Rategtitt Beene erhee oe Moe cates Spies aveacetans a) es Lat Ee rer aren de ers eoerey peel iG 334 ey ; : f ; re eee Foran o chang ale Ferree E ; Bs PRE eet stat 9 Sa ap ea ee ety PTR TSS LL at MAK 14 1025 SL oargAL SERRE = hina) Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2022 with funding from Princeton Theological Seminary Library https://archive.org/details/makingmeaningofnOOsnow_1 | THE MAKING AND MEANING OF THE NEW TESTAMENT BY JAMES H. SNOWDEN THE BASAL BELIEFS OF CHRISTIANITY THE WORLD A SPIRITUAL SYSTEM CAN WE BELIEVE IN IMMORTALITY? THE COMING OF THE LORD IS THE WORLD GROWING BETTER? THE PERSONALITY OF GOD A WONDERFUL NIGHT A WONDERFUL MORNING SCENES AND SAYINGS IN THE LIFE OF CHRIST THE PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGION A SUMMER ACROSS THE SEA THE TRUTH ABOUT CHRISTIAN SCIENCE THE MEANING OF EDUCATION THE ATTRACTIONS OF THE MINISTRY THE CITY OF TWELVE GATES JESUS AS JUDGED BY HIS ENEMIES IMMORTALITY IN THE LIGHT OF MODERN THOUGHT SUNDAY SCHOOL LESSONS, THREE ANNUAL VOLS. The Making and Meaning of the New Testament ITS BACKGROUND, BOOKS AND BIOGRAPHIES A Porutar INTRODUCTION FOR SCHOOLS, CoLLEGES, SUNDAY ScHOOL TEACHERS AND GENERAL READERS BY JAMES H. SNOWDEN grew Bork THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1924 All rights reserved Coprricut, 1923, By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY Set up and electrotyped. Published October, 1923. Reprinted October, 1924. Printed in the United States of America by THE FERRIS PRINTING COMPANY, NEW YORK The words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life.—Jesus. Religion cannot be said to have made a bad choice m pitching on this Man as an ideal representative and guide » to humanity; nor even now, would it be easy, even for an unbeliever, to find a better translation of the rule of virtue from the abstract into the concrete, than the en- deavor so to live that Christ would approve our life— John Stuart Mill. Look on our divinest Symbol: Jesus of Nazareth and His life and His biography and what followed therefrom. Higher has the human thought not yet reached; this is Christianity and Christendom, a symbol of quite peren- nial, infinite character: whose significance will ever de- mand to be anew inquired into and anew made manifest. —Carlyle. I thoroughly believe in a university education for both men and women; but I believe a knowledge of the Bible without a college education is more valuable than a college course without the Bible. For in the Bible we have profound thought beautifully expressed; we have the nature of boys and girls, of men and women, more accurately charted than in the works of any modern novelist or playwright. You can learn more about human nature by reading the Bible than by living in New York. —William Lyon Phelps, All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness; that the man of God may Lopate thoroughly furnished unto all good works. —Paul. Books That Teachers Should Own THE MODERN READER’S BIBLE. By Ricuarp G. Moutron. The Macmillan Company. One volume, cloth, complete text, 1738 pages, including full introductory essays to each book of the Bible. $3.50. This well-known book is simply the Bible presented in a modern literary form. It is not chopped up into bits of verses but is printed in paragraphs like any other book, and prose appears as prose, and poetry as poetry. The book simply gives the Bible a fair chance and lets it tell its own eloquent story as it cannot do when out to pieces in the old form. The reading of one of the books of the Bible, as one of the Gospels, straight through in this volume gives one a new sense of its vividness and vitality. THE ONE VOLUME BIBLE COMMENTARY. By Rev. J. R. Dum- MELOW. The Macmillan Company. $3.00. This book of 1250 pages compresses between its covers a remarkable amount of scholarly information about the Bible, its books and authorship and background, together with brief comments on important and difficult passages and verses. It has been tried out and given satisfaction to all kinds of readers. Sunday school teachers who do not have the time and training to use commentaries of technical scholarship will find this coming to their help in practical ways at most points. THE MAKING AND MEANING OF THE NEW TESTAMENT: Its Background, Books and Biographies. By James H. Snowpen. The Macmillan Company. $2.25. This book tells how the New Testament was made and what it means, It sketches the Hebrew, Greek and Roman background out of which it grew, briefly explains each book in it, outlines the life of Jesus and of Paul, and brings it all home to our business and bosoms with illuminating inter- pretation and application. It shows us what a surprisingly modern book the New Testament is and makes good its claim and distinction to be the most interesting as it is incomparably the most valuable book in the world. TABLE OF CONTENTS PART I THE BACKGROUND OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. CHAP. INTRODUCTION. , ‘ - : : 4 : : vii PAGE I. Tue JEWISH BACKGROUND : : : ; : 3 1. The Land of Palestine : ’ y : : 3 2. The Jewish People. : : - as 6 (1) The History of the Jews 4 - A 6 (2) Racial Characteristics of the Jews : : 8 (3) The Religious Nature of the Jews 2 : 9 3. The Old Testament . 2 11 4. Conditions in Palestine in the Time of Christ ; 14 (1) Political Conditions . 14 (2) The Religious Worship and Life of the Jews 15 (3) Religious Parties among the Jews b 19 (4) Religious Doctrines of Judaism 2 ; 20 II. THe GREEK BACKGROUND : ; 3 i : 22 1. The Greek Genius . : ‘ . 22 2. The Spread of Greek Civilization 2 : : 23 3. The Greek Language 3 24 4. Greek Contributions to the New Testament : 26 III. THe RomMAN BACKGROUND A ; q ; : 29 1. The Roman Genius . : F : : s 29 2. The Roman Empire R : : 30 3. Pagan Religions in the Roman Empire , p SL 4. Roman Contributions to the New Testament : 33 IV. THE FULNESS OF TIME ° 3 ; : é “ 35 PARDS LI THE BOOKS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. 1. INTRODUCTION . i : : : 41 II, GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS OF THE GoseEre : : 44 1. The Historicity of the Gospels . , : : 44 2. The Interrelations of the Gospels a : ‘ 47 3. Can the Gospels Be Harmonized? ; : ; 50 Vil Vill CHAP. eae Ee TABLE OF CONTENTS The Dates of the Gospels Why Four Gospels? Miracles in the Gospels . The Chronology and Outline of Events of the Life of Jesus (1) Chronology (2) Outline of Events III. Tue Four Gosprrs Li 3. 4, The Gospel According to Matthew (1) Authorship : (2) Characteristics (3) Contents : The Gospel According to Mark . (1) Authorship a : (2) Characteristics (3) Contents ; The Gospel According to Luke (1) Authorship (2) Purpose and Characteristics (8) The Preface ; : (4) Contents é The Gospel According to John (1) Authorship and Date (2) Purpose and Characteristics (3) Contents : IV. Tue Acts oF THE APOSTLES AND THE Peres OF (pa 1, LB The Acts of the Apostles (1) Authorship and Date (2) Purpose and Characteristics (8) Contents : ; The Epistles of Padi: (1) Authorship (2) Circumstances and Characteristics of the Epistles 3 (3) Chronology of Paul’s Life and Letters (4) Contents of the Hpistles Romans : : Teand 71) Corinthians Galatians Ephesians . Philippians Colossians . I and II Thessalonians I and II Timothy Tituse: ; Philemon (5) Review of the Epistles V. Tae Caruoric Epistrrs aNnp REVELATION Hebrews PAGE 53 55 56 59 59 59 62 62 62 63 64 66 66 67 68 69 69 69 70 72 73 %3 74 75 77 Lies (7 ili 80 80 80 81 83 84 84 85 86 88 89 90 90 92 94 94 95 99 99 CHAP. Wile III. IV. 4h TABLE OF CONTENTS James ; ‘° ‘8: % I and II Peter I and II and III John Jude . A Revelation THE CANON AND TRANSMISSION OF THE font rises ae The Canon 2. Manuscripts 3. Translations PART IIT THE LIFE OF JESUS. INTRODUCTION Toe TuHirty SILENT vies Seah 2% ASMARSN AD SASTRY EA AS oe The Genealogy of Jesus A Holy Mystery Revealed The Birth in Bethlehem Angels and Shepherds Worshipping Wise Men The Childhood at Nazareth The Carpenter IRSt YEAR: THE HARLY cree MErnisrns A Great Revival Meeting The Baptism of Jesus The Temptation of Jesus How the Kingdom Started to Grow Water Turned into Wine First Cleansing of the Temple A Distinguished Night Visitor A Convert from Low Life ECOND YEAR: THE GALILEAN MINISTRY A Prophet Driven out of His Own Town Preaching and Fishing at Lake Galilee A Busy Day in Capernaum : A Missionary Tour through Galilee | Strange Things : Jesus at the Pool of! Bethesda The Choosing and the Mission of the Twelve Disciples ; The Sermon on the Mount—The Beatitudes The Sermon on the Mount—The Lord’s Prayer Jesus Heals a Centurion’s Servant : A How Jesus Dealt with John’s Doubt Jesus Teaching by Parables : A Storm on Lake Galilee The Tragedy of the Black Tower Five Thousand, Fed . 115 117 117 118 120 121 123 125 129 131 131 133 134 187 141 143 146 148 152 1538 156 158 162 164 167 169 172 175 178 180 184 187 190 192 x TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAP. PAGE 16. Jesus Breaks with the Pharisees : J : 195 17. The Interview at Cesarea Philippi . ‘ ) 198 18. The Transfiguration 7 : t 201 V. Tuirp YEAR: THE LATER JUDEAN Minieeee ; : 205 1. The Man Born Blind i 4 : . F 205 2. Mary and Martha P ; A ; : : 208 3. The Triumphal Entry 3 A ‘ F ; 212 4, Certain Greeks : - , ; X : 215 5. The Lord’s Supper .. A 4 A 4 217 6. Gethsemane : : A ; . A ; vat 1 ene aria 4 ; 3 ; : ? . 223 8. The Crucifixion 4 > : : t 227 9. The Resurrection . ‘ 4 5 ‘ 5 230 10. The Great Commission j : ; ; ; 233 11. The Ascension : A : t , ‘ 236 PART IV THE SPREAD OF CHRISTIANITY I. INTRODUCTION . : ; : ; ‘ : ; 243 II. Tuer CHURCH IN JERUSALEM s : : : : 245 1. The Day of Pentecost q ; : : ; 245 2. The Martyrdom of Stephen rs ‘ : : 248 III, THE GOSPEL SETS OUT ON ITS WorLD MARCH ., i 253 1, The Gospel in Samaria e : : : ; 200 2. The Conversion of Paul : : f : ‘ 256 3. Peter and Cornelius 260 4. First Council at Jerusalem: Shall Gentiles Be Received into the Church? ; ; : 263 5. The Gospel in Antioch : ; : : 4 265 IV. Pavuw’s MISSIONARY JOURNEYS ; : ¥ : 269 1. Paul’s First Missionary Journey ; 269 2. Second Council at Jerusalem: Must Gentile Con- verts Submit to the Mosaic Ceremonies? rf 33 3. Paul’s Second Missionary shane From Antioch to Berea d 4 . 276 4. Paul at Athens and Corinth ‘ : : : 280 5. Paul’s Third Missionary Journey ; : : 283 6. Paul at Jerusalem and Cxesarea ; : ’ 286 7. Stormy Voyage and ee: A : : 289 8. Paul in Rome ; - d : 292 INDEX OF SCRIPTURES : 5 : : p i : 299 INDEX OF SUBJECTS 4 : : : ‘ 303 INTRODUCTION BOOKS AND THE BOOK Books are boats loaded with cargoes of ideas, the most valuable goods and vital wealth in the world. They come floating down the stream of time, it may be from distant days and far lands and various climes, and bring us freight infinitely more precious than the silks of India, or the spices of Araby, or all the ivory and diamonds and gold of Africa. Yet are they so plentiful and cheap that no one is so poor but may be rich, in this treasure. Books are the fossilized brains of thinkers that are gone. The ideas that glowed in Plato’s luminous brain or soared in Shakespeare’s imperial imagination kindle their fires or spread their wings in our minds and hearts. They are vital arteries through which the thoughts and deeds, visions and victories of men of genius pour into us and throb in our pulses. They crowd the glorious consciousness of these gifted souls into our minds so that we see through their eyes and think with their thoughts and are strong with their strength and rise on the wings of their spirits. Words, the first and oldest human invention, are still the most magical things in the world, incomparably sur- passing all our modern wonders. Loom and locomotive, telephone and wireless radio are small achievements com- pared with the wizardy of words. The sign which consists of only a few strokes of a pen or a mere puff of breath yet comes nearer to being the incarnation of the soul and the very life of the spirit than any other device of man. It distills and condenses and crystallizes the living content of one soul and transports it to and dissolves it in another so that two minds think the same thought and two hearts beat as one. A single word may thus diffuse ideas around X1 xii INTRODUCTION the world, compel multitudes to think and act together, and shape the history of coming centuries. Beware of a word: a thousand thinkers and a hundred generations and countless heroes and martyrs may have distilled their life-blood into it, and at its call they may awake and come forth to fight for it and with it. It may seem impalpable and impotent as so much empty air, but its few innocent-looking letters may contain more con- densed potency than all the dynamite on the planet. It may unify and electrify a nation, make a million bayonets think and conquer the world. The simple word democracy has in modern times put kings out of business, overturned all despotic thrones and uprooted some of the most ancient special privileges and most sacrosanct customs among men. The sceptres of kings and emperors are puny playthings compared with these magie wands. Books are battalions of words that in their massed might are charged with mysterious and almost miraculous power of molding and merging many and even millions of minds into one thought and purpose and life. They resurrect the past, create the present and foreordain the future. They are the great university and contain all ideas and visions and carry in their bosoms the promise and potency of all achievements. Of all the books in the world the Bible ig incomparably the greatest and best. It was slowly produced, as diamonds are distilled and crystallized atom by atom, through a thou- Sand years at the convergent and crowded crossroads of the ancient world where all civilizations and languages and religions met and flowed into it. Not only was Palestine compressed into its pages, but so also were Babylon and Egypt and Greece and Rome. All the world was taxed and rifled of its treasures to compose and enrich it. A great many-sided literature of the most gifted people religiously, it is the expressed essence of their history and experience. Historian and psalmist, prophet and poet emblazoned its pages with their pictures of the march of God through time, tossing impenitent nations out of his path, and with the most glorious visions and eolors of their inspired imagination. The Hebrew was the most richly endowed child of God and yet also was the most INTRODUCTION xiii wilful and wayward and passed through the deepest waters and the fiercest fires. He poured his burning, throbbing soul into this book so that it flames with his ardent dreams and hopes, is jubilant with his joyous triumphs, smeared and stained with his sins and tears, darkened with his tragedies, and sobs with his sorrows. No other book is so varied and picturesque and colorful, so surcharged and saturated with the distilled essence of human nature, so woven of the very palpitating fibres of the human soul. It is at once the most human and the most divine book in all the vast library of the world’s books; and like an old rose jar it will ever retain and emit its precious divine aroma; out of its ancient moss- covered rock will ever gush forth living streams of life. It has been and is the most prolific soil and seed-bed of other books, and out of it have grown vast forests of literature. It can never pass out of human interest and become obsolete, any more than can the majesty of moun- tains and the mystery of the sea, the beauty of the Par- thenon, the plays of Shakespeare, or the soul of Lincoln. It is rooted in the religious nature of man and will endure as one of the permanent and perennial interests and values of our human world. The New Testament is the best part of this greatest and best book. The New is the blossom and fruit of which the Old is the root. It contains the most precious truth distilled out of the richest and most sensitive spiritual souls and brings it to our minds and dissolves it in our hearts. It comes to us out of the greatest period of human history, the First Century of the Chris- tian Era which still overtops all the centuries. It is full of picturesque scenes and stirring stories and dra- matic moments. It grows out of a great background and is full of great biographies. It is written in everyday speech in simple words level to the common people and to children, and the simplicity and beauty and majesty and music of its style have been the charm and praise of all the Christian centuries. Translated into no fewer than seven hundred and seventy languages no other book has come near it in circulation over the entire globe. It is read on every continent and island and is incomparably XIV INTRODUCTION the best seller in the world today. It is a profound book in whose depths scholars may lose themselves, and yet it is a popular book and the common people read it gladly. It is a highly composite book, produced by many writers and containing various kinds of literature, history and doctrine, gospel and epistle, parable and prose-poem and panoramic apocalypse, and yet it blends this wide variety into a rich unity. Woven of many notes and chords and melodies, it yet all melts into harmony and makes one music. It gathered honey from all the fields and flowers of the ancient world. It considered nothing human foreign to it and taxed all the world for its own enrichment. An Oriental book, it is yet equally understood in the Occident. It crosses all continental and racial and linguistic lines and is everywhere familiarly at home. While deeply colored with the soil and ideas and customs of Palestine its pic- tures are true to the life of every land. It speaks to the universal human soul and sweeps all the mystic chords of the human heart. Never can it grow old and out of date, nor can custom ever stale its perennial freshness and in- finite variety. One of the oldest books which we know, it is yet one of the most modern and matches and meets all the experiences and needs of our day and life. All its lights are thrown upon its central Figure and supreme Personality. It sets in its frame a Portrait unique and unapproachable in all other literature which no human pen ever produced out of imagination or myth, but which was simply drawn from life and brings us face to face with the living Reality. So realistic and modern is the Picture that Jesus seems to step right out of these pages into our homes and streets and marts and all our Iife. The New Testament is an intensely human book, and yet it is none the less but all the more divine. It is not easy to separate and define this divine element, just as it is not easy or possible to draw the dividing line between the human and the divine in providence or in our own con- sciousness. But this divine element is present as a golden thread woven into all its web, or as a flame that burns all the way through it, or as a relish that is found in all its pages. The book is earthly clay fused with celestial fire, human flesh filled with divine spirit. Its vessel is INTRODUCTION XV earthen, but its treasure is heavenly. The breath of God is blowing through this book: nothing else will explain it. To know this book is in itself an education. It broadens the brain, kindles the imagination, purifies the heart and transforms the life. More than any other book it has shaped and colored the history of these nineteen Christian centuries, and with every cycle of the sun it is infiltrating its teaching and spirit more deeply into the highest and finest civilization. But as yet it is sadly true that only dimly and slightly is its light seen and its power felt and its truth transmuted into life, and its great days and deeds are yet to come. There is vastly more light to break out of this book. Countless seeds and innumerable harvests yet slumber in its soil. When these seeds have been sown around the world and are sprouting on every shore and blossoming in every heart, when all its truth has been turned into bread and assimilated into the life-blood of the race it will be seen and experienced that its words are spirit and life. Na Ki a ee | ' Ped as Cong tame he > : PART I THE BACKGROUND OF THE NEW TESTAMENT THE MAKING AND MEANING OF THE NEW TESTAMENT CHAPTER I THE JEWISH BACKGROUND Christianity is an historical religion and its roots run down into the land of Palestine and back through Hebrew history and still further back into ancient Egypt and Babylon and then out through the wide Gentile world. The books of the New Testament are historical docu- ments and follow the laws of such records in their origin, authorship, contents and purpose. They sprang out of concrete historical conditions, and they ean be fully under- stood only as they are viewed in the light of their original environment. It will, therefore, be necessary to begin this study of the New Testament by sketching the background out of which it grew. The New Testament is primarily a Jewish book and therefore it must be viewed as an outgrowth of Jewish history. 