the oracles in the Hebrew (? Aramaic) language, and each one interpreted them as he was able" (Mar@aîos pèv ovv Εβραϊδι διαλέκτῳ τὰ λόγια συνετάξατο, ἡρμήνευσε δ' αὐτὰ ὡς ὴν δυνατὸς ἕκαστος). There are not many texts of Scripture which have been more controverted than this brief statement. First of all, we have a "various reading," which however does not affect the sense seriously. Many of the Germans read ovveráğato, while our English scholars give Ovveypávaтo, the difference being that of "compiling" and composing." Then it is disputed whether Papias knew of a Greek Matthew; but the aorist pμývevoe is usually, and correctly, regarded as indicating that the time when the Aramæan Matthew was used was already long past, and probably if the de clause were forthcoming it would allude to the translation. Most important is the dispute as to the meaning of the word λóyia. On the one hand, scholars of λόγια. very different schools restrict the word to its classic import, and hold that the Aramaic Matthew was simply a collection of discourses," "the oracular or Divine utterances of the Lord Jesus"; while others regard our Greek Gospel as merely a translation from the Aramaic. Dr. Lightfoot, for instance, in his Essays on Supernatural Religion, appeals to Romans iii. 2, where the whole Old Testament is called Xóyia; he also quotes from Philo and Clement, who use the word as synonymous with "the Scriptures": and hence infers that the Aramaic Móya mentioned by Papias comprised our entire Greek Gospel. But our surest guide as to the meaning in which an author uses a word is to consult the author himself: and when we find that Papias composed a work, Explanation of the Oracles of the Lord, Λογίων κυριακῶν ἐξήγησις, and that this consisted largely

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of an interpretation of the discourses of Jesus; confirming

(2) Siaßeßalovμevos, his interpretations by sayings more or less fabulous, which he claims to have traced to the circle of the apostles; and when we find that Papias, in comparing

the Gospels of Matthew and Mark, speaks of the latter as containing τὰ ὑπὸ τοῦ Χριστοῦ ἢ λεχθέντα ἢ πραχθέντα, “the things said or done by the Christ," and says also that Mark, in contrast with Matthew, does not give a σúvτağıs Tŵv κυριακῶν λογίων (or λόγων), i.e. “ a compilation of the oracles of the Lord,”—we must admit that the word λóyia, as used by Papias, means chiefly the Lord's discourses; though it might also include a brief narrative of the events which served as a setting for some of our Lord's most important utterances, and apart from which they are unintelligible. It is our intention to advance a method which will serve as a touchstone to decide on the contents of the Aramaic Logia, and we shall find that it contained almost all the discourses of Jesus and some of the narratives in a condensed form. And as to the connexion between the Aramaic Matthew and our present first Gospel, we believe that our Greek Gospel is a second and enlarged edition of the Aramaic, written after the lapse of some years, when the Church had begun to realize that it is not the words of Christ merely that demand our attention, but that His life and works are also Divine oracles, revealing to us the Father.

Papias is not the only Church Father who records that Matthew wrote a Gospel τῇ Ἑβραΐδι διαλέκτῳ. Pantænus, who preached among "the Indians," says that Bartholomew had preceded him, and left there the writing (ypapń) of Matthew in Hebrew letters. Further testimonies on the subject are collected by Meyer on Matthew, pp. 4–8.

VII. What theories have hitherto been held as to the probability that Mark and Luke used the Aramaic Gospel in the compilation of their " Memoirs "?

To answer this question fully would be a tedious and a thankless task. Theories on this subject have sprung up on the fertile soil of Germany, like the fabled warriors from the teeth of the dragon on the soil of Boeotia, meeting with the same fate-mutual destruction. But it should be borne

