PROFESSOR WEISS ON THE LIFE OF CHRIST.* PROI ESSOR WEISS'S
first volume consists of two books, entitled respectively "The Sources," in which the origin and the mutual relations of the Four Gospels are discussed ; and "The Prepara- tion," dealing with the life of Christ as far as the Wedding Feast in Cana of Galilee. The style is somewhat cumbrous, and, whether from the fault of the author or of the translator we know no wanting in lucidity. The reader is apt, in spite of a close attention, to lose the drift of the argument, and would be thankful for a more precise enunciation of it. Still, he cannot fail to recognise a work of great critical acumen, the result of a most careful and complete study, and which, while conceived in a reverent spirit, is certainly not wanting in boldness.
For the details of the argument in the first book, Professor Weiss refers us to earlier publications from his pen, in which that argument is fully set out. We must for this reason, and because any complete discussion of the subject would transcend any available space, content ourselves with indicating the conclusions at which he has arrived. These, indeed, are highly interesting, not only for the intrinsic value which any open- minded student of the New Testament will be ready to concede to them, hut for their revelation of the gulf—for it is nothing less—that divides the stand-points of German and of English orthodoxy. The English divine is commonly disposed to accept without question the simple traditionary account of the author- ship of the Gospels. The First, for instance, he attributes without hesitation to the Apostle whose name it bears, and probably dismisses as a delusion the idea of a Hebrew or Aramaic original. Such a reader will be startled by the freedom with which Pro- fessor Weiss thinks on this subject. Of the existence of the Aramaic original he has no doubt whatever, and be sees his way to definitely fixing the date of its appearance to the year 67, or, at least, to the latter half of what, by a numeration which we do not understand, he calls the "sixth decade." But this document is, he thinks, irrecoverably lost, the Matthew Gospel that we have not even being a translation. On the contrary, he sees plain proof that the writer was not even a Palestinian Jew ; that he was learned, indeed, and acquainted with the Hebrew original of the Old Testament, but inaccurate in Palestinian geography, and generally occupying the stand- point both in what he inserts and in what he omits of a Jew of the Dispersion. He is supposed to have had in his hands the Gospel of St. Mark, this, again, having been founded partly on the recollections of St. Peter, communicated to his favourite disciple, and partly on a Greek translation of the original Matthew, which it is not difficult to believe may have reached Rome (where the Mark Gospel is supposed to have been written) somewhere about the year 69. Out of this Mark Gospel, then, the entire contents of which, with the perfectly insignificant exception of a few unimportant fragments, have been transferred to our First Gospel," and out of the original Matthew, which was also in the writer's hands, the Matthew that we have was constructed. The theory of this construction is thus sum- marised :—" The form of the oldest Apostolic document [the .Aramaic Matthew], which was really only a collection of a material, was no longer adequate for the later period. A com- plete representation of the life of Jesus was required, and to the Evangelist, who was not himself an eye-witness of the life • of Jesus, nothing presented itself as being such but the oldest attempt in this direction, as it is given to us by the Mark docu- ment. The latter is laid by him at the foundation, and affords the historical background for his delineation, and more espe- cially there is borrowed from it the whole history of the Passion. Within the framework thus granted, be tries to place the material derived from the Apostolic source, partly introducing particular passages into suitable places to supplement what is there already, partly inserting them in larger masses."
To St. Luke's Gospel Professor Weiss attributes a very similar origin. He is quite certain that "he was not acquainted with our canonical Matthew ;" but it is equally clear to him that he had the Mark document in his bands, and also the original
• Tha DA f Ch.ibt. By Dr. Bernliard Weis.. Translated by John Walter Hope, M.A. Vol. I. Edinburgh: D. Douglas. 1883,
Matthew, which, indeed, a writer so careful as he describes him- self to have been in collecting authentic materials could not have overlooked. What remains unaccounted for by these two sources we must refer to the other documents which may be supposed to have lain before him, the works of the "many who had attempted to set in order," as the Preface has it, the facts of the Master's life.
It is when we come to the Fourth Gospel that we find the most striking part of Professor Weiss's work. He turns the tables most completely on the impugners of this document. In his view, it is the only really Apostolic Gospel of the Four, and so far as it differs from them, must be placed above them in point
of authority. He thinks,— "That in almost every place where actual differences between John and the Synoptists fall to be dealt with, the representation of the first has every historical probability in its favour ; that in the most striking differences, such as the chronological extent of the publics activity of Jesus, the repeated visits to the feasts, the early date of the Last Supper, undesigned indications in the Synoptic tradition itself, establish the statements of John ; that, finally, it is not seldom through the adjustments and the peculiar contributions of this Gospel that the events related by the older Gospels, and their connection with each other, first become intelligible to us."
It does not need proof that the Christ of the Fourth Gospel is the Christ of Christian orthodoxy ; and it certainly strengthens indefinitely the position of this orthodoxy, if it can be estab- lished that this picture is the one, and the only one, which comes to us attested by the signature, so to speak, of one who drew from the original. Nor is this inconsistent with the ad- mission that the picture was, if the expression may be allowed, idealised. "It is certain," says our author, "that the endeavour to find in Jesus' own words points of connection for his own more advanced knowledge of Christ's person, and apprehension of the salvation which he had found in them, caused the Evan- gelist frequently to render them with meanings and elucidations which far surpassed their original scope." Something of a veil must have been drawn over the Divine Personality, a veil which was afterwards removed ; and the Apostles may well have sometimes written in the light of the later rather than of the earlier knowledge.
It will now be seen that the difference spoken of earlier in this notice between German and English orthodoxy does not, after all, touch the bases of belief. Verbal inspiration and the polemics which uses for its weapons isolated texts, indeed, disappear ; but the foundations of faith are firmly laid, all the more firmly, we may be permitted to say, because no longer encumbered. And it is in the spirit of convinced belief that Professor Weiss proceeds to deal with the second part of his subject—the actual life of Christ. Ho demands in an intro- ductory letter, addressed to Professor Voigt, of Leipsic, that judgment on the question whether he" has succeeded in sketch- ing a really life-like picture of the greatest drama the history of the worldhas seen," should be suspended till the publication of his second volume. What we have in the portion here presented to us makes us look forward with much interest to what is to come. We can form a general idea of the lines which it will follow, and feel sure that it will be a valuable contribution to Christology. The specially difficult subject of the correlation of the divine and human natures in the Person of the Saviour, a subject in dealing with which the popular theology is very apt to lapse into sheer monophysitism, seems likely, from what we see, to be treated in a satisfactory way. We may refer our readers to pp. 330-6, where a distinction of great value is drawn between divine omniscience and omnipotence, and the "superior know- ledge and supernatural power of operation" bestowed upon Christ as "necessary for the execution of his calling." In this bestowal Professor Weiss sees the chief significance of the descent of the Spirit (John i., 32), though he also regards it as symbolising the burial of Christ's former life, and the emerging to one that was new, and differed from the old, "not by reason of its sinlessness, but only by its being dedicated from that time forward to his great divine calling !" Messrs. Clark deserve the thanks of all students of theology for introducing to them this book, though, indeed, it is but one out of a great array of valuable works which they have continued to send out for now nearly forty years.
Previous page
