The historical New Testament : being the literature of the New Testament arranged in the order of its literary growth and according to the dates of the documents

Front matter

S3

CORNELL

UNIVERSITY

Contents

PAGE

Pbefaoe ......... xiii

PeINOIPAL AbBEEVIATIONS employed ..... XXV

Preface

Apart from the translation, the main feature of originality within these pages consists of the leading idea which dominates the volume, and of the way in which this idea has been executed. The critical materials constitute what either are or ought to be more or less familiar positions upon the lines of modern NT research ; but they are grouped under a scheme which, so far as I am aware, is quite unique.^ Briefly put, the design is to arrange that selection of early Christian literature which is known as the " New Testament " in the order of its literary growth, and at the same time to indicate the chief grounds upon which such an order may be determined or disputed. This aim, with its difficulties, utility, and limitations, I have discussed in the Prolegomena.

The Historical Tables will explain themselves. Most of them represent an endeavour to further one of the subsidiary objects for which this edition has been prepared, namely, the need of seeing and setting the NT writings in vital connection with one another and with the main currents of contemporary thought and history. Occasionally this connection becomes obvious at a glance. Sometimes it is indirect. Often it may be a matter of interest rather than of relevance. But

1 When my work was almost completed, I came across the following sentence quoted by Dr. Walter Look from a friend's letter {The Exegesis of the NT, 1896, p. 19) : "You don't want to know about animals and plants and musical instruments ; the real Bible is overlaid and smothered by all this . . . I should like to see an English NT with the contents in a different, i.e. a chronological order,''

xiv PREFACE

upon the whole the significance of a NT writing is never reduced— now and then it is immensely heightened— by juxtaposition with its antecedents and context, even in the outlying history and literature which are lightly named "pagan" and untruly judged as alien. To approach and analyse the NT in the sphere of the unconditioned, is an indefensible mistake: unfortunately it is a mistake which has been hitherto confessed rather than avoided in several schools of criticism. The NT may stand by itself ; but the full secret of its genius will be yielded only to the research which goes patiently behind and outside the limits of the canonical collection. Of all unhistorical or semi-historical methods, none has operated so disastrously upon the interpretation of the NT as the tendency to insulate its form and contents ; and it is to supply some materials for a mental impression that may counteract such an error, that these Tables have been com^jiled. In the Jewish and early Christian literature (it is only fair to add), while the various documents have been dated in view of the most recent and reliable criticism, one cannot hope to assign much more than an approximately accurate position to a number of the records, where so considerable a portion of the field is disputable and disputed.

As the printing of the NT text has reduced the available space, I have been obliged substantially to cut out a Historical Introduction written to accompany the Tables, in which the origin and development of the NT literature was sketched from 30 to 150 a.d., in relation to the external context of the Eoman Empire as well as to the inner forces at work within the Christian Communities. Some paragraphs from this have been incorporated in the Prolegomena and Notes, and its outlines are reflected throughout the volume. But I wish to take this opportunity of reiterating the need for treating these subjects in connection

PREFACE XV

with each other, since the impression often left upon most people's minds by the average NT Introduction is that the literature in question lies unrelated and accidental, resembling either

A lonely mountain tarn,

Unvisited by any streams,

or a series of deep scattered pools, one book or group of books coming after the other in a more or less haphazard fashion. Such a dead and spiritless disconnection is to be strenuously repudiated. It is essential for the modern reader to detect the running stream of life that winds, for all its eddies and backwaters, steadily between and through these varied writings. They possess remarkable cohesion. But it is a cohesion which is either misinterpreted or wholly invisible until you stand beside the life they presuppose, and out of which they rise. In fact, NT Introduction and the History of early Christianity are two departments of research which cannot be prosecuted with entire success, so long as they are held apart. Each gains in vitality as it approaches the other.

