Supernatural Religion Volume I Part 22

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117--138);(1) and others, not without reason, consider that it exhibits marks of a still later period.(2) It is probable that it is more or less interpolated.(3) Until the discovery of the Sinaitic MS., a portion of the "Epistle of Barnabas" was only known through an ancient Latin version, the first four and a half chapters of the Greek having been lost. The Greek text, however, is now complete, although often very corrupt. The author quotes largely from the Old Testament, and also from apocryphal works.(4) He nowhere mentions any book or writer of the New Testament, and with one a.s.serted exception, which we shall presently examine, he quotes no pa.s.sage agreeing with our Gospels. We shall refer to these, commencing at once with the most important.

In the ancient Latin translation of the Epistle, the only form, as we have just said, in which until the discovery

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of the Codex Sinaiticus the first four and a half chapters were extant, the following pa.s.sage occurs: "Adtendamus ergo, ne forte, sicut scriptum est, multi vocati pauci electi inveniamur."(l) "Let us, therefore, beware lest we should be found, as it is written: Many are called, few are chosen." These words are found in our first Gospel (xxii. 14), and as the formula by which they are here introduced--"it is written," is generally understood to indicate a quotation from Holy Scripture, it was and is argued by some that here we have a pa.s.sage from one of our Gospels quoted in a manner which shows that, at the time the Epistle of Barnabas was written, the "Gospel according to Matthew was already considered Holy Scripture."(3) Whilst this portion of the text existed only in the Latin version, it was argued that the "sicut scriptum est,"

at least, must be an interpolation, and in any case that it could not be deliberately applied, at that date, to a pa.s.sage in any writings of the New Testament. On the discovery of the Sinaitic MS., however, the words were found in the Greek text in that Codex: [--Greek--]. The question, therefore, is so far modified that, however much we may suspect the Greek text of interpolation, it must be accepted as the basis of discussion that this pa.s.sage, whatever its value, exists in the oldest, and indeed only (and this point must not be forgotten) complete MS. of the Greek Epistle.

Now with regard to the value of the expression "it is written," it may be remarked that in no case could its use in the Epistle of Barnabas indicate more than individual opinion, and it could not, for reasons to be

presently given, be considered to represent the decision of the Church.

In the very same chapter in which the formula is used in connection with the pa.s.sage we are considering, it is also employed to introduce a quotation from the Book of Enoch,(1) [--Greek--], and elsewhere (c. xii.) he quotes from another apocryphal book(2) as one of the prophets.(3)"

Again, he refers to the Cross of Christ in another prophet saying: 'And when shall these things come to pa.s.s? and the Lord saith: When, &c. ...

[--Greek--],

.......[--Greek--]." He also quotes (ch. vi.) the apocryphal "Book of Wisdom" as Holy Scripture, and in like manner several other unknown works. When it is remembered that the Epistle of Clement to the Corinthians, the Pastor of Hennas, the Epistle of Barnabas itself, and many other apocryphal works have been quoted by the Fathers as Holy Scripture, the distinctive value of such an expression may be understood.

With this pa.s.sing remark, however, we proceed to say that this supposed quotation from Matthew as Holy Scripture, by proving too much, destroys its own value as evidence. The generality of competent and

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impartial critics are agreed, that it is impossible to entertain the idea that one of our Gospels could have held the rank of Holy Scripture at the date of this Epistle, seeing that, for more than half a century after, the sharpest line was drawn between the writings of the Old Testament and of the New, and the former alone quoted as, or accorded the consideration of, Holy Scripture.1 If this were actually a quotation from our first Gospel, already in the position of Holy Scripture, it would indeed be astonis.h.i.+ng that the Epistle, putting out of the question other Christian writings for half a century after it, teeming as it does with extracts from the Old Testament, and from known, and unknown, apocryphal works, should thus limit its use of the Gospel to a few words, totally neglecting the rich store which it contains, and quoting, on the other hand, sayings of Jesus not recorded at all in any of our Synoptics. It is most improbable that, if the author of the "Epistle of Barnabas" was acquainted with any one of our Gospels, and considered it an inspired and canonical work, he could have neglected it in such a manner. The peculiarity of the quotation which he is supposed to make, which we shall presently point out, renders such limitation to it doubly singular upon any such hypothesis. The unreasonable nature of the a.s.sertion, however, will become more apparent as we proceed with our examination, and perceive that none of the early writers quote our Gospels,

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if they knew them at all, but, on the other hand, make use of other works, and that the inference that Matthew was considered Holy Scripture, therefore, rests solely upon this quotation of half a dozen words.

