RELIGIOUS MAGAZINE, OR SPIRIT OF THE FOREIGN THEOLOGICAL JOURNALS AND REVIEWS. From the British Critic. OCTOBER, 1828. 1. BERTHOLDT'S INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT-2. Preface to the Translation of Hug's Introduction to the Writings of the New Testament. By the Rev. D. G. Wait, LL. D. Vol. I. pp. 2 .200. THERE was a time, when we felt anxious that German Theology should be confined to Germany: nor should we perhaps have cared, if, as we once heard it expressed in the pulpit, the German divinity was all sunk in the German Ocean. The latter catastrophe would indeed even now be met by us with perfect composure: but in proportion as this new system of theological criticism has been better known in England, our fears have been becoming gra- | dually less. We once thought, that the liberal or philosophical mode, as it is called, of interpreting Scripture, might do harm to some of our countrymen; that it might raise doubts, where no doubt had been felt before; and by ansettling their present faith, without establishing any thing in its room, might make them uncomfortable and wretched upon unquestionably the most important subject which can agitate the human mind. But since the translators of German books have made these writers better known to our countrymen, our fears have gradually subsided. Not that we doubt their intention to undermine revelation, nor the effect which they might produce upon minds congenial with their own: but the more we study their works, the more we feel convinced, that such flimsy sophisms and such audacious criticisms will make little impression upon the honest and matter-of-fact minds of our English students. We have here made use of strong expressions; but we use them advisedly and deliberately. The names of Michalis, Eichorn, Bertholdt, Schleiermacher, and such like, possess no peculiar charm or sanctity, which forbids us to approach them as ordinary mortals: and most assuredly we see nothing in their writings, which leads us to form a high estimate of their heads or of their hearts. We do not deny, that the German divines have done much for the criticism of the New Testament. With intentions, which we cannot but believe to be most mischievous, and proceeding upon principles, which begin and end with denying the divine origin of the Bible, they have certainly brought to light many phenomena, which but for their Rel. Mag.-VOL. II. profound research and unwearied industry might never have been discovered. For these selves greatly indebted to them: but it is to copious materials we are willing to profess ourthe mechanical part of their labours, that we feel obliged to limit our commendation. A German is, perhaps, of all critics the most patient and laborious; and, consequently, the writers of that country have read the New Testament with greater care, and weighed every word and sentence in it with more scrupulous minuteness, than our own or any other scholars. We may add, that a German is also, of all critics, the most fond of theorizing and systematizing. Interpretations, which had never been imagined by the most visionary of the Fathers, and hypotheses concerning the sacred writers, which it had never yet entered into the heart of man to conceive, are yearly and almost daily put forth in Germany; and upon the ruins of one of these short-lived systems every professor erects a theory of his own, more novel and more fanciful than the former. Were we eversomuch disposed to adopt their notions, we should be utterly at a loss to decide at the cana dubia, which the theology of that country spreads before us. All that we can collect is, that every professor thinks his predecessor wrong: of course he supposes himself to be in the right: but while we are construing his sentences, and examining his theories, the steam-boat brings a fresh arrival of lectures and essays from Germany, and we find that a totally new theory, or rather several new theories have been started. There is, indeed, a point of union, in which all these conflicting critics seem to be agreed; which is, to consider the Bible as a book, which is not only uninspired, but which has had the singular misfortune of suffering more from corruptions and interpolations than any other ancient document whatever. They believe the sacred writers to have been inaccurate in facts and dates; to have been forgetful, misinformed; to have wilfully misrepresented and deceived; they deny one book after another to be an original composition; what is related as an actual occurrence, they assume to be a vision or an allegory; and yet, after thus destroying the foundation and credentials of our religion, they still call themselves Christians: having proved the sacred books to be neither authentic nor credible, they still profess to believe in the New Testament; and boast that the phiNo. 10.