For similar reasons of brevity, the critical Notes are limited to what is practically a condensed statement of results. Anything like a detailed or continuous account of the processes of argument which lead up to the conclusions underlying the printed text, has been impracticable. I have merely attempted to collate some of the chief results of modern research upon the NT along its literary and historical sides ; although even there many details have been left unelaborated, and some almost untouched. At one or two points, I am afraid, this lack of space and scope in which to deploy argument ^ has given an appearance of summary

1 The compression will be felt most where affinities of language and style come up for discussion. These factors often contain important criteria for dating or placing a given document, and their evidence is repeatedly used throughout the Notes. But the complete grounds for one's judgment in this class of problems are so delicate and various that they cannot be stated, much xvi PREFACE

treatment or of arbitrariness; but in order to partially obviate this defect, the Notes have been drawn up in such a way as to include copious references to the bibliography of recent criticism. What is offered is no catena or inventory of opinions. It is merely a conspectus of relevant authorities, together with a note of the main arguments in support of each position. One hopes thus to be able to take a line of one's own, without producing an unfair impression or incurring censures like that once passed by Bacon upon tradition and knowledge "which is for the most part magistral and peremptory, and not ingenious and faithful ; in a sort as may be soonest beUeved, and not easiliest examined." Whereas, he rightly proceeded, " in the true handling of knowledge men ought to propound things sincerely with more or less asseveration, as they stand in a man's judgment proved more or less." My plan, then, in the Notes has been to indicate in a handful of sentences the leading data for each book's origin and object, the division and preponderance of authorities upon the question, and finally — by means of sifted references — the select literature. The latter includes for the most part what has proved of chief service in my own work ; but the plan also involves a series of references, as any trained observer will detect, to some works which are to be regarded in the main as landmarks and beacons for progressive study. The wealth and the complexity of modern literature upon the NT make selection and economy imperative in drawing up Notes of this kind. But although the method becomes now and then depressingly utilitarian, it will always serve to

less discussed, except at a length wMch would unduly distend the volume. The result is, one has had to rest content with merely indicating the more salient linguistic parallels upon which the position adopted in the text depends. The whole argument from such parallels and affinities in regard to the filiation of early Christian literature is one of several problems that still await discriminating treatment. Hitherto its use has been mainly characterised by arbitrariness and artificiality, and in this respect the critical and the conservative wings of scholarship are equally to blame.

PREFACE XVli

furnish materials by which the view adopted in the text may be corroborated or modified or refused. Both in the Notes and in the Appendix one has constantly felt, indeed, as the translators of the AV put it in their shrewd and neglected Preface, liable " to weary the unlearned, who need not know so much, and trouble the learned, who know it already." As it is never easy to know how far an acquaintance or sympathy with the subject can be presupposed, and to what extent critical processes in this particular department are as yet naturalised, it is hard to judge what materials should be inserted or omitted. However, it is annoying to find that authoritative references are sometimes as inaccessible as the accessible are unauthoritative, and I have therefore chosen in the bibliography to err upon the side of fulness ; all the more so, seeing that the present state of NT criticism in this country is still marked by immaturity in many vital sections. Not a few of the arguments in this volume, and indeed whole pages of it, would have been gladly omitted, had there been (for example) any modern and thorough NT Introduction to which an English student could be referred with safety or satisfaction. The lack of such a volume is only one of many desiderata felt at every turn by the English worker in NT research. Here, perhaps more than in most branches of historical science, investigation continues to be hampered by the resurrection of the obsolete, the survival of the unfit, and the prominence of the irrelevant ; as if the subject itself did not bring with it sufficient obstacles and problems. It is devoutly to be hoped that in the next century some of the enterprise and enthusiasm which have made the OT blossom like the rose during the past fifty years, may be spared by English scholarship to the task of handling with truer reverence and courage the more central problems raised by the NT literature. Few of these are solved ; some are scarcely stated yet in proper form. Indeed, for some time to come it is to be b

XVIU PREFACE

feared that the prospects of free and full NT criticism in this country will be hampered by the fact that not all the results already gained seem to have been perfectly assimilated, while the very methods by which alone conclusions can be formed or adequately tested are often misunderstood or sadly misapplied.

Conditions such as these, to say nothing of the movements within criticism itself, make any enterprise like the present extremely tentative. But I believe it is timely. Unprejudiced treatment of the historical element in Christianity is one of the most immediate needs for faith and truth alike. For if holiness has not its sources in history, the supreme expression of religious thought and conduct has come to us in a historical form, and any intellectual neglect of that form is an error which cannot long be harboured with impunity.

