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peculiar to the first Gospel, and are mostly introduced by the editorial phrase, "That it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the Lord through the prophets, saying."

Of course, our author holds that S. Matthew's supposed collection of prophecies was larger than this. Papias can hardly have written five books to explain eleven texts. And other Gospels, which have perished, may have incorporated the whole, or nearly the whole of S. Matthew's treatise. In particular, the Gospel which Justin Martyr is assumed to have used, is supposed to have been much richer in this department.

If such a collection did exist-whoever was the author-it seems to me more probable that Justin quoted from it direct than from any supposed gospel containing it. But what I wish to point out is, that these eleven quotations in our first Gospel are no part of the original work. They are comparatively late accretions, never essential to the narrative or really blended with it. The narrative is older and independent. If, therefore, S. Matthew died, as our author insists, about A.D. 63, having already compiled this book, how much older may the other parts of the Gospel be.

It is clear that the study of Messianic prophecy was an absorbing topic of the time. Every preacher would contribute something to it, and no subject was more popular in sermons. We hold that the collection of Messianic texts was a gradual growth, and that the antiquity of narratives embedded in our Gospels may sometimes be tested by their lack of this element.

Justin Martyr's Gospel quotations present a large number of very interesting problems, but we see nothing in the partial examination of a few of them, with which our author is content, to set aside the account by Dr Abbott in his article on the Gospels in the Encyclopædia Britannica. We go even beyond the Rev. J. A. Cross, in holding that during the oral stage every considerable church must have had a Gospel of its own, identical with those of other churches in many points, but differing from them, sometimes considerably, both in contents and in wording. With S. Luke i. 1-4 before us, we can hardly deny that some of these Gospels had been partially committed to writing, enough perhaps to account for the language of 1 Tim. v. 18, but we see insuperable objections to the idea that Justin in the middle of the second century, when, as he informs us, the Gospels were already read in churches, used any other Gospel than the four which we possess.

ARTHUR WRIGHT.

Vol. V.-No 1.

B

Judaistic Christianity.

A Course of Lectures by F. J. A. Hort, D.D. Cambridge and London: Macmillan & Co., 1894. 8vo, pp. xii. 222. Price, 68.

THIS Compendious little volume has a claim on the notice of all Biblical students. For its theme must remain, as Baur showed once for all, one of our chief criteria in the appreciation of the New Testament writings. Its central problem is this: By what stages did the Jewish particularism which so largely animated the early Jerusalem community give way to the universalism of S. Paul, which alone answered to the genius of the Gospel of Christ? We have, as Harnack pointed out some years ago,1 become "richer in historical points of view on this question. But we have not yet attained more than an approximate answer to any but the broader issues involved. Accordingly, a fresh discussion from a master in mature and balanced criticism is most welcome, and even opportune. The method of exposition is eminently constructive, and the real religious problem is ever kept well to the front; while side-lights break forth incidentally almost on every page.

With characteristic thoroughness Dr Hort begins at the real beginning, and in Chapter II., entitled "Christ and the Law," handles a very delicate topic with consummate skill and insight. Specially fine is the section on His attitude to John the Baptist. But every student of the Gospels will feel surer of his ground after reading all the pages in which hard texts like Matthew v. 17 ff., ix. 14 ff., xi. 2-19, xvii. 24-27, xxiii. 2, along with xv. 3-6, as well as those dealing with the original limitation of the Gospel to Israel, are made lucid, and fitting into a subtle harmony become deep water-marks of the historicity of our sources.

The results may be stated as follows:-Christ was the "fulfiller" of the Law and the Prophets, "in that He sought to give effect to their true purpose and inner meaning. He indicated that for Himself and His true disciples, the old form of the Law had ceased to be binding; but He did not disobey its precepts or even the precepts of tradition, or encourage His disciples to do so, except in so far as obedience would have promoted that Pharisaic misuse of the Law and of tradition alike which called for His warmest denunciations. Nay, He did homage to that (for its time) right service of the old order, which was represented by John the Baptist, though He at the same time proclaimed its entirely lower and transitory character."