1. THe Lanp or PALESTINE Palestine, the home of the Bible, is physically one of the smallest countries of the world, but historically and religi- ously it bulks larger than some continents. It is a mere strip of country only about 145 miles long and on the aver- age about 70 miles wide so that it is not larger than some American western counties. It runs north and south along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean and consists of four sections: the maritime plain, the central mountain range, the Jordan valley, and 3a 4 THE MAKING AND MEANING the mountain plateau east of the Jordan bordering on tne desert. The maritime plain, about 20 miles wide, was originally the land of the Philistines, from which word was derived the name of the country. It was and still is the most fertile part of Palestine. The central rocky ridge runs up through the middle of the land like a spinal column, and at the plain of Esdrae- lon, which cuts across the country from the sea to the Jor- dan, the mountain range turns to the west and buries its rocky roots in the blue Mediterranean. North of the plain of Esdraelon rise the mountains of Lebanon and Hermon. The Jordan valley, or gorge, is one of the most remark- able chasms on the planet. It is a geological ‘‘fault’’ or slip in the rock strata of the earth which, at the deepest point at the bottom of the Dead Sea, is 2,600 feet below sea level. The Jordan rises in the mountains of the north and descends to a small lake, the Waters of Merom, near sea level, plunges down in less than nine miles to Lake Galilee, 680 feet below sea level, and then descends in 65 miles to the Dead Sea, 1,300 feet below sea level, the Dead Sea itself being 1,300 feet deep. From the summit of Hermon, 9,000 feet high, to the Dead Sea is a fall of 10,300 Fie and a change in climate from perpetual snow to tropic eat. The plateau east of the Jordan rises higher than the mountain range west of the river, and fades out into the desert sand, and is the region known in the New Testament as Perea. Palestine is thus remarkable in the range of its climate and vegetation from the intense heat and tropic palms and pomegranates of the lower Jordan to the snow and the hardy oaks and pines of the northern mountains. Packed into this small area is a greater variety of meteorology and botany than probably can be found within the same limits anywhere else on the earth. It is a crowded museum of geography and is one of the wonders of the world. On account of this diversity it abounds in picturesque scenery and magnificent views. Palestine is now generally barren, having been swept of forests and being meagerly supplied with water, but in OF THE NEW TESTAMENT 5 ancient times it was remarkably fertile and produced grains and fruits in great abundance. Its chief industries were farming and vineyards and olive orchards, and fishing on Lake Galilee which was incredibly prolific in fish, and, in the days of Jesus, 4,000 fishing boats plied their trade on its waters. The principal cities and towns in the time of Christ were Jerusalem, the ancient capital of splendid renown, near the southern end of the central mountain range, Capernaum on Lake Galilee, Bethlehem south of Jerusalem, Samaria between Jerusalem and the Esdraelon valley, Nazareth in the hills to the north, and Caesarea and Joppa down on the Mediterranean. An important fact about Palestine was its geographical and strategic location on the highways between Babylon and Egypt and between Asia and Europe, so that it lay at the crossroads of the ancient world. This subjected it to attack on every side and made it a battle ground between the empires of ancient history; and as the main trunk lines of travel and trade ran through it, it was exposed to foreign influences and absorbed cosmopolitan culture from every quarter. This central location also made it a strategic point from which it could radiate its light out in every direction upon the world. Especially was this true in the time of our Lord and in the early days of Christianity when Palestine was in direct communication with all countries and the first apostles and missionaries found roads running out to points all around the then known world. The Jews loved Palestine with passionate devotion, and in their long exile from it they have ever cherished the desire and the dream of returning to it as their homeland. This desire has survived to this day and is the objective of the Zionist movement, which has acquired new strength and practical meaning as the result of the Great War, which after many centuries has thrown Palestine back into Chris- tian hands. The Bible is deeply saturated and richly colored with Palestine from beginning to end. It was the promised land which for centuries lured the Hebrews onward as the star of their hope. All its places and scenes became consecrated 6 THE MAKING AND MEANING fl eS and dear to them with accumulated sacred and patriotic associations. Here they developed their religious institu- tions and wrought out their destiny until their final exile from it and dispersion among the Gentiles. Almost every page of the Bible reflects some aspect of this land. Its mountains and valleys, springs and rivers and lakes, the hot desert and snow-crowned Hermon, the steep rocky roads running down to the Jordan and the blue mountains of Moab, wheatfield and olive orchard and vineyard, palm and pine, flowers and birds, all the vari- eties of climate and scenery and vegetation that are crowded into this little country add their picturesqueness and color to this wonderful book. The New Testament was born in this country and much of it was written on its soil. Jerusalem and Capernaum, Bethlehem and Nazareth, the busy shore of Lake Galilee and its fleet of fishing boats, the plunging Jordan and the blue Mediterranean, the green hillsides and flower- embroidered plains and the clear Syrian sky, all its historic places and varied, scenes meet us on these pages. It is the constant background of the Gospels and of the greater part of the New Testament. It is still the most sacred land in all the world and contains those holy fields, Over whose acres walked those blessed feet Which, nineteen hundred years ago, were nailed For our advantage on the bitter cross. 2. Tue JEwIsH PEOPLE The Jews are as remarkable and unique among the peoples of the world as Palestine is among the countries of the earth. (1) A brief sketch of the history of the Jews will be in place at this point. The ancient roots of this race run back mand ete in the east and down into Egypt in the south. Abraham, ‘‘the father of the faithful,’’ a member of the Semitic branch of the human family, is the starting point of the race. He was a dweller in Mesopotamia in the Eu- phrates valley, a land of gross idolatry, and he was called to go out as an emigrant to the west that he might be OF THE NEW TESTAMENT 7 delivered from idolatrous religion and worship the one true and living God. He ‘‘followed the gleam’’ and ‘‘ went out, not knowing whither he went,’’ and wandered over Pales- tine, living a nomadic life. Abraham’s descendants were Isaac and Jacob. Jacob and his sons, under the pressure of famine, were forced down into Egypt where they settled in a state of servitude that became practical slavery, and where their descendants remained under the Pharaohs during a period of about 400 years. Out of the bondage in Egypt the Israelites were deliv- ered under the inspiring leadership of Moses and were conducted to Mt. Sinai, where they received the Ten Com- mandments and other legislation of Moses and were organ- ized into a nation. After forty years of wandering in the wilderness the Israelites entered Palestine under the leadership of Joshua, the successor of Moses, and conquered the land by the exter- mination or subjugation of the Canaanites. The period of the Judges extending to 400 years ensued. The Judges were local rulers, and it was a time of unsettled government and insecurity of property and life when law was loose and rough customs prevailed. Samuel was the last judge, and he inaugurated the mon- archy with Saul as the first king of the nation. David succeeded Saul, Jerusalem was made the capital, and the kingdom was extended over the whole land and greatly strengthened. Under Solomon, David’s son and successor, the kingdom rose to its greatest height of power and splen- dor, the temple was built in Jerusalem, and the ceremonial system of worship under the priests was established. Under Solomon’s son and successor, Rehoboam, a weak and insolent king, the ten northern tribes revolted under the leadership of Jeroboam and set up the northern king- dom of Israel with its capital at Samaria, and the southern kingdom of Judah remained with its capital at Jerusalem. A succession of kings followed in both of these rival kingdoms. A few of these rulers were wise and good, but most of them were corrupt and wicked and many of them came to a violent end. Idolatry and social corruption developed in both kingdoms, though the southern has a 8 THE MAKING AND MEANING better record than the northern kingdom. This degen- eracy proceeded in spite of the opposition and brave words and solemn warnings of such prophets as Elijah and Elisha, Amos and Isaiah and Jeremiah. The Syrians and then the mighty Asyrians began to attack both kingdoms and finally both their capitals fell and their inhabitants were carried into captivity, Samaria in 722 B. C., and Jerusalem in 568 B. C. After an exile of 70 years in Babylon, remnants of the Jews returned to Jerusalem under Zerubbabel and Ezra and Nehemiah, aided by the Persian kings of Babylon, and rebuilt the city with its walls and temple and restored the former worship. The exile in Babylon thoroughly cured the Jews of idolatry and broadened their mental horizon and thus prepared them for their world mission. Palestine fell under the rule of Alexander the Great in 322 B. C., and continued under his Greek successors. In 167 B. C. the Jews revolted and regained their independ- ence under Judas Maccabaeus, and maintained their na- tional existence until 65 B. C., when Pompey captured Jer- usalem and Palestine became a Roman province. At the division of the Roman Empire into the Eastern and Western Empires, Palestine became a part of the East- ern Empire. It fell into the hands of the Mohammedans in 636 A. D., and remained in their control, with brief inter- ruptions during the Crusades, until it passed into the power of the Turks in 1516 A. D., where it remained until in the Great War it was taken out of their hands and is now a mandate of the British Empire. (2) The racial characteristics of the Jew stamp him as the most unique and persistent type of man known to his- tory, and his checkered career and manifold sufferings and tragic fate have made him the pathos of the world. His peculiar physiognomy looks out at us from Babylonian bricks and Egyptian hieroglyphics and Roman monuments, and it is one of the most distinctive among men and has endured with little change through thousands of years. No one would fail to pick him out in any company or crowd. He played a great part in his ancient homeland in gOv- ernment and literature and religion, and then he became a wanderer and has entered all lands and left no shore OF THE NEW TESTAMENT _ untrodden by his foot. He has been an actor or a spectator in history since it emerged from primeval mists. He has witnessed the rise of every empire and then has seen it decline and has stood at its grave. There are few fields of achievement in our modern world in which his genius has not exhibited its versatility and power. He has been the best hated and most universally persecuted man in the world, and yet he has also been highly esteemed and at times greatly exalted. History has focused the light of all the centuries upon him and there he stands revealed, some- times wearing the purple robes of wealth and distinction, but often clothed in rags, crowned with honor or crucified on a cross. Yet in spite of his persecutions and poverty he has rarely been a beggar but has rather been the banker of the world. The most ubiquitous man in the world, he has been every- where and seen everything and absorbed everything into his life and spirit. Without a homeland of his own he has made himself at home in all lands, and mingling with all peoples he has yet identified himself with none.. He has so inwoven himself into the entire web of the world’s civ- ilization that we cannot touch a single thread of it without involving him. Whether we are for him or against him, there is no escaping the Jew. We cannot even date a letter, newspaper or contract without doing him an honor; the very calendar proclaims his central place in history. The most rabid Jew baiter and the bitterest anti-semitic propagandist bow to him in the very act of persecuting him. This many-sided and wonderful man stands in the back- ground of the entire Bible and especially of the New Testa- ment. (3) The outstanding and supreme characteristic of the Jew is his religious nature. The peculiar genius of a people is a spirit so subtle and elusive that it is difficult to catch it in a definition or cage of words, but every great race is marked by such a spirit which it is easier to feel than to describe. Among the upstanding peoples of the past, the Jew obviously stands loftiest and purest in spirituality. He specialized in religion. He was not a universal genius, 10 THE MAKING AND MEANING but his nature was peculiarly sensitive to the things of the spirit. He stood closer to heaven than any other man and earliest caught the light of eternity and reflected it down upon and out over the world. The Jew was the first to see the one true and living God rising above the multitudes of polythestic and idolatrous gods that crowded the ancient world. This was the gleam that Abraham discerned and followed and that led him out into the light of monotheism that finally be- came the light of the world. The Jew had a strong sense of the righteousness of God. Moral character bulked larger and was infinitely worth more in his sight than physical might, and an unethical god was abhorrent to his soul. His fundamental question and faith was, ‘‘Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right ?’’ This Jewish sense of the righteousness of God was accom- panied with a corresponding sense of the guilt of sin and the obligation and necessity of personal righteousness. The Ten Commandments comprise an ethical code unap- proached by any other people in the ancient world, and though falling short of his ethical idealism the Jew imposed this divine law upon his own heart and life. The Jew had a masterful faith that trusted God in the most dreadful day and darkest night. Though subjected to repeated captivity and exile, defeat and retribution, and unprecedented sufferings and sorrows, so that more than any other he ‘‘was a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief,’’ yet he never lost faith but would sing songs in the night and exclaim, ‘‘ Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me.”’ The Jew was preéminently a prophet, sensitive and quick to catch the breath of heaven and the light of God’s face. He was ethically the most susceptible soul in the world to which God could communicate his revelation ; the loftiest peak which was earliest illumined by the rising sun of inspiration; the most spiritually harmonized race through which God could breathe his music. Therefore it was that while other races were endowed with other gifts, the Greeks with a sense of beauty and the OF THE NEW TESTAMENT 11 Romans with administrative ability, the Jews were endued with religious sensibility so that they became the revealers of God to the world. This spiritual achievement is the precious and priceless legacy the Jew has bequeathed to us. It has fertilized and enriched our modern world immeasurely beyond the contributions of any other people. ‘‘If it had not been for the Jews,’’ said Romanes, ‘‘the human race would not have had any religion worth our serious attention.”’ The soul of the Jew as quickened by the breath of the Holy Spirit of God is the soil out of which grew the Old Testament and blossomed the New, which contains the ripened seed of Christianity that is now pane scattered around the world. 