More things than wisdom are best left to be justified by their works, if they are to be justified at all. But a word must be added here upon the translation ; especially as that has been an after -thought, or rather an after-necessity. Owing to the difficulty of securing permission to reprint the EV, the only practicable course was evidently to undertake the preparation of an independent version, and it is the result of this difficult and audacious attempt which is now offered to the reader, with extreme diffidence. It is neither a revision nor an adaptation of any previous translation, but has been made directly from a critical study of the literature itself. The task originally lay as far outside my plan as it has proved beyond my powers. Still, I am in hopes that, despite its many drawbacks, the present rendering will contribute something to that mental impression of change and progress in the NT literature which it is the aim of the whole edition to accentuate. Translation, like peace-making, is always a delicate and often an ungrateful business. The translator pleases nobody, not even himself. But his task

PREFACE XIX

in Biblical literature is additionally severe, as three-fourths of his readers instinctively compare his version, not with the original, but with an English classic which has unrivalled associations of literary rhythm and of religious experience. The one claim of the present version is faithfulness. I have tried to make it accurate and idiomatic, besides presenting, to some extent, the nuances of individual writers. At the same time, I see very little literary or religious gain in making a fetish of over-precision in the verbal reproduction of the original. There is no obvious reason why the translator should not be allowed to exercise his right of inheritance to something of the same freedom that would be granted him if he were dealing with a G-reek classic. Accordingly, while I admit that any version of the NT must incline to be literal, the following pages are not intended for the purists who expect to find in a translation those complete materials for stylistic and grammatical research which only a lexicon can properly afford. If a translator's first duty is to reproduce his text as exactly as possible, his final duty is to write English. A« I conceive it, he is not bound to dislocate style in the pedantic attempt to eschew a reasonable use of English synonyms, or to rehearse at any cost Oriental and Hellenistic idioms that come uncouthly to the modern ear. Transliteration is not translation ; nor is a paraphrase. The latter tends to looseness and weakness, while an absolutely literal version is often the most inaccurate, as it is sometimes the most hideous thing in the world. To be crabbed is the temptation of the one ; to be diluted, of the other. If I have in any degree attained the ideal of my conception, it has been by steering between these two shoals. Attention has been carefully paid to the more recent investigations by Hatch, Kennedy, and Deissmann into the linguistic features of the Koivtj, as well as to a series of grammatical studies in Hellenistic Greek by Viteau, Blass, Jannaris, and Schmiedel. I have further attempted, with

XX PKEFACE

some hesitation, to reproduce, so far as that is possible or desirable in a translation, one or two of the rhythmical and rhetorical features (a-xwara) that mark the structure of the NT literature. These are due, in the main, to either of two influences. One is the gnomic method of parallelism, antithesis, and climax, pervading the older Semitic poetry, and especially the Wisdom-literature, upon which the NT writers, in company, e.g., with the author of 4th Esdras, have drawn in form and spirit to a much larger degree than is commonly suspected. Along with this influence (discussed by Jebb and Wilke) another falls to be placed, due to the rhetorical and artistic spirit of the later Greek and Roman prose, which had a vogue not merely in oratory but in the philosophical compositions of the period (Norden, Die Antike Kunstprosa, 1898, Anhang I., " TJeber die Geschichte des Eeims"; and Wendland, Beitrcige zur Geschichte der Griechischen Philosophic u. Beligio7i, 1895), where, as in the older Hebrew literature, poetry never lay far from what we should to-day distinguish as prose. It would be artificial, indeed, to rigidly reproduce all these strophic features in print. Some, like assonance, live only in the original. Some have to be felt rather than exhibited. Others again appeal to the ear more subtly than to the eye. Still quite a number of them are obvious, as Heinrici, Blass, and J. Weiss have seen in Paul, D. H. Miiller (Die Propheten in ihrer ursprilng. Form, 1896, 1, p. 216 f.), and Briggs {Expository Times, viii. pp. 393 f., 452 f., 493 f., ix. p. 69 f.) in the gospels ; these it is well to mark, so far as is legitimate, in order to preserve the freshness of their literary charm, no less than for the sake of their occasional bearing upon the larger questions of exegesis and interpretation.

The translation is substantially based upon the critical text which Professor Eberhard Nestle has recently edited with accuracy and success {Novum Tesiamentum Graece cum apparatu critico ex editionibus et lihris manu scriptis collecto

PREFACE XXI

Stuttgart, 1898; Zweite Auflage, 1900). Wherever I have been obliged to adopt a different reading, the departure is noted at the foot of the page. I am also responsible myself for the arrangement and punctuation of the text. Passages within brackets denote either displaced sections or interpolations belonging to a date subsequent to that of the writing as a whole. Single brackets imply that there is no MS evidence for the interpolation, while double brackets are used when such external evidence does exist. Darker type denotes a passage incorporated from some earlier source, and phrases or quotations from the OT are printed throughout in italics, although it is rather difficult in many cases to ascertain whether the use of OT language is due to direct reminiscence, to indirect allusion, or merely to the current religious vocabulary of the age. For the evidence upon most of the bracketted passages, as well as for a discussion of some critical points raised throughout the Notes, the reader is referred to the Appendix. The plan of the edition has not permitted any statement of the grounds upon which the Greek text has been determined.

