defined legends which have proceeded from the zeal of the second Christian generation.[1] The Gospel of Mark is much firmer, more precise, containing fewer subsequent additions. He is the one of the three synoptics who has remained the most primitive, the most original, the one to whom the fewest after-elements have been added. In Mark, the facts are related with a clearness for which we seek in vain amongst the other evangelists. He likes to report certain words of Jesus in Syro-Chaldean.[2] He is full of minute observations, coming doubtless from an eye-witness. There is nothing to prevent our agreeing with Papias in regarding this eye-witness, who evidently had followed Jesus, who had loved him and observed him very closely, and who had preserved a lively image of him, as the apostle Peter himself.
[Footnote 1: Chaps. i., ii., especially. See also chap. xxvii. 3, 19, 51, 53, 60, xxviii. 2, and following, in comparing Mark.]
[Footnote 2: Chap. v. 41, vii. 34, xv. 24. Matthew only presents this peculiarity once (chap. xxvii. 46).]
As to the work of Luke, its historical value is sensibly weaker. It is a document which comes to us second-hand. The narrative is more mature. The words of Jesus are there, more deliberate, more sententious. Some sentences are distorted and exaggerated.[1] Writing outside of Palestine, and certainly after the siege of Jerusalem,[2] the author indicates the places with less exactitude than the other two synoptics; he has an erroneous idea of the temple, which he represents as an oratory where people went to pay their devotions.[3] He subdues some details in order to make the different narratives agree;[4] he softens the passages which had become embarrassing on account of a more exalted idea of the divinity of Christ;[5] he exaggerates the marvellous;[6] commits errors in chronology;[7] omits Hebraistic comments;[8] quotes no word of Jesus in this language, and gives to all the localities their Greek names. We feel we have to do with a compiler—with a man who has not himself seen the witnesses, but who labors at the texts and wrests their sense to make them agree. Luke had probably under his eyes the biographical collection of Mark, and the Logia of Matthew. But he treats them with much freedom; sometimes he fuses two anecdotes or two parables in one;[9] sometimes he divides one in order to make two.[10] He interprets the documents according to his own idea; he has not the absolute impassibility of Matthew and Mark. We might affirm certain things of his individual tastes and tendencies; he is a very exact devotee;[11] he insists that Jesus had performed all the Jewish rites,[12] he is a warm Ebionite and democrat, that is to say, much opposed to property, and persuaded that the triumph of the poor is approaching;[13] he likes especially all the anecdotes showing prominently the conversion of sinners—the exaltation of the humble;[14] he often modifies the ancient traditions in order to give them this meaning;[15] he admits into his first pages the legends about the infancy of Jesus, related with the long amplifications, the spiritual songs, and the conventional proceedings which form the essential features of the Apocryphal Gospels. Finally, he has in the narrative of the last hours of Jesus some circumstances full of tender feeling, and certain words of Jesus of delightful beauty,[16] which are not found in more authentic accounts, and in which we detect the presence of legend. Luke probably borrowed them from a more recent collection, in which the principal aim was to excite sentiments of piety.
[Footnote 1: Chap. xiv. 26. The rules of the apostolate (chap. x.) have there a peculiar character of exaltation.]
[Footnote 2: Chap. xix. 41, 43, 44, xxi. 9, 20, xxiii. 29.]
[Footnote 3: Chap. ii. 37, xviii. 10, and following, xxiv. 53.]
[Footnote 4: For example, chap. iv. 16.]
[Footnote 5: Chap. iii. 23. He omits Matt. xxiv. 36.]
[Footnote 6: Chap. iv. 14, xxii. 43, 44.]
[Footnote 7: For example, in that which concerns Quirinius, Lysanias,
Theudas.]
[Footnote 8: Compare Luke i. 31 with Matt. i. 21.]
[Footnote 9: For example, chap. xix. 12–27.]
[Footnote 10: Thus, of the repast at Bethany he gives two narratives, chap. vii. 36–48, and x. 38–42.]