3. THe OLtp TESTAMENT All this history and genius of the Jews were embodied in the Old Testament, which is the literary background of the New. The essential religious history of the Jews, their wander- ings and vicissitudes, development in their promised land, division and captivity, exile and return, are recorded in its pages. The Old Testament is itself a highly composite book, not only containing various documents older than itself, but also tinctured in its teachings and colored in its pages with ideas and words derived from other ancient sources, notably Egypt and Babylon. Our fundamental religious ideas are very old and go back beyond the begin- ning of recorded history. The germinal roots and the growth of Hebrew religious ideas and doctrines and ordinances are unfolded in the progressive revelation of the Old Testament. We see the Ten Commandments expanded into the fuller ethical life and legislative enactments of the law, the tabernacle give way to the temple, and the simple services and sacrifices of early ages grow into the elaborate and splendid cere- monies of later times. The doctrines of God’s unity and sovereignty, spiritual- ity and righteousness and universal Fatherhood and love and providence; of sin and salvation; of growing ethical obligation and social responsibility and righteousness; and 12 THE MAKING AND MEANING the expression of these in an increasingly elaborate ritual- ism, are portrayed in these books. The teachings of the ereat prophets, declaring the will of God as the pre- eminent preachers and statesmen of their time and seeing splendid visions and uttering eloquent words for all time, are conspicuous in these records. Especially did they catch views of the coming Messiah in the light of his rising sun as it fell upon their inspired vision and flooded the whole horizon of the future with prophetic glory. The psalmists voiced the aspiration and worship, peni- tence and faith, prayers and songs of the Jews in their ancient hymn book that is‘still a precious treasury of sacred poetry and song to the whole Christian world. The lapses into unfaithfulness and sin, the sorrows and tears, and the retribution and tragedies of the chosen peo- ple stam and color these pages with somber hues and mournful beauty. It is true that the Old Testament in its early pages re- flects low ethical ideas and is blotted on many a leaf with the barbarous deeds of barbarous days or the wickedness of a corrupt age. But this is because it is an honest book in its records and starts with the rude civilization of primitive times and advances through progressive revela- tion and purer ethical ideals to higher levels of doctrine and life; and in the New Testament these lower levels are outgrown and left behind. Taken as a whole the Old Testament is a mass of national literature that ranks as one of the richest literary treasures of the world. Even apart from its religious value its loss would leave a large and irreparable gap in the library of the world’s great books, and its spiritual contents and its ministry of preparation for the birth of its more richly endowed child make it one of our most useful and precious deposits of religious experience. All these lines of history and doctrine and ritual, proph- ecy and song, led towards the culmination and climax of the Old Testament in the New, as the seed leads towards the blossom and fruit, or as the dawn ushers in the day. The New Testament roots itself back in the Old at every point; all its fibres and rootlets run down into the Old and draw their nourishment from its soil. The New Testament OF THE NEW TESTAMENT 13 derives from the Old all its essential doctrines of God and man, sin and salvation as seeds which it then expands into flower and fruit. The New is thus concealed in the Old, and the Old is revealed in the New. It is no more possible to understand the New Testament apart from the Old than it is to understand the second volume of a two-volume work apart from the first. The supreme connection between the Old Testament and the New is that the sacrifices of the Old prefigure the supreme sacrifice of the cross, and the Messiah of the Old is the Christ of the New. There are 275 quotations from the Old Testament in the New, which are so many visible threads directly binding the two books together, or roots running out of the one into the other, besides the innumerable filaments that inter- lace them. The Gospel of Mark, the earliest written gospel, opens with a quotation from the Old Testament, so that the new gospel connects itself up with the old gospel in its very first sentence. All the evangelists and especially Matthew conjoin their gospels with the Old Testament by numerous quotations from it. John the Baptist opened his ministry with a text from Isaiah, and Jesus chose the text of his first sermon from the same book. Jesus expressly declared that he came not to destroy but to fulfill the law and the prophets, and he gave a new commandment which he affirmed was a com- plete expression and fulfillment of the old commandments of Moses. Peter preached his great sermon on the day of Pente- cost from a text from the prophet Joel and declared ‘‘this is that,’’ the new message was identical with and the ful- fillment of the old truth. Paul wove numerous quotations from the Old Testament into his Hpistles to show the continuity of his teaching with the teaching of the prophets. Christ and his apostles and all the writers of the New Testament appeal to Moses and the prophets to confirm their teaching and to show that they are simply carrying out and fulfilling the Old Testament. And one New Testa- ment book, Hebrews, has for its special and direct object 14 THE MAKING AND MEANING the demonstration that the old dispensation of Moses is more gloriously fulfilled in the new dispensation of the gospel of Christ. If we were to strike out of the New Testament all the quotations from and allusions to and all the doctrines drawn more or less directly from the Old Testament, the New would be riddled to pieces and rendered unintelligible, or its foundation would be removed and it would fall apart. These two volumes of the Word of God are indissolubly united, one principle and spirit of unity pervades them, one heart beats in them and one spiritual blood courses through them. They have been divinely joined in the his- tory of redemption, and what God hath joined together let not man put asunder. The Old Testament, then, can never fall out of date and become obsolete, but it is still alive with vital spiritual truth, and it is necessary as the soil and seed, the frame- work and background of the New. 4. CoNDITIONS IN PALESTINE IN THE TIME OF CHRIST The conditions existing in Palestine in the time of Christ are important factors in the background of the New Testa- ment. (1) The political state of Palestine was that of a Roman provinee. The country fell under the Roman rule when Pompey captured Jerusalem in 65 B. C., and in 40 B. C. Herod the Great became king under Roman control. His death occured in 4 B. C., and he was on the throne when Jesus was born. Herod at his death was succeeded by three of his sons, Archelaus, Antipas and Philip. Archelaus became king of Judea, but was deposed in 6 A. D., and Pontius Pilate became procurator in 26 A. D. and was in office at the time of the trial and crucifixion of Jesus. Herod Antipas We tetrarch of Galilee, and Philip became tetrarch of erea. Palestine at this time was divided into Judea, Samaria, Galilee, and Perea. Samaria lay between Judea and Gali- lee, and the Samaritans were the descendants of the mixed races that settled in the region after the fall of Samaria OF THE NEW TESTAMENT 15 and the deportation of the Jews to Assyria in 722 B. C. Because of these racial and religious differences the Jews had ‘‘no dealings with the Samaritans,’’ and this fact plays a part in the New Testament history. Perea lay on the east side of the Jordan, and it was the custom of the Jews in traveling between Judea and Galilee to cross the river and thus avoid passing through Samaria. The aristocratic and ruling classes of the Jews mostly lived in Judea in and around Jerusalem, the capital and the seat of the temple worship and of education in the two chief schools or colleges, conducted by the rival teachers or professors, Hillel and Shammai, and the center of wealth and fashion and social life; and Galilee was a rural district which contained no large city and was in- habited by farmers and fishermen and was provincial in spirit and uncultivated in manners. Judea, however, was more conservative and traditional and less open to pro- gressive ideas than was Galilee that lay more directly on the highway between the East and West, and was more ex- posed to cosmopolitan liberalism. (2) The religious worship and life of the Jews at this time centered in Jerusalem where sacrificial worship was restricted to the temple. Herod the Great had built this temple, which was an imposing structure with marble walls and flashing gilded roof, a mass of snow and gold. The temple service was held daily and consisted of bloody sacrifices and incense offerings administered by white- robed priests and was accompanied by an antiphonal choir composed of singers and players on instruments and with the blowing of silver trumpets, and altogether it was an elaborate and splendid ceremony. The Jewish sacrifices were of three kinds: 1. For the individual, the burnt-offering (Lev. 1:2-3), the sin-offer- ing (Lev. 4: 1-12), and the tresspass-offering (Lev. 5: 1-6). 2. For the family, the Passover (Ex. 12:1-27). 3. For the people, the daily morning and evening sacrifice (Ex. 29: 38-46), and the scapegoat-offering on the great day of atonement (Lev. 16: 5-10). The religion of Judaism had developed beyond the sys- tem of the Old Testament and been elaborated and hard- ened into a system of legalism which had grown up around me 16 THE MAKING AND MEANING the law. This law was the system of teaching and com- mandments which was chiefly contained in the Pentateuch but had been expanded by noted rabbis. Not only were the commandments and ordinances of the Mosaic law bind- ing on the people, but these had been extended and ‘“fenced’”’ by additional rules and regulations which had accumulated into a highly complicated set of minute in- junctions and prohibitions that were almost impossible of obedience and hampered and burdened life to an incredible degree. These ceremonial restrictions of the most complicated and rigid nature were spun around life at every point. The ‘‘washings’’ so often referred to in the Gospels were not the ordinary cleansing of the hands but were religious rites for the removal of ceremonial impurity. They were un- believably numerous and meticulous and were applied not only to the hands and body but also to the dishes and fur- niture. The clothing was regulated, especially the robes, and the phylacteries or leather straps with small boxes containing prescribed texts of Scripture, which were bound around the arm or forehead, were also subject to countless rules. The Sabbath, which was such a frequent occasion of friction and collision between Jesus and the Pharisees, was especially hedged around with restrictions that made it a burden upon life. The command to do no work on this day had been drawn out into a thousand petty prohibitions. ‘‘Grass was not to be trodden upon, as being akin to har- vest work. Shoes with nails were not to be worn, as the nails would be a ‘burden,’ and a ‘burden’ must not be carried. A tailor must not have his needle about him towards sunset on Friday, for fear the Sabbath should begin while he was yet carrying it.’’ In the same way, ‘‘nlucking grain was wrong because it was kind of reap- ing, and rubbing off the husks was a sin because it was a kind of threshing.”’ These traditions, which were elaborated into an astound- ing system of complexity and trivialiy, acquired an author- ity far exceeding that of the law of Moses. ‘‘It is a greater offense,’’ said the Mischna, the Jewish book containing these additional laws, ‘‘to teach anything contrary to the OF THE NEW TESTAMENT 17 voice of the rabbis, than to contradict Scripture itself.’’ ‘‘The Bible was like water, the Traditions like wine, the Commentaries on them like spiced wine.’’ These were ‘‘the traditions of the elders’’ with which the scribes made ‘‘the word of God of none effect’? (Mark 7:18). These were the ‘‘heavy burdens and grievous to be borne,’’, which they laid ‘‘on men’s shoulders, but they themselves’’ would ‘‘not move them with one of their fingers’’ (Matt. 23:4), for they resorted to all sorts of ingenious subterfuges to evade them. No doubt these complicated rules were invented with good motives as a means of serving God more minutely and perfectly, and many sincerely pious Jews derived good from such religion. But it was a highly external and mechanical system and could assume ostentatious and pompous forms in public and yet inwardly hide hypocrisy and pride and selfishness and even gross corruption, a ‘‘whited sepulcher’’ concealing ‘‘dead men’s bones.’’ This danger ever attends ritualistic religion. Jesus came into frequent collision with this ritualistic and legalistic religion, as we shall see, and it was the chief occasion of his break with the priests and Pharisees and of their hostility to him that culminated in their sending him to the cross. The religious life of the Jews was further centered and concentrated in Jerusalem in the yearly feasts, of which the principal ones were Passover, Pentecost, Tabernacles, and Dedication. The Passover was eclebrated in the spring of the year and was in commemoration of the deliverance out of Egypt. It began with the sacrifice of the Pascal ilamb and continued for a weck. Pentecost, so-called be- cause it came fifty days after Passover, celebrated the first fruits of the harvest and was a joyous festival. In the fall the feast of Tabernacles, so-called because the people lived in tabernacles or booths out in the open, celebrated the ingathered harvests, and was a national thanksgiving week. The feast of Dedication came in December and celebrated the purification of the temple in the time of Judas Macca- baeus: im 165.B.-C. | There were other minor feasts and fasts, such as Purim, celebrating the deliverance of the Jews in the days of 18 THE MAKING AND MEANING Esther, and the Day of Atonement, which was a day of fasting and humiliation. It was required of all Jews that they attend these feasts at Jerusalem so that they drew great multitudes to the capital. They were not only religious meetings but were also social and festive and patriotic gatherings that served to bring and mingle the people together and thus to con- serve and intensify their religious and national life. Jesus is reported in the Gospels as being present on several oceasions at these feasts and it is probable that he regularly attended them as he observed the requirements of the Mosaic law. | In addition to this centralized worship at Jerusalem, there was the worship that was everywhere carried on in the synagogue, which corresponded with our local church. The synagogue was found in all the cities and towns and villages, as well as wherever Jews were settled in foreign countries. The service in it consisted in reading selected portions of the Scriptures, chiefly of the law and prophets, together with an exposition of a passage or a sermon and prayer. A collection was taken for the poor. Each synagogue was governed by a board of elders, of whom one presided as ‘“ruler,’’ but there was no minister in our sense of the word and any one might read the Scripture or speak, so that the service was a social one after the manner of our prayer meeting. A curious feature of the synagogue was that ten men were each paid a shekel to attend every service so that a quorum might always be present. The local common school was also held in the synagogue, either in the building or in one connected with it, and at- tendance was compulsory on all Jewish children, beginning at the age of six years. The synagogue school was thus. the precursor of our public school. The local law court or police court was also held in the synagogue, so that it was the center of the religious and educational and civil life of each community. The supreme court of the Jews was the Sanhedrin, consisting of 71 members, scribes and priests, which sat in Jerusalem and had jurisdiction over religious matters and the more important civil and crim- inal cases. OF THE NEW TESTAMENT ify It was in the synagogue in Nazareth that Jesus wor- shipped and went to school, and during his ministry he frequently taught in the synagogue at Nazareth and in other places. (3) Several religious parties had grown up among the Jews, dating from the time of the Maccabees, and these play an important part in the Gospels. The Sadducees were the high priestly and court party. They were wealthy aristocrats who stood in with the Herodian and then with the Roman government and had political and social prestige; and they usually had the office of high priest, which was the principal position of religious and political influence. The temple administra- tion and services were in their hands. As regards doctrines, they held to the Mosaic law as it was contained in the Old Testament and rejected the tra- ditional additions to it that had grown up into such bur- densome complexity. But they also rejected belief in angels and spirits and the resurrection of the dead and were doubtful of immortality (Acts 23:8). They empha- sized the freedom of the will as opposed to the determin- ism of some extremists known as Essenes and a middle position of the Pharisees. Altogether they were the worldly party among the Jews, supporting the government which was so unpopular with the people, holding to formal religion and occupying ruling positions in the church, but lacking in the spirit of piety. Over against the Sadducees were the Pharisees, who were the party in opposition to the government and were the orthodox religious people. The name means ‘‘separatists’’ and designates their position and character as separated from the less serupulous defenders of the Jewish religion. They were the traditionalists who had elaborated the law of Moses into all its minute rules and regulations, and they were punctilious and ostentatious in enforcing these regu- lations on others and yet were expert at evading them in their private practice. The scribes were men of learning who studied and wrote upon the law and mostly belonged to the Pharisees. They were traditionalists and were generally joined with the Pharisees in their opposition to Jesus and along with them 20 THE MAKING AND MEANING came under his condemnation. The ‘‘lawyers’’ occasion- ally mentioned are practically the same as the scribes. Two smaller parties mentioned in the Gospels are the ‘‘Herodians’’ (Matt. 22:16), and the ‘‘zealots,’’ to whom Simon, one of the twelve disciples, belonged (Luke 6:15). The former were supporters of the Herod government and family, and the latter were intense and radical nationalists who advocated violent measures against the Romans and, during the various Jewish rebellions against the hated pagan power, committed many excesses. | (4) The religious