to help unlearned as well as 
 perhaps some learned readers to discern the impassable gulf 
 that separates this sublime production from a merely false 
 and ignoble forgery like the so-called " Second Epistle of 
 St Peter 1 ." 
 
 Nearly five and twenty years ago, while writing an article 
 on "Gospels" for the Encyclopaedia Britannica,ax\d circulating 
 the proof-sheets among friends, availing myself of criticism 
 from any quarter that promised frankness, ability, spiritual 
 insight, and critical knowledge, I trespassed upon the leisure 
 of one of the most able journalists and essayists of the last 
 century, with whom, though my personal acquaintance did 
 not extend beyond a single conversation of a quarter of an 
 
 1 See Appendix v. 
 A. I I
 
 ON THE HONESTY OF 
 
 hour, I had the privilege of an occasional epistolary corre- 
 spondence. His reply, after reading and often re-reading, 1 
 have recently mislaid or destroyed; but I am certain of its 
 substance and almost certain of two of its key-words. In 
 effect, it pronounced the Fourth Gospel worthless unless 
 written by an eye-witness : in detail, it contained (I think) 
 the word " forgery" and (I am almost sure) the epithet 
 " impudent ". 
 
 My correspondent was then what would perhaps be called 
 a Broad Churchman, certainly an admirer of F. D. Maurice ; 
 and his articles on theological subjects combining reverence 
 and spiritual insight with intellectual force, literary culture, 
 and a natural nobility of thought and style were a refresh- 
 ment week by week to thousands of educated readers. If 
 such a man could express himself in such terms about the 
 Fourth Gospel, on the hypothesis of its proceeding from one 
 who was not an eye-witness of the facts, the conclusion was 
 inevitable that, in the existing state of knowledge among the 
 professional classes in England, the Fourth Gospel must re- 
 main either the work of the son of Zebedee, or worse than 
 worthless, not indeed quite so contemptible in respect of style 
 as " The Second Epistle of St Peter," but still morally as 
 bad, or even worse, because better adapted to deceive. 
 
 And yet the conviction remained within me that this 
 criticism was completely erroneous. But it was impossible at 
 that time to demonstrate its error. I had not a sufficient 
 mastery of the historical or textual facts. It is true that I 
 dimly discerned some of the difficulties that must have beset 
 an honest Evangelist at the beginning of the second century 
 attempting to convey the real and spiritual truth without 
 shaking the faith of Christians in the equally honest but not 
 equally spiritual attempts of a multitude of earlier Evangelists 
 one or two perhaps so early that they were beginning to be 
 regarded as "Scripture"; but the difficulties needed to be 
 not only more clearly discerned by me but also more amply 
 
 2
 
 THE FOURTH GOSPEL 
 
 illustrated, before I could hope to make them apparent to 
 others. It was necessary to proceed from the known to the 
 unknown. In the New Testament, parallel passages of the 
 Gospels had to be more closely examined and their differences 
 traced to their several causes. The canonical texts had to be 
 compared with corrupt versions of them, and with later non- 
 canonical traditions bearing on them. In the Old Testament, 
 the distortions of the Hebrew by the Greek translators, to- 
 gether with their occasional omissions and far more frequent 
 insertions ; in later Hebrew, the evidence from the Talmuds 
 and the Targums and other Jewish literature, shewing how 
 Christian Jews might think and helping one to realise how 
 Christian Greeks might represent, or misrepresent, their 
 thoughts ; in the Dark or Middle Ages, the rapid develop- 
 ments of legendary or non-historical tradition, as for example, 
 in the accounts of the miracles of St Thomas of Canterbury- 
 all these were facts that might have a bearing upon the 
 subject to be elucidated ; but with some of them I had then 
 but a superficial acquaintance, and with others none at all. 
 
 Since that time, twenty-five years of study, while deepen- 
 ing my previous negative convictions as to the evidential 
 qualifications of the Fourth Evangelist, also convinced me 
 that I had occasionally underestimated his anxiety to be histori- 
 cally as well as spiritually truthful. Where I had once sup- 
 posed him to be inventing or (if I may coin a useful barbarism) 
 poeticizing, he now appeared to be extracting the spiritual 
 truth out of some ancient tradition obscured by Mark and 
 omitted or variously interpreted by the later Evangelists. 
 For indeed by such obscurities, omissions, and variations, 
 a lover of Christ and of Christ's truth and of Christ's flock 
 especially the "lambs " or " little children " writing a Gospel 
 at the beginning of the second century, might well feel 
 grievously perplexed. What was he to do ? Was he to adhere 
 to the Synoptic tradition, correcting it as well as he could ? 
 Had he done this even supposing that he had felt fairly 
 
 3 12
 
 ON THE HONESTY OF 
 
 confident of the precise words of the original he would have 
 added one more Gospel to be criticized, compared, and harmon- 
 ized. But his object was to write a Gospel that should have 
 quite different results, one that should lift his readers out of 
 the critical atmosphere into the region of adoring love. Be- 
 sides, it may be taken as certain that in most of such cases he 
 did not feel sure of the real words. What, however, he did 
 feel sure of was the real spirit, which had passed into him from 
 the Lord Jesus by what precise personal or impersonal 
 channel, or channels, we do not know enabling him to repre- 
 sent our Lord, not as He appeared in the flesh to the multi- 
 tudes, or even to the disciples in Galilee, but as He appeared 
 to those who loved Him when they, after His death looking 
 back upon His past and forward to His future, and feeling 
 His present influence burning within them summed up the 
 character and person of their Saviour in one consistent image, 
 and realized Him as the Holy One of God, their only Light 
 and Life. 
 
 " But how" it may be asked " explain or justify (in one 
 who loved and revered Christ) the long discourses attributed to 
 Jesus in the Fourth Gospel, so absolutely different from any- 
 thing attributed to Him in the Three ? Might not the author 
 have at least kept as far as possible to the ancient traditions 
 of Christ's words explaining, paraphrasing, yes, even ampli- 
 fying, but not substituting long discourses of his own in words 
 of his own (for his own they undoubtedly are) ?" The answer 
 is probably to be found, partly in the author's desire to break 
 with the past and introduce a tradition absolutely new in 
 shape though old in essence ; partly in his objection to any- 
 thing that involved invidious comparison with the older 
 Gospels. But partly, and principally, it may be as follows : 
 " The discourses originated in explanations (perhaps proceed- 
 ing from John the son of Zebedee) intended by the originator 
 to explain what Christ meant, and to be as it were a marginal 
 or parenthetical commentary on the text, not part of the text
 
 THE FOURTH GOSPEL 
 
 itself. But subsequently, being modified and amplified by the 
 evangelists and elders of the Ephesian Church, and being 
 thrown into the form of a consecutive, harmonious, and artistic 
 whole by one particular Evangelist (perhaps John the Elder), 
 the whole mass of explanation or comment came to be re- 
 garded not merely as what Christ meant but as what He 
 actually said" 
 
 It was a custom of the later Jews to paraphrase the 
 Scriptures in Targums, and to amplify them in what they 
 called Haggada, often for mere picturesqueness, but some- 
 times in the attempt to bring out their historical 1 or spiritual 
 meaning. For example, in the sacrifice of Isaac, the Bible 
 simply says that Abraham " bound Isaac his son and laid him 
 on the altar upon the wood, and stretched forth his hand and 
 took the knife to slay his son," leaving the reader to supply 
 the willingness of the son to be sacrificed by his father. But 
 the Jerusalem Targum adds, "And Izhak answered and said 
 to his father, Bind me aright lest I tremble from the affliction 
 of my soul, and be cast into the pit of destruction, and there 
 be found profaneness in thy offering." Now it happens that, 
 in Hebrew, if a Targumist had wished to say, " Isaac felt 
 this or that, when he lay on the altar," or " Isaac said this 
 or that to himself (or, in his heart)" or " Isaac meant this or 
 that," a common Biblical way of expressing this would be, 
 " Isaac said it " omitting " to himself" or " in his heart" 
 Hence the transition must have been easy in Jewish tradition 
 from Jewish Targums about what "Jesus meant" to Greek 
 
 1 "Historical." Comp. Megill. 3^; concerning Zech. xii. 11 "In that 
 day there shall be a great mourning in Jerusalem, as the mourning of 
 Hadadrimmon in the valley of Megiddon," R. Joseph said, "Without the 
 Targum I should not have understood that verse, [the Targum is] In that 
 day there shall be a great mourning in Jerusalem, as the mourning for 
 Ahab the son of Omri, whom Hadadrimmon the son of Tabrimmon slew 
 in Ramoth Gilead, and as the mourning for Josiah the son of A man, whom 
 Pharaoh the Lame slew in the plain of Megiddo." 
 
 5
 
 ON THE HONESTY OF 
 
 traditions about what "Jesus said 1 ." This, in the course of 
 many years of oral teaching, in which Jewish apostolic, 
 tradition was filtered through Greek thought and Alexandrian 
 symbolism, may help to explain the origin of the long 
 Johannine dialogues and discourses the nucleus of which so 
 the present writer believes is closer than most Synoptic 
 tradition to the deeper doctrines of Christ. 
 
 But further, our Apostle was something more than a 
 Targumist. According to Luke, the Apostles had not only 
 seen the Lord Jesus after death, but had received instruction 
 from Him for " forty days." The number is probably typical, 
 and the actual period of post-resurrection communication by 
 voice between the Lord and the Twelve continued long after 
 that time, sometimes in special visions accompanied by 
 special voices (such as " Arise, Peter, kill and eat," and 
 " What God hath cleansed call not thou common ") ; but 
 sometimes also in more general utterances illuminating the 
 parables or dark sayings of the Lord in Galilee, or the 
 meaning of His later words and acts, and especially the 
 Lord's Supper and the Passion. St Paul was not one of the 
 Twelve. Yet he had heard the voice of the risen Saviour, 
 not only at his conversion, but long afterwards in Corinth, 
 and presumably on other occasions when he had been 
 snatched up into the third heaven, "whether in the body 
 I know not," he says, " or whether out of the body, I know 
 not ; God knoweth." So little stress did this thirteenth Apostle 
 lay on such a knowledge of the actual words of Christ as he 
 might have obtained from the Twelve, that he goes straight 
 from Ananias his baptizer not to Jerusalem but to Arabia 2 , 
 there to be alone with the Spirit of Christ. And it was from 
 Christ, direct, that St Paul asserts himself to have " received" 
 the words of Institution of t/te Eucharist: " I received from the 
 
 1 For " say " = " say in one's heart," see Gesen. 56 a ; and for a specimen 
 of the application of this theory to the Fourth Gospel, see 1003 12. 
 
