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INSPIRATION AND PLAGIARISM

 In this connection a few words may be said as to the chronological order and manner of composition of the first three or Synoptic Gospels. “Historically Mark is the earliest, and its study the foundation of critical enquiry. But the ordinary Christian is not a historical critic.” (New Commentary, Pt. III, p. 126; ef. pp. 33, 45.) With the latter statement all will agree; with the first CE. is in agreement with the leading critics, though holding to the exploded “tradition” that one Mark wrote “Mark,” or, in its words: “If, then, a consistent and widespread early tradition is to count for anything, St. Mark wrote a work based upon St. Peter's Preaching.” (CE. ix, 676.) The later writers of “Matthew” and “Luke” copied bodily from “Mark,” with the utmost literality in many places, but with the greatest freedom of changes, additions and suppressions at others, to suit their own purposes. But one comparison, that between “Mark” and “Matthew,” can here be given; the method extends quite as notably to “Luke.” Thus CE. discloses the process: “Mark is found complete in Matthew, with the exception of numerous slight omissions and the following periscopes. ... In all, 31 verses are omitted”; and so with respect to the “analogies” with the other two. “Parts peculiar to Matthew are numerous, as Matthew has 330 verses that are distinctly his own.” (CE,. x, 60, 61; cf. for thorough examination, New Comm. Pt. III, pp. 33, seq.) “These ‘Matthean additions,' as they are called. ... seem to be authentic when they relate our Lord's words; but, when they relate incidents, they are extremely questionable.” (New Comm. Pt. III, p. 127-128.)

 We have just seen the same authority admit the want of authenticity of one set of words imputed by Matthew to his Lord; our next section will demonstrate another famous “Matthean addition” to be a gross and bungling forgery. This bodily copying from Mark, with so many “additions and suppressions,” implies, as we have seen, “a very free treatment of the text of Mark in Matthew and Luke (a freedom which reaches a climax in the treatment of Mk. x, 17f. in Mt. xix, 16f.). ... Just as the latter (Matthew) tampered more with the Markan order than St. Luke did.” (New Comm. Pt. III, 36, 40.) But this textual tampering is well explained, for clerical apologists: “Nor need such freedom surprise us. Mark, at the time when the others used it, had not attained anything like ¹⁶² the status of Scripture, and an evangelist using it would feel free, or might indeed feel bound, to bring its contents into line with the traditions of the particular Church in which he lived and worked”! (Ib. p. 36.)

This perfectly confirms the position taken in the section “Why Four Gospels?” that these Gospels were framed up each in a different Church, to meet its own uses and special purposes, and in answer to the “gospels” of the Heretics. “Mark,” being first in order, was probably in the hands of several Churches, some of whose “traditions” did not accord with the “gospel” narratives therein retailed; the local gospel-mongers, therefore, taking “Mark” as good “copy” for a start, took their blue-pencil styluses in hand and “edited” its text by profuse “tampering” until they produced, severally, the “gospels according to” Matthew and Luke, for use in more “orthodox” and approved form according to the local traditions. The “John” gospel-fabrication alone of the Four quite disregarded the “Mark” document, and is in the most complete contradiction with it, and with all the first three. The “Big Four” gradually won their way against and were “chosen” from all the other fifty or more in circulation, which then became “apocrypha,” or admitted forgeries. 

GOSPELS LATE FORGERIES

We have seen the admissions of CE. that the earliest notice of the Four Gospel's now known to us was towards the close of the second century, quoting as the earliest witnesses the African Bishops, Clement of Alexandria and Tertullian, both of whom died about 220 A.D. It presents, however, one earlier witness to Gospels going in the name of the Four: “Irenrus, in his work Against Heresies (A.D. 182-188), testified to the existence of a Tetramorph or Quadriform Gospel, given by the Word and unified by one Spirit,” (CE. iii, 275),—of which we have just had occasion to admire his quaint and cogent proofs. This first mention, by Irenaeus, of Four Gospels, with the names of their supposed writers, we shall in a moment quote; first we will get the record in honest and correct form by citing an even earlier partial naming of something like Gospels, and their reputed writers. 

1. Bishop Papias , about 145 A.D., is the very first name of something like written “Gospels” and writers; and this is what he says, quoting his anonymous gossipy old friends, the presbyters:

“And the presbyter said this. MARK having become the interpreter of PETER, wrote down accurately whatsoever he remembered. It was not, however, in exact order that he related the sayings or deeds of Christ. For he neither heard the Lord, nor accompanied him. ... For one thing he took especial care, not to omit anything he had heard, and not to put anything fictitious into the statements. MATTHEW put the Oracles (of the Lord) in the Hebrew language, and each one interpreted them as best he could.” (Papias, quoted by Eusebius, Hist. Eccles. iii, 39; ANF. i, 154-5.) ¹⁶³