doctrines of Judaism consisted i those of the Old Testament, such as the unity and sov- ereignty and righteousness of God, salvation from sin through sacrifice and faith; but in addition to these two others were specially prominent and dominant in the time of Christ. | The first of these was the doctrine as to the Messiah. The prophets predicted the coming of the Messiah under various names and aspects, sometimes as the conquering King and at other times as the suffering Servant. Various were the views and hopes of the Jews as to the Messiah, but by the time of Christ, the prevailing view had fixed on the idea and hope of a conquering king who would come in the greatness of his strength and put down the enemies of the Jews and exalt them in power. Corresponding with this idea of a Messiah was the Jew- ish doctrine and hope of the kingdom of God. The Jews were impatiently waiting and passionately longing for this kingdom in the days of Christ. Various views were also held of the kingdom, some interpreting it in spiritual terms as the righteous rule of God over men in his gracious truth and love. But the prevailing view was that of an earthly kingdom to be established by the wrath and power of the Messiah breaking in pieces the Gentile kingdoms, especially hated Rome, and setting up a world kingdom with Jerusalem as the capital and themselves in the chief offices. This hope of a conquering Messiah and an earthly king- dom established by his power was the passionate desire of the Jews in the time of Christ. It found expression in the ‘‘apocalypses’’ of the Jews, books which represented OF THE NEW TESTAMENT 21 history as a drama in which enemies were destroyed and the kingdom of God was set up by sudden divine power. Daniel and Revelation are two such apocalyptic books, but the Jews had many others. By this time the Jews had turned all the symbolical representations of the Messiah and his kingdom found in the prophets into literal materialistic reality. They wanted another kingdom like the Roman Empire with another Caesar, only they wanted its capital to be Jerusalem in- stead of Rome and themselves to sit on Caesar’s throne in place of Augustus and Nero. These prevailing views and hopes as to the Messiah and his kingdom are a prominent fact and feature in. the back- ground of the New Testament and play an important part in the life of Jesus. It was because he was not the kind of Messiah they were looking for and was not setting forth the kind of kingdom they wanted that they rejected him and sent him to his cross. CHAPTER II THE GREEK BACKGROUND The background of the New Testament is much wider than the country of Palestine, and the religious history of the Jews; it really is rooted back in Babylon and Egypt in the ancient world, and in the time of Christ it ran its roots out widely through the Greek and Roman world. The New Testament was largely shaped and colored by Greek life and thought and owes much to this wonderful people. 1. THe Greek Genius The Greeks were an Aryan people who came down from the north in early times in successive waves of immigra- tion and settled in Greece and its adjacent islands and shores, and there through a thousand years developed their racial life. From the sixth to the fourth centuries B. C. the Greek genius blossomed into its fullest glory, but its fading splendors lasted down into the Roman Empire. This was the age of its great statesmen and orators and artists, poets and philosophers, Pericles and Demosthenes and Phidias, Pindar and Aeschylus and Euripides, Socrates and Plato and Aristotle, names that are imperishable in the history of the human race. The genius of the Greeks, like that of any other great people, is complex and subtle, and different students have analyzed it differently. It had a supreme sense of beauty and produced architecture and sculpture of which the very ruins and fragments are now guarded as priceless treas- ures. The Greeks had intellectual depth and _ brilliance and their historians and poets produced literary master- pieces that in these fields have rarely been equalled and probably never surpassed; and the Greek philosophers thought profoundly on all the great questions that still 22 OF THE NEW TESTAMENT 23 perplex us. If it be true, as has been said, that the ancients stole all our best thoughts, then the Greeks got the larger part of them, for it is surprising how modern their books are. Other factors in the Greek genius that have been noted were their originality, their freedom, their intense curios- ity, their humanism and their versatility. And of course they were deeply religious and Athens swarmed with gods so that, not to miss any god in their worship, they set up an altar ‘‘To the Unknown God,’’ which attracted Paul’s attention and became the text of his memorable sermon on Mars’ Hill. 2. Tue SprREAD OF GREEK CIVILIZATION The Greeks lacked political cohesiveness and never built up a great state at home, but after their decline had set in they burst their own narrow boundaries in a notable adventure that profoundly affected the ancient world. Alexander the Great started out in 334 B. C. and cut his way into the heart of Asia, mowing down Asiatic hordes in his path and reaching India. Death by fever cut short his meteoric career at Babylon in 323 B. C., and his Greek generals divided up his empire, Ptolemy taking Egypt, and Seleucus taking Syria, including Palestine. Palestine thus remained under Greek rule, with the exception of the brief Maccabean independence, until it fell under the rule of Rome. Many Greeks following in the train of Alexander settled in Syria and other regions along the track of his march. These Greek settlements became centers of Greek life and culture and sowed seeds that fertilized these regions and produced widespread and lasting effects. The conquest of Alexander thus broke up the immobility and stagnation of the East and mixed with it the ideas and energies of the West and opened a new era in history. Many Greeks settled in Palestine and affected its life and thought. Many Greek names of individuals and towns and regions occur in the New Testament. Decapolis (Matt. 4:25) was a region lying east of the Esdraelon valley con- taining ten Greek cities, as the name means, which had been founded by Greeks following in the wake of Alex- 24. THE MAKING AND MEANING ander. Greeks came up to the feasts at Jerusalem, and on one occasion several of them wished to see Jesus (John 12: 20-22) and first made known their desire to Philip, probably because he bore a Greek name. The ‘‘Grecian Jews’’ (Revised Version) mentioned in Acts 6:1 and 9:29, commonly called ‘‘Hellenists,’’ were Jews who spoke Greek and thus were deeply saturated with Greek culture. 3. THe GREEK LANGUAGE The Greeks developed one of the most flexible and ex- pressive and beautiful of human languages, in many re- spects the highest achievement of human genius in this field. It has a wealthy vocabulary and a wonderful power of expressing ideas in all their shapes and shades and it is rarely rhythmical and musical. The tongue of Homer and Demosthenes remains to this day as a master instru- ment of the human soul, capable of voicing its great heights and depths, and is still one of our richest means of culture. Such a language easily proved its superiority by over- spreading the ancient world and becoming a universal speech. As formerly French was and now English is a world language by which culture and trade and travel compass the earth, so in the days of Greece the Greek language was the instrument of universal communication and life and thought. Cicero said in 62 B. C.: ‘**Greek is read by practically the whole world, while Latin is confined to its own territory, which is narrow indeed.”’ Greek, then, overran Palestine and was generally used and understood in the cities and towns by many if not most of the people. By the time of Christ Hebrew had ceased to be a vernacular language and had grown into the Aramaic, as the Anglo-Saxon developed into our Eng- lish tongue. Aramaic was generally the common speech among the Jews, although many of them also understood Greek. Jesus no doubt was reared in the Aramaic language and commonly spoke it in his life and used it in his public ministry. A few of his Aramaic words are preserved in the | Gospels. In his sorrow in the garden of Gethsemane he said, ‘‘Abba,’’ Father, which was possibly the first word his infant tongue uttered; and in his ery on the cross, OF THE NEW TESTAMENT 25 ‘*Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani,’’ he reverted to his childhood speech. Yet we may be sure that Jesus knew Greek and could use it on occasion. He must have talked with the Greeks, who came to see him (John 12: 20), in their own language, and a trial before Pilate probably was conducted in Greek. The Old Testament was early (285 B. C.) translated into Greek and was widely read in this Septuagint version ; there were many Greek towns and Greeks as well as Greek- speaking Jews in Palestine, Paul was reared in a Greek city, and of course the apostles, when they went out as missionaries, preached in Greek. The outstanding fact at this point is that the New Testa- ment was written in Greek. One and only one book of the New Testament, the Gospel of Matthew, may have been originally written in Aramaic, according to an early tra- dition, but if so written it was soon translated into Greek, and all the others were originally written in this language. It is an astonishing fact that while the Gospel of Christ came from a Jew and through the Jews, yet it was not given to the world in the Jewish language: this immortal honor was conferred upon the Greek tongue. The whole story of the life and ministry of Jesus, the Sermon on the Mount and his parables and all the recorded words that fell from his lips went out to the world and have come down to us in the Greek language. The reason for this, of course, was that Aramaic was only a provincial and short-lived language and was not a fit and sufficient vehicle to carry the gospel out over the world. The Greek, being the universal language of the time, was the only proper channel for the transmission of the universal religion. Jesus Christ was no parochial schoolmaster, but the Prophet of humanity and he must needs speak in a world language. The language was fitted to the message of good news, and the good news was worthy of the language, and so the two were divinely wedded to- gether in a union that has not been sundered to this day. The particular idiom or kind of Greek in which the New Testament was written was not the classical Greek of the writers of the palmy days of Greece, but the speech of 26 THE MAKING AND MEANING the common people of the time of Christ. Recent dis- eoveries in the sands of Egypt and elsewhere have un- earthed Greek papyri or letters and other writings of this period which show that the everyday speech of the Greeks was practically identical with the Greek of the New Testa- ment, and these writings are throwing much fresh light on the meaning of New Testament words and teachings. Such books as Professor Adolf Deissmann’s LInght from the Ancient East, containing these discoveries, are an illum- inating commentary on the New Testament. 4. Greek ConrriputTions To THE NEw TESTAMENT The New Testament, being written in Greek, necessarily derived from that language something more and much more than the mere words in which it was expressed. The words of any language not only convey their primary sig- nifications but also carry with them subtle associations and suggestions and implications that cannot be divested from their express contents. When words are chosen as vehicles to convey ideas these marginal or atmospheric implications or overtones go along with them and mingle with the ex- pressed ideas. Not only the Greek language poured into the New Testa- ment, but along with it slipped in a stream of Greek ideas and suggestions that helped to shape and color the book. Any important Greek word in it is thus more or less satu- rated or tinctured with Greek thought. A notable instance of this is the word Logos translated Word in the opening verses of John’s Gospel. This word was in use in the Greek city of Alexandria as a designation of divine reason in action or deity expressing itself in ereation, and thus John found it shaped to his use and applied it to Christ. As a word is the revelation or ex- pression of the mind, so is Christ the Logos or Word or revelation of God, or God in action. The word translated ‘‘propitiation’’ in Rom. 3:25, a critical word in connection with Christ’s atoning death, has recently had fresh light thrown upon it from its use in Greek worship in which it was applied to a sacrifice offered to God to appease or satisfy him. Not only did Greek words, however charged with Chris- OF THE NEW TESTAMENT 27 tian meanings, necessarily carry Greek implications into the teaching of the New Testament, but Greek principles of theology and philosophy were also incorporated in it. Paul’s letters are especially tinctured and colored with these foreign ideas more or less derived from pagan cults. Christianity has a native affinity with any and all truth and selects and absorbs and assimilates it from any source, and so as 1t went out through the world it appropriated and transformed ideas and customs from Greek thought and Roman law and pagan religions; and in its march down through the centuries it has continued this process to this day. It has an enormous digestive capacity and has thus grown and enriched itself through its whole his- tory. Never was thig selective and absorbent affinity and pro- cess more active than in our age. By this principle our modern knowledge is being constantly digested by and assimilated into our religious thought and life. As Paul said to the Corinthians (1 Cor. 3: 21-22), ‘‘For all things are yours, whether Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas, or the world, or life, or death, or things present, or things to come; all are yours,’’ so may we say that all truth is ours, whether of Copernicus and Newton, or of Milton and Tennyson, whether of astronomy and geology, or of phi- losophy and poetry, all are ours to incorporate in our religious thought and interpretation of the Scriptures. There is no escaping this psychological necessity of doing all our thinking in the terms and under the limitations of the language and ideas and life of our day. The fact, then, that the New Testament was originally written in Greek was one of tremendous importance. This involved it deep and subtle consequences as it abandoned its own mother speech and domiciled itself in a new tongue, for every Greek word it used carried with it Greek asso- ciations and implications and overtones that entered into and modified its own meaning. ‘‘This change meant at once a change of race and home; the cradle of the religion ceased to be its nursery. So it forgot the tongue of its birthplace and learned the speech of its new mother- land.’? We know how deeply a change of language goes into any one’s whole thought and life, and the New Testa- 28 THE MAKING AND MEANING ment did not and could not escape the consequences of this epochal fact. The result of this change of base was not the narrowing and impoverishment of Christianity but its enlargement and enrichment. It gave up a meager, provincial and rapidly vanishing tongue for one of the richest, most powerful, most expressive and most beautiful organs of human communication in the world. The New Testament, the most vital, dynamic and creative book ever given to humanity, did not lose but immensely gained in thought and life and power because it spoke to the world and to the ages in the marvelous Greek tongue. And although the New Testament, along with the Old, has been trans- lated into many hundreds of languages and thus is given to most of the peoples of the world in their own speech, and although it stands translation and carries its thought and message over into other languages better than most other books, yet the Greek New Testament remains as the original and standard of the inspired Word of God. CHAPTER III THE ROMAN BACKGROUND Behind and around the New Testament stands a vastly wider background than the Jewish and the Greek worlds, the Roman Empire. This is the majestic frame that hems in Palestine and all its doings as mountains encircle a plain. 