Preface
It is a providential characteristic of God's written revelation that it presents the record in twofold, threefold, or even fourfold form, without effort to conceal the discrepancies due to the varying points of view of fallible reporters. Polemic interest seizes upon this fact to argue on the one side from the discrepancies against the veracity, on the other that " in the mouth of two or three witnesses shall every word be established." Only the tendency has been so extreme to establish every word as to lose sight of the value of divergences.
For eighteen centuries of polemics the supreme interest of the Church in comparing biblical parallels has been harmonistic. Everything has been done to obliterate the last trace of difference. In the earlier time transcribers did not scruple to assimilate text with text, going so far as to meet the taunt of discrepant genealogies of Jesus by substituting in Luke the pedigree of Matthew. In the fourth century the Syrian church only escaped the actual superseding of the " separate " four gospels by the composite " Diatessaron " of Tatian through the forcible intervention of Theodoret, Bishop of vi PREFACE
Cyrrhus. Later harmonizers were compelled to confine themselves to interpretation, until traditional exegesis had completed the work of obliteration.
But criticism, lower and higher, documentary and historical, if scientific, is devoid of polemic interest. Its object is historical, and for that reason it places appreciation of differences before harmonization. The wider the variation in standpoint of honest witnesses, the stronger the general corroboration, and the broader the base-line for scientific determination of that historical ultimate which no one man, or one age even, is competent to describe. For one century criticism has been patiently seeking to restore the marks of difference that the harmonists of nineteen centuries have sought by every means to efface. The vast preponderant mass of the heretical and extra-canonical witness has been irrecoverably destroyed. Only a fragment survives here and there, and the incompletely obliterated divergences within the canon itself. To seek to undo the work of harmonizers who thought they did God service by improving on the record as he gave it, first by tampering with the text, afterwards by a warped interpretation, is inevitably to incur suspicion if not odium. That is a small matter to men who know that God's word is just the unvarnished truth, and who search the Scriptures, not as the scribes and Pharisees, who thought that
PREFACE vii
in them they had eternal life, but because these testify of Christ, and through them they come unto him and find life indeed.
The criticism which underlies the present volume is based on the conviction that a hearty and sympathetic appreciation of the differences in our two sources for the life of Paul must precede attempts at combination. The tradition as embodied in the Acts toward the close of the first century for purposes quite other than those of the critical historian, by an unknown hand from unknown sources, under circumstances but dimly understood, must be appreciated by itself and for itself. Into comparison with this must be brought the letters, with their indirect but unimpeachable testimony. The temptation to forced reconciliations must be resisted in the light of their past disservice. Such larger harmony as results from simple-hearted recognition of agreements and disagreements alike, taking its doctrine of inspiration from the facts and not vice versa, is the reward we seek. But what little we know of religious ideas and conditions outside the canonical sources must also be brought into consideration. It is no detriment to Christianity that it is not a product of Judaism alone. The more we can learn of its roots in Gentile soil the better.
The lectures were made purposely as untechnical as possible. They were prepared as a " historical viii PREFACE
and literary study" for mixed audiences, whose knowledge of the Bible was for the most part uncritical, and are printed substantially as delivered in the two " University Extension " courses at Providence, K. I., and New Haven, Conn., in the spring and autumn, 1903. A few footnotes constitute substantially the only additions. To transform these semi-popular lectures on some of the results of critical study into a scientific treatise with adequate presentation of scientific opinion on all disputed points, would be to rob them of their essential character, if not to overload the work for the public. There will be better hope of the welcome predicted for them in the kind assurances of auditors who have asked their publication, if they go forth as they are.
Benjamin W-. Bacon.
New Haven, July 5, 1904.
Part I The Story In The Light Of The Letters
LECTURE I
PAGE
LECTURE II Conversion and Vocation 34
LECTURE III
The Propagation of the Gospel as a World- Religion 68
LECTURE IV
The Understanding in Jerusalem and Misunderstanding at Antioch 107
LECTURE V
Founding of the Greek Churches and Battle
with the judaizers 147
LECTURE VI The Ambassador in Chains 186 x CONTENTS
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