As I have explained in the Prolegomena, one is extremely conscious of the limitations which beset a pioneering edition like the present, both in idea and in execution, particularly when it has to be done practically single-handed. At point after point one has felt the lack of that width of survey, that minuteness of research, that balance of judgment, which are essential to any valid advance in a subject so wide and complex. Most of the volume also has been written and re-written at some distance from libraries, and apart from errors it is more than possible that some important literature has slipped through the editorial meshes, just as some has unfortunately proved inaccessible. I hope that such gaps or slips will not seriously

XXU PREFACE

interfere with the utility and use of the volume.^ Under the Spartan maxim, Tout lien ou rien, it could not have been produced. But I am confident that it is upon the right lines at any rate, and that its general plan will be serviceable even to those who may dislike its presuppositions or dispute several of its particular results. Such as it is, it is offered as a secondary aid to the more exact appreciation of that early Christian literature, the study of which is bound up with so many vital problems in our modern faith.

My warmest thanks are due to those who have aided me during the preparation of this book with literature or suggestions. I wish particularly to thank the following scholars who have revised different parts of my translation : Professor Denney and Dr. H. A. A. Kennedy, who have read over the Pauline epistles (with the exception of 1 Corinthians, which has been undertaken by Eev. David Smith, M.A.) ; Dr. Marcus Dods (Hebrews and the Catholic epistles) ; Eev. Canon I. Gregory Smith (Mark) ; Eev. E. F. Scott, B.A. (Matthew) ; Eev. LI. M. J. Bebb (Luke and Acts) ; Dr. George Eeith (the Johannine literature) ; and Professor Walter Lock (Pastoral epistles). To these scholars I am indebted for the time and care they have generously bestowed upon another man's work. It is only right to add that they are not to be held responsible for any opinion or position expressed throughout the course of the volume, or even for the final shape in which the translation now appears. Mr. Scott and Dr. Eeith have done me the further service of reading most of the proof-sheets.

1 I specially regret that my edition has to appear before the completion of such important critical enterprises as Dr. Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible, the Encyclopaedia Bihlica, edited by Dr. Sntherland Black and Professor Cheyne, and the Expositm-'s Oreek Testament. For some literature which has come to hand or appeared during the printing of this volume, the reader is referred to the Addenda on pp. 709-710.

PREFACE xxiii

I should not like these pages to appear without also acknowledging how much they owe to the late Professor A. B. Bruce, without whose impulse and direction they would hardly have been written. Some years ago he was kind enough to look over the sheets and give me the benefit of his advice as the MS began to take shape. But one is indebted to him for much more than even the characteristic generosity which he showed to his old pupils and the demands for work with which he honoured them. His abiding service was one of stimulus ; he naturalised critical processes, and with singular open-mindedness resisted tradition and intellectual torpor in handling the NT as a subject either for writing or for preaching. Few of us can take many steps in this department of study without realising more and more keenly that the very possibility of such an advance in this country is largely due to the work done by our old master upon these lines. Where he ventured, others follow. Both by teaching and example he has rendered to many in this generation a timely service of liberation not unlike that which in another sphere America is said by Lowell to have gained from Emerson : " He cut the cable and gave us a chance at the dangers and the glories of blue water." Dr. Bruce's work thrust his students upon the responsibilities of freedom. It awakened them especially to the subtle and comfortable peril of antiquarianism in dealing with the Christian facts, while at the same time it steadied them on the conviction that no genuine faith had ultimately anything to fear from strict and fair enquiry. This was conspicuously brought out in his treatiiient of the historical basis and element in early Christianity ; within that department of theology, those who remember his unsparing methods of research will be the first to feel that the truest loyalty to their distinguished teacher lies not in the slavish repetition of his own ideas or in the reassertion