-2 B losophical and rational method of interpreting that book has been brought to light and perfected by themselves. If this be reason and philosophy, we hope that it may long be confined to the Germanic confederacy. Non equidem invideo, miror magis. The most favourite subject, upon which these new divines exercise their ingenuity, is what they choose to call the origin of the three first Gospels: and from the days of Michælis to our own, Germany has constantly been putting forth some new theory concerning the TEUaior, the common document or documents, from which the three first Evangelists borrowed, and which is to account for the remarkable verbal agreements between them. One of the latest of these theorists is Bertholdt, who has not only maintained the existence of a common document, but has amused himself with settling the other question which rises out of the former, whether this common document was written in Greek or Aramaic. Bertholdt is positive, that the previor was written in Aramaic, and translated by Matthew, Mark, and Luke: the Epistles of St. Paul also, and indeed all the Epistles, are asserted by him to be merely translations from an Aramaic original; so that instead of the good old-fashioned notion, that the New Testament is a collection of works composed by the persons whose names they bear, and who wrote under the immediate inspiration of the Holy Ghost, we must now believe that the original narrator of the Gospel History was an unknown person: and that the Gospels and Epistles, which we read in Greek, are merely translations made by some persons whose names are lost, and who betray themselves by several blunders in the work which they undertook. If Bertholdt's book had been so fortunate as to be translated into English, we should perhaps have presented our readers with an analysis of his theories: but this not being the ease, we shall make some remarks upon the Preface prefixed by Dr. Wait to his translation of Hug's Introduction. This Preface, as Dr. Wait informs us, is an epitome of Bertholdt's arguments: some of these are espoused by Dr. Wait, and some of them are refuted; but in many cases it is difficult to comprehend whether the epitomiser intended to approve of the theory of Bertholdt or no. The Preface contains the sentiments of many other German writers besides Bertholdt: and since we have expressed ourselves rather strongly as to the merits of the German theologians, we shall make use of this preface to support the assertion hazarded above, that the principles, upon which they proceed, are mischievous, and that the arguments, by which they attempt to support them, are weak. The first point which we shall establish is, that these philosophical critics entirely keep out of sight the inspiration of the New Testament. They assume, that the writers of it were not inspired; and they bring forward instances, which would render the notion of their inspiration impossible to be maintained. Thus Bertholdt asserts, that there are direct contradictions between the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, (pp. viii. and xiv.) and at pp. xi. xv. be ays the same of the Gospels of Mark and | Luke. That persons, writing under immediate inspiration, should differ occasionally in relating the same story, is what we should be fully prepared to expect: but if two writers contradict each other, one of them at least does not speak truth, and all idea of his inspiration is necessarily overthrown. We have examined all the instances of contradictions, which are collected by Bertholdt, and we have no hesitation in asserting, that not one of them amounts to a contradiction. To lay each case before our readers, and discuss it in detail, would be tedious and perfectly unnecessary: but that we may not meet the assertion of Bertholdt merely with a counter-assertion of our own, we shall transcribe the four first instances in each case, and request our readers to examine them for themselves. We have not picked and selected these instances, but they are the four first in each series; and we are prepared to prove, that not one of them contains any thing like a contradiction; nor is any one of the differences of such a nature as to preclude the idea of both writers being separately inspired. At p. xvi. we are informed, that this original document must have been written in Aramaic, because at the early period to which it is referred, it is most improbable, that any disciple or follower of Jesus should have sufficiently known Greek, to have been able to write it." This argument appears to have been used by Eichorn and Paulus: but any person, except a German critic, would see, that in the very earliest days of Christianity, even in the first year after our Lord's Ascension, there must have been many thousand Christians, who spoke Greek as their native language: and since this common document is supposed to have been committed to writing, to meet the wants of the different Christian congregations, the natural conclusion would be, that there were narratives of our Saviour's life written