 2 Gal. i. 17. 
 
 6
 
 THE FOURTH GOSPEL 
 
 Lord that which also I delivered unto you 1 ." According to 
 the Jews, all their teaching was "delivered " and " received ". The 
 original source was God, but there were channels, thus : Moses 
 received the Torah from Sinai and delivered it to Joshua, who 
 delivered it to the elders, and the elders to the prophets, and 
 the prophets delivered it to the men of the Great Synagogue, 
 among whom was Simon the Just ; Antigonus received from 
 Simon, and so on 2 . Hence no Jew could miss the meaning 
 of St Paul's words ; he did not " receive " from the Twelve, he 
 " received " from the Lord by revelation the words of the 
 Institution, including the saying not found in any Gospel 
 except an amplified or interpolated Luke " Do this in 
 remembrance of me." Yet Christians, while admitting that 
 Christ did not actually " say " these words, may feel sure that 
 He "said" them in the Hebrew sense, i.e. He "meant" them, 
 and may accept St Paul's tradition as inspired in the highest 
 sense, as a comment in which the Holy Spirit, speaking 
 through the Apostle of the Gentiles, filled up the deficiency 
 of the language of the East so as to make it intelligible and 
 living for the West. 
 
 But if St Paul, an Apostle " born out of due time," who 
 was " not worthy to be called an Apostle," who had never 
 seen or heard Christ in the flesh, and who had once persecuted 
 His Church, could thus teach in Corinth, and establish in 
 Christendom, words that were only "meant", not "said", by 
 the Lord Jesus, how much more might one of the pillar 
 Apostles 3 , John the son of Zebedee, " the beloved disciple," 
 venture to tell the Church in Ephesus that Jesus "said" this 
 or that, which in fact He did not " say " in articulate words, 
 but did " say " in the Spirit ! 
 
 These remarks are intended to prepare the reader to meet 
 the accusation that the Evangelist says that he " saw " what 
 
 1 i Cor. xi. 23. 2 Aboth i. I 3. 
 
 3 Gal. ii. 9, and see below 943.
 
 ON THE HONESTY OF 
 
 not being (according to our present hypothesis) an eye wit- 
 ness he could not " see ". Take for example the words, 
 " And straightway there came out blood and water [from 
 Jesus on the cross]. And he that hath seen hath borne 
 witness, and his witness is true, and he knoweth that he 
 saith true." compared with the conclusion of the Gospel : 
 " This [/. e. almost certainly, John the son of Zebedee] is the 
 disciple that beareth witness of these things and wrote these 
 things : and we know that his witness is true 1 ." There are 
 many obstacles to the acceptance of this assertion (" hath 
 seen [the flow of blood and water] ") as literally true ; and, 
 if it is not so, some may be disposed to think that the 
 above-quoted condemnation of " impudent forgery " is hardly 
 too severe to apply to it. 
 
 But imagine John the son of Zebedee in his old age, 
 long after his return from Patmos to Ephesus, once more 
 (as when he wrote the Apocalypse) " in the Spirit on the 
 Lord's day 2 /' and receiving a revelation as to that mysterious 
 Cross which was to the Greeks foolishness and to the Jews 
 a stumbling-block. He may have been sitting with his Elders 
 or Bishops around him, while they were hotly discussing 
 their controversies with some keen Stoic, or obstinate Rabbi 
 of an Ephesian synagogue, as to the nature of purification 
 and the comparative efficacy of baptism and of sprinkling 
 with blood : and they may have attributed their Bishop's 
 apparent indifference to the lethargy of age. Yet he is not 
 indifferent, but absent. His body is in Ephesus, but his 
 mind on Golgotha. In a flash his eyes have been opened, 
 and he is seeing, not water alone nor blood alone, but a 
 mingled stream of blood and water together flowing from 
 the heart of his Lord upon the Cross, the " fountain against 
 sin and uncleanness " predicted by Zechariah 3 , not cleansing 
 
 1 Jn xix. 35, xxi. 24. - Rev. i. 10. 
 
 3 Zech. xiii. i.
 
 THE FOURTH GOSPEL 
 
 the bodies but pouring a pure life into the souls of sinners. 
 This he would say he " saw ", and so he did see it as clearly 
 as any of the numerous visions that he "saw" at Patmos. 
 In after years, the Elders of Ephesus, handing on his Gospel, 
 would attest his revelation as a whole, and declare that they 
 knew his witness to be true. But they would also take 
 special pains to deliver this particular testimony of the be- 
 loved disciple concerning the vision of the Cross, as far as 
 possible in his own words asseverating his conviction of its 
 truth, as though he were still living among them " I saw 
 it and I know that my witness is true." Last of all w r ould 
 come our Evangelist, who with the freedom of a true 
 prophet would develop, explain, and amplify the nucleus 
 of truth bequeathed to his predecessors the Elders of 
 Ephesus, by their first Bishop. Thus he would give to 
 the rough Hebrew original a Greek literary unity and an 
 artistic harmony, and yet with the insight of a true pro- 
 phet would perceive that " the beloved disciple " was the 
 real originator and author, he himself being, in comparison, 
 nothing but the instrument. " Spiritually speaking," he 
 would say, " John the Disciple of the Lord wrote, the Elders 
 attested, I myself was but the pen." In thus executing his 
 labour of love, while embodying in his written Gospel this 
 most beautiful vision, he might unfortunately lead later ages 
 to suppose, and perhaps might himself suppose, that it was 
 literally and materially true. This conjecture is offered here 
 for the present only as a conjecture, but as a fairly probable 
 one, to be supported hereafter in a separate commentary on 
 the Fourth Gospel by cumulative evidence, but meantime 
 to be accepted provisionally in arrest of a hasty verdict that 
 "the Fourth Gospel is either literally true" or else "an im- 
 pudent forgery 1 ." 
 
 1 Compare the following vision of George Fox, as to which we may 
 feel confident that the seer had not the slightest intention of borrowing
 
 ON THE HONESTY OF 
 
 On the first page of this volume hoping to stimulate 
 readers to reflect on the difficulties besetting the path of 
 this (as it seemed to me) misunderstood Evangelist I ven- 
 tured to call his Gospel an "attempt at indirect biography 
 where direct biography was impossible." I meant " impossible " 
 both materially and spiritually. The former impossibility 
 would arise from want of trustworthy matter, letters, reports, 
 books, and the like : and in this connection it need only be 
 added that the most ancient of our ecclesiastical historians 
 reveals a quite Johannine dissatisfaction with " books 1 " and 
 a longing for traditions about persons who might pass on 
 to him some echo of the "living and abiding voice? But, 
 even if short-hand reporters, eye-witnesses, had accurately 
 written down Christ's each word and act, a second kind of 
 impossibility would still have existed (I believe) for our 
 Evangelist, arising from the nature of personality in general 
 and of this Person in particular. No artist, not even Turner, 
 can paint the sun. The Synoptists tried to express the 
 splendour of the transfigured Lord in language about "light", 
 "whiten", "snow", "lightning", " no fuller on earth", etc. Our 
 author felt that he could not, no, even "the beloved disciple" 
 could not, delineate in any words, much less in these, the 
 glory of the Only Begotten in its fulness of grace and 
 truth 2 . 
 
 from the Fourth Gospel, and that he " saw " what he says he " saw " 
 (Fox's Journal, p. 14): 
 
 " Soon after, there was another great meeting of professors ; and a 
 captain named Amor Stoddard came in. They were discoursing of the 
 blood of Christ. As they were discoursing of it, / saw, through the 
 immediate opening of the invisible Spirit, the blood of Christ ; and 
 cried out among them, saying 'Do ye not see the blood of Christ f 
 See it in your hearts, to sprinkle your hearts and consciences from 
 dead works, to serve the living God.' For I saw the blood of the 
 new covenant, how it came into the heart." 
 
 1 For Papias see 995 6; for the Johannine feeling about books 
 see 999. - Jn. i. 14. 
 
 IO
 
 THE FOURTH GOSPEL 
 
 But "direct biography" is perhaps an obscure expression. 
 In the original form of the Dedication it was explained by 
 words that then followed but were subsequently cancelled 
 as inappropriate for their position. After the cancelling, 
 the expression was still retained as being brief, easily re- 
 membered, and possibly provocative of thought. Perhaps 
 the discarded portion of the Dedication, a little modified 
 and amplified, may not seem too lengthy to come here as 
 a summary of this Introduction, and also as suggesting an 
 explanation of what some have called the egotistic element 
 in the Evangelist's conception of Christ. I have bracketed 
 the words deleted. 
 
 " To the unknown author of the Fourth Gospel, the 
 noblest attempt at indirect biography where direct bio- 
 graphy was impossible ; [who, finding the glory of the Lord 
 Jesus so darkened by legendary materialism and misinterpre- 
 tation that historic detail was no longer discernible, was 
 inspired by the Holy Spirit not to correct old writings but 
 to write things nezv in letter yet old in essence, not contra- 
 dicting nor arguing but explaining, so as to reveal his Master 
 indirectly (as seen in the mirror of " the disciple whom He 
 loved"} a Being human and divine, at once the Humblest 
 and the Highest, Lord of Lords because Servant of Servants, 
 claiming our allegiance not for His separate self but for the 
 Spirit of the Son within Him, which Spirit if any man has 
 felt, he has felt the Father in heaven\" 
 
 II
 
 INTRODUCTION II 
 
 ON THE SUBJECTS DISCUSSED IN THIS WORK 
 
 THE Preface to Part I of Diatessarica, giving a programme 
 of the whole series, described Part III as intended to be a 
 commentary on Mark. An explanation of the reasons for 
 deviating from that programme will enable the reader to 
 understand the origin, nature, and objects, of the present 
 volume. 
 