XXIV PREFACE

of his own positions — little he cared for echoes, and least of all for echoes of himself — but in continuing to employ those methods with something of his spirit, sharmg his reverent and brave conviction that even the faults and mistakes of candid enquiry somehow work together for the truth, that truth is the surest defence of faith, and that faith is the justification as it is the germ of real criticism. Historical truth and genuine religion were to Dr. Bruce inseparable allies. He wrought this vital conception into his pupils, with the result that any effort upon their part to carry out this principle in its details is naturally felt by them to be primarily derived from his instruction and incentive. Certainly none of them can prosecute enquiries into the development of early Christianity without being sensible of a recurring debt of gratitude, not so much for the actual results of their master's criticism, though these were often fresh and independent, as for the spirit which he habitually inculcated in dealing with that period and with its literature. Under such obligations to him, personal and general, this volume lies. Yet, after all, they form but a single item in the long fragrant debt which, in common with the rest of his pupils and those wider circles who knew him mainly as an author, one is conscious that one owes to the personality of a- great Christian scholar, who has done more than almost anyone throughout this country during the last quarter of the present century to make the knowledge of Jesus and his Christianity welcome and rich and reasonable.

JAMES MOPPATT.

DUNDONALD, AYRSHIRE,

December 1900.

PRINCIPAL ABBREVIATIONS EMPLOYED

AA . . . History of the Apostolic Age— McGiffert, A History of Christianity in the Apostolic Age (1897).

Weizsticker, Eng. tr. of Das Apostolische Zeilalter der Ohristlichen Kirche (2nd ed.).

J. Vernon Bartlet, I'he Apostolic Age, its Life, Doctrine, Worship, and Polity (1900).

AJT . . The American Journal of Theology.

BI . . . A Biblical Introduction (1899). The NT section, p. 276 ff. by Prof.

W. F. Adeney.

GOT. . The Camlridge Greek Testament for Schools and Colleges.

Ghron . . W. Briiokner, Die chrmiologische Beihenfolge in welcher die Briefe des NT mrfasst sim(i(1890).

Clemen, Die Chronologic der Paulinischen Briefe (1894).

Harnack, Geschichie der altchristlichen Litteratur his Eusebius. Zwciter Theil: die Chronologic der Literatur his Irenaeus (1897).

Class. Rev. . The Classical Review.

OR . . . The Critical Review (ed.

Principal Salmond).

ORE. . . Prof. W. M. Ramsay, The Church in the Roman Empire{5th ed. 1897).

DB .

Binf .

EB .

EBi .

Einl.

EWK

ExGT

Exp .

ExpT GGA GK .

. A Dictionary of the Bible

Hastings. . Einfiihrung in das Grie-

chische NT (Zweite,

vermehrte und verbes-

serte Auflage 1899),

by Professor E.

Nestle. . Encyclopaedia Britannica

(9th ed.). . Encyclopaedia Biblica

S. Black and T. K.

Cheyne.

Einleitung in das Neue

Testament — Hilgenfeld (1875).

Mangold-Bleek (1886).

Holtzmann, H. J. (3rd

ed. 1892).

Jiilioher, A. (2nd ed.

1894).

Trenkle, F. S. (1897).

Schafer, Aloys (1898).

rfkcine EmyTcloplldic der

Wissenschaften und

Kiinste.

The Expositor's Greek

Testament (1897- ).

The Expositm- (ed. Dr.

Nicoll. Small superior

numbers ^' ^' *> 5' ^ refer

to the series).

The Expository Times (ed.

Dr. Hastings).

Gottingische Gelehrte An-

Oeschichtc des NT Kanmis (Zahn), 1888-

XXVI

Hausrath

PRINCIPAL ABBREVIATIONS EMPLOYED

HC

HD

HJP.

laa . .

IS . .

INT . .

JfTh .

JTS .

KAP .

Keim(i.- Laurent

LC .

-Meyer

NTTh

. Hau3rath's Neutestamentliche Zeitgeschichie{ En g. tr. of 2nd ed. 1895 : "The Time of the Apostles "). . Umid - Commentar zum Neuen Testament (H. J.

Holtzmann, Sehmiedel, Lipsius, and von Soden). . History of Dogma, Eng. tr. of Harnack's Dogmengeschidite, (1894- 1899).

Eng. tr. of Sohtirer s Oeschichtc dcs j ildischen Koikes im Zeitalter Jesu Ohristi 2 (1886-1890), entitled, "A History of the Jewish People in the Time of Jesus Christ." . The International Critical

Commentary. . International Handbooks to the NT (ed. Dr.

OrelloCone), 1900- . . Introduction to the New Testament.

