THE FOURFOLD GOSPEL.
The Fourfold Gospel. Section I.: Introduction. By Edwin A. Abbott. (Cambridge University Press. 2s. 6d. net.)—Dr.
Abbott has just published the tenth part of a great projected whole book. This last treatise, he tells us, although it is not a harmony of the Gospels, may be best explained by an allusion to the most ancient of such harmonies, that of Tatian. Dr. Abbott deals in this last book " only with the things that are in. some sense attested 'through four' (evangelists). Most minutely he discusses this fourfold tradition, and the patient reader is apt to lose his attention in the multitude of detail. Dr. Abbott's view of the authorship of the fourth Gospel is that it was written down by a young disciple when "the disciple whom Jesus loved" was a very old man. His studies, Dr. Abbott tells us, have slightly altered his point of view :—
" Comparing the present volume with my articles on the Gospels in the Encyclopaedia Biblica (1901) and in the Encyclopaedia Britannia& (1880) and with the earliest parts of Diatessarica, I find that the Fourth Gospel, in spite of its poetic nature, is closer to history than I had supposed. The study of it, and especially of those passages where it intervenes to explain expressions in Mark altered or omitted by Luke, appears to me to throw new light on the words, acts, and purposes of Christ, and to give increased weight to His claims on our faith and worship,"
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