A BOOK FOR STUDENTS AND CLERGY.* NOTWITHSTANDING Oxford declarations and
Lambeth pastorals we cannot but believe that the late decision of the Privy Council will greatly forward the interests of Biblical criticism among the English clergy. That judicious decision, by proclaiming that cer-
* 1. Wisserrechaftliche Kritik der Evangelischen Gesehichte. tin Kompeudium fUr Geistliche tied Studirende. Von J. H. Ebrard, Doctor mid Ordeutl. Prof. der Theologie zu Erlangen. Erlangen, MO.
2. The Gospel History. By Dr. J. H. Ebrard. Translated by James Martin, B.A., Nottingham. Revised and edited by Alex. B. Bruce, Cardross. Edinburgh : T. and T. Clark, 1563.+
1+ Row far Mr. Bruce "improved the occasion" when Mr. Martin's proofs were sent to him to edit and revise, we have no means of knowing, but by their united efforts editor and translator have succeeded in producing a readable and respectable f.xanslation.)
tam n grave questions, instead of being authoritatively and finally answered by the Church, are in reality left open, has, so to speak, changed the clerical attitude in regard to these subjects. As far as legal obligation is concerned, the clerical student is eman- cipated from the subtle temptation which would lead him to read himself into foregone conclusions. He may now "prove all things" pertaining to the history, character, and intrinsic claims of the canonical Scriptures. The law, as now expounded, assumes on the part of all bishops, priests, and deacons, a cordial acceptance of the transcendent Revelation which was given to the world in the " Word made flesh ;" but the relation of the written records to that living and eternal Word it does not attempt to define. It rather says :—" Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind, and let no man be his brother's judge. Let not him who cannot find anywhere in the New Testament a hint of the modern notion of inspiration despise him who substitutes for an infallible church the dogma of an infallible book, and let not the literalist call that brother latitudinarian who affirms that a filial faith does not necessarily involve an acquiescence in the popular estimate of certain writings."
To those students or younger clergy who really want an introduction to the results of German criticism, as applied to the New Testament, we can recommend, as being in the main work- manlike and reliable, the Gospel History of Ebrard. We by no means rank the author among Germany's foremost names, nor do we regard him as a very profound thinker. That rare intuition which surprises you by the fresh light it throws into the inner re- cesses of consciousness, which seems at once to give sensitiveness to thought and form to feeling, and which is so eminently charac- teristic of Schleiermacher, and in less measure of Dr. Ebrard's predecessor in Erlangen — Olshausen —hardly belongs to him. As an expositor he strikes us as hard and unimaginative, crushing often the rich wine out of a particular passage, and giving you only the mere husk instead. We are sorry indeed to be obliged to say that the materialism of the style of interpretation which our author indulges in when speaking of the descent of the Spirit at the Baptism of Christ, and (to take but two other instances) when he treats of the second coming of our Lord and of man's resurrection, is only worthy of Dr. Cumming. But Ebrard is an accomplished, if not a great scholar. He is thoroughly master of the literature of theological criticism. He is a very skilful dialectician, and if at times he hits very hard, becoming almost savage, in dealing with certain passages of Strauss and the superficial Bruno Bauer, yet he is always candid, never attempting to combat an assertion without producing it in the original words of his antagonist.
It is, however, by his Methodology that Ebrard will hold his place among the abler critics of the New Testament. His book, con- sisting in the original of nearly a thousand closely printed large octavo pages, including no end of elaborate foot-notes, is divided into two parts. The first is devoted to the consideration of "The Historical Materials of the Evangelical Narratives," the second embraces what he calls" The Criticism of the Writings." It is the special merit of Ebrard that he keeps well distinguished from each other the two questions—first, of the credibility of the history, and second, of the authorship or authenticity of the respective histo- ries. In regard to the latter, the treatment may be considered as tolerably exhaustive ; and Ebrard's results are those of sobriety and verisimilitude when compared with the capricious hypotheses of Strauss, Weisse, Gfrörer, B. Bauer, and the " Tiibingen School," concerning the origin and date of composition of the several Gospels. Ebrard does not impose on himself or seek to impose on his readers by a pretended demonstration ; but he shows that there is a very strong probability that the three synoptical nairatives, the works respectively of the authors to whom tradition assigns them, were given to the world before A.D. 70. All the "data," again, relating to John's Gospel are minutely discussed by Ebrard. His vindication of its genuine- ness appears to us quite conclusive. But if some of his readers should feel dissatisfied, would any of the following hypotheses be more acceptable ?—l. All the Gospels mythical and spuri- ous (Strauss), the myths, as Ebrard suggests, springing up unknown to the Apostles, perhaps in Gadara, where the devils were drowned. 2. The synoptical Christ true, John's a phantasm, and John's sketches written down merely for his own use, and in which he speaks half in his own person and half in that of his Master, found among his papers after his death by the Epbesian presbytery, and published and attested by them as a veritable Gospel !—Weisse. 3. John's Christ true, the synoptical a popular corruption.—Gfrtirer. 4. Eighteen centuries ago it came to pass that nothing came to pass, or something happened, but we cannot tell what,—the book which goes by the name of Mark—an aimless account of what is now supposed to be real history, giving rise to Luke while a third writer, equally unaware with his two predecessors that he was " evolving " history "from his own internal consciousness," ori- ginated Matthew.—B. Bauer. 5. All the four Gospels contro- versial pamphlets of the second century.—Tiihingen (pp. 31-611- 2 ; E. Tr. 484).