in Greek, as well as in Aramaic. Indeed, since the Apostles remained some tine at Jerusalem, the necessity was greater for these narratives to be written in Greek than in Aramaic for the converts in Judea had the benefit of the oral preaching of the Apostles; whereas the Hellenistic Jews, and the converts in other countries, would be very likely to call upon some person to draw up a history of our Saviour's life, which they might study in their own language. But when we read in the above quotation, of the improbability that any disciple or follower of Jesus should have sufficiently known Greek to have been able to write it," we are perhaps to understand the remark to apply exclusively to the Apostles. This is evidently the belief of many of the German critics: upon which we have only to observe, that it fully bears us out in the assertion made above, that these critics entirely lay aside the notion of the Apostles be ing inspired, or miraculously assisted in composing their histories. This doctrine is still more plainly avowed at p. xxix. where it is said that "Mark is mentioned by the ancient ecclesiastical historians, as Peter's interpreter, probably because Peter was This necessarily unacquainted with Greek." requires us to understand that Peter was ignorant of Greek, not only at the time of our Lord's Ascension, but at the time when Mark composed his Gospel; which, according to every calculation, was at least twenty years after Peter first began to preach: and the German critics actually require us to believe, that at the end of these twenty years St. Peter was not able to dictate an epistle in Greek. A person, who denied the inspiration of the Apostles, might certainly be inclined to suppose, that a Galilæan fisherman, when first taken from his nets, would be unable to write in Greek: but to suppose, that this fisherman, ignorant and illiterate as he may at first have been, travelled for many years in countries where his native language was not spoken, that he had zeal enough to do this, and yet had not patience or curiosity enough to make himself master of Greek, is an hypothesis quite too monstrous to be entertained, except in Germany. We have actually no occasion to call in the aid of inspiration in this instance: but we repeat, that if we could suppose St. Peter not to have acquired the language in so many years, we still could not suppose him ignorant of it, without entirely rejecting the idea of the gift of tongues being miraculously imparted. At p. xxxvii. we are informed, that St. John must have noted down our Saviour's words at the time when they were spoken: "could he otherwise have remembered those long speeches, which he has recorded?" The answer to this question is very obvious, if the sceptic who put it would turn to that passage in St. John's Gospel, where the promise of our Saviour is delivered, that the Holy Ghost should bring all things to the remembrance of the Apostles, whatever he had told them and if we believe this promise to be true, the argument of Bertholdt is reduced to nothing, that because Jesus spoke in Aramaic, the notes which St. John made of his discourses, must have been also in that language, and that his Gospel was only a translation from those notes. One of the most extraordinary pieces of information which we ever met with, is given at p. lxix. where Dr. Wait gravely informs us, that some have disputed Paul's capability of writing an entire treatise in Greek. The love of disputing must indeed be great, and apparently the choice of subjects must be small, when any persons could dispute, or even doubt upon this question. But it seems, that Bolton supposed St. Paul "to have expressed his ideas in the Palestinian dialect, and to have delivered his Epistles to be translated into Greek by one versed in the language.". We should wish to ask this sagacious disputer, whether he has ever read or thought of the travels of St. Paul: whether he has followed him out of the confines of Palestine through whole regions, we had almost said whole continents, where the Palestinian dialect was scarcely so much as heard of. Did St. Paul not speak or preach in Greek, when travelling or residing in Asia Minor, Macedonia, Peloponnesus, &c. &c.Did he not speak Greek, when he harangued the Athenian philosophers at the Areopagus, or when he made his defences before Felix and Agrippa? Would a person of his genius and temperament be likely to have read the works of Aratus, Epimenides, and Menander, and yet not be capable of writing an entire treatise in Greek? We grant, that there is a difference between speaking and writing a language. Bolton, or Eichorn, or Bertholdt, might be able to converse in French or English, and yet might not be able to write correctly in either language. But the mind of St. Paul was cast in a different mould. We say nothing at present of his being inspired: we do not believe, that in this instance he required any supernatural aid: but