The application of such a formula to a supposed quotation from one of our Gospels, in so isolated an instance, led to the belief that, even if the pa.s.sage were taken from our first Synoptic, the author of the Epistle in quoting it laboured under the impression that it was derived from some prophetical book.(1) We daily see how difficult it is to trace the source even of the most familiar quotations. Instances of such confusion of memory are frequent in the writings of the Fathers, and many can be pointed out in the New Testament itself. For instance, in Matt, xxvii. 9 f. the pa.s.sage from Zechariah xi. 12-13 is attributed to Jeremiah; in Mark i. 2, a quotation from Malachi iii. 1 is ascribed to Isaiah. In 1 Corinthians ii. 9, a pa.s.sage is quoted as Holy Scripture which is not found in the Old Testament at all, but which is taken, as Origen and Jerome state, from an apocryphal work, "The Revelation of Elias,"(2) and the pa.s.sage is similarly quoted by the so-called Epistle of Clement to the Corinthians (x.x.xiv). Then in what prophet did the author of the first Gospel find the words (xiil 35): "That it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet,(3) saying: I will open my mouth in parables; I

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will utter things which have been kept secret from the foundation of the world "?

Orelli,(1) afterwards followed by many others,(2) suggested that the quotation was probably intended for one in IV Ezra viii. 3: "Nam multi creati sunt, pauci autem salvabuntur."(3) "For many are created, but few shall be saved." Bretsclineider proposed as an emendation of the pa.s.sage in Ezra the subst.i.tution of "_vocati_" for "_creati_" but, however plausible, his argument did not meet with much favour.(4) Along with this pa.s.sage was also suggested a similar expression in IV Ezra ix. 15: "Plures sunt qui pereunt, quam qui salvabuntur." "There are more who perish than who shall be saved."(5) The Greek of the three pa.s.sages may read as follows:--

[--Greek--]

[--Greek--]

[--Greek--]

There can be no doubt that the sense of the reading in IV Ezra is exactly that of the Epistle, but the language is somewhat different. We must not forget, however, that the original Greek of IV Ezra(6) is lost, and that we are wholly dependent on the versions and MSS. extant, regarding whose numerous variations and great

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corruption there are no differences of opinion. Orelli's theory, moreover, is supported by the fact that the Epistle, elsewhere, (c. xii) quotes from IV Ezra (iv. 33, v. 5).

On examining the pa.s.sage as it occurs in our first Synoptic, we are at the very outset struck by the singular fact, that this short saying appears twice in that Gospel with a different context, and in each case without any propriety of application to what precedes it, whilst it is not found at all in either of the other two Synoptics. The first time we meet with it is at the close of the parable of the labourers in the vineyard.(1) The householder engages the labourers at different hours of the day, and pays those who had worked but one hour the same wages as those who had borne the burden and heat of the day, and the reflection at the close is, xx. 16: "Thus the last shall be first and the first last; for many are called but few chosen." It is perfectly evident that neither of these sayings, but especially not that with which we are concerned, has any connection with the parable at all. There is no question of many or few, or of selection or rejection; all the labourers are engaged and paid alike. If there be a moral at all to the parable, it is the justification of the master: "Is it not lawful for me to do what I will with mine own?" It is impossible to imagine a saying more irrelevant to its context than "many are called but few chosen," in such a place. The pa.s.sage occurs again (xxii. 14) in connection with the parable of the king who made a marriage for his son. The guests who are at first invited refuse to come, and are destroyed by the king's armies; but the wedding is nevertheless "furnished

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with guests" by gathering together as many as are found in the highways.

A new episode commences when the king comes in to see the guests (v.

11). He observes a man there who has not on a wedding garment, and he desires the servants to (v. 13) "Bind him hand and foot, and cast him into the darkness without," where "there shall be weeping and gnas.h.i.+ng of teeth;"(1) and then comes our pa.s.sage (v. 14): "For many are called but few chosen." Now, whether applied to the first or to the latter part of the parable, the saying is irrelevant. The guests first called were in fact chosen as much as the last, but themselves refused to come, and of all those who, being "called" from the highways and byways, ultimately furnished the wedding with guests in their stead, only one was rejected. It is clear that the facts here distinctly contradict the moral that "few are chosen." In both places the saying is, as it were, "dragged in by the hair." On examination, however, we find that the oldest MSS. of the New Testament omit the sentence from Matthew xx. 16.