The shades of distinction here so briefly summarized will not fail to be valued by those whose patience has been at any time tried by

1 Contemporary Review, August 1886, pp. 222 ff.

the laborious onesidedness of men like Geiger and Grätz, when they try to handle the same theme. They will also follow our author when he proceeds: "The fundamental point, a fulfilment of the Law, which was not a literal retention of it as a code of commandments, was, as it is still, a conception hard to grasp it was easier either to perpetuate the conditions of the old covenant or else to blaspheme them.1 Again, there was ample matter for apparent contradiction in the necessity for a time of transition, during which the old order would live on by the side of the new, not Divinely deprived of its ancient sanctity, and yet laid under a Divine warning of not distant extinction. This period of transition was prefigured in the Baptist's own testimony: 'He must increase, but I must decrease '-decrease, not simply give way and be gone. The great point to remember is, that it was hardly possible for either aspect to be forgotten in man's recollections of the original Gospel at any period of the Apostolic age, however vaguely and confusedly both might be apprehended" (pp. 36-38). Surely in such a passage we have already in germ an analysis of the actual conditions of thought in the Apostolic age. And when we consider how modern Jewish writers have failed to interpret this twofoldness of the expressed mind of Christ, we shall cease to wonder that early Jewish Christians should have found the problem of Continuity amid Progress, as involved in the Gospels and evolved by Stephen and Paul, all too high for them at first.

To the sympathetic unfolding of this drama, well-nigh tragedy as it was at times, of primitive Christianity, Chapter III. is devoted. It is refreshingly historic in spirit,2 untinctured by the subtle intrusion of later ecclesiastical associations, which is, alas, still all too common even with certain scholarly writers. Acts ii. 42 is very frankly handled; kowwvia has a full-blooded sense assigned to it; while “the 'breaking of the bread' is, of course, what we call the Holy Communion in its primitive form, as an Agape or Supper of Communion," held too in private houses (kar' oikov). But this and the next chapter, which carry us down to the Jerusalem Conference that great turning-point in our subject-are practically a running paraphrase of the first half of the Acts, and simply teem with points. Thus, in Acts xi. 20, Dr Hort cannot accept the easier "Greeks" in place of the better supported "Hellenists," as those addressed by Cypriots and Cyrenians at Antioch. The latter,

1 The media via marked out by Hort appears very vividly in the well-known saying in Codex Beza, addressed to a man found working in the field on the Sabbath.

2 Some may perhaps think that Dr Hort takes the numbers of the growing Church rather literally, and might desiderate a little more recognition of the possibly diverse sources underlying the Acts.

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he supposes, may here include "the fearers of God, or proselytes of the less strict sort, such as Cornelius and probably the eunuch had been (xi. 3); but no one as yet preached to men entirely heathens." Then, touching Peter's weakness at Antioch, as recorded in Gal. ii. 11-14, he also holds a view slightly different from the usual one. Peter is at first inclined to treat on terms of perfect equality Gentile believers, so recently recognised as brethren, on the basis of the Precepts enjoining abstinence from Idolatry, Impurity, and the use of certain forms of food specially abhorrent to Jewish sentiment-so answering to the renunciations which early became a condition of baptism." But subsequently he was terrorised by the public opinion of the Jerusalem Church, with which James sympathised at least to the extent of urging a certain "opportunism" of reserve as expedient. This, of course, argued an inferiority of Gentile Christians, which Paul could not tamely tolerate; and Dr Hort thinks that the Jerusalem authorities most have confessed him to be strictly in the right; but he thinks also that the necessity of actual communion of the closer order was avoided by tacit mutual consent, each type-the actually circumcised and the uncircumcised Christians-taking its own course for the time. Yet the resultant Dualism was temporary, and was modified by the influence of "the Dispersion"; in principle, moreover, S. Paul had already won the day. But that he was not the man to push the advantage gained for born Gentiles in a doctrinaire way, alien to the spirit of 1 Cor. ix. 19 f., appears from the case of Timothy, adequate practical reasons for whose circumcision are supplied in Acts xvi. 4.