1. Tae Roman GENIUS The Romans were an Aryan people closely related to the Greeks, the Latin and Greek languages being kindred tongues, but they had a characteristic racial genius that was in marked contrast with that of the Greeks and that of the Jews. The Jews were intuitive and mystical, along with all Semitic peoples, the Greeks were artistic and philosophical, but the Romans were practical and political. The Romans had immense common sense and always took hold of things at the practical end. They borrowed their arts and philosophy, but they conceived and built their own roads and bridges and buildings and government. While they imported a good deal of Greek art and phil- osophy, yet these never passed into their blood and circu- lated in their system, but remained as a thin veneering on their civilization. Their philosophy was materialistic and tended down- ward into the flesh. They endured hardship as soldiers in gaining their conquests, and then, feasting on the fruits of their victories, they relapsed into ease and luxury and sensuality. They were as hard-hearted as they were hard- headed, and never was a great people more insensible to human suffering. They were pleasure mad, and ‘‘bread and the circus’? were the demand of the populace and were the two things that would keep them quiet. The Colos- 29 30 THE MAKING AND MEANING seum, whose mournful ruin is the most majestic monument of the Roman Empire and stands as its most significant tombstone, typified its life and spirit as it was filled to overflowing with 80,000 people frenzied with excitement and shouting over the scenes down in the blood-stained sand of the arena where thousands of men lost their lives in mortal combat to make a Roman holiday. The most prominent feature of Roman genius was ad- ministrative ability. The Roman was strong where the Greek was weak, and weak where the Greek was strong. The Greek had philosophical acumen, but he lacked execu- tive ability. He could build a system of metaphysics and mould marble, but he could not build a political fabric larger than a city state because he could not join and weld city states into permanent cohesion. The Roman lacked philosophical insight and depth of thought, but he was tremendous in execution. He had a will to govern and political adhesiveness to cement his conquests into coherence and stability. Thus, while the Greek instructed the world as its schoolmaster and charmed it with his art, only the Roman could impose upon it an imperial will. 2. THe Roman EMPIRE And so it came to pass that the Roman built the might- lest political structure that had ever been erected on the earth and that has hardly yet been surpassed or even equaled in the world. From the Golden Milestone in the center of his capital city he swept a far-flung circumference around the western world and shut up within its mighty rim the motley multitudes of peoples from the Atlantic to the Euphrates and turned the Mediterranean into a Roman lake. From one hundred to one hundred and fifty millions of human beings were housed under this vast roof, a greater mass of population that had up to that time been gathered under one government. Within this territory were many races and peoples speaking many languages which had hitherto been in a state of chronic mutual warfare and con- fusion, and Rome reduced all this chaos of tongues and strife into law and order and hushed it into peace. With his strong sense of the practical, the Roman built OF THE NEW TESTAMENT 31 roads running out from his capital in every direction to the rim of the empire so solidly constructed that some of them are in use to this day; and he made trade and travel by land and sea as safe as they are in our modern world. The Roman legions marched everywhere with their glitter- ing helmets and flashing spears and golden eagles, and their mere presence was enough to secure order and quiet. Roman. officials were generally honest, though many of the petty ones were grafters, and they were efficient and fear- less and terribly severe in enforcing law and justice. The Roman boundary of the empire protected the West against the Asiatic hordes of the East and against the barbarians of the North. The world had grown weary and exhausted with the wars of the closing years of the Re- public, and welcomed the peace of Augustus Caesar and his successors, despotic as it was, with a profound sense of relief and thankfulness. Under the mighty wing of Rome the world recovered its exhausted energies and began to build up its agriculture and industries and to grow in prosperity and wealth. Greek culture also spread under the same protection and the higher and finer things of life began to grow and flourish. For two hundred years after Augustus this peace en- dured, and to Rome was given the mission of saving the ancient world from chaos and of holding it together in peace and preparing the way for the advent and spread of Christianity. 3. PaGAN RELIGIONS IN THE ROMAN EMPIRE Paul’s opening sentence in his sermon on Mars’ Hill, ‘“*Ye men of Athens, in all things I perceive that ye are very religious,’’ might equally well have been addressed to the whole ancient world. Man is constitutionally and ineurably religious, and his religious nature is the soil which over the whole earth from the most primitive times has sprouted into innumerable religions which have sought to know and worship the God of heaven. The Roman world swarmed with gods in countless num- bers. The Greek mythological gods, Jupiter and Venus and their whole company that were supposed to occupy Mount Olympus and were once sincerely worshipped, by 32 THE MAKING AND MEANING the time of Christ had become pale specters and myths that were no longer believed in by thoughtful people and were generally made the objects of ridicule and jest. A horde of Asiatic cults, religions that worshipped the sun and fire and other forms of nature, and mystery relig- ions with their secrets imparted only to their initiates, all with their priests and rites, had invaded Rome, and each had its little coterie or larger group of followers. Many of these cults were immoral in teaching and prac- tice, and one temple of such worship had 6,000 young women devoted to its impure rites. Most of these religions were decadent and dying, but some of them were vigorous and militant with the missionary spirit, and one of them, Mithraism, was at one time a threatening rival of Chris- tianity that was not overcome and crowded out of the field until the second century of the Christian era. All these pagan religions headed up into the worship of the Roman Emperor, whose very name as an object of worship struck terror or inspired confidence throughout the empire. Rome was tolerant of all faiths, but, while permitting them to exist, compulsorily imposed upon all its subjects the worship of the Emperor, which was offi- cially and might be perfunctorily performed by dropping a little incense on the altar of Caesar in acknowledg- ment of his divine authority. The object of this wor- ship was notsimply the gratification of the Emperor, but chiefly the binding of the empire into unity and solidarity. When this formal act of worship was rendered, the wor- shipper was free to worship any other god or gods, but when this act was refused the consequences became orave, for this was regarded not only as an act of impiety, but also of treason. It was this Emperor worship that pre- cipitated the fateful break and collision between Chris- tianity and Rome that brought upon the early Christians the terrible doom of ten dreadful persecutions and that plays so prominent a part in the lurid pictures of the Book of Revelation. Underneath all these pagan faiths was a great hunger for God and a great deal of sincere piety. By means of these cults their followers sought to satisfy their religious OF THE NEW TESTAMENT 33 needs, especially for guidance and courage and comfort, and these multitudes of souls were seeking after God if haply they might find him; and through these dim faiths some light glimmered into their minds from ‘‘the true light which lighteth every man that cometh into the world.’’ However misguided they often were, yet There were longings, yearnings, strivings, For the good they comprehend not. And the feeble hands and helpless Groping blindly in the darkness, Touched God’s right hand in that darkness, And were lifted up and strengthened. 4. Roman ContTRIBUTIONS TO THE NEw TESTAMENT While there was not given to the Roman such a glory as fell upon the Greek, that of contributing to the New Testa- ment his language, yet the Roman contributions to the book are large and important. Rome furnished the political framework and world back- ground for Christianity. It prepared the world at large and hushed all its clamorous confusion into quiet so that the gospel could be heard. It built the roads and bridges over which it could travel and made the sea safe over which it could sail. It also furnished ideas that passed into the New Testa- ment. The idea of law that is so fundamental in the gospel, while not a distinctive Roman contribution, was yet greatly deepened and broadened by the background of Roman law. And the vast overshadowing presence and power of the Roman Empire lent its powerful influence and impetus to the ideal of the kingdom of God. Paul was a Roman citizen as well as a Greek scholar and a Hebrew rabbi, and so these three backgrounds, the Jew- ish, Greek and Roman, met and blended in him, and some- thing from each of them passed through him into his Epistles. Roman ideas and customs, some of them con- nected with the pagan religions, by various methods and means percolated into the New Testament and colored its pages in ways which the ordinary reader may little suspect but which the critical scholar can detect. Christianity has not hesitated to adopt and adapt elements from pagan re- 34 THE MAKING AND MEANING ligions, transforming and transfiguring them to its own teaching and spirit and use. The Book of Revelation especially is set in the frame- work of the Roman background and is deeply colored by Roman Emperor worship and Roman persecution. It is thus seen that at a hundred points and ways the Roman world impinged upon and penetrated the New Testament. Its government and laws and taxes, its courts and customs, its rulers from imperial Cesar down to its most petty official, its roads and ships and trade and travel, its theaters and games, its city life and riots and mobs, its free citizens and its slaves, its literature and art, its reli- gions ranging from Oriental cults to the Emperor worship, all are in this book. The Roman Empire was the mighty all-encircling background and stage on which its whole history was enacted. Thus the New Testament is a highly complex book. It has many roots running down into and back through many continents and countries, races and religions, languages and literatures, cities and civilizations. Babylon, Egypt, Palestine, Persia, Greece and Rome, all sent streams into this book. It is composed of and colored with elements, ideas, customs, doctrines, ordinances contributed from every quarter of the world. A providential decree went out that all the world should be taxed for the enrichment of this sacred volume. These diverse and widely separated human origins and elements do not detract from its divine origin and Inspira- tion, but all the more enhance its value. These were the ‘“sundry times and divers manners’’ at and in which ‘‘God spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets.’’ The book is therefore the distilled essence of the religious life and experience of many lands and peoples. The most gifted spiritual geniuses, the loftiest souls closest to God and quickest to catch the light of his face, poured their light into these pages. It is because of this highly com- posite nature, gathering its materials from many sourees, that it so completely matches our experiences and meets our needs. It is the sifted sum and supreme summit of the religious literature of the race, and thereby is incom- parably the most vital and precious book in the world. CHAPTER IV THE FULNESS OF TIME Why was it that the Saviour of mankind was not brought into the world until so late a period in its history, after so long a delay in which many prophets grew weary of waiting for his coming, and generation after generation passed without ever hearing his voice? Why did he not come in the beginning and get an early start in saving the world? The question must ever surprise and startle us when we come to think of this long delay. And yet the answer is not far to seek. Preparation must always precede execution, as plowing must go before plant- ing and planting before reaping. Even a great man of genius cannot be brought into the world until all things are ready for him. It would have been of no use to bring Sir Isaac Newton into the world in the 17th century B. C.; he would then have died unknown without any worthy accomplishment; the soil was not ready for the peculiar seed of his brain. And so his coming was delayed until the 17th century A. D. when all things were ready for him. In a still greater degree the world had to be got ready for the coming of Christ. God did not drop this precious ‘‘ecorn of wheat’’ into the ground until the soil was pre- pared for it and its summer was near. The various backgrounds we have been sketching were sO many converging paths of preparation for the coming of Christ and the writing of the New Testament. The Jewish people were endowed with religious genius and disciplined through their varied history and experiences to receive the Messiah. They were drilled in the great doctrines of the one true and living, sovereign and righteous God; of sin and sacrifice, penitence and faith; of the spirituality of religion and of increasing revelation through the prophets. 35 36 THE MAKING AND MEANING From Babylon through Egypt and Palestine and down into exile and back to Jerusalem they were traveling to- wards the advent of their Messiah; and however blindly and perversely they missed seeing him in his true light when he came, they did prepare the way for his coming and his mission and kingdom. At the same time a parallel process of preparation was going on out in the universal Gentile world. Greek genius was developing its thought for the enrichment of Chris- tian doctrines and was fashioning and finishing its flexible and facile language for the New Testament. Rome was also suppressing disorder in the world and binding it into unity and quieting it into the stillness of a vast amphi- theatre in which the gospel could make its voice heard. It was building roads and casting up highways along which the gospel could travel and sweeping the sea of pirates and making it safe. It was enforcing principles of law and maintaining a universal empire that were powerful reén- forcements to the kingdom of God. And all pagan religions, while they were pathetic and often sincere efforts to feel after God if haply their grop- ing fingers might touch his hand in the darkness, yet had proved the utter impotence of unaided man to save him- self by all the altars he could build and all the sacrifices he could offer and all the tears he could shed. It would seem that God left the world largely to itself for so long a time to show it and bring home to the very bosom and heart of men that only his truth and grace could redeem the world from sin and restore it to his fellowship. At this crisis all the stars of pagan faith were fast fad- ing into a night of black despair. The Roman Empire, while it suppressed disorder, was yet a terrible burden of despotism and cruelty on the world. Slavery cast its deep pall over its vast domain, and the rich were exploiting the poor without merey. Never was the human heart more eruel and hopeless. The world was really sick at heart and seemed to be reeling to its doom, On that hard pagan world disgust And secret loathing fell. Deep weariness and sated lust Made human life a hell. OF THE NEW TESTAMENT 87 And yet at this time the world stood expectant. Strange rumors were abroad of a coming Saviour, in the Gentile as well as in the Jewish world, and in many souls were deep forebodings of his advent. The universal human heart was weary of the burden of sin and was receptive of some more sure word of prophecy. At this critical juncture the angels announced to Judean shepherds the birth of the Babe of Bethlehem. Hebrew and Greek and Roman had done their work of preparation, and the great hour struck. God did not wait a day too long to bring his Son into the world, but ushered him in at just the right moment. The world stage was set, and the calendar of the centuries marked the exact hour. The divine philosophy of history is that ‘‘when the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son.’’ It is in the light of this grand background only that we can understand the New Testament, and we are now ready to examine its books. 7 any j aa Peas 4 e i sae i ’ PART II THE BOOKS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION Christianity, being an historical religion, early com- mitted itself to writing and embodied itself in books that are still its foundation and fountain. The Bible, consist- ing of the Old and the New Testaments, is at once its history and charter and constitution. The New Testament contains twenty-seven books as follows: the four Gospels, the Acts of the Apostles, thirteen Epistles of Paul, Hebrews, James, two Epistles of Peter, three Epistles of John, Jude, and Revelation. These are only a selection out of a much larger body of literature which arose in connection with the beginnings of Chris- tianity, but which, with the exception of the New Testa- ment books, has perished. Luke in the preface to his Gospel refers to some of these writings which he had in hand, and many books of later date, such as the apocryphal gospels, have survived; but the books forming our New Testament were the only ones which were selected to con- stitute the Canon. It is an important fact that the New Testament did not | ereate Christianity, but Christianity created the New Testament. These books are only the record of things said and done, and are the consequence and not the cause of the history they relate. They are bits of literature float- ing on the stream of early Christianity that issued out of the ministry and especially out of the resurrection of Christ, and they no more created this stream than all the books written about Niagara have created that river and its cataract, or than any history creates the facts it records. Christianity began before there was any single book about it; and it would have gone on had no book about it ever been written. Of course without the aid of the New 41 42 THE MAKING AND MEANING Testament, Christianity would not have come down to us in the same certainty and clearness, volume and power, but its living tradition would have carried it far down the Stream of time; just as the British Empire has no written constitution, but it does have a deep and powerful stream of national tradition and life that carries it through the centuries. It startles us even yet to recall the fact that there was no book or line of the New Testament in existence during all the earliest years of Christianity. Although Jesus is the central fact and figure in the New Testament and it is all written about him, yet he wrote not a word of it and had no Bible but the Old Testament. We have no record of his writing anything except a few words in the dust which some passing foot or breeze quickly obliterated. He Seemed to be quite careless about his words, tossing them out upon the air and letting others catch them up and put them on record. Peter on the day of Pentecost did not have a page or word of the New Testament but chose his text from an Old Testament prophet. The apostles all went forth preaching the gospel without any one of the four Gospels in their hands or possibly with- out any written record at all. They simply told the story of the life and teaching and resurrection of Jesus from memory, speaking as eyewitnesses and declaring ‘‘That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, of the Word of life’? (I John 1:1). Paul never quotes or alludes to any one of our Gos- pels or any New Testament book because no one of them was in existence until near the end of his ministry. These first Christians and preachers had the gospel in their minds and hearts and were themselves living gospels, and the living truth was at first the only form of the truth. Yet the New Testament now contains the teachings and life and work of Christ and the early history of the gos- pel, and these are the foundation on which Christianity rests and the fountain out of which it flows, and these books bring the gospel to us in its original form in which it is still fresh and vital with its original life. The New OF THE NEW TESTAMENT 43 Testament is our most fruitful and powerful means of grace and blessing and is therefore incomparably tne most important book in our hands. More than any other book its words are spirit and life. It surprises many readers of the New Testament to dis- cover that the order in which its books are now arranged was not the order in which they were written. It is com- monly thought that Matthew’s Gospel was written first, and so on in the present order until Revelation, which was written last. But this was not at all the order in which these books were produced. It is obvious that some of Paul’s Epistles were written before any of the Gospels, because he was eonverted and began his missionary work a few years after the resurrection and ascension of Christ, before any of the Gospels had appeared. Scholars are not agreed as to the order in which these books were produced, but they generally agree that either Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians or his First Epistle to the Thessalonians was the first New Testament book to be written. But various orders of arrangement were in use in the second and third Christian centuries, and it was not until the fourth century that the Canon was finally settled and the present order became fixed. There is a great justification for the present arrange- ment of these books in that they follow the general his- torical order. The Gospels necesarily come first in the order of their events and then the Acts and then the Epistles, because this follows the order of their chronology. It is confusing to the ordinary reader or student to break this arrangement up and adopt another, and therefore we shall follow this natural and familiar order in our study of these books. CHAPTER II GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS OF THE GOSPELS The Four Gospels are the root of the New Testament, the fountain of its essential facts and faith, and all the other books are the expansion and fruitage of this root, the broadening stream of this fountain. We begin their study by considering some of their general characteristics. 