in mind, that if ever the knotty problem of the synoptic Gospels is to be solved, it must be by the resuscitation of some theory thought to be effete; for every possible theory has been advocated, and every one has also been stoned and dragged out for dead. We will restrict ourselves then to some of the most important of these theories. The first great name which claims attention is that of Eichhorn, who thought he had discovered the contents of the SyroChaldaic Urevangelium in the forty-four sections which the synoptists have in common. Whatever is found in all the three Gospels belonged in his judgment to our Aramaic Gospel, written about the time of the stoning of Stephen. This primitive document was circulated, and was gradually expanded in three different districts by different authors, and then each was translated into Greek. The use of some two of these secondary documents by the synoptists explains the cases where two of them agree; while other documents had to be sought as the source of the passages in which each of our evangelists stands alone. Led on by the criticism of opponents, Eichhorn was continually discovering fresh Urkunden in a somewhat arbitrary way, considering himself called upon to specify the document from which each verse in our synoptists had been culled. The theory of Eichhorn caused an immense sensation throughout Germany for some years, but the excessive ingenuity and arbitrariness of its later accretions caused it to fall into disrepute. Its chief fault was its dead mechanism. It made the Gospels a mere mosaic of pre-existent materials. It allowed too little for prevalent peculiarities of style in each Gospel, for the independent idiosyncrasies of apostles and apostolic men, still less for inspiration. It quite ignored the fact that each Gospel has its raison d'être; that each evangelist was supernaturally endowed with a sublime conception of Jesus and His work; and that in the choice of materials, the arrangement of details, the

omission and insertion of incidents, each evangelist was dominated by his own divinely given conception of the Christ. The Tübingen school of some twenty years later was a reaction against this stolid mechanism. It sought for a raison d'être, and was so far right; but was wrong in finding it in a supposed antipathy between the Pauline and Petrine sections of the Church.

The next great scholar that we would name as having investigated the Papian Matthew is Schleiermacher. He came to the conclusion that the Logia was nothing more than a collection of our Lord's sayings; and also that the proto-Mark was not nearly so large as our Mark, but simply the notes which Peter gave to Mark, and thus our Gospels are not in either case the writing to which Papias refers. He was opposed by Weisse, who shows that Papias' description of Mark answers admirably to our canonical Mark. Then came Knobel, who held that the Aramaic Logia and the canonical Mark were the two oldest independent documents, and the sources from which chiefly our Gospels of Matthew and Luke were compiled. Meyer maintains that the Aramaic Matthew was gradually expanded by the interweaving of historical matter. Thus enlarged, it was translated into Greek, and became our first Gospel. In its Aramaic form it was used to some extent by Mark and Luke. Mark was written before Matthew was enlarged, and the author of the canonical Matthew (who was not Matthew himself) made use of Mark. Then comes Weiss who claims to have improved on his predecessors in two ways: (1) in the discovery that the Logia contained many narratives in addition to the discourses of our Lord. (2) As Meyer, he held that Mark and Luke had the Logia before them in writing-not however in Aramaic, but in a Greek translation.

Thus we see that there is a strong body of opinion that the common matter of the synoptists was taken from a

written source; and we see that several scholars of the first rank have maintained that the Aramaic Logia was translated into Greek by each of the three synoptists. This is the conclusion to which we also have come by thoroughly independent investigation. There is a counter-theory, first advocated by Gieseler, which, through Bishop Westcott's influence, has been extensively adopted in this country, and has recently been presented in fully developed form by the Rev. Arthur Wright. This is the theory of oral tradition. The advocates of this view remind us of the fact that the memoirs of Christ's life were recited in the Church by the catechists, and committed to memory by the catechumens; and they seek to explain the variations in the homologous matter of the synopists by two human imperfections: (1) the necessarily variant account which different equally-credible witnesses would give of the same incident; and (2) the imperfection of human memory in transmitting orally the same discourse. The great objection usually urged against this theory is, that it does not explain the agreement of our Gospels, which is not simply one of words, but sometimes "extends to finishing touches and details of expression, as also to its introductory and transitional formulæ, and in many cases continues throughout long speeches and even series of narratives such as could never have been transmitted in oral tradition " (Weiss: Introduction, vol. ii., p. 209). We wish to add a more forcible objection to the theory of oral tradition. If it can be shown, as we hope to do, that the variations in the common matter of the synoptists are, in numerous cases-and we hope to bring forward more than sixtydue to a variant translation of a common Aramaic original, then the theory which would explain them by the errancy of oral tradition must be admitted to be inadequate, if not untenable.

VOL. III.

J. T. MARSHALL.

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