Here clearly is an " embarrassment " of hypothetical riches, and we have by no means exhausted the catalogue ; but perhaps we have the reader's patience, and we turn willingly to Ebrard's summing up of his researches touching the authenticity of the fourth Gospel :—
"A Gospel which had met with a reception so general by the middle of the second century that even heretics were obliged to expound it in harmony with their own views, and on which Heracleon the heretic had written a commentary by the end of the century. . . . A Gospel containing in the appendix an assur- ance that it was written by John, which assurance the writer was able to give in the name of his contemporaries or colleagues.
. . A Gospel, apart from which certain passages of Ignatius are unintelligible, written by the author of an Epistle which is quoted by Polycarp and Papias, referred to unquestionably in a fragment of Justin,—a Gospel in reference to which we have the testimony of the pupil of Polycarp that it WAS written by the teacher of the latter, and to which he ascribes a co-ordinate authority with the three other Gospels,—a Gospel which the author of a work attributed to John by an unanimous tradition evidently affirms that he wrote (for thus Ebrard interprets Rev. i. 1, 2) ought certainly to be accepted as authentic. At all events, there is no profane writing whose authenticity is attested by half so many witnesses" (875, E. T. 581). We cannot but think that Ebrard's Apocalyptic notions have forced on him the curious anticlimax in the foregoing sentence. For ourselves, indeed, there exist no definitive grounds against recognizing St. John as the author of the Apocalypse. Surely the inexorable love of the Father Almighty which burns as a consuming fire against all evil is not synonymous with weak good nature ; and sin throws its dismal shadow darkening down into "the wrath of God" in the Gospel and Epistle, as well as in the Book of Revelation. Nor are the difficulties arising from the varying phraseology of the Gospel and the Apocalypse quite insuperable. But as the latter' bears evidence, and, as we think, unmistakeably, of having been written before the fall of Jerusalem—although the old traditions assign to it a much later date—to appeal to one of its affirma- tions as a proof of the pre-existence of the Gospel creates per- plexities out of which we can detect no rational means of egress. The threads of evidence, however, by means of which the Apocalypse and the fourth Gospel seem both to be equally associated with the name of St. John admit of disentangle- ment, and if after the process a doubt remains as to whether John the Presbyter or John the Apostle was the writer of the grand visionary prophecy, all reasons,—those of most careful chronology, of intense depth of spiritual feeling, and of sublime and withal such simple Christology—the spontaneous reflex of all-reverent converse with that incarnate love that had been "seen and handled,"—compel us to the conclusion that the Gospel was and could only have been written by him whom all ages of the Church have honoured as the "beloved disciple."
In his "Introduction" Ebrard, as Neander and others had done before him, speaks of the self-delusion which is at work when one professes to be without a " prepossession " (Voranssetzung). Each critic, he thinks, is more or less consciously obliged to look at all phenomena which claim to be of a generically higher order than those we term " natural " under the light of his theistic or pantheistic preconceptions. Nature is to us either the plastic organism through which the creating will can flash hints of spiritual power, or it is a mere process of cause and effect, which grinds on its deaf, unheeding way, impassive, imperturb- able. Clearly it is not merely the evidence of certain alleged facts that will be affected by the medium which every theory forms for the holder of it. But Dr. Ebrard, as it seems to us, makes use of a leaping-pole instead of logical stepping-stones, when, after speaking of the liberating tendency of a genuine religious predisposition, he assigns to this bias "an intuitive per- suasion of the divine character of the Biblical books." No doubt, as Tertullian says, when speaking of the Book of Enoch, "We have warrant enough for believing that every writing which is fitted for edification is inspired by God"—a very satis- factory interpretation, by the way, of that passage on which bibliolators lay so much stress ; but surely the faith which seeks
to surrender itself absolutely to the truth and love revealed in Christ, may belong quite as much to him who doubts as to him who holds the "divine character" of the genealogies of Matthew and Luke. Just in proportion, we believe, to the depth of a man's faith in the Unseen will there be a readiness indeed to yield him- .self to all that comes with the intrinsic credentials of a heavenly origin, but not less a very righteous care lest he should be found ascribing to the source of all light that which, after all, may only be "of the earth, earthy."
However, we can only enter our protest against this rather rhetorical mode of confounding a subject of critical inquiry with the living object of faith ; and indeed Dr. Ebrard himself, by waiving in the present volume the question of inspiration, by admitting, as in the instance of the "Last Supper," error or Misapprehension on the part of three of the Evangelists, seems at least to allow that the thesis which the New Testament sup- plies first of all to the critic is not the divine character of certain books, but the credibility of a history and the trustworthiness of its historians. For the thorough discussion of this thesis our readers now know how much of valuable help they will find in the pages of Ebrard.
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