Moreover, the present “Gospel according to Mark” relates the crucifixion of Jesus at about thirty years of age, after one year's ministry; which is wholly false, as Jesus died at home in bed of old age, in effect says Bishop Papias, on the “tradition” of these same presbyters. So, every other consideration here aside, Papias is not a witness to “The Gospel according to Mark.” As for Matthew, Papias simply reports the elders as saying that Matthew wrote down the “ORACLES” or words of the Lord, and in Hebrew; the “Gospel according to Matthew” is much more than mere “words of the Lord”; it is the longest and most palpably fictitious of the “Lives” of the Christ; it was written in Greek, and very obviously by a Greek priest or Father, many years after the reputed time of Jesus Christ. And Bishop Papias, more than a century after Christ, did not have in his important church, and had never seen, these alleged apostolic writings, and only knew of some such by the gossip of the elders at second or third hand. So we must count Papias out as a witness for these two of our written Gospels. None of the present Four Gospels was thus in existence in about A.D. 145. And it is obvious that, even by “tradition,” the Gospels in the names of Luke and John did not exist in the time of Papias. 

2. Justin Martyr (145-149) quotes sundry “sayings” of Jesus which we find here and there in the present Four,—just as like alleged “sayings” identically are to be found in almost any of the confessedly forged or apocryphal gospels; but he names no names nor Gospels, but only says “memoirs of the apostles,” or simply “it is said.” (See all instances cited, in EB. ii, 1819.) So Justin is no witness to our present Four Gospels, which evidently did not exist in his time about 150 years after Jesus Christ,—though he assiduously quotes the Sibyl and the heathen gods as proofs of Jesus Christ, as we have seen. ¹⁶⁴

3. Irenaeus (182-188) makes the very first mention of Four Gospels and names the reputed authors. These are textually the interesting, and as we shall see, at least in part, spurious words of Bishop Irenaeus:

“Matthew also issued a Gospel—[see it grow—Papias said only “oracles of the Lord”] among the Hebrews in their own dialect, while Peter and Paul were preaching at Rome, and laying the foundations of the Church. After their departure, Mark, the disciple and interpreter of Peter, did also hand down to us in writing what had been preached by Peter. Luke also, the companion of Paul, recorded in a book the Gospel preached by him. Afterwards, John, the disciple of the Lord, who also had leaned upon his breast, did himself publish a Gospel during his residence at Ephesus in Asia.”

 (Iren. Adv. Haer. Bk. III, Ch. 1, i; ANF. i, 414.)

One may turn the thousands of pages of the Ante-Nicene Fathers before Irenaeus in vain to find a direct word of quotation from written Gospels, nor (except as above, recorded) even bare mention of the names of Matthew, Mark, Luke or John, as writers of Gospels. The above words of Irenaeus are registered in his Book III, chapter i; in the first two Books, while, like Justin, he quotes “sayings” which are to be found in our present texts, as in the apocryphas, he does not mention “Gospel” or any of the four reputed evangelists, until chapter xxii of Book II, where he mentions the word “Gospels” and those of John and Luke, and assails their record ¹⁶⁵ of the early death of Jesus as “heresy.” But beginning with chapter x of Book III, he bristles with the names of and direct quotations from all Four; and so with all the following Fathers. It seems, therefore, a fair inference that Irenaeus had just heard of these Four Gospels at the time the last chapters of the second of the two Books were composed; and that they came into existence, or to his knowledge, just before the time be began to compose Book III. And certainly these Four Gospels could not have been in existence and circulation very long before they would come to the eager hands of the active and prolific Bishop of Lyons, who had recently come from the tutelage of his friend Polycarp,—“disciple of the Apostle John”—venerable Bishop of Smyrna, who sent him to Lyons, and who, for his part, shows not a suspicion of knowledge of them. And these Gospels, just now come into existence, were immediately and fiercely attacked by Bishop Irenaeus as false and “heresy” in the vital points of the crucifixion and early death of Jesus, who, says the Bishop, lived to very old age, even maybe till the times of Trajan, 98-117, as vouched for by the Apostle John and other apostles and by the [oral] “Gospel.” This, too, casts discredit on these Gospels as containing authentic record of the apostolic “traditions,” condemned in this vital particular by the only two Bishops, Papias and Irenaeus, who—for a century and a half—mention any Gospel-writings at all. 

“LUKE” DISCREDITS APOSTOLICITY

Moreover, at the time that the Gospel bearing the name of Luke was published, already many Gospels or purported histories and sayings of Jesus Christ were in active circulation: “Forasmuch as many have taken in hand to set forth in order a declaration of those things which are most surely believed among us, Even as they delivered them unto us, which from the beginning were eye-witnesses and ministers of the word; it has seemed to me good also, having had a perfect understanding of all things from the very first, to write unto thee, in order, most excellent Theophilus, that thou mightest know the certainty of those things, wherein thou hast been instructed.” (Luke, i, 1-4). Now, these “many” Gospels were clearly not by any of the apostles, else Luke would certainly have so stated; they were not “inspired” writings, but they were by sundry anonymous “eye-witnesses and ministers of the word”; they are either totally lost to posterity, or are among the fifty admittedly forged and apocryphal Gospels which we have previously noticed. Thus we see two of the “Four,” i.e., “Mark,” and “Luke” are, on their face, uninspired, hear-say, and long ex post facto.

