THE SYNOPTIC PROBLEM.

The criticisms I have hitherto made are not offered as more than modest doubts, presented as subjects for inquiry by students who shall have qualified themselves to speak as experts; for I am well aware that one who has no such pretensions is liable to make too rigorous demands for proof, and to reject conclusions which one familiar with the subject can see to be true, although he may not be able to state his reasons for holding them in such a way as to satisfy an outsider of their logical cogency. But I feel myself on firmer ground when I express my opinion that it is an obvious and very serious fault in WH's work that neither of them appears to have taken any interest in the question of the origin of the Synoptic Gospels; that is to say, in inquiries whether the narratives of the three have any common basis, oral or written. And yet the decisions we come to on such points as these must materially affect our conclusions as to what can properly claim a place in the New Testament text.

In whatever points Burgon differs from Westcott and Hort, they all agree in this, that the critic's business is to go back to the apostolic autographs. The assumption common to them all, for example, is that the first Gospel was originally written by St. Matthew's own hand, or by that of his amanuensis; and therefore that there can be in no case more than one reading which can claim to be original; any changes that have since taken place must be due to transcribers' alterations, conscious or unconscious. Consequently, though there are some of the Western additions to the Alexandrian Gospel text which Hort is willing to recognize as embodiments of ancient and perhaps true tradition, he pronounces them (p. 195) to be quite extraneous to the Gospels " considered as individual writings of individual authors." I shall presently return to the question whether the value of the Gospels to us is that they contain the individual words of an individual author, of whom apart from his work in some cases we know scarcely anything. For example, do we value the second Gospel because it contains the actual words of St. Mark; or would its value be less if it could be proved that it was written, not by Mark, but by some other of the Apostles' disciples? Is it not rather the case that we honour St. Mark because he was the author of a work which was recognized by the Churches which the Apostles founded as containing a specially authentic record of our Lord's early life and was publicly read as such in weekly meetings of Churches ever since the time when eyewitnesses of the events were alive?

But, postponing this question, I wish to know whether WH claim for their own work that it gives " the individual words of the individual author." I can understand such a claim in the case of St. Paul's Epistles, for then we have every reason to think that there is but a unique original to which we desire to get back. On this account I consider that one who desires to study New Testament criticism would do well to commence his training by studying the text of St. Paul's Epistles. The third and fourth Gospels have strong traces of the individuality of their authors, and therefore the only doubt as to the uniqueness of their original arises from the possibility that the authors may have published more editions of their work than one. But the second Gospel, and still more the first, give us the impression of being works rather of a compiler than of an original writer. I ask then, Can WH be confident that the first Gospel, as they edit it, presents us with the individual words of St. Matthew? Are we completely to set aside the tradition that the Gospel was originally written in Aramaic? Are the individual words which we try to recover those of St. Matthew himself or of his translator, or perhaps we should rather say of his editor, because our Greek St. Matthew has many marks of not being a mere translation, however true it may be that it was based on an Aramaic original? And were there more editors than one? Is there any truth in German speculations about a deutero-Matthasus and a trito-Matthaeus? Surely it is a very vital question whether the individual words that we seek are those of the Apostle Matthew or of an unknown subsequent editor.

Hort had some misgivings on this point, for (p. 282) he specifies a few passages " in which it is difficult to believe that all the words as they stand have apostolic authority." And in the only passage that I know where Hort exhibits consciousness of the Synoptic problem (Appendix, p. 22) he speaks of " the genuine text of the extant form of Matthew." Surely if the " extant form " of St. Matthew were not necessarily the same as the original St. Matthew if the work suffered growth or alteration after the time of its first publication, such growth may easily have been antecedent to the authority on which Hort relies. Giving to the common parent of B and א as high antiquity as is claimed for it, still it will be distant by more than a century from the original autographs, and the attempts to recover the text of MSS. which came to Alexandria in the second century may be but an elaborate locking of the stable door after the horse has been stolen.