1. THe Hisroriciry or THE GOSPELS The question of the historical trustworthiness of the Gospels confronts us at the threshold of our study. The final decision of this question logically comes after we have gone through them and critically examined them; but we can take a preliminary general look at them and get a broad impression of their truthfulness, The question is, Are these books late productions, writ- ten long after the events they record and evidently the outgrowth of tradition and legend? If so, their historical value is greatly reduced. : But they are not late books. There is good ground for believing, as we shall see, that Mark, the earliest Gospel, was written within twenty-five or thirty years after the death of Christ, and still earlier writings derived from eyewitnesses were in existence, as is seen by Luke’s preface to his Gospel. This date is close enough to the events to give us a trustworthy history of them and too close for the growth of legend and myth. But at present we are concerned chiefly with the general impression these Gospels make upon us; for we can judge much as to the consistency and reality and trustworthiness of a narrative from the mere reading of it. Let the student read one of them through, say the Gospel of Mark, which can be read at a single sitting. 44 OF THE NEW TESTAMENT A5 How does it impress us? As sober history keeping down on the ground of reality. The writers of these Gospels impress us as having competent knowledge of the facts, either as eyewitnesses or as investigators who were close to the facts, and as being men of honesty and sound judg- ment, insight and sincerity, who had no other motive or purpose than to tell us the simple truth. Seldom do we read writers that are so free from subjective influences and so transparent in their truthfulness. While no one of them was a learned scholar and one was a tax collector and another was a fisherman, yet they were men of sanity and sound sense who were fully competent to judge and record plain matters of fact. These narratives have all the telltale self-evidencing marks of reality. They give details of persons and places and dates, events and incidents, in their due order and connection. None of the stuff of invention and imagina- tion, legend and myth, is woven into their web. The things that would almost certainly have been pushed into prominence in an invented story are conspicuous by their absence. Facts are recorded which would have been earefully glossed over or suppressed in a partisan account or fictitious narrative. The most damaging facts, such as that the disciples at first disbelieved and ridiculed the reports of the resurrection of Jesus as an idle tale, are boldly written down on their pages. The outstanding feature of these narratives is that they have none of the inescapable marks of vision and ecstasy, invention and legend, which are careless of order and system, causes and consequences, and unmindful and un- conscious of contradictions and impossibilities as they weave all sorts of incongruities and absurdities into the subjective fabric of desire. These writers and witnesses do not lose touch with the earth and take to the wings of fancy; on the contrary, due allowance being made for the supernatural events they are relating, they keep close to sober reality and conerete details, follow the necessary connection of things, and observe the order and unity and harmony of normal human experience and historic fact. We are familiar with the glowing pictures that are pro- duced when imagination works with palette and brush. 46 THE MAKING AND MEANING Such artistry is absent from these narratives. In a word, the Gospels have all the simplicity and artlessness of un- affected truth, and these inimitable signs of veracity are So many seals authenticating their trustworthiness. Another general impression may be derived from the life of Jesus as depicted in the Gospels. The portrait of his life and ministry and character is there as an existing fact. How did it get there? It must be accounted for. We must suppose either that it is a transcript of a reality, or else that in some way it was an invention of later days. But who could have invented such a portrait, so life- like and wonderful, composed of such various features, some of which, such as the contrasted virtues of meekness and manliness, justice and love, are difficult of consistent composition, and yet are combined and blended into perfect proportion and harmony? Where was the genius that could create out of imagination or weave out of tradition and myth a portrait of such remarkable verisimilitude and appealing beauty and compelling power which for near two thousand years has put a spell upon the world as a reality? It is easier to believe that the picture of Christ is in the Gospels only because these writers, humble un- lettered men devoid of literary training and art, simply painted the portrait from life and told what they saw. On the general historicity of the Gospels we here give one of the latest and most authoritative deliverances of critical scholarship. The Rev. Arthur C. Headlam, D.D., now Bishop of Gloucester, but formerly Regius Professor of Divinity in the University of Oxford, in his recent Life and Teaching of Jesus the Christ, sums up the results of. his long study of the Gospels as follows: ‘‘I have aimed, in the first place, at showing that, accepting the results of modern criticism, there is every reason to think that the subject-matter of the first three Gospels represents the traditions about the life and work of Jesus of Nazareth as they were current in the earliest years of the Christian church. Then, secondly, that it harmonizes with all that we know of the times when Jesus lived and the environment in which he taught. Thirdly, that the teaching of Jesus is harmonious throughout, natural in its language and form to the circumstances and representing a unity of OF THE NEW TESTAMENT 47 thought transcending anything that had existed before. And then, fourthly, that the life as narrated forms a con- sistent whole. The result of these investigations is to satisfy myself, at any rate, that we have a trustworthy account of the life and teaching of Jesus.’’ From this preliminary view we may accept these Gospels as trustworthy historical documents, but this conclusion will be strengthened as we proceed with our study. 2. Tue INTERRELATIONS OF THE GosPEL The problem of the interrelations of the Four Gospels is one of great interest and importance. In order to compare the Gospels, it is best to study them as they are arranged in parallel columns in a harmony, such as Stevens and Burton’s Harmony of the Gospels, which will be used and referred to in this connection. We soon discover that the Gospel of John stands apart from the first three Gospels in that there is missing in John’s column much that is present in the others, while there are many passages and sections and even whole pages that are peculiar to John. Evidently the Fourth Gospel covers a special field and has a special object in view in its narrative of the life of Christ. Examination soon discloses the fact that John deals more in interpretation of the words of Jesus and is especially interested in his inner life as compared with the other Gospels. The first three Gospels keep to plain matters of fact, while the Fourth breathes a mystical spirit in tone and temper. John takes us more closely into the inner thought of Jesus and his confidential relations with the disciples. The Fourth Gospel is also of much later date than the others. For these reasons this Gospel may be set aside for the present, and we proceed with the special interrelations of Matthew, Mark and Luke. These three Gospels give an outline or synopsis of the life of Jesus, and are therefore called the Synoptic Gospels or the Synoptics. How are they related? Did Matthew in writing his Gospel have Mark’s or Luke’s Gospel, and did Mark have Matthew or Luke, and did Luke have Matthew or Mark? Did each one write entirely independently of the others, or did each have one or both of the others? 48 THE MAKING AND MEANING This question was for a long time an unsolved problem, and all possible combinations and solutions have been tried out. Yet the key to the problem, which has been discovered only in modern times, is simple enough when we once see it. A study of the Harmony will disclose the secret. It will be observed that Matthew begins his Gospel with the genealogy of Jesus, and proceeds to give the annunciation to Joseph, the birth of Jesus, the visit of the wise men, the flight into Egypt and the return to Nazareth. Luke has a different order and only at three points does he touch Matthew’s order as they are arranged in parallel columns. Luke begins with his preface and proceeds to give the promise of the birth of John the Baptist, the annunciation to Mary, Mary’s visit to Elizabeth, the birth of John the Baptist, the birth of Jesus with the accompani- ments of the angels and the shepherds, the circumcision of Jesus and his presentation in the temple, and the child- hood and youth of Jesus at Nazareth. The only three points at which they touch and run parallel in the same events are the genealogies, which are yet different in the two, the birth of Jesus at Bethlehem, and the childhood at Nazareth. The two narratives are not at all contradictory, but it is plain that each follows its own order and selects its own events, and the three parallel columns coincide in only three brief widely- separated sections. But as soon as we arrive at the opening of Mark’s Gospel the three columns appear and run side by side in general continuity until we reach the end of Mark, when Matthew and Luke again part company and each follows his own order and tells his own story to the end. What is the evident explanation of this remarkable fact? It is just this that Matthew and Luke had Mark in hand in writing their Gospels and followed his order and used his materials. We may accept with confidence the con- clusion that Mark was the first Gospel written and that Matthew and Luke wrote later and used Mark. This conclusion is strengthened by a closer examination of the parallel columns in the Harmony. Two thirds of Mark’s Gospel is reproduced in both Matthew and Luke, OF THE NEW TESTAMENT 49 and of the remaining one third, all but 30 verses is found in either Matthew or Luke. All of Mark except 55 verses is found in Matthew, and all except 129 verses is found in Luke, and 74 of these are found in one passage, 6: 45— 8:26. The only explanation of these facts is that Matthew and Luke had Mark and utilized his material. There is also a considerable body of material common to Matthew and Luke which is not found in Mark. Some of these passages are specially important and include the preaching of John the Baptist (Matt.&: 7-12; Luke 3:7-9); the temptation of Jesus (Matt. 4:3-10; Luke 4:3-13) ; and the Sermon on the Mount (Matt. 5-7; Luke 6). About fifty of these passages that are common to Matthew and Luke but are not found in Mark have been noted. The probable explanation of this fact is that Matthew and Luke also used some other common document besides Mark. This unknown common source is called by scholars Q, being the contraction of the German Quelle, meaning source. It is true that this common material may have been drawn by Matthew and Luke from more than one source, and the problem at this point begins to grow com- plex and uncertain. As we know from Luke’s preface that other writings or gospels were in existence which he used, it is not surprising that Matthew and Luke had one or more such common sources. Attempts have been made by piecing together the pass- ages that constitute Q to reconstruct this document, but with small success, as the passages are evidently frag- mentary. An examination of these passages, however, makes it appear that this source was mainly composed of the sayings and sermons of Jesus. We may then conclude that Mark’s Gospel was written first, and that Matthew and Luke used his Gospel in writ- ing theirs and that they also used one or more other common sources. Another question at this point is, Did Matthew have Luke, or Luke have Matthew? The evidence on this point strongly indicates that these two Gospels are independent of each other, the writer of each having no knowledge of the other. 50 THE MAKING AND MEANING 3. CAN THE GosPELS Br HARMONIZED As we look at the Gospels arranged in the Harmony the question forces itself upon us, Can they be harmonized ? The question assumes two forms. First, what is the meaning of these gaps in the columns where the several narratives do not coincide and one has matter which one or more of the others omit? How does it come that only Matthew and Luke have the genealogies and the virgin birth of Jesus, that only Luke has the ac- count of the angels and shepherds, and that only Matthew has the visit of the wise men and the flight into Egypt in connection with his birth,-and so on to the end? How ean it be that Mark says nothing of the birth and early years of Jesus and starts right off with his public appearance and ministry? Why is it that so important a matter as the Sermon on the Mount is entirely absent in Mark and John, and that many parables and miracles are found in one and not in another Gospel? How did it happen that Luke has a long section extending through nearly eight chapters (11-18: 8) that no other evangelist records? And especially how can we account for the fact that John so seldom has material in common with the three synoptics and that so much of his narrative, including some of the most important and precious portions of the Gospel, such as John 14-17, is peculiar to himself? These facts look surprising if not startling. And yet the explanation is not difficult. This explana- tion is that each evangelist had access to different sources or had a larger body of material than he used, and he selected and incorporated in his Gospel such portions as suited his point of view and purpose. No one of these writers was attempting a full biography of Jesus in the modern sense, but each one was giving an impressionistic account with a particular end in view, which will appear later in this study. It is not strange, then, but quite in accordance with their purpose and with literary art that these writers should produce narratives of the same life that coincide only in sections and at points. We see the same fact in books of biography and history written today. No two biographers or historians of the same personage or period will follow the same outline and OF THE NEW TESTAMENT 51 give the same facts. Open two or four or a dozen Lives of Lincoln and the same apparent lack of continuity and identity in the narratives is conspicuous; and if they were arranged in a harmony in parallel columns they would show gaps and difficulties as great as or greater than, what we find in the Gospels. Yet the many Lives of Lincoln do combine into one consistent picture of the man that is fuller and richer than any Life by one author can be. So these four brief Lives of Jesus, each of which is in- complete and fragmentary and gives only glimpses of him from a special point of view, do fit together and comple- ment one another so as to give a composite but consistent and lifelike portrait of the one Person who is the common subject of them all. And the portrait is all the richer be- cause it is composite. A second question relates to the harmony of the Gospels in so far as they do run parallel. Seldom is the parallel so close as to be a coincidence, but there are thousands of verbal variations, even when the evangelists are reporting the words of Jesus. Such verbal variations, however, are of small importance and do not affect the validity of the narrative. More important are variations that seem to involve inac- curate and inconsistent statements. Reference has been made to the 275 quotations from the Old Testament in the New, but rarely are these quotations verbally exact and are often only loose paraphrases and accommodations of the originals. Mark begins his Gospel with a quotation which is stated to be from Isaiah, yet the first part of it is from Malachi and only the second part of it is from Isaiah. But, to say nothing of the mistakes of copyists, the explanation of such facts is that the common usage did not require ancient writers to be exact in their quota- tions as it does with us, and the evangelists simply con- formed to the literary rules of their day. Other variations may be magnified into more serious differences. The different evangelists often locate the same events and teachings at different times and places, or they state them differently. The Sermon on the Mount is lo- eated differently by Matthew and by Luke, but possibly Jesus repeated the substance of it on different occasions. 