That neither apostle nor contemporary of Jesus wrote a line of “gospel” is thus perfectly evidenced by Luke: “According to the prologue of Luke, no eye-witness of the life of Jesus took pen in hand—none at least appear to have produced any writings which Luke would have called a ‘narrative.'” (EB. ii, 1892.) These conclusions are confirmed by the learned clerical translators and editors of the ANF, respectively, as follows:

“Though a few of the Apocryphal Gospels are of comparatively early origin, there is no evidence that any Gospels purporting to be what our Four Gospels are, existed in the first century, or that any other than fragmentary ¹⁶⁶ literature of this character existed even in the second century.” (Ed. note to Apocrypha of the New Testament, ANF. viii, 349.)—“There is abundant evidence of the existence of many of these traditions in the second century, though it cannot be made out that any of the books were then in existence in their present form.” (Translator's Introductory Notice to Apocryphal Gospels. ANF. viii, 351.)

That these Four Gospels, then, are forgeries, falsely ascribed to Apostles and their companions, a century and a half after Christ and the apostles, and were compounded of very conflicting “traditions” and out of the existing 50 or more forgeries circulating in apostolic names—is proven as positively as negative proofs permit, and “beyond a reasonable doubt”—which is proof ample for conviction of capital crime.

Most people, says Bishop Papias, took pleasure in “voluminous falsehoods” in reporting or writing of Jesus Christ and his life and deeds, for which reason, says the Bishop, he was driven to “the living voice of tradition” for his own accounts,—samples of which we have seen. These fanciful and distorted oral traditions, finally reduced into some fifty fantastic written records of “voluminous falsehoods,” were later, about the time of Book III of Bishop Irenaeus, crystallized into four documents, one each of which was held by one of the principal churches as its authoritative biography of the Christ, or “gospel”; to which, the titles “According to” Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, were tacked for pretended apostolic sanction.

The truth of the late second century origin of the Gospels and Epistles may be garnered from the guarded words of a standard theological textbook on Christian Evidences: “The Christian literature which has survived from the latter part of the first century and the beginning of the second is scanty and fragmentary—[which could not be true if the Gospels and Epistles had then existed]. But when we come into the light of the last quarter of the second century, we find the Gospels of the canon in undisputed possession of the field.”. (The Grounds of Theistic and Christian Belief, by George Parker Fisher, D.D., LL.D.; 1902.) ¹⁶⁷

 Summarizing the results of critical study of the four Gospels, upon all the evidences, internal and external, which are there fully reviewed, the conclusions of modern Biblical scholarship are thus recorded by the Encyclopedia Biblica:

As to Matthew: “The employment of various sources, the characteristic difference of the quotations from the LXX (Septuagint) and the original (Hebrew), the indefiniteness of the determinations of time and place, the incredibleness of the contents, the introduction of later conditions, as also the artificial arrangement, and so forth, have long since led to the conclusion that for the authorship of the first Gospel the apostle Matthew must be given up.” (EB. ii, 1891.)

As to Mark: “According to Papias, the second gospel was written by Mark. ... In what Papias says the important point is not so much the statement that Mark wrote the gospel as the further statement that Peter supplied the contents orally. ... The supposition that the gospel is essentially a repetition of oral communications by Peter, will at once fall to the ground. ... Should Mark have written in Aramaic then he cannot be held to have been the author of canonical Mark, which is certainly not a translation, nor yet, in view of the LXX quotations which have passed over into all three gospels, can he be held to have been the author of the original Mark.” (EB. ii, 1891.)

As to Luke: “This tradition [that Luke was the author of the third gospel and of Acts] cannot be traced farther back than towards the end of the second century (Irenaeus, Tertullian, Clement of Alexandria, and the Muratorian fragment). ... It has been shown that it is impossible to regard Luke with any certainty as the writer even of the ‘we' sections of Acts, not to speak of the whole book of Acts, or of the Third Gospel. ... If Luke cannot have been the author of Acts, neither can he have been the author of the Third Gospel.” (EB. ii, 1893, 2831.)

As to John: “No mention of the Fourth Gospel which we can recognize as such carries us further than to 140 A.D. As late as 152, Justin, who nevertheless lays so great value upon the ‘Memorabilia of the Apostles, regards John—if indeed he knows it at all—with distrust, and appropriates from it a very few sayings. ... If on independent grounds some period shortly before 140 A.D. can be set down as the approximate date of the production of the gospel [a certain statement in it is explained]. ... The Apostolic authorship of the gospel remains impossible, and that not merely from the consideration that it cannot be the son of Zebedee who has introduced himself as writer in so remarkable a fashion, but also from the consideration that it cannot be an eye-witness of the facts of the life of Jesus who has presented, as against the synoptists, an account so much less credible, nor an original apostle who has shown himself so readily accessible to Alexandrian and Gnostic ideas, nor a contemporary of Jesus who survived so late into the second century and yet was capable of composing so profound a work.” (EB. ii, 2550, 2553.) ¹⁶⁸

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