If changes took place in the text previous to the origin of the parent of B, they are likely to have been of a different kind from those that occurred later on. One example is worth being discussed at length. Hort regards it as a proof of the modernness of the Syrian text that it is apt to assimilate one Gospel to another. Now it is certainly true that in the case of a transcriber familiar with all our Gospels, even if he did not intentionally alter the text before him, in order, as he imagined, to improve it by bringing it into conformity with another Gospel, it would be a very natural error that he should sometimes unconsciously substitute for the words of the Gospel he was copying, better remembered words from the parallel passage of another. At the end of the second century, when first we have clear external evidence as to the circulation of our Gospels, all our four are found to be known and venerated all over the Christian world. But in the earliest days of our religion we may well believe that each of the Synoptic Gospels was written for men who had no other; that each had at first but a local circulation, written in a little papyrus book by itself. In those days the transcriber of a single Gospel would be under no temptation to harmonize it into conformity with another; but, on the contrary, having no acquaintance with the story as told elsewhere, he might, by introducing errors of his own, cause a dissimilarity which had not previously existed. Thus it might happen that if a story had been originally told in identical words in two Gospels, these might in the process of transcription come to vary, and later transcribers who reduced them to uniformity may have only corrected an error of previous copyists.

Thus our decision on the Synoptic question must affect our decisions on textual criticism. If the same event is related by two Evangelists, then if we regard them as quite independent writers a diversity in their narratives is to be expected, and a complete identity would provoke suspicion that the text of one or other had been tampered with. But if we believe that the two drew their story from a common source, then identity of narrative would be perfectly natural; and it is diversity that raises doubt whether the text has been accurately preserved.

When Hort speaks of the tendency of the Syrian text to assimilation of the Gospels, he probably had one notable case specially in his mind the story of the rich young man (Matt. xix. 16; Mark x. 17; Luke xviii. 18). According to the Received Text, all the Gospels tell the story the same way: the young man addresses our Lord as "Good Master," and receives the reply, " Why callest thou Me good? there is none good but One, that is, God." But according to א B the question, as the story is told by St. Matthew, is, " Master, what good thing shall I do? " And the answer is, " Why askest thou Me concerning ' the good '? there is One that is good." This reading is confirmed by Origen, who notes that Matthew's version of the story is different from that of the other Evangelists; and the reading was consequently adopted by Eusebius, and after him by Jerome. The reading is also that of D, and we need not here raise the question whether the reason is that D contains an Alexandrian text with separable Western additions,¹ because the early Latin translations agree in the main with this variation.

WH have, therefore, an irresistible case on behalf of the reading which has the unanimous support of the earliest witnesses, coming to us through two independent channels. It is true that the story is referred to by several authorities earlier than Origen, who all seem to have known it in a form substantially the same as the Received Text, and not one of whom appears to be acquainted with the reading, τί με ἐρωτᾷς περὶ τοῦ ἀγαθοῦ; No doubt it may be said that they were referring to St. Luke or St. Mark, and not to St. Matthew; yet some of these authorities are such as we should have expected to be better acquainted with the first than with the other Gospels; and it is odd that they should not mention the variation of reading. However, since A and the other " Syrian " authorities agree in assimilating St. Matthew's story to that told by the other Synoptics, WH's assertion appears to be well confirmed, that a tendency to such assimilation is a feature of the Syrian revision.

But the case presents a different aspect if we try to go behind the MS. which was the parent of א B, and doubtless of other descendants. It is quite plain that it is the same occurrence which is related by all three Synoptics, and the question how the story is related by St. Matthew is not so important as the question, What were the words which our Lord really spoke? whether did He say, τί με λέγεις ἀγαθόν; or τί με ἐρωτᾷς περὶ τοῦ ἀγαθοῦ; Now we have here exactly the same question as that ruled by Hort, p. 54, his decision being in perfect agreement with that made by Scrivener.

Suppose we have an original O, transmitted to us through two channels, x and Y. Say that the descendants of X are a, b, c, and of Y are d, e; then if in some particular case some of the descendants of X, say c, separate themselves from their usual allies, a, b, and join themselves to d, e. we cannot satisfactorily account for the unnatural alliance, except by acknowledging c as that which correctly transmits the true reading of X; a and b having met with corruption from some other quarter. In the present case the story has come through three channels Matthew, Mark, and Luke; there is no dispute as to the testimony of Mark and Luke, and with them agree the vast majority of the extant MSS. of St. Matthew. If therefore we accept Hort's ruling on p. 54 just cited, we must set aside the dissentient MSS. of St. Matthew, and accept Luke's version, not only as that which correctly reports our Lord's words, but also as that which must have been found in the original text of St. Matthew.