 Re-studying Mark's text I was led to the conclusion that 
 almost all the names peculiar to his Gospel such as Abia- 
 thar, Alexander, Rufus, Bartimaeus, Boanerges, Dalmanutha, 
 Salome, and Timaeus were erroneous and consequently 
 omitted by subsequent Evangelists. Further examination 
 shewed that similar suspicion attached itself to some names 
 in the later Gospels. Sometimes the spuriousness of one 
 name, e.g. Dalmanutha, suggested the spuriousness of another, 
 e.g. Magada (or Magdala), and the two had to be discussed 
 together. Finally, it appeared that the subject must be treated 
 as a whole, before I could proceed with my commentary. So 
 I turned aside to "Gospel Names." 
 
 This new task having been almost completed, I found 
 myself brought to a stand at the name " Galilee " because of 
 its insertion, omission, or varying context, in parallel passages 
 of the profoundest interest where our Lord predicted His 
 Passion and Resurrection. Examining these predictions 
 
 12
 
 SUBJECTS DISCUSSED IN THIS WORK 
 
 anew, and the remarkable deviations of Luke from the two 
 earlier Gospels, and the absolutely new vocabulary in which 
 John described the Saviour as predicting His death, I was led 
 to take up in particular the prophecy that the Lord would be 
 " delivered up ", or " betrayed ". Comparing Isaiah's saying 
 that the Messiah would "make intercession"* with the LXX's 
 version that He would "be delivered up", I came to the 
 conclusion that Mark had led the Synoptists into a rendering 
 that subordinated, if it did not altogether conceal, our Lord's 
 sense of the " intercessory" nature of His death, and that this 
 error had extended even to our English translation of St Paul's 
 Epistles, and, through them, to that portion of our Communion 
 Service which speaks of "the same night on which he was 
 betrayed" whereas it should have been " delivered up [by the 
 Father for the sins of men] V The importance of this error, 
 and of ramifications from it, led to a second digression on 
 " Christ's Predictions of His Resurrection." 
 
 But again, the study of our Lord's sayings on the night 
 before the Crucifixion (concerning His being "delivered up," 
 and " he that delivereth me up is at hand ") led me to reflect 
 on the extraordinary want of agreement between the Evan- 
 gelists as to His very last utterance just before He was 
 abandoned by the Twelve. At first, this disagreement seemed 
 explicable as the result of the momentary consternation of 
 His disciples. If so, it occurred to me that closer agreement 
 might be hoped for as to His first words when He entered on 
 public life. Yet here, Luke entirely deviates from Mark and 
 Matthew 3 , and John describes things from quite a different 
 point of view. Perplexed by these variations as to Christ's 
 first public words, I turned to the consideration of Christ's 
 first public appearance, the striking event described by John 
 as well as by the Synoptists the Baptism of Christ and the 
 
 1 Is. liii. 12. * See below 9278. 
 
 3 Mk i. 15, Mt. iv. 17, Lk. iv. 15, Jn i. 38. 
 
 13
 
 ON THE SUBJECTS 
 
 descent of the Spirit. Here, if anywhere, I might hope to 
 find, not indeed identity or even similarity of words, but at all 
 events substantial unanimity. 
 
 The attempt first to find it, and then to explain thoroughly 
 why it could not be found, originated a third and last 
 digression, which was originally intended to include merely 
 the Baptism of Christ and the Voice from Heaven. Indeed 
 at first sight it appeared that there was no room for a treatise 
 but only for a string of disappointing antitheses, such as 
 these: (i) The Synoptists mention a Voice from Heaven, 
 John does not ; (2) John mentions a message from God to the 
 Baptist, the Synoptists do not ; (3) John says that the Spirit 
 was to "remain" on Jesus, the Synoptists do not; (4) John 
 says that the Baptist saw the descent of the Spirit, the 
 Synoptists do not (but either state the descent as a fact or 
 leave it doubtful who saw it), etc. But further examination 
 shewed that more results might be expected if more labour 
 were expended. 
 
 In the first place, besides a remarkable number of varia- 
 tions in canonical documents, there were non-canonical 
 accounts of, or allusions to, the Baptism : and these might 
 throw light on the subject if they were placed, clause by 
 clause, beside their several canonical parallels. In the next 
 place, there were other passages in the Gospels themselves 
 that had a direct bearing on the problem. 
 
 To take the Gospel passages first. I was dealing with a 
 stupendous Synoptic miracle, a Voice from Heaven, and with 
 the question why John omitted it. How could I hope to 
 answer that, if I lazily neglected the fact that the Synoptists 
 mention another Voice from Heaven (in the Transfiguration) 
 and that John omits that too? Could it be that John did not 
 believe in Voices from Heaven ? This led to a new question, 
 namely, whether the Jews had anything to say on this point. 
 I soon found as the reader will find too that they had a 
 great deal to say, and that towards the end of the first century
 
 DISCUSSED IN THIS WORK 
 
 they became so tired of Voices from Heaven that one of their 
 Rabbis said, " We do not trouble ourselves about them'' Was 
 John, I asked, of that opinion ? No, he could not be. For 
 he himself recorded a Voice from Heaven. But this added 
 perplexity to perplexities, for marvellous to relate I found 
 the Synoptists, who obviously had no objection to Voices 
 from Heaven, omitting the Johannine Voice ! Were Voices 
 from Heaven, then, so common in Christ's life that the Evan- 
 gelists, like the Rabbi, "did not trouble themselves" to record 
 all of them? Moreover, in the two Voices that the Synoptists 
 did insert, how came it to pass that they did not agree as to 
 the exact words, and that a well-supported text of Luke gave 
 an entirely different version of the Voice at the Baptism ? 
 
 Still keeping to the Canonical Gospels, I had to answer 
 other questions. Luke in his account of the Voices, twice 
 mentions Christ's praying as a preliminary to the Voice, but 
 gives no prayer 1 ; John gives a prayer, and makes the Voice a 
 kind of reduplicated echo of it 2 . Again, John's prayer, in its 
 context, suggested a reference to the prayer at Gethsemane, 
 the only prayer of Christ recorded by t/ie three Synoptists. But 
 why was the Synoptic version (as commonly accepted) so 
 different from the Johannine version of the single short appeal 
 ("Glorify thy name") uttered by the Son to the Father in 
 heaven ? And whence came the curious differences between 
 Mark and the two later Synoptists in recording the Prayer? 3 
 This led to a comparison of the Synoptic accounts of the 
 Agony and to further questions. Why does Luke omit all 
 mention of the three drowsy disciples watching with Jesus, and 
 the three prayers ? And why is John's account different both 
 from Luke's and from that of Mark and Matthew? 
 
 Luke indeed introduces the three drowsy disciples on 
 another occasion when Christ prays, not, however, on or near 
 
 1 Lk. iii. 21, ix. 28. 
 
 - Jn. xii. 27 8, " Glorify... \ have both glorified and will glorify'" 
 
 J See below 929 foil. 
 
 IS
 
 ON THE SUBJECTS 
 
 the Mount of Olives, but on the Mount of Transfiguration. 
 Now this was called by the early Church mount Tabor ; 
 modern critics prefer Hermon ; the Acts of John calls it " the 
 mountain where it was His custom to pray," and the Second 
 Epistle of Peter "the holy mount." Was it indeed "the Holy 
 Mountain " of God, called by the later Jews " the Mountain 
 of the Lord's House," and did it mean, either literally or 
 spiritually, the Temple? 1 If so, was the Transfiguration a 
 vision seen in the Temple (like the vision of Isaiah and the 
 trance of St Paul 2 ) and did that explain John's omission of 
 the whole event (surely a central and stupendous event, if 
 true, in the life of Christ)? But how explain the Synoptic 
 introduction of Elijah and Moses ? Must one be driven to a 
 materialistic explanation like that of the Brocken phantoms 
 in which the three disciples saw themselves as three figures? 3 
 or could this feature be explained by a corruption of an 
 original tradition that " He (i.e. Jesus) appeared to them [as] 
 Moses and Elijah," when taken as meaning " There appeared 
 to them Moses and Elijah 4 "? This necessitated an exam- 
 ination of the Transfiguration narrative and of the very re- 
 markable illustrations of it derivable from the Acts of John 
 (which omits Elijah and Moses, and places the story in close 
 connection with that of Gethsemane, called by it " Genne- 
 saret "). 
 
 The Synoptists, variously describing the Transfiguration 
 in phrases about "light", "snow", "lighten", "fuller", "whiten", 
 treat it as a manifestation of Christ's "glory" 5 . But was this 
 the " glory" that Christ really contemplated ? Did it even 
 approach the "glory" contemplated in the Mosaic theophany 
 vouchsafed in answer to the prayer "Shew me thy glory*"? 
 Could John be satisfied with this Synoptic theophany (or 
 
 1 See below 867 a, 981. 2 Is. vi. i, Acts xxii. 1718. 
 
 3 See below 8667. * See below 871. 
 
 5 See below 901 b, 9067. 6 Exod. xxxiii. 18, see below 898 foil. 
 
 16
 
 DISCUSSED IN THIS WORK 
 
 Christophany) ? Did it come up to his own description of 
 the "glory as of the Only-begotten full of grace and truth"? 
 According to John, the one short prayer of Christ was pre- 
 ceded by "trouble" and followed by a mention of "glory" 1 . 
 Was not this sequence in harmony with Christ's deepest 
 teaching? To give it prominence and emphasis was not 
 this a leading object for the Fourth Evangelist, and was not 
 this one of the reasons why, besides omitting the " glory" of 
 the Transfiguration, he systematically described Christ as en- 
 during, or subjecting Himself to, a threefold "trouble" 2 ? To 
 answer this question required further examination of those 
 parts of the Fourth Gospel which speak of " trouble " and 
 of "glory ". 
 