we do say, that to doubt whether St. Paul was capable of writting a letter in Greek, is one of the most disgraceful absurdities, and one of the most gratuitous pieces of scepticism, which we have ever encountered. Our readers will now form some notion of the arguments, by which it is attempted to be proved, that all or nearly all the books of the New Testament are translations from Aramaic originals. We repeat that all the arguments rest upon the assumption, that the Apostles and Evangelists were not inspired: and, consequently, if their inspiration be allowed, all the difficulties which have been started by the German critics, and the conclusions which they have drawn, cease to have any substantial existence. But we will examine a little more minutely the theory of the πρωτευαγγελιον, or the common document, from which the three first Evangelists are supposed to have borrowed. We allow, that the verbal agreement between these three writers is a singular phænomenon. If they merely coincided in the order of events, there would be nothing in such a coincidence but what we should expect: or if the verbal agreement existed only in the discourses of our Saviour, we might explain it upon the notion, that the same spirit brought to their recollection the same discourse, and that consequently they could only relate it in the words which were actually used by our Lord. But beside the objection (which we shall notice presently) that our Saviour did not speak Greek, and that the fact of the common inspiration of the Evangelists will not therefore explain their using the same Greek terms, it is demonstrable, that there are some remarkable verbal agreements between Matthew, Mark, and Luke, in passages which do not contain any parable or discourse, but a mere narrative of facts. These coincidences may be seen in the Harmonies of the New Testament, as well as in the elaborate treatises of Eichorn, Bertholdt, Hug, and other writers of the German school. In making these collections, the German critics have been indefatigable; and, as we observed above, for these results of their industry and research we hold ourselves greatly indebted *That St. Paul addressed Agrippa in Greek is evident from his saying to him, that the voice from heaven addressed him in the Hebrew tongue.Acts, xxvi. 14. to them. They have unquestionably succeeded in showing, that the three first Gospels contain such singular coincidences, not only of thought and style, but of whole sentences, which are word for word the same in all the three narratives, that if we suppose them to have been written at different times and places, we must have recourse to some theory to account for such an unparalleled agreement. Accident could not have produced it: and the warmest supporter of inspiration will not contend, that the Holy Spirit supplied the sacred writers with the syllables and letters which they used. One of the most obvious and natural hypotheses would seem to be, that the Gospels, which were composed first, were seen and partly copied by the persons who wrote later. Thus, if Matthew was the first to publish his Gospel, Mark extracted passages from it into his own; and Luke had the advantage of seeing and copying from both. There is little doubt that we should have recourse to this solution in the case of any ancient or modern writers, who, in giving the history of their times, were found to have whole pages or even whole sentences word for word the same. We should conceive, without feeling the least doubt or hesitation, that one of the writers must have transcribed the work of the other. Nor can we see, as it has appeared to some persons, that there is any danger in applying this hypothesis to the three Evangelists. It will be said, perhaps, that the separate inspiration of each writer must be given up, if we suppose the one to be indebted to the other. But we cannot see the necessity of this conclusion. Let us suppose the Evangelists to have written in the order mentioned above, and let us only add the assumption, (which indeed is no assumption at all,) that Mark was acquainted with the fact of Matthew having written under inspiration, and we would ask, why should Mark, who knew himself to be inspired by the same spirit, not make use of passages which he had probably learnt by heart, and which would naturally present themselves to him, when he was writing upon the same subject? That the instances, in which one Evangelist has not copied from the other, or in which after following his predecessor through several verses he suddenly leaves him, and gives rather a different account, that these cases present difficulties in the way of supposing, that Matthew's Gospel was seen by Mark, and Mark's by Luke, we readily allow; and we have only made the above remarks to show, that the belief of the three Evangelists being separately inspired is not necessarily shaken by the notion of the Gospel, which was first composed, being seen by