It is neither found in the Sinaitic nor Vatican codices, and whilst it has not the support of the Codex Alexandrinus, which is defective at the part, nor of the Dublin rescript (z), which omits it, many other MSS.

are also without it. The total irrelevancy of the saying to its context, its omission by the oldest authorities from Matth. xx. 16, where it appears in later MSS., and its total absence from both of the other Gospels, must at once strike every one as peculiar, and as very unfortunate, to say

1 This is not the place to criticize the expectation of finding a wedding garment on a guest hurried in from highways and byways, or the punishment inflicted for such an offence, as questions affecting the character of the parable.

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the least of it, for those who make extreme a.s.sertions with regard to its supposed quotation by the Epistle of Barnabas. Weizsacker, with great probability, suggests that in this pa.s.sage we have merely a well-known proverb,(1) which the author of the first gospel has introduced into his work from some uncanonical or other source, and placed in the mouth of Jesus.(2) Certainly under the circ.u.mstances it can scarcely be maintained in its present context as a historical saying of Jesus. Ewald, who naturally omits it from Matthew xx. 16, ascribes the parable xx. 1--16 as well as that xxii. 1--14, in which it stands, originally to the Spruchsammlung(3) or collection of discourses, out of which, with intermediate works, he considers that our first Gospel was composed.(4) However this may be, there is, it seems to us, good reason for believing that it was not originally a part of these parables, and that it is not in that sense historical; and there is, therefore, no ground for a.s.serting that it may not have been derived by the author of the Gospel from some older work, from which also it may have come into the "Epistle of Barnabas."(5)

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There is, however, another pa.s.sage which deserves to be mentioned. The Epistle has the following quotation: "Again, I will show thee how, in regard to us, the Lord saith, He made a new creation in the last times. The Lord saith: Behold I make the first as the last."(l) Even Tischendorf does not pretend that this is a quotation of Matth. xx.

16,(2) "Thus the last shall be first and the first last," [--Greek--] the sense of which is quite different. The application of the saying in this place in the first, and indeed in the other, Synoptic Gospels is evidently quite false, and depends merely on the ring of words and not of ideas. In xix. 30 it is quoted a second time, quite irrelevantly, with some variation: "But many first shall be last and last first"

[--Greek--]. Now it will be remembered that at xx. 16 it occurs in several MSS. in connection with "Many are called but few are chosen," although the oldest codices omit the latter pa.s.sage, and most critics consider it interpolated. The separate quotation of these two pa.s.sages by the author of the Epistle, with so marked a variation in the second, renders it most probable that he found both in the source from which he quotes. We have, however, more than sufficiently discussed this pa.s.sage. The author of the Epistle does not indicate any source from which he makes his quotation; and the mere existence in the first Synoptic of a proverbial saying

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like this does not in the least involve the conclusion that it is necessarily the writing from which the quotation was derived, more especially as apocryphal works are repeatedly cited in the Epistle. If it be maintained that the saying is really historical, it is obvious that the prescriptive right of our Synoptic is at once excluded, and it may have been the common property of a score of evangelical works.

There can be no doubt that many Scriptural texts have crept into early Christian writings which originally had no place there; and where attendant circ.u.mstances are suspicious, it is always well to remember the fact. An instance of the interpolation of which we speak is found in the "Epistle of Barnabas." In one place the phrase: "Give to every one that asketh of thee" [--Greek--](1) occurs, not as a quotation, but merely woven into the Greek text as it existed before the discovery of the Sinaitic MS. This phrase is the same as the precept in Luke vi. 30, although it was argued by some that, as no other trace of the third Gospel existed in the Epistle, it was more probably an alteration of the text of Matth. v. 42. Omitting the phrase from the pa.s.sage in the Epistle, the text read as follows: "Thou shalt not hesitate to give, neither shalt thou murmur when thou givest... so shalt thou know who is the good Recompenser of the reward." The supposed quotation, inserted where we have left a blank, really interrupted the sense and repeated the previous injunction. The oldest MS., the "Codex Sinaiticus," omits the quotation, and so ends the question, but it is afterwards inserted by another hand. Some pious scribe, in fact, seeing the relation of the pa.s.sage to the Gospel, had added the

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words in the margin as a gloss, and they afterwards found their way into the text In this manner very many similar glosses have crept into texts which they were originally intended to ill.u.s.trate.

Tischendorf, who does not allude to this, lays much stress upon the following pa.s.sage: "But when he selected His own apostles, who should preach His Gospel, who were sinners above all sin, in order that he might show that He came not to call the righteous but sinners, then He manifested Himself to be the Son of G.o.d."(1) We may remark that, in the common Greek text, the words "to repentance" were inserted after "sinners," but they are not found in the Sinaitic MS. In like manner many Codices insert them in Matth, ix. 13 and Mark ii. 17, but they are not found in some of the oldest MSS., and are generally rejected.