 But after " trouble" and " glory " had been considered, 
 there remained the question, "What as to prayer?" Did 
 Christ indeed utter the prayer " Glorify thy name"? And as 
 regards the Cup where the Synoptists have two traditions, 
 one (at the Agony) asking God apparently to (Mark and 
 Luke) " remove " the cup, but the other (at the Lord's Supper) 
 saying " From this moment I shall assuredly not drink of 
 this 3 " how comes it that Mark and Luke, according to R.V., 
 use in the sense " remove " (applied to " cup ") a word that 
 elsewhere in Greek literature means for the most part 
 " present " and always (so far as we know) has the latter 
 meaning when applied to " meat ", " drink ", and especially to 
 "cups" or "vessels" 4 ? And why does John fasten on pre- 
 cisely these words " / will assuredly not drink" and take 
 them in quite a different context as an indignant exclamation 
 to the disciples, " The cup that the Father hath given me I 
 [if I am to take your advice] shall assuredly not drink it 5 \" 
 
 1 Jn xii. 27, " Now is my soul troubled? 
 
 2 Jn xi. 33, "troubled himself" xii. 27, "now is my soul troubled," 
 xiii. 21, "was troubled in spirit." 
 
 3 Mk. xiv. 25 &c., see below 934. 4 See below 931 e, 9757. 
 5 Jn xviii. n, see below 933 foil. 
 
 A. I/ 2
 
 ON THE SUBJECTS 
 
 The prayer as to "the cup" could not be discussed with- 
 out reference to the other prayer in Matthew's and Luke's 
 context, "Thy will be done." And this in turn raised new 
 questions. Why, for example, did the earliest version of this 
 utterance in Gethsemane (Mark's) make it no prayer at all 
 but a statement, " [It is] not [the question] what is my will 
 but what is thine 1 "? Why did Matthew insert this petition 
 or utterance of resignation in the formula called the Lord's 
 Prayer, whereas Luke omits it? And, in this connection, why 
 does Matthew say "Our Father who art in heaven" while 
 Luke omits the italicized words? W T hy does John omit all 
 mention of such a prayer? And, to come to John's insertions, 
 why did the R.V. text give Christ's words as " What shall I 
 say? Father, save me from this hour," when they could at all 
 events be less incorrectly rendered (as in R.V. margin), 
 "What shall I say? [Shall I say] Father, save me from this 
 hour?", and probably most correctly, " Why should I say, 
 Father, save me from this hour?" 2 ? In order to answer 
 these questions, some study was required not only of the 
 Evangelical texts themselves but also of Jewish forms of 
 prayer, and especially of those short forms taught by Rabbis 
 to their pupils, many of which are current in the Talmuds. 
 
 Such answers as I have been able to find to all these 
 questions will be set forth in the following pages. But the 
 questions at least the most important ones are enumerated 
 here in order to shew how a comparatively large book grew 
 up out of what might seem to be a comparatively small 
 subject, the Baptism of Christ, occupying less than 20 verses 
 in the Four Gospels taken together. To these, however, 
 must be added the non-canonical accounts, some of which, 
 when compared (clause by clause) with the canonical, are of 
 great value in indicating an Original that might explain and 
 harmonize Evangelical variations. For example, it will be 
 
 1 See below 931. 2 Jn xii. 27, see below 93740. 
 
 18
 
 pointed out 1 that the Dove in Jewish literature is not (as 
 with Greeks, Romans, and Christians) the type of love and 
 peace, but for the most part the type of timorousness, re- 
 pentance, mourning. Some very early oriental non-canonical 
 accounts omit "'dove'" and insert the "abiding" (or ''resting"} 
 of the Spirit on Christ. The Hebrew words that express 
 "dove" and "resting" are almost identical. The facts point 
 to the conclusion that there was no "dove" in the Original 
 but only a mention of the Spirit as " resting" on Jesus. This 
 is but one of many interesting conclusions to be derived from 
 the non-canonical documents bearing on the Baptism. And 
 the non-canonical accounts of the Transfiguration, few though 
 they are, have even greater interest. 
 
 When I said above that " more results might be hoped for 
 if more labour were expended," such was the "labour" that 
 I had in view. It consisted mainly in a very full statement 
 of the evidence and in varied classifications of it under 
 such headings as "Voice from Heaven", "Prayer", "Glory", 
 "Trouble". To take another instance. A question arose as 
 to the origin of the words " Hear ye him " (in the account of 
 the Transfiguration). The first " labour " was to go back to 
 Exodus and Deuteronomy and to put side by side the two 
 old Hebrew traditions (and the Targums on them) command- 
 ing Israel first to "hear" a ''Messenger" and then to "hear" a 
 "prophet" like unto Moses, and to trace the influence of these 
 on Malachi, and then on the Christian Evangelists and 
 Fathers 2 . Such an investigation as this, besides throwing 
 light on the Synoptic " Hear ye him," might illustrate early 
 Galilaean views of Christ as "Elijah", or as "Moses", or as 
 "one of the ancient prophets"; but whether it did or not, one 
 could not hope for any blessing on an effort to discover some 
 new truth about this " Voice from Heaven " and about John's 
 reason for omitting it, unless so obvious a preliminary had 
 been first completed. 
 
 1 See below 685, 694. 2 See below 81749. 
 
 19 2 2
 
 ON THE SUBJECTS 
 
 If anyone else had done this collecting and classifying, I 
 would most gratefully have used and acknowledged it, as I 
 have acknowledged my obligations to Trommius, Wetstein, 
 Schottgen, Horae Hebraicae, Levy's valuable dictionaries, 
 and the published parts of the Oxford Gesenius 1 . But for 
 the most part modern writers cover rather more ground with 
 conjectures of their own, and much more ground with refuta- 
 tions of other people's conjectures, than with the full state- 
 ment of the original texts to which they, and those who differ 
 from them, alike refer. Consequently, when subjected to the 
 old but never antiquated test, " Verify your references," the 
 foundations of much that is popularly received as indisputable 
 in N.T. criticism will be discovered to be unsound. For 
 example, none of the articles on the Jewish Voice from 
 Heaven that I have read appears to me to convey so much 
 information as Pinner's collection of instances compiled more 
 than sixty years ago but never, as far as I know, reprinted 2 . 
 As to the elucidation of Greek minutiae bearing on the text 
 of the Gospels, we are only beginning to understand the 
 requirements of the problem. For example, many good 
 scholars still assert with confidence that the Fourth Gospel 
 speaks of being "born again" (when it really means "born 
 from above "), supporting their assertion by half-quoting 
 sentences of authors alien from John's style and by suppress- 
 ing evidence on the other side from kindred authors 3 ; and 
 the same much-used Concordance that supports this erroneous 
 view informs its readers that St Paul's undoubted use of 
 
 1 I have also derived advantage from Resch's very valuable collection 
 of extra-canonical parallel texts. Having made a similar collection on 
 my own account previous to the appearance of his work, I have frequently 
 been able to supplement its deficiencies from his book. Wherever I quote 
 from Resch without being able to verify the quotation, my debt to him is 
 acknowledged, as also any obligation to him for a conjecture as to the 
 Hebrew original of the Gospels. 
 
 2 I have consequently reprinted it in Appendix IV. 
 
 3 Enc. Bib. 1833 n. 5. 
 
 20
 
 DISCUSSED IN THIS WORK 
 
 "analyse" for "die" 1 is illustrated by a passage in Lucian 
 about a boy who " being eighteen years old was (?) dying'' 
 But if you look at it you will find "Though he was [only] 
 eighteen years old he was doing analysis' ' 2 ! 
 
 Space has been gained for the full statement of positive 
 evidence by omitting refutations of (what may seem to me) 
 erroneous inferences from it. Only in a few instances, where 
 a Biblical critic of first-rate ability or reputation appears to 
 be misleading public opinion, have I thought it necessary to 
 controvert. Triis will explain, to some extent, the absence 
 of modern names from the foot-notes in the following pages. 
 But another explanation is, I must confess, that having spent 
 a great deal of time in examining the original Greek and 
 Hebrew texts, I have not had much to devote to the study 
 of mere opinions about them unless supported by fully-stated 
 and well-classified evidence. 
 
 Is this craving for " evidence " unreasonable or antiquated ? 
 Surely it is not so, especially in the face of the steady pro- 
 gress of material science (which is based on classified evidence) 
 as compared with Biblical criticism (which, till lately, has 
 been based on authority, endowments, and sectarian pre- 
 possessions). Moreover, those who believe in a God, and in 
 the Bible as the word of God, ought to feel specially prepared 
 to find new evidence from generation to generation bearing 
 on the Christian religion. The Koran has, I believe, few or 
 no various readings and disputed or doubtful sections at all 
 events nothing to compare with the literary uncertainty (as 
 regards words, texts, passages, and even whole books) that 
 awaits those who approach the study of the Bible. But has 
 not this uncertainty been, on the whole, productive of good 
 for Christians? 
 
 1 Phil. i. 23. 
 
 2 Lucian Philops, 14 (vol. iii. p. 41, ed. Reitz, who renders it 
 "analyst uteretur.") Of course Lightfoot does not thus misapply Lucian. 
 
 21
 
 ON THE SUBJECTS 
 
 May we not believe that these very imperfections 
 brought to light after many centuries like the faulty strata 
 and broken fossils that interest a geologist were intended 
 to stimulate the sons of Japhet in the end to bring to bear 
 upon their religion that restless spirit of truth-seeking which 
 differentiates them from the sons of Shem? The Hebrew 
 language with its absence of vowels, paucity of tenses, 
 and frequent use of identical letters to represent absolutely 
 different meanings what did God mean by entrusting the 
 Law and the Prophecies of Israel to such a vehicle as this ? 
 And further not to speak of four Greek Gospels constantly 
 differing and sometimes appearing to contradict each other 
 if we are to believe Papias, that Matthew wrote his Gospel in 
 Hebrew, and that people " interpreted it as they severally were 
 able," what did He mean again by sending (according to our 
 belief) His only Son to convey to mankind a revelation that 
 was to be thus variously "interpreted" at the very outset of 
 its literary history? Surely the Christian answer or at all 
 events a Christian answer may reasonably be to this effect : 
 " It was God's will that the followers of Christ should have 
 burdens proportioned to their privileges, that their search 
 after a fuller knowledge of the Lord Jesus should be con- 
 tinued through the ages, and that it should call into play all 
 their faculties pureness of heart, soundness of head, and 
 robust patience under the labour of scientific investigation." 
 