those who wrote subsequently. The solution which has been most popular with the German divines, is that which was put forward by Le Clerc, but first brought into much notice by Michaelis and his learned translator; and which has given rise to almost as many theories as there are professional chairs in Germany. We allude to the notion, that documents containing short narratives of the Gospel History were in existence before the composition of any of the three first Gospels; and that the writers of the Gospels, having re course to such documents, transcribed the same passages. Hence we are told, that the agreement between all the three Evangelists in some particulars, and between only two of them in others, may easily be explained. We have no intention of calling up these several theories to pass, like Banquo's ghosts, before our readers: many of them have long been the companions of Tullus dives et Ancus, and we can only say, peace be to their manes! If we were to attack the latest theory which has been imported, we should only be doing what the author of it has done to all his predecessors; and perhaps nothing can be said more decisive against the notion of the common docuinent, than that all the divines and professors of Germany have been working for nearly half a century to produce some system, which shall solve all the phænomena, and they are still as wide of the mark as ever. The dragon's teeth were sown by Michaelis, and their progeny have been fighting ever since: we have yet to learn, when the Cadmean victory will be won. A point, which may truly be called preliminary in this question, has still been undecided: namely, whether the common document or documents, to which the three first Evangelists were so largely indebted, were written in Greek or Aramaic. Many of the German critics have decided for the latter: and in supporting their theory, they have given as great an instance of obtuseness, or rather we should say, of prejudice, as we can ever expect to meet with. They have decided, that Matthew, Mark and Luke, borrowed from some common source, because there are such remarkable verbal agreements between them; and yet these sagacious persons have not been aware, that for three writers to translate from a common document, and for all of them to render it into precisely the same words, is quite as extraor dinary, as for them to have used the same words, if each of them had written independently from their own memories: so that if this celebrated π por was written in Aramaic, the question of the verbal agreement between Matthew, Mark and Luke, who are to be looked upon only as translators, is just as far from being elucidated, as it was before the matter began to be discussed in Germany. It appears, that Eichorn and Bertholdt, who are undoubtedly to be placed iv рμxx, never saw this palpable inconsistency, which pervades their whole theory and lest our readers should think, that we have falsely represented this blindness, we give the following extract from Dr. Wait's preface, which, as we have already stated, is an epitome of Bertholdt. "Mark's Gospel cannot merely have been dictated by Peter, nor have been compiled from reminiscences of his discourses, because, excepting about twenty-four verses, it is analogous to the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, partly in words, partly in matter, and most frequently also in arrangement. Hence it must have been derived from the same source as the other two Gospels, viz. that paravaggerJOY, which Peter and the other Apostles possessed, as a doctrinal Archetypus. It would therefore naturally appear, that the Christians at Rome requesting Peter to communicate it to them by means of Mark, his interpreter and assistant, he delivered to him his examplar of the Aramwan preve, that he might edite and translate it into Greek."-p. xxx. If we understand this sentence rightly, it is argued, that Mark could not have written his Gospel independently of Matthew and Luke, because it agrees so closely with them; and yet we are to believe, that he translated the common document independently of their translations, and in many instances happened to If it be light upon precisely the same words. said, that he also saw their translations, then there is no need of calling in the πρωτευαγγελιον at all: we may say at once, that he saw the Gospels which were already in circulation; and the difficulty arising out of the verbal coincidences will be solved in a much less complicated way than in that proposed by Michaelis, or any other divine in Germany: Eichorn and Bertholdt have brought forward many fanciful instances, which demonstrate, as they imagine, that the three Evangelists were merely translators. Their pages are filled with mistakes and blunders made by the Evangelists, who sometimes could not read the document before them, or sometimes had a faulty copy; and hence they made use of a wrong Greek term to express the Aramaic original. In the case of Matthew, the Evangelist himself will probably be allowed to escape these imputations: for it is decided, that he wrote in Aramaic; and his translator, an obscure and ignorant person, made many mistakes in turning the expressions of Matthew into Greek. Dr. Wait's Preface will give many instances of these blunders; and at pp. xvii.