Reserving the discussion of the latter point, I think we cannot hesitate' to pronounce on transcriptional grounds that Luke's version is that which most correctly represents our Lord's words; for there is no reason why, if St. Matthew's version had been the original, it should have been altered into the other form, whereas there was an obvious reason why believers in our Lord's divinity should have been startled by the question, "Why callest thou Me good? " if at least they put on it the first-sight interpretation and regarded it as equivalent to, "You ought not to call Me good."

In respect of intrinsic probability St. Luke's version has manifest superiority over that of the Alexandrian St. Matthew. In the former a quite natural question receives a perfectly appropriate answer. In the latter, not to say that the question " What shall I do? " is more natural than " What good thing shall I do? " (a form which seems devised to give occasion for the answer about " the good "), it does not seem a fair answer to assume that the young man wanted information περὶ τοῦ ἀγαθοῦ, when it was clearly different information that he wanted. Again, the answer that there is only One (vis. God) who can properly be called good, is appropriate if intended to exclude the ascription of that attribute to any person, but does not convey the meaning that it must not be ascribed to any thing or any action—a doctrine inconsistent with our Lord's own practice (Luke xviii. 15; Matt. vii. 11; Luke xi. 13; Matt, xii. 35; Luke vi. 45). On the whole, as I cannot doubt that the second and third Evangelists give the true report of the incident we are discussing, I find it impossible to believe that the Apostle Matthew gave a different one, and therefore I see only two explanations of the present state of the text.

The first is that suggested by Hort's canon already cited—viz. that an alteration was made in the MSS. of St. Matthew, which had been originally in unison with the other two Synoptics. It evidently must have been made very early that is to say, while the Gospels were in separate circulation; for whatever reasons there were for making a change in St. Matthew's text would have applied equally to the other Gospels, if he who made the change had been in possession of them. A corruption introduced so early might easily obtain the excessive circulation that this one did.

It must be remarked also that the majority of the witnesses already cited as favouring the altered reading exhibit signs of conflation. In the true text of each of the versions of the story, the word " good " only occurs once in the question; either, " Good Master," answered by, " Why callest thou Me good? " or else, " Master, what good thing? " answered by, " Why askest thou Me concerning goodness? " When the latter version is presented, with also the address " Good Master," we can see that the scribe was then in possession of both forms of the story. Yet the authorities for " Good Master " are so ancient and so numerous—Origen is one of them that there was good ground for Burgon's sarcastic comment on the marginal note in the Revised New Testament, " Some ancient authorities read ' Good Master ' ": " I should like to know how many ancient authorities read anything else." Instead then of saying with WH that the insertion of the word " good " before " Master " was the earliest corruption to be introduced into the text, I should prefer to say that this was the word in the original text which most stubbornly resisted alteration. In any case it does not seem fair to accuse the " Syrian reviser " of having introduced the assimilation of the Gospels. It probably only was that, in choosing between the different forms of text current in his time, he preferred that which made all the Gospels agree in their narrative. So much for the first explanation.

The second explanation is to suppose that our first Gospel is by no means a copy of St. Matthew's autograph, or even a faithful translation of an Aramaic original; but a work which, though probably founded on St. Matthew's, had received additions or alterations from one or more subsequent editors. According then to this theory, WH may have correctly edited the text presented in the final edition of the first Gospel, which, however, we are not at all bound to suppose agreed in all respects with Matthew's original. This example will show how close is the connection between the criticism of the Gospel text and theories concerning the genesis of the Gospels, and how much in my opinion the work of WH has suffered from their want of interest in the latter inquiry.

We can hardly separate from the discussion of this text in St. Matthew the addition made to chap, xxvii. 49 of the same Gospel: " Another taking a lance pierced His side, and there came out water and blood." Thus this piercing, which according to St. John took place after Jesus was dead, is made to have taken place while He was alive. The evidence for this reading comes short of that for the Alexandrian version of the story of the rich young man, because it has less support from the early Latin versions; but it has even in a higher degree all the early evidence on which WH place most reliance. Hort then, as in consistency bound, leans strongly to the opinion that the words belong to the " genuine text of the extant form of St. Matthew,"² and were early omitted (originally by the Western text) on account of the obvious difficulty. But since he had already stigmatized a few phrases in the Alexandrian text of the concluding chapter of St. Luke as " non-Western interpolations," he thinks it safer to treat this verse also as an early interpolation, which never found admission into the Western text, and so he includes the verse in his text, but on the same conditions of double brackets as those on which he received the " carried up into heaven " at the end of St. Luke's Gospel.