 Strauss, towards the conclusion of his Life of Jesus, after 
 describing the Gospels as recording many things that are 
 false, many uncertain, and few certain, continues thus : " No, 
 the happiness of man, or, speaking more intelligibly, the 
 
 possibility of fulfilling his destiny it is impossible that 
 
 this can depend on his recognition of facts into which scarcely 
 one in a thousand is in a position to institute a thorough 
 investigation, and, supposing him to have done so, then to 
 arrive at a satisfactory result." But does not " the possibility 
 of fulfilling his destiny" depend at least for a son of Japhet, 
 
 22
 
 DISCUSSED IN THIS WORK 
 
 and probably in the end for all mankind on his recognition 
 of the facts of anthropology, history, political economy, and 
 science, into many of which not " one in a thousand," but we 
 may rather say, not one in a hundred thousand, is "in a 
 position to institute a thorough investigation"? It sounds 
 plausible, and it has a fine democratic ring, to say that 
 conclusions cannot be useful to the multitude unless they 
 are discoverable by the multitude : but it is not true. Again, 
 whereas Strauss maintains that the real figure of Christ has 
 been so overgrown with corrupt traditions that it is no longer 
 discernible, it is among the main objects of the present treatise 
 to shew that this, though not without truth, is not true to 
 anything like the extent that he supposes. Celsus is nearer 
 the mark though he expresses himself spitefully when he 
 describes the later Gospels as improving on the " intoxication " 
 of the earlier 1 . Just as some of the later MSS. of the LXX. 
 correct the faults of the earlier by returning closer to the 
 Hebrew, so it is maintained John often explains or corrects 
 a tradition of Mark where Luke has misexplained it, or 
 omitted it as inexplicable : and in many cases John can be 
 shewn to be, in all probability, more accurate historically and 
 more trustworthy spiritually than his predecessors. 
 
 In particular, as regards the Voice from Heaven, it will 
 appear that the evidence of the Fourth Gospel outweighs 
 that of the Three in establishing the following conclusions, 
 (i) There was no objective Voice from Heaven at any time 
 in Christ's life, but only such an answer as may be breathed 
 by the Spirit of God in response to the prayer of the Son, 
 echoing it with an Amen. (2) The real Transfiguration was 
 a spiritual act of self-renunciation or sacrifice, in which the 
 glory was of the nature of grace, truth, and love, not like 
 "snow" 2 , "light" or "whiteness"; and it did not take place 
 on a material elevation, but in a spiritual region 3 . (3) The 
 
 1 See Enc. Bib. 1766. 2 See 901 . 3 See 981. 
 
 23
 
 prayer of Christ before His death was not an utterance of 
 acquiescence or pious resignation, much less a struggle of 
 will against will, but, in effect, a fervent petition that the 
 Father would glorify His name : and such, too active not 
 passive was the original tenor of the opening clauses of 
 what we call " The Lord's Prayer," as recorded in the Double 
 Tradition of Matthew and Luke 1 . (4) The "glory" of Christ 
 consisted in His power so to undertake and endure "trouble" 
 in His own soul and spirit as to remove it from the souls 
 and spirits of His followers. (5) Lastly, His divine nature 
 did not consist in a miraculous conception but in being from 
 the beginning the eternal Word, Law, Harmony, Son, of the 
 Father, taking our human nature as the Son of Joseph and 
 Mary, and filling His disciples with the conviction that He, 
 although Son of man, was also Son of God, because He was 
 incarnate righteousness. 
 
 1 See below 968. 
 
 24
 
 APPENDIX V 
 
 "THE SECOND EPISTLE OF ST PETER" 
 
 CONTRASTED WITH 
 
 "THE GOSPEL OF ST JOHN" 
 
 i . 77/6' one point of similarity, tJie claim of both to have 
 " seen " or " heard " 
 
 [1116] THE spuriousness of this Epistle has been so fully 
 demonstrated by Dr Chase in Hastings' Dictionary of the 
 Bible 1 , that I should be content simply to refer my readers to 
 his article, but for the fact that, in the attempt to give full and 
 fair representation to the arguments on the other side for the 
 genuineness of the Epistle mostly special pleading of a very 
 flimsy and unscholarlike nature the author has been com- 
 pelled to enter into such minute detail that some may perhaps 
 fail to appreciate the crushing force of his demonstration 
 when taken as a whole. I shall therefore attempt to re-state 
 some of the facts that tell against the Epistle. 
 
 [1117] The reason for this digression in a note on the 
 Fourth Gospel may not be at once apparent. And there is 
 little indeed that the Epistle and the Gospel have in common ; 
 but they have this one point, that both of them represent 
 their respective writers as having "seen" or "heard" what 
 
 1 Vol. iii. 796-813. 
 25
 
 1118] THE SECOND EPISTLE 
 
 (according to our belief) they did not "see" or "hear". More- 
 over, what they profess to have severally seen is of a very 
 sacred nature: in the Epistle, the Transfiguration, in the 
 Gospel, the blood and water flowing from Christ's side ; and 
 this, for some modern readers, seems to stamp both writers as 
 equally guilty of falsehood of a particularly odious description. 
 The Evangelist, it is true, only implies that he was John, 
 whereas the letter-writer plainly asserts himself at the outset 
 to be "Simon Peter, a servant and apostle of Jesus Christ", 
 and keeps up the fiction not indeed successfully but at all 
 events pertinaciously, to the end of the letter, where he 
 patronizes the Apostle of the Gentiles as "our beloved brother 
 Paul." But this may seem to make matters no better per- 
 haps even worse for the writer of the Gospel, at all events 
 in the eyes of those who agree with Charles Lamb in disliking 
 "your hesitating half story tellers who go on sounding your 
 belief," and in preferring one who " did not stand shivering 
 upon the brink but was a hearty thorough-paced liar, and 
 plunged at once into the depths of your credulity." It must be 
 admitted, then, that there is against the author of the Fourth 
 Gospel a prima facie and plausible case for including him in 
 the condemnation justly pronounced upon the author of the 
 Epistle; and I desire to argue in arrest of such a judgment. 
 
 [1118] Not that I would conceal my regret that the 
 Evangelist has not seen his way to be more exact in dis- 
 tinguishing John's part in originating the Gospel from his 
 own in preaching and writing it. This, I think, might have 
 been done, somewhat after the fashion though by the way of 
 contraries in which the humble Tertius claims his part in a 
 Pauline letter: "I, Tertius, who write the Epistle." Accord- 
 ing to our hypothesis, the man that developed and finally 
 committed to writing the Fourth Gospel, possibly originated 
 by the son of Zebedee, was much more than an amanuensis: 
 but still, in place of the text as it stands (Jn xxi. 24 " This is 
 the disciple that beareth witness of these things and wrote 
 
 26
 
 OF ST PETER [1119 
 
 these things ") he might have said something of this kind : 
 "This is the disciple that taught these things, John the son of 
 Zebedee, sometime Bishop of Ephesus : and I, who consider 
 myself but his amanuensis, after having taught them for such 
 and such a number of years after his death, am now writing 
 them down at the request of the Elders." 
 
 2. Yet the Evangelist is a true Prophet 
 
 [1119J This would have been (according to our hypothesis), 
 from the modern and historical point of view, very much 
 better : and I admit that it was a fault to say that the dis- 
 ciple that "witnessed" was also the disciple that "wrote". But 
 still it may be contended that this fault proceeded from an 
 excess of pious devotion in a noble and prophetic nature, 
 merging its own individuality in the person of "the beloved 
 disciple" , upon whom his eyes were constantly fixed as the 
 mirror of the Love of Christ. Taken as a whole, the Gospel 
 reveals a writer imbued with a message of Light, Life, and 
 Truth, which message he must needs give in his own way. 
 It is not at all our way. It is not such as we might have 
 expected from an ordinary prophet of Light : it is far from 
 being clear, direct, and pointed like the short Synoptic sayings 
 of Christ. It is as though the writer felt darkened by excess 
 of illumination. Or else he writes under the conviction that 
 the light cannot be poured into his readers, but must be drawn 
 in by some act on their part ; and his first point is to ensure 
 their co-operation. He appears sometimes to go out of his 
 way to be ambiguous. He is always mystical, always fraught 
 with a two-fold or manifold meaning, as though he said, 
 "You shall not go a step with me unless you will think for 
 yourselves." Sometimes he seems to meander in long dis- 
 courses or dialogues. He repeats the same things positively 
 and negatively, other things with a two-fold, others with 
 
 27
 
 1120] THE SECOND EPISTLE 
 
 a three-fold, testimony: .there are also instances of sevenfold 
 reiteration, and the Gospel begins and ends with a sabbatical 
 arrangement 1 . 
 
 [1120] Indeed, in some respects, the style is as compli- 
 cated as a sonnet ; and we feel beneath it the influence of 
 the allegorizing School of Philo and of Jewish canons about 
 the methods of stating terrestrial and celestial doctrine. But, 
 underlying all this Philonian or Alexandrian art, which has 
 become with him a second nature, there is something that is 
 not Philonian at all a fervent belief that God could become, 
 and has become, incarnate for the redemption of man in 
 Jesus Christ, and that His Spirit, moving upon the face of the 
 waters of humanity, is to create order out of trouble, and to 
 renew mankind in the likeness of God. This is his message 
 of Truth, and he is wholly possessed by it as a Prophet should 
 be. In matters of detail he might go wrong probably he 
 knew he must go wrong, for there were not the means of going 
 right but the Law of human nature, the conformation of 
 man to God, the identity between what is righteous and what 
 is divine, this was his Truth, and he loved it as he loved 
 God, and hated all contradictions of it as the brood of Satan. 
 