Tischendorf considers them a later addition both to the text of the Gospel and of the Epistle.(3) But this very fact is suggestive. It is clear that a supposed quotation has been deliberately adjusted to what was considered to be the text of the Gospel. Why should the whole phrase not be equally an interpolation? We shall presently see that there is reason to think that it is so. Alhough there is no quotation in the pa.s.sage, who, asks Tischendorf,(3) could mistake the words as they stand in Matthew, ix. 13, "For I came not to call the righteous but sinners"?

Now this pa.s.sage is referred to by Origen in his work against Celsus, in a way which indicates that the supposed quotation did not exist in his copy; Origen says: "And as Celsus has called

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the Apostles of Jesus infamous men, saying that they were tax-gatherers and worthless sailors, we have to remark on this, that, &c.... Now in the Catholic Epistle of Barnabas from which, perhaps, Celsus derived the statement that the Apostles were infamous and wicked men, it is written that 'Jesus selected his own Apostles who were sinners above all sin,"(1)--and then he goes on to quote the expression of Peter to Jesus (Luke v. 8), and then I Timothy, L 15, but he nowhere refers to the supposed quotation in the Epistle. Now, if we read the pa.s.sage without the quotation, we have: "But when he selected his own Apostles who should preach his Gospel, who were sinners above all sin.... then he manifested himself to be the Son of G.o.d." Here a pious scribe very probably added in the margin the gloss: "in order that he might show that he came not to call the righteous but sinners," to explain the pa.s.sage, and as in the case of the phrase: "Give to every one that asketh of thee," the gloss became subsequently incorporated with the text. The Epistle, however, goes on to give the only explanation which the author intended, and which clashes with that of the scribe. "For if he had not come in the flesh, how could men have been saved by beholding him? Seeing that looking on the sun that shall cease to be, the work of his hands, they have not even power to endure his rays. Accordingly, the Son of Man came in the flesh for this, that he might bring to a head the number of their sins who had persecuted to death his prophets."(2) The argument of Origen bears out this view, for he does not at all take the explanation of

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the gloss as to why Jesus chose his disciples from such a cla.s.s, but he reasons: "What is there strange, therefore, that Jesus being minded to manifest to the race of men his power to heal souls, should have selected infamous and wicked men, and should have elevated them so far, that they became a pattern of the purest virtue to those who were brought by their persuasion to the Gospel of Christ."(1) The argument, both of the author of the Epistle and of Origen, is different from that suggested by the phrase under examination, and we consider it a mere gloss introduced into the text; which, as the [--Greek--] shows, has, in the estimation of Tischendorf himself, been deliberately altered. Even if it originally formed part of the text, however, it would be wrong to affirm that it affords proof of the use or existence of the first Gospel. The words of Jesus in Matt. ix. 12--14, evidently belong to the oldest tradition of the Gospel, and, in fact, Ewald ascribes them, apart from the remainder of the chapter, originally to the Spruchsammlung, from which, with two intermediate books, he considers that our present Matthew was composed.(2} Nothing can be more certain than that such sayings, if they be admitted to be historical at all, must have existed in many other works, and the mere fact of their happening to be also in one of the Gospels which has survived, cannot prove its use, or even

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its existence at the time the Epistle of Barnabas was written, more especially as the phrase does not occur as a quotation, and there is no indication of the source from which it was derived.

Teschendorf, however, finds a further a.n.a.logy between the Epistle and the Gospel of Matthew, in ch. xii. "Since, therefore, in the future, they were to say that Christ is the son of David, fearing and perceiving clearly the error of the wicked, David himself prophesies--"The Lord said unto my Lord, sit at my right hand until I make thine enemies thy footstool."(1) Teschendorf upon this inquires: "Could Barnabas so write without the supposition, that his readers had Matthew, xxii. 41. ff, before them, and does not such a supposition likewise infer the actual authority of Matthew's Gospel?"(2) Such rapid argument and extreme conclusions are startling indeed, but, in his haste, our critic has forgotten to state the whole case. The author of the Epistle has been elaborately showing that the Cross of Christ is repeatedly typified in the Old Testament, and at the commencement of the chapter, after quoting the pa.s.sage from IV Ezra, iv. 33, v. 5, he points to the case of Moses, to whose heart "the spirit speaks that he should make a form of the cross," by stretching forth his arms in supplication, and so long as he did so Israel prevailed over their enemies; and again he typified the cross, when he set up the brazen serpent upon which the people might look and be healed. Then that which Moses, as a prophet, said to Joshua (Jesus) the son of Nave, when he gave him that