-xix. in particular, there is a great collection of them, taken from Bertholdt. This mode of argument had been tried before by Michaelis, who conceived the Epistle to the Hebrews to be merely a translation; and he points out some mistakes which were made by the translator. Thus, he says, that "the expression punxaqwuera, (xii. 18.) is certainly a very extraordinary one: and I am wholly unable to give a satisfactory account of it, except on the supposition, that the Epistle was written in Hebrew. But on this supposition the cause of the inaccuracy may be easily assigned. Sinai, or the Mountain of Moses, is that, which is here opposed to Mount Sion, Now the expression, to the Mountain of Moses, is in Hebrew, on n. The word the translator misunderstood, and instead of reading it and taking it for a proper name, either read by mistake v palpatio, or pronounced by mistake palpatio. Hence, instead of rendering to the Mountain of Moses, he rendered to the tangible mountain."-(Vol. iv. p. 241.) Perhaps a more unfortunate criticism was never hazarded even in Germany. Mount Sinai was, we believe, never called the Mount of Moses, except in that particular page of Michaelis's work: and the word neuer evidently contains an allusion to the commandment given in Exod. xix. 12-24, that no person was to touch the mountain, while the Lord descended upon it. We give this as a specimen of the proofs, by which the three first Gospels are to be shown to be merely translations; and whoever will consult the instances collected by Dr. Wait out of Eichorn and Ber- We will now present our readers with some other specimens of Bertholdt's reasonings upon this subject. At p. iii. we are told, that he argued from the exact chronological harmony between the last fifteen chapters of Matthew and the Gospels of Mark and Luke, "that their agreement could not have been accidental, but must have originated in a relationship between their writings; i. e. he supposes them to have been derived from one and the same document." We had always conceived, before we had read this sentence, that one of the strongest evidences in favour of any writer, was his agreeing as to dates with some other contemporary author; nor did we ever imagine that this was a demonstration of the one having copied from the other: but it seems that in Germany these agreements are to cast a suspicion upon both writers, and to lead us to infer that neither of them could have composed an original work. At p. xxix. we are informed that the Gospel of Matthew, as we now have it, is not merely a translation, but an extremely faulty one: "the translator took the liberty of enlarging and altering many parts of the Aramean copy: he was a foreigner, and executed his task for foreign Hellenistic Christians, which he conceives to be established by ch. xi. 1. (iv Tai πόλεσιν αύτων,) whence he also deduces that he was not an Apostle." We have given this extract as showing Bertholdt's power in the capacity of a critic: and certainly if it may be inferred that the Greek writer of this Gospel was a foreigner, from the expression in ch. xi. 1, we may not despair of being able to prove any hypothesis. At p. xxviii. an argument is drawn for the supposed date of this Gospel, from the fact of Matthew not being named in the Epistle to the Galatians, nor in the Acts of the Apostles; from which it is inferred that he must have left Jerusalem before the year 65 or 66. A weaker argument could scarcely have been advanced, nor could it have been stated in more indefinite terms. That the Twelve Apostles, and consequently St. Matthew, are often mentioned in the Acts of the Apostles, must be evident to every one; the meaning, therefore, of this loose and wretched argument probably is, that it does not appear from the Acts that Matthew was at Jerusalem at the time of the supposed date of the Epistle to the Galatians. We do not dwell now upon the uncertainty of the date of this Epistle, which has been discussed in a former Number, but we merely mention that at the council held at Jerusalem, (Acts xv. 6,) all the Apostles appear to have been present, at least we have no right to except St. Matthew; and when it is said in Acts xxi. 17, that St. Paul was received at Jerusalem by the brethren, it is by no means improbable that we are to understand this expression of the Apostles, and of St. Matthew among the rest. Our readers may form a farther notion of Bertholdt's critical powers, when they find him presuming, at p. xxxi., that St. Peter was twice at Rome, and that his first visit was in the reign of Claudius. He refers us, in the note, 2 B2 |