52 THE MAKING AND MEANING The Lord’s Prayer is given in a longer and a shorter form, but the same explanation may apply to this. Matthew says that two blind men appealed to Jesus as he was going out of Jericho, but Mark and Luke mention only one, and Luke says the incident occurred as Jesus was drawing nigh to the place. But there is little diffi- culty in such a case, for if there were two blind men, then ere was one. Such differences do not disturb us in other ooks. One of the most serious of these variations relates to the accounts of the resurrection of Christ. Much has been made of different statements in the narratives of this event as though they amounted to irreconcilable contradictions. Mark mentions three women as going to the tomb on the morning of the resurrection, Matthew mentions two, and John mentions only one. But again we may say that if there were three, then there certainly were two and also one. Alli the evangelists give an account of the appear- ances of Jesus at Jerusalem, but it is said that only Matthew and John know of his appearances in Galilee. Yet these differences are harmonized if he appeared in both places. One gets the impression, when these differences are fairly considered, that they have been overstrained in order to magnify them into contradictions. Again we must emphasize the fact that the evangelists were not composing a systematic and complete history of these events, and are not even trying to arrange and set forth the facts so as to prove them, but are only giving personal experiences and impressions from their different points of view. And hence we have only disconnected incidents and fragments of the entire story, and it is not surprising that we cannot put these broken pieces together so as to make them fit around the ragged edges when other parts are missing that might complete and harmonize the whole. These differences also are generally such as should be found in independent accounts. If all these writers related the story in precisely the same way, this would throw suspicion on them all as having been in collusion or as simply copying one another. No two men will tell their experience of an event in just the same words. While they OF THE NEW TESTAMENT Do relate substantially the same story, yet they will differ in their points of view and shading and emphasis, one relating one incident that another omits, or setting it in a different light. These individualistic variations in the Gospels are strong indications of truthfulness. It is mostly such differences that exist in these narratives. It is not at all strange that the evangelists that were eyewitnesses of the risen Christ had each one more vivid recollections of some of the hap- penings of that wonderful day, surcharged with the excite- ment of unexpected and unbelievable events, than of others and that some of them have emphasized the appearances at Jerusalem and others those in Galilee. They may differ widely and even seriously at such points, and yet all be telling the truth, which fuller light would make plain to us. There is such substantial agreement among them that we feel sure of their testimony to the essential facts. Such agreement satisfies us in historical matters. Let it be admitted that there are variations and dis- erepancies in the Gospels, some of which have not yet been reconciled, yet these are unimportant in comparison with their general agreement and do not impair the substantial truth and value of their testimony. Our conclusion then is that the Four Gospels stand the light of examination and are shown to be trustworthy historical documents. They have been under the fiercest test of criticism for centuries and have held their place in the field of scholarship and in the faith of the Christian world. Scholars are not unanimous in their views in all these points, and there are yet unexplained remainders to be cleared up in New Testament criticism, but we have solid ground on which to hold that these Gospels are not eunningly devised fables but are an honest record of things that were not done in a, corner and are not afraid of the light of day. 4. Tur Dates oF THE GOSPELS The three synoptic Gospels are so interrelated and linked together, as we have seen, that their dates become a com- mon problem, while the date of the Fourth Gospel, being much later, can be set aside until we come to its particular o4 THE MAKING AND MEANING study. If we can fix the date of one of the synoptics we can draw some conclusions as to the dates of the others. A base line at this point is the date of the Acts of the Apostles. The author of this book is Luke, the traveling companion of Paul, who appears in the narrative at chapter 16:10 where he includes himself with Paul under the designation “‘we.’? The Acts from this point on is prac- tically the biography of Paul by Luke, and Luke closes it with Paul under arrest in Rome waiting for his trial, which probably did not occur until after his release and further work as a missionary and his second arrest and final trial and execution. ~ The inference is therefore direct and strong that Luke wrote the Acts before the final trial and death of Paul; for if he completed his biography of Paul after this event he would certainly have given an account of it. We can- not think of a biographer of Lincoln, writing after his death, concluding his book without a reference to this tragical event. Paul was executed in Rome under Nero, who died in 68 A. D., and the death of Paul has been placed at 64 and the date of the Acts at or near 62. But Luke wrote his Gospel before he wrote the Acts, as we learn from his preface to the Acts, and its date must be placed near 60. Mark’s Gospel is still earlier than Luke’s, as we have seen, and therefore, its date falls between 55 and 60. This line of reasoning and these dates have behind them the weighty authority of Harnack and many other scholars. This date of Mark is supported by the contents of the Gospel, especially by the fact that it was clearly written before the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans in 70, as it contains no reference to that cataclysmic event except Christ’s prophetic prediction of it. The date of Matthew comes after Mark, but cannot be so clearly fixed. It was probably written in its original form before or near the destruction of Jerusalem and may have undergone some later editing. We may then date the synoptic Gospels at from 55 to 70 A. D., and this takes them back of the region of legend and myth into trustworthy historical connection with their contents and with eyewitnesses. OF THE NEW TESTAMENT 55 5. Wuy Four GosPets The question arises how there came to be just four Gospels. Fanciful reasons for this fact were given in early times, such as that they correspond with the four seasons or the four winds of heaven, and so on. ‘There is, how- ever, nothing mysterious or even remarkable in the fact. Every great man has many biographies written of him, and the same historical and literary instinct prompted ‘“‘many to set forth a declaration of those things’’ which were surely believed among the first Christians, as Luke says in his preface to his Gospel. Our Four Gospels, then, are a selection from a much larger number which have been lost. It is not impossible that one or more of these lost Gospels may yet be found. It is a fortunate event that we have these Four Gospels, for we thus have as many separate portraits of our Lord that complement and complete one another. The absence of any one of these would be an enormous loss and im- poverishment to our knowledge of Jesus, and it takes all of them fused into unity to give us anything like a full and rich and adequate appreciation and apprehension of him. For these evangelists did not simply reproduce or copy one another, but each one wrote from his own point of view out of his personal experience and for his own pur- pose. They thus give us so many supplementary views and interpretations of the same Person. They pass the manifold contents and colors of the life and ministry of Jesus through the prisms of their peculiar minds and give us combined a more glorious spectrum of his person and character; or their superimposed pictures combine and blend into a composite portrait that is fuller and richer. Each evangelist wrote for his own audience and with his own object in view, as will appear later. Matthew wrote more especially for the Jewish converts to convince them that Jesus is the Messiah of the old Testament. Mark wrote in Rome under the direction of Peter to present Jesus to the Gentiles as a mighty worker and Saviour. Luke wrote primarily to convince a Roman friend of the certainty of the things of the Gospel, but being a physician and scholar and a Greek, he addressed a wider audience. John wrote for the church to give an interpretative por- 06 THE MAKING AND MEANING trait of Christ as the Word who abides in mystical union with believers. These four points of view are distinct yet are comple- mentary, and no one of them could be missed without marring the composite picture in a serious degree: fused together they present that wonderful Life that is the praise of the ages and has put its spell on all these Chris- tian generations. The Christian centuries and world have been largely guided and. shaped and inspired by these four brief pamphlets, any one of which can be read through at a sitting. But brief as they are, they are charged with infinitely precious significance. Many a classic of Greek and Roman literature has been lost and buried in the dust of the ages, but these four little writings have come down through all the vicissitudes of the centuries that have con- vulsed continents and wrecked empires unscathed and are as fresh and vital as ever. There is something in them that the world will not let die. When the early Christians connected these Four Gospels with cosmic agents such as the seasons and the winds they were guided by a true instinct, for they are human in form yet superhuman in contents and are the power of God unto salvation. 6. MIRACLES IN THE GOSPELS There are accounts of miracles incorporated in all the Four Gospels and it may be well to dispose of the question of their reality in this place. A miracle may be defined as an event in the physical world not explainable by known natural laws or human agency, wrought for a worthy religious object, and there- fore to be attributed to the special act of God to authenti- cate his redemptive presence and work among men. That there are such signs recorded in the Bible is plain enough, but they are not nearly so plentiful as is com- monly supposed. Many appear to think that the Bible is full of miracles and that they just dripped from the fingers of Jesus. But they are comparatively few and scarce in the Bible, and only about thirty are attributed to Jesus and about one third of these are instances of healing, some of which may not have been strictly miraculous but OF THE NEW TESTAMENT 57 within the bounds of natural agencies. Not every ‘‘won- der’’ or ‘‘sign’’ was a miracle, and it is not always easy to draw the line between where the natural leaves off and the supernatural begins. Jesus was possessed of extraordinary powers of per- sonality and did not ordinarily draw upon his super- natural power to accomplish his purposes, but kept well within his human limitations, as is ilustrated in his temptations in the wilderness. He used miracles charily and kept them in the background and refused to permit them to be exploited as mere wonders. Yet that, according to the Gospels, he did work miracles in the supernatural sense is a plain matter of record. These miracles were never spectacular or absurd and silly performances, such as the alleged miracles attributed to Jesus in the apocryphal gospels, but they were sober and sane, keeping close to the ground of nature and were fitting and worthy works of the Son of God. His miracles were always proper manifestations of his divine personality and power and were wrought as illustrations and activities of his redemptive presence and purpose. That they did authenticate his divine person and mission was only an incidental object and result. They were integral parts of his message and mission and are not to be separated from them. The miracles of Christ must not be dissociated from this framework and background of worthy purpose. A mere wonder, however supernatural it might seem, that was un- related to any such worthy end, would be difficult if not impossible of proof; but the miracles of our Lord fit into his divine character and mission and are consonant there- with. Any historical event is rational and capable of proof very much in proportion to its congruity with its environment in time and place and purpose, and in the light of this principle the miracles of Jesus are appropriate to him as leaves to a tree or as light to the sun, and there- fore they present themselves to us as rational events ca- pable of proof, and this proof is the main question to be considered. The writers of the Gospels do not show any conscious anxiety or intention to prove the miracles of Jesus by 58 THE MAKING AND MEANING direct evidence and argument with one outstanding exception: the resurrection of our Lord. This is pushed out into the light of publicity and supported by many witnesses and much evidence and direct argument and is thus attested ‘‘by many infallible proofs’’ (Acts 1:3). The evangelists all narrate it with fulness and particu- larly, and Paul expressly argues it and stakes the whole Gospel upon it (1 Cor. 15:1-20). This miracle stands as the central pillar and support of the supernatural in the New Testament, and as long as it stands the other miracles will stand with it. He who could raise himself from the dead could also with perfect mastery and ease heal the sick and still the stormy sea. The detailed examination of this epochal event in the life of Christ will come up later in our study, and it is here adduced as a central support and proof of the miraculous element in the Gospels. While specific proof is not given for other miracles in the Gospels, yet many of them are so interwoven with the entire web of the account that they could not be dissected out without dismembering and destroying the whole narra- tive. If any such conversation as is recorded in John 9 with reference to the restored blind man took place, then the miracle of opening his eyes must also be historical. The relation of miracle to natural law calls for a word. A miracle is not a violation of natural law but only the intervention of a higher power to turn natural law to its own purpose. The human will is constantly interposing its presence and purpose in the world of natural law and thereby effecting results that nature itself would never accomplish. One cannot close a window or lift his hand without doing something that is strictly supernatural; and what man can do in his finite degree and way, God and God in Christ can do in his perfect way. Perhaps the chief difficulty the modern mind feels in connection with miracles is that nature is viewed as a closed and rigid system of mechanical action which must proceed in its determined operations and cannot be inter- rupted at any special point in any special way. But philosophy views nature, not as a closed and com- plete world in itself, but as a part of a larger spiritual OF THE NEW TESTAMENT 59 system or living organism in which God is immanent, or as the mode of the divine activity, and then physical laws are habits of the divine will and are still subject! to special divine purposes. On this view, miracles are such special acts and fall within the sweep of wider laws and higher ends. In such a world the miracle of the resurrection of Christ violated no law but fulfilled a high spiritual end and was a supremely rational event. As all physical laws continue in their operation while we turn them to our use and ends, so the miracles of Christ did not violate or arrest any natural laws but only caused them to move in the larger orbit of his plan and purpose as the revelation of God and the Saviour of the world. 7. Tue CHRONOLOGY AND OUTLINE OF EVENTS OF THE LIFE OF JESUS Before examining the Gospels it may be well to fix their general chronology and the outline of events in the life of Jesus. (1) Chronology. It was not until the sixth century, A. D., that the birth of Jesus was adopted as the initial date of our calendar, and therefore it is not surprising that this event was placed four years too late. Jesus was born under Herod the Great and he died in 4 B. C., and therefore Jesus must have been born in or before this year, which is the commonly accepted year of his birth. As Jesus began to teach at the age of thirty (Luke 3:23), he entered upon his ministry in 26 A. D. The dura- tion of his ministry depends on how many Passover feasts he attended, and this depends on whether the unnamed feast of John 5:1 was a Passover. The view is generally . accepted that it was a Passover, making four he attended (John 2:18; 5:1; 6:4; 12:1), and this would make his ministry extend to three years and the ascension would fall in the spring of 29 A. D. There are elements of un- certainty in these dates, but they are approximately cor- rect. (2) Outline of Events in the Life of Jesus. The life of Jesus falls into two main parts, the thirty silent years, and the three years of the public ministry. Of the three years of the public ministry, the first was 60 THE MAKING AND MEANING spent chiefly in Judea and has been designated py Dr. James Stalker the year of obscurity; the second was spent in Galilee and was the year of growing popularity; the third was spent chiefly in Perea and Judea and was the year of increasing opposition. These years are not to be taken strictly as one year each, as the early Judean min- istry was probably less than a year, and the Galilean ministry extended to considerably more than a year, but the three periods into which the public ministry falls may be approximately designated as years. The chief events of the life of Jesus may be arranged in the following outline, which is the framework into which we shall fit the contents of each Gospel. We cannot always be sure of the chronological order, but this general arrange- ment cannot be far from the facts and will serve our prac- tical purpose. PARTS THe THIRTY SILENT YEARS B. C. 4—A. D. 26 . The genealogies. . The annunciations of the births of John the Baptist and of Jesus. . The birth at Bethlehem. . Angels, shepherds and Wise Men. . The quiet years at Nazareth. PART II THE PUBLIC MINISTRY B.C. 26—A. D. 29 FIRST YEAR Harly Judean Ministry: Year of Obscurity . The ministry of John the Baptist. . The baptism of Jesus. . The temptation. First disciples of Jesus. First miracle. First cleansing of the Temple. . Discourse with Nicodemus. . The codperation of Jesus with John. . Departure from Judea. . Discourse with the Woman of Samaria. SECOND YEAR Galilean Ministry: Year of Popularity . First rejection at Nazareth and removal to Capernaum. COORG WH ft COMND OB obo ES fa O00 NI OU 99 bs Jt fot HODDNATP WIE pad fk fod Hm CO ND fad ped ed ed CO CO AI Sd ON OF THE NEW TESTAMENT . Itinerant preaching in Galilee. . Calling the Twelve and the Sermon on the Mount. Many miracles. John the Baptist’s last message. Many parables. Second rejection at Nazareth. . The feeding of the five thousand. . Break with the Pharisees on eating. 