Touching the Galatians, we may note that while our author wrote in the pre-Ramsay stage of the subject, he feels that the reasons given by Lightfoot for dating the Epistle after, rather than before, the Epistles to the Corinthians are "not all equally good." In fact, his own views, as here stated, could easily be fitted into Ramsay's scheme; and, indeed, the "calm and deliberate manner in which Paul sums up the Judaistic controversy" in Romans seems to point to the lapse of several years between it and Galatians. For "we can now see that the crisis of Apostolic Christianity was virtually over when S. Paul wrote " to Rome, on the eve of his perilous mission to Jerusalem. On the other hand,

the " persecution of S. Paul by unbelieving Judaism" was about to reach its climax. Arrived at Jerusalem, he was indeed welcomed by the more representative men among "the brethren." Yet it seems clear that the need of circumspectness had been already felt : the advice of the zekénim, with James at their head, implies that ugly rumours had gained wide credence with the "Christian Jews living mixed among the general body of Jews." The ultimate source of such calumnies was probably unbelieving Judaism,

especially that of Asia Minor (xxi. 27). The attempted refutation by object-lesson, as suggested by the zekénim, Dr Hort accepts as quite consistent with the Apostle's own practice as a Jew, and supports his view by Acts xxiv. 17 (προσφοράς).

Passing now to Rome, Dr Hort explains the ignorance of the leading Jews as to Paul's person by the lapse of time during his stay at Cæsarea, which might make his enemies less apt to dog his steps with slander. He finds, too, no signs as yet of a Judaizing party among Roman Christians. But he does not explain how otherwise Phil. i. 15 ff. is to be taken; nor can the party there referred to be regarded as something of very recent growth. All the more strange is it that in Phil. iii. 17 ff. (cf. Rom. xvi. 17-20) our author should refuse to see, with Lightfoot, any "antinomian tendency as menacing the Philippians, and prefers to contrast "the visible Toλíтevμa to which they (Judaisers) cling, with the true invisible Christian ToíTevua in the heavens." Aliquando dormitat Homerus !

Far more convincing is the discussion of the "Colossian Heresy," expressed generically in ii. 8, and specifically in ii. 16-23. Having shown that the latter passage has no clearly non-Judaic features, Dr Hort paraphrases τῆς φιλοσοφίας καὶ κενῆς ἀπάτης by " that philosophy of his which you know of" (cf. 1 Cor. i. 21), which enjoined subservience to human tradition and the rudiments of the world (cf. 20, 22); and concludes that the theory of "some sort of theosophic speculation" is needless. The 'philosophy' would thus be "merely a fresh example of a widely-spread tendency of that age to disarm Western prejudice against things Jewish by giving them a quasiHellenic varnish. Angel-worship might easily be treated as an esoteric lore, and distinctions of foods and days as the perfection of a refined morality above the level of the common multitude." For "the disposition to treat ethics as the true substantial philosophy was already abroad, and during the third century at least gave rise to a technical use of piλocopia for the anchorite life and principles. Hence the TaTewоppoσúvn here censured is "a grovelling habit of ταπεινοφροσύνη mind, choosing lower things as the primary sphere of religion, and not rà avw, the region in which Christ is.' And this same temper, applied to the unknown sphere of angelic being (ii. 18), tended at once to create rivals to Christ Himself (v. 4)—a thing quite easy where current Jewish conceptions as to Messiah were not expanding in the light of the real Messiah, Jesus.

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An instructive parallel to part of the facts at Colossæ, and a contrast to the treatment there called for, is found in Romans xiv. (cf. xv. 1-13). The recrudescence of certain tendencies abroad among "the Dispersion" is involved in either case. But we follow Lightfoot as against Dr Hort in believing that Essenes or Therapeutæ,

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