[Footnote 11: Chap. xxiii. 56.]
[Footnote 12: Chap. ii. 21, 22, 39, 41, 42. This is an Ebionitish feature. Cf. Philosophumena VII. vi. 34.]
[Footnote 13: The parable of the rich man and Lazarus. Compare chap. vi. 20, and following, 24, and following, xii. 13, and following, xvi. entirely, xxii. 35. Acts ii. 44, 45, v. 1, and following.]
[Footnote 14: The woman who anoints his feet, Zaccheus, the penitent thief, the parable of the Pharisee and the publican, and the prodigal son.]
[Footnote 15: For example, Mary of Bethany is represented by him as a sinner who becomes converted.]
[Footnote 16: Jesus weeping over Jerusalem, the bloody sweat, the meeting of the holy women, the penitent thief, &c. The speech to the women of Jerusalem (xxiii. 28, 29) could scarcely have been conceived except after the siege of the year 70.]
A great reserve was naturally enforced in presence of a document of this nature. It would have been as uncritical to neglect it as to employ it without discernment. Luke has had under his eyes originals which we no longer possess. He is less an evangelist than a biographer of Jesus, a "harmonizer," a corrector after the manner of Marcion and Tatian. But he is a biographer of the first century, a divine artist, who, independently of the information which he has drawn from more ancient sources, shows us the character of the Founder with a happiness of treatment, with a uniform inspiration, and a distinctness which the other two synoptics do not possess. In the perusal of his Gospel there is the greatest charm; for to the incomparable beauty of the foundation, common to them all, he adds a degree of skill in composition which singularly augments the effect of the portrait, without seriously injuring its truthfulness.
On the whole, we may say that the synoptical compilation has passed through three stages: First, the original documentary state ([Greek: logia] of Matthew, [Greek: lechthenta ê prachthenta] of Mark), primary compilations which no longer exist; second, the state of simple mixture, in which the original documents are amalgamated without any effort at composition, without there appearing any personal bias of the authors (the existing Gospels of Matthew and Mark); third, the state of combination or of intentional and deliberate compiling, in which we are sensible of an attempt to reconcile the different versions (Gospel of Luke). The Gospel of John, as we have said, forms a composition of another orders and is entirely distinct.
It will be remarked that I have made no use of the Apocryphal Gospels. These compositions ought not in any manner to be put upon the same footing as the canonical Gospels. They are insipid and puerile amplifications, having the canonical Gospels for their basis, and adding nothing thereto of any value. On the other hand, I have been very attentive to collect the shreds preserved by the Fathers of the Church, of the ancient Gospels which formerly existed parallel with the canonical Gospels, and which are now lost—such as the Gospel according to the Hebrews, the Gospel according to the Egyptians, the Gospels styled those of Justin, Marcion, and Tatian. The first two are principally important because they were written in Aramean, like the Logia of Matthew, and appear to constitute one version of the Gospel of this apostle, and because they were the Gospel of the Ebionim—that is, of those small Christian sects of Batanea who preserved the use of Syro-Chaldean, and who appear in some respects to have followed the course marked out by Jesus. But it must be confessed that in the state in which they have come to us, these Gospels are inferior, as critical authorities, to the compilation of Matthew's Gospel which we now possess.
It will now be seen, I think, what kind of historical value I attribute to the Gospels. They are neither biographies after the manner of Suetonius, nor fictitious legends in the style of Philostratus; they are legendary biographies. I should willingly compare them with the Legends of the Saints, the Lives of Plotinus, Proclus, Isidore, and other writings of the same kind, in which historical truth and the desire to present models of virtue are combined in various degrees. Inexactitude, which is one of the features of all popular compositions, is there particularly felt. Let us suppose that ten or twelve years ago three or four old soldiers of the Empire had each undertaken to write the life of Napoleon from memory. It is clear that their narratives would contain numerous errors, and great discordances. One of them would