10. 14 ier 13. Renewed controversy with the Pharisees. Retirement to the north: Peter’s confession. The transfiguration. Discourse on humility. THIRD YEAR Later Judean Ministry: Year of Opposition . Arrival in Judea. The mission of the seventy. Jesus foretells his death. Incidents on the way to Jerusalem. . Anointing of Jesus by Mary in Bethany. Triumphal entry into Jerusalem. . Second cleansing of the Temple. . Questions and controversies. . Discourse concerning the destruction of Jerusalem. . The conspiracy between the priests and Judas. . The Last Supper. . Christ’s farewell discourses. . Gethsemane. . Betrayal and arrest. . The trial. . The erucifixion. . The burial. . The resurrection. . The appearances and ascension, 61 CHAPTER ITI THE FOUR GOSPELS We now proceed to an examination of each of the Four Gospels. : 1. THE GospeL AccorpDING To MaTTHEw (1) Authorship. The title, ‘‘The Gospel According to Matthew,’’ does not necessarily mean the Gospel by Matthew or written by him, but the gospel story as he reported it. There is evidence that Matthew’s report of the gospel was an earlier writing than our Matthew. Papias, Bishop of Hierapolis early in the second century, is quoted by Eusebius, a church historian of the third cen- tury, as follows: ‘‘Matthew, in the Hebrew dialect, com- piled the Logia, and each one interpreted them according to his ability.’’ ‘‘Logia’’?’ means words or speeches, and this early book by Matthew, consisting of the sayings and sermons of Jesus, was written in Hebrew or Aramaic, and was then translated and used together with Mark’s Gospel by the author or editor of our Matthew. This view is borne out by the fact that 411 verses, or two-fifths, of Matthew consist of the reported words of our Lord. There is then back of our Matthew an earlier Matthew, but the name of the apostle rightly stands in connection with our Gospel as being ‘‘The Gospel Accord- ing to Matthew.”’ As Matthew was a tax collector (Matt. 9:9), he was used to gathering facts and statistics and to reducing them to tabular form and writing, and this was literary train- ing that fitted him for collecting materials for and com- posing his Gospel. It is thought by some scholars that he shows a fondness for numerical combinations, such as 62 OF THE NEW TESTAMENT 63 groups of three, five, seven or ten incidents or topics, and this may have grown out of his habit of tabulating matters in his tax reports. His business methods would uncon- sciously ereep into his writing. No information is available as to his place of residence at the time of writing the Gospel, or of his career and death as an apostle. Eusebius says of him: ‘‘For Mat- thew, after preaching to Hebrews, when about to go also to others, committed to writing in his native tongue the Gospel that bears his name; and so by his writ- ing supplied, to those whom he was leaving, the loss of his presence. ’’ (2) Characteristics. Matthew’s point of view and pur- pose is plain: he is writing to the Jews to show that Jesus is the Messiah of the Old Testament. This purpose begins with the genealogy and continues through the visit of the Magi and runs through the whole teaching that the gospel fulfills and expands the law of Moses, down to the form of the inscription on the cross and the great commission (Matt. 28: 18-20) as carrying out the Messianic predictions of the prophets. ‘‘Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill’? (5:17) is a prineiple in the teaching of Jesus that Matthew never lets his readers forget. Matthew quotes the Old Testament more frequently than any other evangelist, giving twenty-nine such quotations, of which ten are peculiar to himself. When we compare Matthew with parallel passages in Mark, we find that often when Mark makes a simple statement of fact Matthew confirms and enriches it with a quotation from the Old Testament. Thus, when Mark states that Jesus and his disciples ‘‘went into Capernaum’’ (1:21), Matthew states that this was done ‘‘that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Isaiah the prophet’’ (4:14), and quotes Isa. 9:1-2. ‘‘To Mark’s simple statement that Jesus withdrew himself to the sea after the collision with the Pharisees, occasioned by the healing on the Sabbath of the man with the withered hand (Mark 3:7), the first evangelist attaches a fine prophetic picture, as if to show readers the true Jesus as opposed to the Jesus of the Pharisaic imagination (Matt. 12:15-21). From these instances we see his method. 64 THE MAKING AND MEANING He is not inventing history, but enriching history with prophetic emblazonments for apologetic purposes, or for increase of edification’’ (Hxpositor’s Greek Testament, Vourlwp4L). Matthew is thus on every page connecting the gospel with the Old Testament and showing that the teaching of the Old Testament is fulfilled in the person and mission and kingdom of Jesus as the true Messiah and is thus re- moving doubts and misgivings from the minds of Jewish converts and confirming them in the Christian faith. It is difficult for us to realize how great was the transition from the old to the new, what a wrench and shock it gave to Jewish loyalty and faith to seem to give up the one for the other, and how earnest were the efforts of the New Testa- ment writers to show the Jewish Christians that they were not sacrificing their old faith, but were only fulfilling and enriching it in receiving the new faith. This was Mat- thew’s special purpose and it is deeply stamped upon every page of his Gospel. That Matthew is the Jewish Gospel is also seen in the fact that it is more deeply impregnated and richly colored with the soil of Palestine than any other Gospel. He is minutely acquainted with Jewish history and custom and assumes that his readers understand these. The seven parables in chapter 13 show acquaintance with Jewish farming and fishing, housekeeping, the fondness for and traffic in jewels and other matters, and while Jesus spoke these parables only Matthew records them all and thereby shows his keen interest in them. He knew his own coun- try and people and wrote for them a Gospel that must have touched more native chords in their hearts and appealed to them more deeply than any other of these narratives. | (3) Contents. Matthew, as well as the other evangel- ists, does not always follow a chronological order, espe- cially in the teachings of Jesus, but groups together de- tached sayings and larger portions of discourses delivered at different times. However a general progressive plan may be plainly traced, and we can fit the chief portions of Matthew into our Outline of Events in the life of Jesus as follows: a8 III. si 2. 3. OF THE NEW TESTAMENT 65 PARTI: THE TuHirty Sment Years, 1-2. The genealogy, 1: 1-17. The birth at Bethlehem, 1: 18-2: 23. The quiet years at Nazareth, 2: 23. PART II: Tue Pustic MInistry, 3-28. First Year: The Early Judean Ministry, 3-4: 11. iP 2. 3. The ministry of John the Baptist, 3: 1-13. The baptism of Jesus, 3: 13-17. The temptation of Jesus, 4:1 -11. SECOND YEAR: The Galilean Ministry. Ae m os CO CO AIS? OT Departure from Judea and settlement at Capernaum. 4: 12-17. . Call of the Four and itinerant preaching in Galilee, 4:18-23. . Controversies with scribes and Pharisees, 9:1-17, 12: 9-14. . Calling the Twelve, 10:2-4, and the Sermon on the Mount, 5-8. . John the Baptist’s last message, 12: 2-19. . Warnings to the scribes and Pharisees, 12: 22-45, . The true kindred of Christ, 12: 46-50. . Many parables, 13, and miracles, 8: 23-84, 9: 18-384. . Second rejection at Nazareth, 13: 54-58. . The mission of the Twelve, 9: 386-11: 1. . Death of John the Baptist, 14: 1-12. . The feeding of the five thousand, 14: 13-23. . Break with the Pharisees on eating, 15: 1-20. . Journey to the region of Tyre and return, 15: 21-381. . Feeding of the four thousand, 15: 32-88. . Renewed controversy with the Pharisees, 15: 39-16: 12, . Retirement to the north: Peter’s confession, 16: 13-20. . The transfiguration, 17: 1-20. . Discourse on humility, 18. THirp YEAR: The Later Judean Ministry, 19-28, 1. Arrival in Judea, 19: 1-2. 2. The mission of the seventy, 11: 20-30. 3. Jesus foretells his death, 20: 17-19. 4, Incidents on the way to Jerusalem, 20: 20-34. 5. Anointing of Jesus by Mary in Bethany, 26: 6-18. 6. *§ 8 9 10 The triumphal entry to Jerusalem, 21: 1-11. . Second cleansing of the Temple, 21: 12-17. . Questions and controversies, 21 : 23-23. . Discourse concerning the destruction of Jerusalem, 24-25. . The conspiracy between the chief priests and Judas, 26:1-5, 14-15. . The Last Supper, 26: 17-80. . Christ’s farewell discourses, 26: 31-85. . Gethsemane, 26: 386-46. 66 THE MAKING AND MEANING 14. Betrayal and arrest, 26: 47-56. 15. The trial, 26: 57-27: 31. 16. The crucifixion, 27 : 32-56. 17. The burial, 27 : 57-66. J #6. The resurrection, 28: 1-10. 79 *6. The appearances, 28: 16-20. Matthew omits the events in the first year of the min- istry of Jesus after his temptation, recorded only in John, gives in fuller detail than any other evangelist the Gali- lean ministry, and concludes the final scenes with the ap- pearance of the risen Christ in Galilee and omits the ascension. 2. Tur GospreL ACCORDING TO MARK (1) Authorship. Mark first appears in the New Testa- ment in connection with the release by an angel of Peter from prison in Jerusalem, when Peter went to ‘‘the house of Mary the mother of John, whose surname was Mark”’ (Acts 12:12). It would appear that his mother owned the house and was a woman of some means. Mark then became associated with Paul who took him with him as a helper on his first missionary journey. The earliest testimony to his authorship of the Second Gospel is again that of Papias writing about 125 A. D. ‘‘Mark,’’ he says, ‘‘having become the interpreter of Peter, wrote down accurately everything that he remem- bered, without, however, recording in order what was either said or done by Christ. For neither did he hear the Lord, nor did he follow him; but afterwards, as I said (attended) Peter, who adapted his instructions to the needs (of his hearers) but had no design of giving a connected account of the Lord’s oracles. So then Mark made no mistake, while he thus wrote down some things as he remembered them; for he made it his one care not to omit anything that he heard, or to set down any false statement therein.’’ This statement that Mark wrote as the disciple of Peter is borne out by the fact that Peter is prominent in this Gospel, often in unimportant matters, especially as it becomes more specific in details when Peter appears upon the scene in the first chapter; and it bears the impress of Peter’s urgent spirit and direct rough speech. OF THE NEW TESTAMENT 67 Mark was also a traveling companion of Paul in his first missionary journey, and some critical readers think they discern something of the spirit and teaching of Paul in the Second Gospel. We have already seen reasons for dating this Gospel be- tween 55 and 60 A. D., and this date is borne out by its contents, especially by the fact that it was evidently writ- ten before the fall of Jerusalem in 70 A. D. (2) Characteristics. Mark’s immediate purpose is to set forth Jesus as the Son of God, the note he strikes in the very first verse: ‘‘The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.’’ In Matthew Jesus is the mighty Speaker, but in Mark he is the mighty Doer. On every page he is doing great deeds that show forth his divine power and Saviourhood. It does not appear that Mark is writing specially for either Jews or Gentiles, but is proclaiming to all believers that Jesus is mighty to save. He appeals especially to men of action. Mark’s Gospel is marked by characteristics that sharply distinguish it from the others. It is realistic in the direct vision and apprehension of the facts of the life of Jesus and graphic in its style. Mark sees and says things just as they are without any effort or thought of smoothing them off or toning them down. A rapid reading of the book gives one a vivid impression of this feature. He calls Jesus a ‘‘carpenter,’’ has the people on first hear- ing him at Capernaum exclaim, ‘‘A new teaching!’’ and tells how his family declare of him, ‘‘He is beside him- self,’? or is crazy. These realistic touches appear on every page. There is also an urgency in the book that is character- istic. The words ‘‘straightway’’ and ‘‘immediately’’ occur more than forty times and indicate the rapidity and eagerness with which Jesus passes and almost rushes from one point or work to another. Once while hasten- ing to one work of mercy he dropped another by the way (chapter 5). This urgeney is characteristic of the im- pulsive nature of Peter and reflects his spirit in the nar- rative. The frequent use of the present tense in the narrative is another mark of its realistic style, the author telling 68 THE MAKING AND MEANING events as though they were present before him as he writes. These characteristics are indications of the historicity of the book as being inimitable, and also accord with its being the earliest Gospel written under fresh knowledge and vision of the facts before reflection and tradition had be- gun to pale their colors and dim their sharp outlines. They are indications that Mark saw through the eyes and wrote with the hand of Peter. (3) Contents: PART I: THe THirty Sent YEARS, omitted. PART II: Tue Pusric Ministry, 1-16. I. First YEAR: The Early Judean Ministry, 1: 1-18. L, 2. 3. The ministry of John the Baptist, 1:1-8. The baptism of Jesus, 1: 9-11. The temptation of Jesus, 1: 12-13. II. Seconp YEAR: The Galilean Ministry, 1: 14-9. uf fea SOMND OP ob if a Call of the Four and itinerant preaching in Galilee, 1: 16-45 . Miracles and controversies, 2:1-3:12. . Calling the Twelve, 3: 13-19. . Warnings to scribes and Pharisees, 3: 19-30. The true kindred of Jesus, 3: 31-35. Many parables and miracles, 4-5: 43. . Second rejection at Nazareth, 6: 1-6. The mission of the Twelve, 6: 7-138. . Death of John the Baptist, 6: 14-29. . The feeding of the five thousand, 6: 30-46. . Break with the Pharisees on eating, 7: 1-23. 12, . Feeding the four thousand, 8: 1-9. . Renewed controversy with the Pharisees, 8: 10-21. . Retirement to the north: Peter’s confession, 8 : 27-80. . The transfiguration, 9: 2-29. . Discourse on humility, 9:33-50. Journey to the region of Tyre and return, 7: 24-80, (fl. THirp YEAR: The Later Judean Ministry, 10-16. 1. . Various teachings, 10: 2-81. © 00 NI od CHB CO DD food —) Arrival in Judea, 10:1. Jesus foretells his death, 10: 32-84. . Incidents on the way to Jerusalem, 10: 35-52. . Anointing of Jesus by Mary in Bethany, 14:8-9, The triumphal entry to Jerusalem, 11: 1-11. Second cleansing of the Temple, 11: 15-19. . Questions and controversies, 11: 27-12: 40. - Discourse concerning the destruction of Jerusalem, 13. . The conspiracy between the chief priests and Judas, 14: 1-11. OF THE NEW TESTAMENT 69 11. The Last Supper, 14: 12-26. 12. Christ’s farewell discourses, 14: 27-81. 13. Gethsemane, 14: 32-42. 14. Betrayal and arrest, 14: 48-52. 15. The trial, 14: 53-15: 20. 16. The crucifixion, 15: 21-41. 17. The burial, 15: 42-47. 18. The resurrection, 16: 1-11. 19. The appearances, 16: 9-20. Mark in the oldest existing manuscript breaks off abruptly in the middle of a sentence in verse 8 of the last chapter: ‘‘for they were afraid of,’’ leaving the meaning incomplete. The ending to the chapter found in our ver- sions was supplied by a later hand and is no part of the genuine Gospel. Probably the end of the roll of the manu- script was worn or broken off; and as the Gospel also be- gins abruptly without any account of the birth of Jesus it has been suggested that the first end of the manuscript roll may also have been worn or torn off and thus the original Mark may have been mutilated at both ends. 3. THE GospeL AccorRDING TO LUKE (1) Authorship. Luke is directly mentioned only twice in the New Testament, both times as the companion of Paul: ‘‘Luke, the beloved physician, and Demas, greet you’’ (Col. 4:14). ‘‘Only Luke is with me’’ (II Tim. 4:11). But he appears in Acts 16:10 as one of Paul’s companions in his second missionary journey: ‘‘ And after that he had seen the vision, immediately we endeavored to go into Macedonia.’’ There are four of these ‘‘we passages’’ (16:10-18, 20:5-16, 21:1-18, 27:1—28:16) that indicate the presence of Luke with Paul, so that he is writing Paul’s biography from personal knowledge. Uniform ancient tradition ascribes the Third Gospel to Luke. Irenzus, writing about 180 A. D., says, ‘‘Luke, the companion of Paul, recorded in a book the gospel preached by him,’’ and Justin Martyr, writing thirty years earlier, quotes from the book. We have already fixed its date at near 60 A. D. (2) Purpose and Characteristics. Luke addressed his Gospel to a single individual, the ‘‘most excellent Theo- philus,’’ a Roman knight or man of rank, to whom he 70 THE MAKING AND MEANING subsequently addressed the Acts (1:1). It was therefore written for a Gentile and no doubt was intended through him to reach a wide circle of Gentile readers. Yet this Gospel is not adapted specially to any particular class, but is suited to all readers and has in view its declared purpose that Theophilus ‘‘might know the certainty of those things’’ that are set forth in it. The Gospel of Luke, pronounced by Renan ‘‘the most beautiful book ever written,’’ having for its author a physician was composed by a professional scholar and is the most literary of the Gospels in style and finish and, in fact, is the most literary*book in the New Testament with the possible exception of the Epistle to the Hebrews. The Greek is smooth and the construction is that of an artistic biography. The Gospel is characterized by the spirit of humane- ness, as befits the nature and work of a physician. The author notes that they were ‘‘gracious words’’ that pro- ceeded from the mouth of Jesus at Nazareth (4:22), and graciousness marks his narrative all the way through. He alone gives us such beautiful humanitarian parables as the Good Samaritan and the Prodigal Son, and he very noticeably smooths down the faults of the disciples, as is seen in his omitting the rebuke to Peter, ‘‘Get thee be- hind me.’’ He notes the specific features of disease, such as ‘‘a great fever’’ (4:38), and ‘‘full of leprosy’’ (5:12), and he notes “‘the only son’’ (7:12), and an ‘‘only child”’ (9:38). Many are the little touches that show the quick eye and tender hand and sympathetic heart of ‘‘the be- loved physician.’? Thus the human charm and healing ministry of Jesus shine out in special splendor upon his pages. (3) The Preface.