Weiss B. (Eng. tr. of Mnleitung in das Neue Testament,^ 1886).

Davidson S. (3rd ed.

Salmon G. (8th ed. 1897).

Godet, Introduction au

Nouveau Testament — 2.

Les ipUres de S. Paul

, Jahrbiicher fur prolestant.

Theologie. . Journal of Theological

Studies. . Die Apokryphen u.

Pseudepigraphen d.

Allen Testaments, ed.

Kautzsoh (1898-1899). ■vi.) Eng. tr. of Oeschichtc Jesu von Nazara. . Neutestamentlichc Studien (1866), by J. C. M.

Laurent. . Literarisches Centralblatt

(ed. E. Zarncke). . Meyer's Com,mentar zum NT (latest editions). . . New Testament Theology—

NTTh . . Weiss, Eng. tr. of 3rd ed. (1888). .

Bovon, ThAologie du NT

(1893) : deux tomes.

Beyschlag, Eng.tr. (1896).

Holtzmann, Lehrbuch der Neutestamentlichen Theologie (1896).

Stevens (1899), Internat.

Theol. Library.

PG . . Philology of the Gospels,

Blass (1898).

PM . . . ProtestantischcMonatshefte (1897- , ed. Websky).

Eeuss . E. Reuss, Oeschichtc der

heiligen Schriften NT (Eng. tr. of 5th ed. 1884).

Rdville . . A. Rdville, Jilsus de Nazareth : etudes critiques sur les anticidents de Vhistoire dvangilique ct la vie deJisus (1897, deux tomes).

RLA . . Prof. E. de W. Burton, Pecords and Letters of the Apostolic Age (1895).

PTIC . . Beal-Encyklopddie fur protestantische Theologie und Kirche (ed. Hauck) 1896- .

SK . . ■ Studien und Kritiken (ed. Kostlin and Kautzsch).

SPT . . . Prof. W. M. Ramsay, St.

Paul the Traveller and the Roman Citizen (1895).

Syr-Sin . . The Four Gospels translated from the Syriac of the Sinaitic palimpsest (Lewis, 1894).

TQ . . . Theologische Quartal-

schrift.

TR . . Theologische Rundschau

(ed. Bousset).

TV . . . TexteundUntersuchuiigcn zur Geschichte der altchristlichen Literaiw (ed. Harnack and Gebhardt).

ThA . . . Theologische Abhandlungen 0. von Weizsackcr gewidiiiet (1892).

PRINCIPAL ABBREVIATIONS EMPLOYED xxvii

ThLz .

ThS . .

Urc . .

ITS. .

Theologische Literaturzeitung (ed. Harnaok and Schiirer).

Theologische Studien

Herrn Prof. D. Bernhard Weiss dargebracht (1897).

Bas Urchristenthum —

Pfleiderer, Das Urchristenthum (1887).

Spitta, Zur Geschichte u.

Litteratur d. Urchristenthums (1893-1896).

The New Testament in Oreek, Westcott and Hort.

ZKWL . . Zeitschrifl fur Kirchliche WissenschaftibiidKirch- Hches Lehen (ed. Luthardt).

ZNW . . Zeitschrift fur die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft und die Kunde dcs UrchristeiUums (ed.

Preusohen).

ZSchz . . Theologische Zeitschrift aus der Schweh (ed.

Meili).

ZThK . Zeitschrift fiir Theologie

und Kirche.

ZioTh . . Zeitschrift fur wissenschaftliche Theologie (ed. Hilgenfeld).

The otlier abbreviations employed throughout the volume are either obvious or familiar. In addition to what has been already said, however, upon the types employed in the translation (p. xxi), the reader is requested to observe that where OT quotations occur in the body of an earlier source {e.g. pp. 189, 295), they are always printed in italics, as elsewhere throughout the volume, although they must in these cases be strictly regarded as part and parcel of the darker type which forms their immediate context. Also, in Tables IV. -V. the straight lines represent more or less direct literary filiation, while mere affinities or indirect influences are marked by means of dotted lines.

It may be said of all that is told of Jesus Christ, that it is written as a lesson for us. That is a consideration which in our controversies is often unduly overlooked ; but it is in keeping with the object of the oldest writers, and the practice of the oldest teachers. In matters of religious tradition it is the peculiarity of much that passes for historical, that the spiritual meaning to be found in it is its most important feature. Where something is maintained as an historical fact, it is more often than not a defence of the article of faith bound up with it. — Harnack.