person by the divine voice ("Thou art my beloved Son") in Mark and Luke, and the peculiar language of Matthew, in confirmation of this view. But (not to argue that, if the vision and the voice were imperceptible to the spectators, they could not have given that public and conclusive attestation to the Messiahship of Jesus which was their obvious object and intention) a comparison of the four accounts clearly show that the evangelists meant to state that the dove was visible and the voice audible to John and to all the spectators, who, according to Luke, must have been numerous. In Matthew the grammatical construction of iii. 16, would intimate that it was Jesus who saw the heavens open and the dove descend, but that the expression "alighting. upon him,” ἐρχόμενον ἐπ ̓ αὐτόν, should in this case have been o'avrov, "upon himself." However, it is very possible that Matthew may have written inaccurate, as he certainly wrote unclassical, Greek. But the voice in the next verse, speaking in the third person, "This is my beloved Son," must have been addressed to the spectators, not to Jesus. Mark has the same unharmonizing expression, é'auróv. Luke describes the scene as passing before numbers, “when all the people were baptized, it came to pass that Jesus also being baptized";-and then adds to the account of the other evangelists that the dove descended "in a bodily shape,' ἐν σωματικῷ εἴδει, as if to contradict the idea that it was a subjective, not an objective fact,-a vision, not a phenomenon ; he can only mean that it was an appearance visible to all present. The version given in the fourth evangelist shows still more clearly that such was the meaning generally attached to the tradition current among the Christians at the time it was embodied in the gospels. The Baptist is there represented as affirming that he himself saw the Spirit. descending like a dove upon Jesus, and that it was this appearance which convinced him of the Messiahship of Jesus.

Considering all this, then, we must admit that, while the naturalness of John's message to Christ, and the exact accordance of the two accounts given of it, render the historical accuracy of that relation highly probable, the discrepancies in the four narratives of the baptism strongly indicate, either that the original tradition came from different sources, or that it has undergone considerable modi

fication in the course of transmission; and also that the narratives themselves are discredited by the subsequent message. We think with Schleiermacher, the great defender and eulogist of Luke, that the words iv owμating side are an interpolation which our evangelist thought himself at liberty to make by way of rendering the picture more graphic, without perceiving their inconsistency with a subsequent portion of his narrative.

In all the synoptical gospels we find instances of the cure of demoniacs by Jesus early in his career, in which the demons, promptly, spontaneously, and loudly, bear testimony to his Messiahship. These statements occur once in Matthew (viii. 29);-four times in Mark (i. 24, 34; iii. 11; v. 7); and three times in Luke (iv. 33, 41; viii. 28'). Now, two points are evident to common sense, and are fully admitted by honest criticism :-first, that these demoniacs were lunatic and epileptic patients; and, secondly, that Jesus (or the narrators who framed the language of Jesus throughout the synoptical gospels) shared the common belief that these maladies were caused by evil spirits inhabiting the bodies of the sufferers. We are then landed in this conclusion certainly not a probable one, nor the one intended to be conveyed by the narrators-that the idea of Jesus being the Messiah was adopted by madmen before it had found entrance into the public mind, apparently even before it was received by his immediate disciples-was in fact first suggested by madmen;-in other words, that it was an idea which originated with insane brains-which presented itself to, and found acceptance with, insane brains more readily than sane ones. The conception of the evangelists clearly was that Jesus derived honour (and his mission confirmation) from this early recognition of his Messianic character by hostile spirits of a superior order of Intelligences; but to us, who know that these supposed superior Intelligences were really unhappy men whose natural intellect had been perverted or impaired, the effect of the narratives becomes absolutely reversed;-and if they are to be

1 It is worthy of remark that no narrative of the healing of demoniacs, stated as such, occurs in the fourth gospel. This would intimate it to be the work of a man who had outgrown, or had never entertained, the idea of maladies arising from possession. It is one of many indications in this evangelist of a Greek rather than a Jewish mind.

accepted as historical, they lead inevitably to the conclusion. that the idea of the Messiahship of Jesus was originally formed in disordered brains, and spread thence among the mass of the disciples. The only rescue from this conclusion lies in the admission, that these narratives are not historical, but mythic, and belong to that class of additions which early grew up in the Christian Church, out of the desire to honour and aggrandise the memory of its Founder, and which our uncritical evangelists embodied as they found them.

1

Passing over a few minor passages of doubtful authenticity or accuracy, we come to one near the close of the gospel, which we have no scruple in pronouncing to be an unwarranted interpolation. In xxii. 36-38, Jesus is reported, after the Last Supper, to have said to his disciples, “He that hath no sword, let him sell his garment and buy one. And they said, Lord, behold, here are two swords. And he said, It is enough." Christ never could have uttered such a command, nor, we should imagine, anything which could have been mistaken for it. The very idea is contradicted by his whole character, and utterly precluded by the narratives of the other evangelists;-for when Peter did use the sword, he met with a severe rebuke from his Master:-"Put up thy sword into the sheath: the cup which my Father hath given me shall I not drink it," according to John.-"Put up again thy sword into its place; for all they that take the sword shall perish by the sword," according to Matthew. The passage we conceive to be a clumsy invention of some early narrator, to account for the remarkable fact of Peter having a sword at the time of Christ's apprehension; and it is inconceivable to us how a sensible compiler like Luke could have admitted into his history such an apocryphal and unharmonising fragment.

In conclusion, then, it appears certain that in all the synoptical gospels we have events related which did not really occur, and words ascribed to Jesus which Jesus did not utter; and that many of these words and events are of

1 Compare Luke ix. 50, with xi. 23, where we probably have the same original expression differently reported. Schleiermacher, with all his reverence for Luke, decides (p. 94) that Luke vi. 24-26, is an addition to Christ's words by the evangelist himself-an "innocent interpolation," he calls it. For the anachronism in xi. 51, see our remarks on the corresponding passage in Matthew.

great significance. In the great majority of these instances, however, this incorrectness does not imply any want of honesty on the part of the evangelists, but merely indicates that they adopted and embodied, without much scrutiny or critical acumen, whatever probable and honourable narratives they found current in the Christian community.

CHAPTER X.

SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED-GOSPEL OF JOHN.

IN the examination of the fourth Gospel a different mode of criticism from that hitherto pursued is required. Here we do not find, so frequently as in the other evangelists, particular passages which pronounce their own condemnation, by anachronisms, peculiarity of language, or incompatibility with others more obviously historical;-but the whole tone of the delineations, the tenour of the discourses, and the general course of the narrative, are utterly different from those contained in the synoptical gospels, and also from what we should expect from a Jew speaking to Jews, writing of Jews, imbued with the spirit, and living in the land, of Judaism.

By the common admission of all recent critics, this gospel is rather to be regarded as a polemic, than an historic composition. It was written less with the intention of giving a complete and continuous view of Christ's character and career, than to meet and confute certain heresies which had sprung up in the Christian Church near the close of the first century, by selecting, from the memory of the author, or the traditions then current among believers, such narratives and discourses as were conceived to be most opposed to the heresies in question. Now these heresies related almost exclusively to the person and nature of Jesus; on which points we have many indications that great difference of opinion existed, even during the apostolic period. The obnoxious doctrines especially pointed at in the gospel appear, both from internal evidence and external testimony, to be those held

2

1 See Hug, Strauss, Hennell, De Wette. Also Dr. Tait's "Suggestions." 2 Irenæus, Jerome, Epiphanius. See Hug, § 51. See also a very detailed account of the Gnostics, in Norton's Genuineness of the Gospels, ii. c. 1, 2.