Hort's phrase " the genuine text of the extant form of St. Matthew" implies, as I have said, a consciousness that he had not succeeded in getting back to the apostolic autograph. I have no doubt that he has succeeded wonderfully well in getting back to the text of the ancient MS. from which א and B were ultimately derived; and I have little doubt that that MS. must have contained the clause now under consideration. But since it can be asserted with certainty that this clause was not part of the original St. Matthew, and with high probability that it was added by some one already acquainted with the Gospel of St. John,³ it follows that what WH have reproduced does not represent the apostolic autograph, but a text which had undergone alteration, more or less; and therefore that we have no right, relying on its authority, to refuse to take into consideration what was read in other parts of the Christian world. As for the " Syrian reviser," we have no means of knowing on what MS. evidence he rejected this " non-Western interpolation " and accepted the others at the end of St. Luke; but there is good reason for thinking that in both cases his judgment was right.⁴

I have said enough to illustrate my opinion that no one who ignores the Synoptic problem has a right to be confident in the judgment he forms on the text of a passage in one Gospel without having considered the parallel passage in another. Thus, for example, there is no doubt as to the reading of Luke vii. 35, "Wisdom is justified of all her children "; but in the parallel passage, Matt, xi. 19, WH, on what would be very weak evidence if the combination א B were not regarded as absolutely decisive, read, " Wisdom is justified by her works." The Revised Version follows them, but gives a note, " Many ancient authorities read c children,' " which tempts one to repeat a sarcastic comment of Burgon's already quoted. Now if we ask which of the two was the phrase actually used by our Lord, the following considerations favour our adoption of Luke's account: (1) that there seems reason to think that it was not the purest form of St. Matthew's Gospel which was found in the copy which was the parent of the Alexandrian; (2) that after St. Paul's Epistles had become the common property of the Churches, the phrase "justified by works " would present a familiar combination which might easily come accidentally from the pen of a transcriber; (3) that the form given by St. Luke is much more difficult of interpretation than that ascribed to St. Matthew. On the other hand, an attempt may be made to account for the variation by seeking to recover the Aramaic word used by our Lord;⁵ yet the preservation of the word " all " in one version and its absence in the other can scarcely be explained unless there is acknowledged to have been some conscious manipulation of the Greek.

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During the considerable interval between the composition of the Gospels and the earliest date to which we can trace the source of any of our existing copies, there plainly was time enough for errors of transcription to arise. I fear I am doing an injudicious thing in here mentioning a doubtful speculation of my own on this subject, as it may indispose readers to accept other conclusions about which I have more confidence. But it seems to me a possible thing that it may have been an early transcriber who is responsible for a well-known difference between Mark and the other Evangelists—viz. that Mark alone makes the cock which woke the slumbering conscience of Peter crow twice. If we ask what were the words actually spoken by our Lord, " before the cock crow," or " before the cock crow twice," we have the other three Evangelists united against St. Mark in favour of the former account; for in this instance John joins his testimony to the Synoptics. St. Mark's disagreement is the more surprising because Matthew's account of the Passion closely, and often verbally, follows St. Mark's, or else that of Mark's authority; only inserting from time to time matter derived from some other source, but after each insertion taking up St. Mark's narrative where it had been broken off. If any one will take the trouble to draw a line in his Bible along those verses of Matt, xxvii. which are common to St. Mark, he cannot help seeing how closely the latter is followed, and how little of it is left out, and he will be at no loss to answer the question whether Mark's account is an abridgment of Matthew's, or Matthew's an expansion of St. Mark's. There is no such very close agreement between these Gospels in other places, and it becomes hard to believe that in this case there was original disagreement between the allied authorities.