 3. The Letter-writer has no prophecy of his own 
 
 [1121] From the Evangelist we pass to the letter-writer 
 and his apostolic claims. First, what has he to say that is at 
 all worth saying? Secondly, in what spirit does he say what 
 he actually says ? 
 
 What he has to say refers less to Christ than to other 
 subjects except in the first chapter, and there mostly in 
 formal phrases or in the allusion to the Voice at the Trans- 
 figuration, which the writer claims to have heard 2 . The 
 
 1 See Westcott on Jn xii. i, " His Gospel begins and closes with a 
 sacred week." 
 
 2 2 Pet. i. 1718. 
 
 28
 
 OF ST PETER [1122 
 
 Epistle of St James, however, shews that a letter may seldom 
 mention Christ and yet be very Christian in spirit and contain 
 passages of apostolic fervour. But this Epistle is not Christian 
 in spirit, much less apostolically Christian. If it is the sign 
 of an Apostle to draw us closer to our Redeemer, to quicken 
 our sense of the debt we owe Him, and to breathe into our 
 lethargic souls something of His strengthening and purifying 
 Spirit then an Apostle this man is not. He deals with 
 many subjects, and now and then gives us a phrase or two of 
 beauty, but seldom or never what may be called an apostolic 
 passage. As to prophecy, for example, he tells us briefly 
 that it is, or was, like a lamp shining in a gloomy place till 
 the day-star appear, that it was confirmed by the Voice from 
 Heaven, and that it is not "of private interpretation" 1 . But 
 his meaning is not quite clear ; and this part of his Epistle 
 reads as though it had been taken out of some frame-work 
 where it had a sense that is now lost or obscured. 
 
 [1122] In the condemnation of heretics he is copious, and 
 in depicting the endless punishments that await them. He 
 also informs us that the world was made out of water, and is 
 to be destroyed by fire ; on which last point he enlarges with 
 tedious iteration. He is most practical when he cautions his 
 readers against inferring that, because the end of the world 
 is delayed, it will never come; and his most moral passage is 
 a commendation of Christian qualifications (curiously differing 
 from N.T. vocabulary) beginning with "faith" and "virtue", 
 and ending with "love of the brethren" and "love". But in 
 all this there is no Christ unless a mere list of Christian 
 qualifications can be taken to represent Him and no Spirit 
 of Christ, nothing that marks a prophet, or an apostle. It is 
 wholly different from St Peter's First Epistle. 
 
 1 See 1135 a, quoting Philo i. 510, "The prophet utters nothing [of] 
 private [utterance]." If the writer is borrowing from Philo he has 
 turned a straightforward and intelligible sentence into one that has 
 given commentators a great deal of trouble and has never been satisfac- 
 torily explained. 
 
 29
 
 1123] THE SECOND EPISTLE 
 
 4. He has no style of his own 
 
 [1123] Next, as regards the style and spirit in which he 
 says what he has to say. Dr Chase has compiled a long list 
 of rare and curious words and expressions differentiating him 
 from any other New Testament writer. Few of these are 
 taken from the LXX, which, though copiously quoted in the 
 First Epistle of St Peter, is hardly used at all by our author 1 . 
 He is conclusively demonstrated to have extracted liberally 
 from Jude; Dr Chase also indicates a probability that he 
 made considerable use, directly or indirectly, of a second- 
 century apocryphal work called the Apocalypse of Peter; and 
 Professor Deissman calls attention to a remarkable group of 
 similarities between the Epistle and a Carian inscription 
 (probably written in the first half of the first century) decree- 
 ing processions and offerings to Zeus and Hecate. 
 
 [1124] When a literary man pilfers in this indiscriminate 
 way, one is rarely safe in asserting that he stole this particular 
 phrase or passage from that particular source; for he may 
 have stolen at second-hand, taking it from somebody who 
 took it from that source. Hence Prof. Deissman is well- 
 advised in not committing himself to the conclusion that the 
 Epistle-writer borrowed from the Carian inscription. More 
 probably the inscription used certain expressions, common in 
 decrees of this kind, and Pseudo-Peter borrowed, not from 
 one such decree, but from the class. This however makes no 
 difference as to our argument. The point for us, at present, 
 is that styles so varied as that of Jude, the Pseudo- Apocalypse, 
 and the heathen Inscription, are all to be found in this 
 Epistle, and that this extraordinary mixture indicates the 
 work to be spurious. 
 
 1 [1123 a] See Hastings' Diet. vol. iii. 807 a : "The Epistle contains 
 no formal quotation from the O.T. W.H. use uncial type only in five 
 places But in none of these passages is the resemblance of language 
 so close as to make the reference to the LXX. certain." 
 
 30
 
 OF ST PETER [1126 
 
 [1125] Why could not the writer be content to say what 
 he had to say in language of his own ? The answer is two- 
 fold. In the first place he has a very imperfect mastery of 
 Greek, as is apparent from his use, or non-use, of the particles, 
 and from his general misuse of word and idiom. But this is 
 not a sufficient answer. John the son of Zebedee, the author 
 (according to Irenaeus) of the Book of Revelation, writes 
 most barbaric Greek ; but it is always clear, never con- 
 temptible; and for the most part one forgets the roughness 
 of the dialect in the vividness and force of the thought. This 
 man might have written in the same way, or in a correspond- 
 ing way of his own, if he had been a real apostle : but being 
 a false apostle, destitute of original thought, given to bom- 
 bastic inanities, and of an essentially vulgar, tawdry, and 
 dishonest mind, he instinctively seeks to disguise his own 
 spiritual nakedness by stealing patches from others some- 
 times from prophets, but at other times from mere weavers of 
 words, since words were his delight. 
 
 5- He writes artificially and grandiloquently 
 
 [1126] Hence this one short Epistle supplies more in- 
 stances (probably) than could be found in the whole of the 
 Pauline Epistles of out-of-the-way, grandiloquent, and what 
 may be called ambitious words. Sometimes the writer prefers 
 a long sonorous word to a short and simple one. even though 
 the latter has received the sanction of our Lord's own usage. 
 For example, Christ spoke of " Hades", but Pseudo-Peter 
 speaks of "consigning to Tartarus": the New Testament 
 speaks of " children of God ", or " begotten of God ", but this 
 pseudo-apostle, aping Greek philosophy, gives us "partakers 
 of the divine nature". St Paul once, and only once, bids his 
 disciples take account of "virtue"^, where Lightfoot para- 
 phrases thus : " Whatever value may reside in your old 
 
 1 Phil. iv. 8. 
 31
 
 1127] THE SECOND EPISTLE 
 
 heathen conception of virtue " ; and this is the only use of 
 the word by an Apostle or Evangelist (speaking in his own 
 person 1 ) in N.T. In the whole of the LXX., too, apart from 
 a technical use of " virtues " to render the " praises " of God, 
 the Greek word occurs only twice as the equivalent of a 
 Hebrew one : but in the highly rhetorical Fourth Book of 
 the Maccabees it occurs seventeen times, and once in the 
 phrase "the virtue of God" 2 . Similarly this highly rhetorical 
 Pseudo-Peter uses the word thrice, and mentions the ''virtue" 
 of God, as well as that of man. 
 
 [1127] Substituting "obtrude" for '"avoid", we may say of 
 this writer what Lightfoot says of St Paul : " Pseudo-Peter 
 (St Paul) seems studiously to obtrude (avoid) this common 
 heathen term for moral excellence." As, in O.T., its frequent 
 use in Maccabees indicates a writer off the lines of Jewish 
 thought, so, in N.T., it points to one who either is, or affects 
 to be, a philosophic or literary Greek. The same tendency 
 is indicated by the use of some phrase with the word "divine" 
 in it as a periphrasis for " God ". Occurring in the speech 
 of Paul of Tarsus the Apostle of the Gentiles addressing 
 philosophers on the Areopagus it is intelligible as an in- 
 stance of his becoming all things to all men. But in a letter 
 to believers in Christ, it is incredible that the real Peter should 
 have used such phrases as " his divine power hath granted 
 unto us," and " that through these ye may become partakers 
 of the divine nature " 3 . 
 
 1 I Pet. ii. 9 is not written in the apostle's own person, but is a 
 quotation from Is. xliii. 21. 
 
 2 4 Mace. x. 10. 
 
 3 [1127 a] Dr Chase (815 a) quotes, as a parallel to the above quoted 
 2 Pet. i. 4, " sharers in the divine natrtre" (from Method. Conviv. Virg. 
 ii. 6) " the decree of that same blessed nature of God." But the whole 
 context (as given by Dr James, Apoc. Pet. p. 95) indicates that the words 
 in question belong to Methodius' comment on the Apocalypse, not to the 
 Apocalypse itself. 
 
 32
 
 OF ST PETER [1128 
 
 6. Some of his blunders like those of Baboo English 
 
 [1128] A style of this kind has many points of affinity 
 with what is called Baboo English, made familiar in recent 
 years to English readers by Mr Anstey's imitations of it in 
 the pages of PnncJi imitations that by no means go beyond 
 many original instances. One peculiarity of this literature 
 is that, in straining after novelty of expression, the writer 
 often uses a word (sometimes an archaic word, and generally 
 a rare one) in a context that makes no sense, or obscure 
 sense. For example, " wrangle ", in old days, might mean 
 " argue ", as we see in the title of " Senior Wrangler " : " boot ", 
 as late as Shakespeare, meant " profit ", " advantage " ; but 
 when the Baboo biographer tells us that Mr Mookerjee, as 
 a barrister, " would wrangle in a logomachy of words for the 
 boot of his client," we feel that, although some would be 
 merely amused, others might be perplexed, and a few actually 
 misled, by such an extraordinary mosaic of words. In this 
 case, the Baboo writer is (theoretically and archaically) 
 correct ; but it is easy to see that such a style may often 
 lead the stylist into error when he quotes a proverb or a verse 
 unintelligently, as in Mr Anstey's description of Mr Fran- 
 kenstein. This begins, correctly (though quaintly), by calling 
 him "so phenomenally addicted to brain-work as to deny 
 himself the most mediocre spree," but goes on to say that 
 " he is pegging away wider a rose behind the arras," and 
 that " he is of juvenile exterior, with a countenance sicklied 
 over, like a pale cast 1 " 
 
 That the peculiaritiesof this style have hardlybeen exaggerated 
 by Mr Anstey, will appear from the following phrases selected from little 
 more than one page describing the death of Mr Mookerjee (pp. 57 8). 
 " They [the doctors] did what they could do, with their puissance and 
 knack of medical knowledge, but it proved after all as if to milk the 
 ram !...He remained sotto -voce for a few hours and went to God at about 
 6 P.M ..... His children did fondre en /armes . . .The house presented a 
 second Babel or a pretty kettle of fish." 
 