But when we examine into the evidence for Mark's singularity we find it breaks down a good deal. Hort has remarked that of the seven principal MSS. of St. Mark which tell the story no two have exactly the same text. It was really Hort's attempt to show that every version of the story except B's has suffered from transcribers' errors which impressed me with the idea that the same thing may be said of B's. Hort points out that Mark's variation is made in four places: (1) our Lord's prediction (xiv. 30), " before the cock crow twice thou shalt deny Me thrice"; (2) after the first denial (ver. 68), "and the cock crew"; (3) after the third denial (ver. 72a), " and the second time the cock crew "; (4) Peter's recollection of our Lord's prediction (ver. 72b), "before the cock crow twice." No two of the authorities deal in the same way with all these four places; but in the various ways in which they present these particulars, Hort finds that B alone has the note of genuineness as giving the points "tersely but sufficiently." B gives the points (1), (3), (4), but omits (2); yet surely if Hort had not been so prejudiced in favour of B as to find it almost impossible ever to desert it, he would have found some defect in a story which tells only of one cock-crowing, yet describes that one as the second.⁶

B has but scanty support in this omission; but if we agree with Hort in accepting its testimony that the words " the cock crew " in ver. 68 are spurious, the phenomena are easily explained. If an early scribe had inadvertently written in ver. 68 the words which properly ought to come in ver. 72, then subsequent scribes, finding two cock-crowings related, would be under a strong temptation to make the narrative consistent by inserting the word δίς in our Lord's prediction, and adding ἐκ δευτέρου in ver. 72. Yet it is surprising what a strong support of MS. evidence there still is for omitting the δίς in our Lord's prediction. In suspecting that Mark's original narrative only made mention of one cock-crowing, I take no account of the evidence of א, which does so tell the story, but as I think rather from harmonistic motives than because of then extant testimony; for the editor of this MS. seems to have been somewhat addicted to improving his text by conjectural emendations.

Perhaps it will not have been altogether useless to state a speculation which probably will find but little acceptance, if it enables us to feel more distinctly that the authorities on which WH rely are still so far from the original autographs, that the careful ascertaining the verdict of these authorities may be, as I said, but an elaborate locking of the stable door after the horse has been stolen.

1) Perhaps it may not be useless to explain, what Burgon seems to have been unable to understand, why modern critics who own the licentiousness of D still rely on it as an authority; and in particular why when they reject its additions to the text they value its testimony to omissions. If we imagine that D represents to us a more ancient MS., in the margin of which additions had been written which D has incorporated in its text, then if we could only strike out those additions we should recover the parent text. Tregelles was of opinion that many of these additions are as separable from the text as footnotes are from the text of a modern book. If then, after these additions have been discarded, we find D agreeing with the early Alexandrian MSS. in rejecting some things which are found in the Syrian text, it is inferred that the parent ol D had not included them.

2) This remarkable phrase suggests the question, What is supposed to be the date of the " extant form of St. Matthew "? If we are to insert in our New Testament a verse which we do not believe to have been written by St. Matthew, why contend so vehemently against the concluding verses of the second Gospel because we do not believe them to have been written by St. Mark? Those verses were read as part of St. Mark's Gospel in the second century by Irenaeus; and as I believe were so read at the same date in the Church of Rome. Is there evidence that the additions made in the " extant form of St. Matthevy " are any older?

3) On the authority of an ancient scholiast who speaks of Tatian as an authority for this reading in St. Matthew, Scrivener and Burgon accounted for this intrusion of a passage from one Gospel into another as originating in the use of the Diatessaron, which mixed together the words of different Gospels. When recent discoveries seemed to enable us to restore in great measure the text of the Diatessaron, it was found to give no sanction to this explanation. But Burgon held fast to his explanation, and refused to acknowledge the restored Diatessaron, which he always refers to as Pseudo-Tatian. I observe that Miller also uses the phrase " Pseudo-Tatian." I do not know whether it is a necessary inference that he shares Burgon's opinion about the Diatessaron.

4) As another instance how our judgment about readings is affected by our opinions as to the genesis of the evangelic texts, I may mention that Hort rejects a couple of those so-called non-Western interpolations in St. Luke because he judges them to have been added by some one acquainted with St. John's Gospel. But if I am right in thinking that the author of the fourth Gospel shows acquaintance with the third, coincidences would rather indicate that the third Gospel had assumed its present form before the fourth was written.

5) Exactly the same confusion has been pointed out by Lightfoot as having taken place in the Syriac translation of Clement (see Lightfoot's Clement, i. 138).

6) I cannot always sympathize with the admiration which both Hort and Burgon felt for their favourite authorities. Thus Burgon finds in the Received Text of Luke xviii. 14, δεδικαιωμένος ἢ γὰρ ἐκεῖνος, "an exquisitely idiomatic expression," which tempts one to think that he regarded " idiom " as the English equivalent for ἅπαξ λεγόμενον.