 A. 33 3
 
 1129] THE SECOND EPISTLE 
 
 [1129] Blunders of this kind if they had been possible, 
 which they were not, in a letter really written by the former 
 fisherman of Gennesaret would almost certainly have been 
 suppressed or corrected in the first century. But this Epistle 
 was not generally received as genuine till after the fourth century; 
 and hence some vestiges of error originating from an am- 
 bitious and affected style may be still traced in it, not indeed 
 so palpable or amusing as those above described, but still 
 sufficient to convict the author of unintelligent borrowing. 
 Thus for example, whereas Jude speaks of " bringing a judg- 
 ment, i.e. a suit, or action, for blasphemy" Pseudo-Peter mistakes 
 this for "a blasphemous accusation"^; and whereas Jude 
 speaks of " revelling together in your love-feasts" AFATTAIC, 
 Pseudo-Peter probably has "revelling together in their deceits" 
 ATTATAIC 2 . Again, Jude spoke of the fallen angels as being 
 
 1 [1129 rt] 2 Pet. ii. II, SKda-^^ov Kpia-iv, Jude 9, Kpi(Tiv...^\aa-(prjp.ias, 
 R.V. in both, "a railing judgment." But see Field (Otium, ad loc.), who 
 quotes fully from Diod. Sic. xvi. 29, xx. 10 and 62, where eVi<e'po> 8inr)v, 
 Kpia-fis, fiidvvas <a\ KptWiy = " bring an accusation, or lay an information, 
 against anyone." Quoting Diod. Sic. (T. x, p. 171, ed. Bip.) of Kadvppto-- 
 dfvres enrjvtyKav Kpi<nv rw SaTotipi/iVo) jrepi rrjs (is avrovs vfipfots, he adds, 
 "The accusation might be described as a Kpia-is vfiptas : here" [i.e. in Jude] 
 " it is a Kpia-is Xao-07?/xia?," and he instances the saying of some that the 
 devil "charged Moses with being a murderer because he slew the 
 Egyptian'' He concludes thus : " Instead of bringing St Jude's phrase- 
 ology into conformity with St Peter's, it would be better to explain 
 P\d<r<pT]iJLov npia-iv in the sense which we have now asserted for Kpia-iv 
 P\aa-(pr)p.ias." No doubt, it would be correct to render the Greek of Jude 
 as Field does. But it does not follow that it would be correct to render 
 the Greek of Pseudo- Peter in the same way. The latter seems to 
 have mistaken Jude's meaning, and may have altered Jude's words to 
 suit his own mistake. If so, R.V., though incorrect in Jude, has been 
 correct in Pseudo- Peter, faithfully rendering into English the mistake 
 made by the latter in Greek. 
 
 2 [1129] "Deceits," so W.H. 2 Pet. ii. 13, in text (but marg. "love- 
 feasts"). See Dr Chase on Jude, Hastings ii. 803 a. Did Pseudo-Peter 
 take "deceit," as in Mk iv. 19, to mean the deceitful pleasure of this 
 world? Or does his combination of evrpv(pav and airdrais combine a 
 misunderstanding of Jude (12) and a pilfering from Hermas (Mand. 
 
 34
 
 OF ST PETER [1130 
 
 in " bonds " ; but this florid writer appears first to have pre- 
 ferred a more unusual word meaning " cords ", and then, by 
 the change of a vowel, to have converted this to a very 
 unusual term meaning excavations to hold corn, pit-falls, and 
 hence fits 1 . The Carian inscription uses a fairly common 
 phrase " exhibiting zeal ", Pseudo-Peter piles on a second 
 preposition so as to convert this into (at best, as in Demo- 
 sthenes) " substituting zeal ", or (at worst, as in the Tebtunis 
 Papyri) " smuggling zeal-." 
 
 7. His resemblance to the Pseudo-Peter of the Petrine 
 Apocalypse 
 
 [1130] Dr Chase quotes from Dr James (Led. on Apoc. of 
 Pet., p. 52) a remarkable series of coincidences of expression 
 between the Pseudo-Peter of the Apocalypse and the Pseudo- 
 Peter of the Epistle. The former work, the Apocalypse, is, 
 as Dr Chase justly says, "simple and natural in style," as 
 much so indeed as the Epistle is artificial and unnatural. It 
 ought to be regarded as probable, then, that if these coin- 
 cidences are not accidental, it is the author of the Epistle, 
 
 xi. 12 (or some kindred writer) V rpvfpals Tro\\als...Kai fv trtpais TroXXeus 
 airdrais. (comp. ib. Sim. vi. 2. I ayyikos rpv^rjs Kal aTraTTjs, 2 dirdrais 
 *m Tpvfpcus p-araiais, &c.) ? Where Mk iv. 19, Mt. xiii. 22 have '''the deceit 
 of riches," Lk. viii. 14 has "riches and pleasures of life." 
 
 1 [1129^] " Pits," see Hastings iii. 808 a, where Dr Chase quotes Field, 
 Otium, ad loc. The hypothesis is that the familiar Seoyioij was altered to 
 the rare cmpaiy, and this to crfipols. 
 
 2 [1129 </] 2 Pet. i. 5, irapfHTfviyKavTfs. Tebt. Pap. xxxviii. 12, 14, 
 Trapfia-<pfpca (bis) "smuggle" Carian Inscr. (Bockh ii. p. 483, No. 2715 a) 
 Tracrav a-irovBrjv i(T(p(pr6ai. : comp. Joseph, xx. 9. 2 Tracrav {IcrrjvfyKaro 
 (T7rov8r)v, Diod. Sic. i. 84 /xe-yaXj/v (i(r<pepovTiu cnrovSyv, ib. xviii. 34 Tracrav 
 cnrovc)f]v tlatfopovTo : Wetstein ad loc. quotes also Libanius xxix. p. 670 D 
 TroXXiji/ tlcrtviyKacrdai arirov8rjv. It thus appears that Pseudo-Peter zs 
 distorting a familiar straightforward idiom from sense to nonsense (or, at 
 best, to very pedantical sense if napa could possibly be taken, in such a 
 word, as " on your part "). 
 
 35 32
 
 1131] THE SECOND EPISTLE 
 
 not of the Apocalypse, that is the borrower. But, if so, the 
 Epistle-writer has been not only arbitrary but even erroneous 
 in his borrowing. The Apocalypse applies the word "squalid," 
 or "gloomy," av^rjpo^, to hell\ the Epistle (i. 19) to the 
 "place" in which the lamp of Prophecy is glimmering. Again, 
 the former speaks of the " mire", ftopfiopos, of hell, and (sub- 
 quently) of the souls "wallowing" in it both of them rare 
 words : the Epistle, having occasion to quote the proverb of 
 "the dog returning to its vomit" (Prov. xxvi. 11, LXX 
 eperov), not only improves upon the LXX by substituting 
 for " vomit " a word not alleged to occur elsewhere (egepapa) 
 just as a Baboo stylist might prefer " returned to his sick- 
 ishness" but also takes occasion to duplicate the proverb so 
 as to bring in the sonorous ftopftopos in the phrase " wallowing 
 in the mire " (" and the sow that has washed to ivallowing in 
 the mire"} 1 . In both these cases the different application 
 cannot be called a wzV-application, for it is only borrowing, 
 not error. But one more instance if the passages are in- 
 deed parallel will indicate that the writer confused " testing 
 (So/a/ibj>Ta9), or proving, one's soul in this life," a duty 
 enjoined by our Lord, with " tormenting (eftaadviZtv) his 
 [Lot's] soul with unrighteous works [of others]." 2 
 
 8. His version of the Voice at the Transfiguration 
 
 [1131] Owing to this loose way of quoting, or borrowing, 
 we are unable to attach the importance we could wish to the 
 one interesting point in this Epistle its version of the Voice 
 at the Transfiguration " ' This is my beloved Son, in whom I 
 am well pleased.' And this voice we heard " (i) The 
 
 1 2 Pet. ii. 22. 
 
 2 [1130 a} Both Dr James and Dr Chase print these passages (2 Pet. 
 ii. 8, Apoc. i) as parallels. If they are, Pseudo-Peter may have thought 
 that " this life " meant " this -world" as St Paul uses the term, i.e. the 
 life of the flesh and of sin. 
 
 36
 
 OF ST PETER [1132 
 
 writer agrees with Matthew, against Mark and Luke and 
 undoubtedly (798 801) against the earliest tradition in 
 inserting the words " in ^vhom I am well pleased? (2) He 
 disagrees from them all in omitting " Hear ye him" which 
 should follow. (3) He agrees with Matthew in adding "And 
 the disciples heard it (fcal a/cova-apres ol f^aOijrai)," only that as 
 Peter is supposed to be speaking he necessarily substitutes 
 " we " for " the disciples" so as to give " and this voice we 
 heard" If only our Pseudo-Peter had been a trustworthy 
 quoter, he might have been of very great advantage to us 
 at this point. For the text of Matthew suggests that the 
 Evangelist conflated l^DE? in its double sense of " Hear ye",. 
 and "They heard" 1 : and we might suppose that Pseudo-Peter 
 had a text that contained only the latter. Even as it is, his 
 evidence, as pointing in that direction, is worth something. 
 But it is not worth much. 
 
 | g. His inane reiterations 
 
 [1132] Besides giving other specimens of solecism, for 
 which space cannot be found here, Dr Chase also calls 
 attention to many instances of unpleasing, tedious reiteration. 
 St Paul and St John repeat words, and even play upon them, 
 but always with a meaning and a purpose. The Pseudo- 
 Petrine trick of repetition is quite different. It suggests that 
 the writer, having got hold of a word or phrase that takes 
 his fancy (sometimes one not elsewhere used in N.T.), cannot 
 
 1 [1131 a] Comp. Gen. xxiii. 15, ''Hearken (imperat.)," LXX " I have 
 heard" ; Lam. i. 21 " They have heard" LXX " Hear ye indeed? 
 
 [1131 b~\ The contrast between the Fourth Gospel and the " Second 
 Epistle of St Peter " comes out nowhere more clearly than in their several 
 treatments of the Voice from Heaven. The former neither supports nor 
 contradicts any Synoptist, but gives a highly spiritual account probably 
 based on some old tradition ; the latter supports the least accurate of the 
 three accounts (Matthew's) and apparently adds a negative inaccuracy of 
 his own. 
 
 37 33
 
 1133] THE SECOND EPISTLE 
 
 let it alone till he has used it again, as, for example, in the 
 twice-repeated phrase "stir up by putting in remembrance" 
 and the twofold repetition of the word " be-feverous " used in 
 Greek literature, so far as we know, only by two medical 
 writers 1 , to mean " suffer from a remittent fever" but applied 
 by Pseudo-Peter to the destruction of the world by fire. 
 Shakespeare, in his four mentions of the word " feverous," 
 applies the word twice to the " earth " or " world " ; and it is 
 possible that an Asiatic, who may have caught up some 
 Sibylline verses about earthquakes a frequent topic with 
 the Sibyl may have extracted the word from that source. 
 And, in florid Asiatic Greek, a single mention of the word 
 in the Shakespearian sense might be pardonable. But if 
 that is the meaning, this writer rides it to death, loading 
 the sentence with other repetitions as well, thus : " But the 
 
 elements being-in-a-fever-fit shall be dissolved These 
 
 things then being thus to be dissolved, what manner of persons 
 ought ye to be... hastening the day of the Lord by reason of 
 which the heavens being on fire shall be dissolved and the 
 elements being-in-a-fever-fit shall waste away 2 ." In all this 
 fine language, where is there a trace of the single-hearted 
 apostle of the Lord Jesus Christ, or of the simple nobility of 
 such words as these (i Pet. iv. 7): "But the end of all tilings 
 is at hand: be ye therefore of sound mind, and be sober unto 
 prayer: above all things being fervent in your love among 
 yourselves ; for love covereth a multitude of sins " ? 
 
 10. His mention of " all the Epistles" of " our beloved 
 brother Paul" 
 
 [1133] Toward the close of the Epistle, the writer implies 
 that his readers had previously received a letter, or letters, 
 
 1 See Hastings iii. 807. " The word does not appear to occur else- 
 where," i.e. except in Dioscorides and Galen. 
 
 2 2 Pet. iii. 10 12. 
 
 38
 
 OF ST PETER [1135 
 
 from the Apostle Paul : " Even as also our beloved brother 
 Paul... hath written unto you, as also in all \]iis\ epistles... 
 in which are some things hard to understand, which the un- 
 learned and unsteadfast wrest, as they also do the rest of the 
 Scriptures, to their own perdition." It is difficult not to agree 
 with Dr Chase (i) that the writer of these words had before 
 him a collection of " all the Epistles " of St Paul, and (2) that 
 they had by that time attained to the rank of " Scriptures " 
 both of which conclusions are incompatible with Petrine au- 
 thorship and scarcely compatible with authorship of any date 
 earlier than the second century. 
 
 [1134] The argument against the Second Epistle, derivable 
 from its contrast to the First, need not be insisted on and 
 this, for two reasons. In the first place, the contrast must be 
 obvious to all readers, even from the English text ; in the 
 second, the two most prominent advocates of the genuineness 
 of the Second Epistle are, so Dr Chase tells us, " obliged to 
 give up the real Petrine authorship " of the First. 1 
 
 11. Not an "imitator" of JosepJms, but perJiaps a pilferer 
 
 from him 
 
 [1135] Many years ago, in some articles in the Expositor 
 (2nd Series, vol. iii. p. 49 ff.), when illustrating the style of the 
 Second Epistle by quotations from Baboo English, I main- 
 tained that the author " imitated" Josephus. In the face of 
 the new testimony to indiscriminate borrowing brought for- 
 ward by Dr James, Dr Chase, and Professor Deissman, I am 
 disposed to think this was an error. One would not speak 
 of the jackdaw in the fable, arrayed in feathers borrowed from 
 a number of different birds, as " imitating" any one of them. 
 "Imitation" implies some kind of artistic unity. At all events 
 it implies some concentrated effort, as in the fable about the 
 ass personating the lion, which presupposes that the lion's 
 
 1 Hastings, iii. 813 b. 
 
 39
 
 1135/7] THE SECOND EPISTLE 
 
 skin has been stolen whole. In this Epistle there is no such 
 art, and absolutely no concentration. Though adhering, then, 
 to everything that I formerly asserted about the mongrel 
 style, and vacuity of thought, in this blemish on our Canonical 
 Scriptures, I nevertheless desire to retract the word "imitated" 
 and to substitute "pilfered". Nor would I now venture to 
 say with confidence "pilfered from Josephus" t but rather, 
 "pilfered certainly from Jude, almost certainly from the 
 Petrine Apocalypse, not improbably from some heathen form 
 of religious decree like the Carian Inscription above quoted, 
 from some iambic poem, from Sibylline hexameters, from 
 Philo 1 , from Josephus 2 and from other sources so numerous 
 that, if they could all be ascertained and the pilferings re- 
 moved from the Epistle, nothing at all would be left of the 
 author's own except the true statement that he knew of '//' 
 St Paul's Epistles, and the false statement that he heard the 
 Voice at the Transfiguration." 
 
 1 [1135 a] Philo, See Hastings iii. p. 816, where Dr Chase gives as 
 instances tVon^os, dperij (applied to God), 17 Averts TUV $eov, 17 dtia <j)v<ri$, 
 and \oyiKT)s KeKoivtov^Kaa-i (frvo-fcas. But all these might perhaps be 
 derived from Josephus (See next note). More convincing is Philo i. 510, 
 "the prophet utters nothing as \his\ private [utterance] (iStov)" as com- 
 pared with 2 Pet. i. 20, " of private interpretation ". This last passage 
 suggests that Pseudo-Peter misunderstood Philo. 
 
 - [1135 ] "Not improbably from Josephus." The 
 
 Epistle begins by saying that (i) all things are bestowed 
 on us by " the divine power " through the recognition of 
 Him that called us through His "virtue" that we may 
 " become sharers of tJie divine nature'' (2) The middle (and 
 greater) portion of it deals with the punishing (Ko\ao/j.evou<>) 
 of those who will not thus recognize God. (3) Much of the 
 third and last section deals with the physical nature of ttie 
 world (the earth being made out of " water " and destined to 
 perish by "fire"). But these three thoughts are not connected 
 in the Epistle. 
 
 40
 
 OF ST PETER [1135 d 
 
 [1135 c] Josephus, in the Preface to his Antiquities, has 
 the same three thoughts, in reverse order, and gives them 
 a logical connection. People ask, he says (Pref. 4), why 
 the Law deals so largely with "physiology" (i.e. the science 
 of nature, inanimate, animate, and divine). Tojthis he replies 
 that Moses made it his first object to " understand the nature 
 of God" and to become a spectator of His works. Without 
 this, all that may be enacted "with a view to virtue" will be 
 fruitless unless people understand that following God brings 
 blessedness, and departing from Him brings calamity. Moses 
 taught men to behold God and the structure of the world, and 
 to perceive that men are " the fairest of God's works upon 
 earth." When Moses had thus led men to " reverence [of 
 God] (eva-efteiai'}," the rest followed. Other lawgivers begin 
 from human contracts and human rights ; some even slander 
 God with shameful and vicious myths, imputing to Him the 
 sins of men : " But our lawgiver, exhibiting God with His 
 virtue intact, resolved that men should attempt to participate 
 in it" ; and those who refused he "punished (e'/coXao-e)." 
 
 [1135 d~\ Here, in one short section of Josephus' Preface, 
 we find, if not the very Pseudo-Petrine phrases, at all events 
 the Pseudo-Petrine notions in very similar phrases, about 
 " God's virtue ", " divine nature " and our " sharing in it ", the 
 "punishment" for refusal, and a reference to the physical 
 structure of the world. But in the Preface they follow an 
 orderly and intelligible arrangement ; in the Epistle they 
 appear to follow no logical arrangement at all. This is just 
 what might be expected from an unintelligent pilferer, who 
 sets words above thoughts and sonorousness above sense. 
 While absolutely and willingly withdrawing (for the above- 
 mentioned reasons) the statement that Pseudo-Peter "imitated" 
 this section, I am still of the opinion that he attempted to 
 pilfer thoughts from it, and that he succeeded in pilfering 
 phrases.
 
 (In the Press) 
 
 FROM LETTER TO SPIRIT 
 
 AN ATTEMPT TO REACH 
 
 THROUGH VOICES AND WORDS 
 
 THE MAN BEYOND THEM 
 
 BY 
 EDWIN A. ABBOTT 
 
 " The letter killeth, the spirit giveth life." 
 
 St Paul. 
 
 " I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness." 
 
 St John the Baptist. 
 
 " Thou hast the words of eternal life." 
 
 St Peter. 
 
 " There is nothing more like God than the man that 
 is the perfection of righteousness." 
 
 Plato. 
 
 LONDON 
 
 Adam and Charles Black 
 
 1903