JESUS CHRIST. The principal problem which is presented by the New Testament to the historian is the problem of account ing for the faith of the early Christians in one whom they had known as Jesus the carpenter's son of Nazareth, and whom they had seen die the shameful death of a criminal outside Jerusalem. We have evidence that a very few weeks after that event His fol lowers, who had scattered in dismay, were reunited at Jerusalem, men and women to the number of about 120, feeling themselves to be bound together in a religious society through a common con viction, a common expectation and a common attitude towards Jesus. They were fully persuaded that He was alive, and that He had been seen by individuals and by groups of His followers. They were eagerly expecting that He would quite shortly return as the Messiah of their race, the Son of God with power, and they adopted an attitude to Him which, though still undefined, was an attitude of religious faith. The strength and the sincerity of their conviction were tested by persecution and proved by their stead fastness. The religious quality of their attitude to Jesus was evinced by devotion, self-sacrifice and a sense of obligation to Him which swept away the last barrier of selfishness. And they had a message concerning this same Jesus which they proceeded to proclaim with enthusiasm and amazing success. The Church of Christ became a fact of history.
What manner of man was it whose life and character, teaching and experience, are to account for this phenomenon? The answer must be looked for in the three Gospels of Mark, Matthew and Luke, commonly known as the Synoptic Gospels. with some assis tante, slight but important, from the Acts of the Apostles, and the Epistles of St. Paul. All three Gospels were the work of men who were believers in Christ, and were intelnded primarily at least for the benefit of those who already believed. Luke definitely announces his purpose is to confirm Theophilus in the certainty of the things wherein he had been instructed; and though Matthew and Mark make no similar statement, it is equally clear that their purpose was similar; it was not either to prove anything not already accepted or to persuade other men to believe, but to give connected and permanent form to narratives of what Jesus had done and said which had hitherto been current in the Christian community, either as oral tradition or in preliminary attempts to reduce the tradition to writing. Their own faith did not rest
upon the story which they told ; for the earliest preaching was not the proclamation of the historic Jesus but the proclamation of "Christ and Him crucified," that is to say, the witness of be lievers to the risen, living and glorified Christ whose connection with the life of men and with the purpose of God might be learnt from the fact that He had been crucified. The Gospels were written in order to satisfy the eager desire to know more fully and to know with certainty the earthly life of Him in whom men believed as the living Saviour and Lord.
While this is the purpose common to all three Evangelists, there are important distinctions between them in respect of the material which they have at command, the way in which they sev erally handle it, and the aspects of life and thought in which they are severally interested. They all show great and equal interest in the account of the Trial and Passion of Jesus which they relate with fulness and detail ; but in the account of the previous ministry of Jesus, Mark confines himself mainly to narrative, reporting in comparison but little of what Jesus taught, few of His parables and little of His discourse. Luke and Matthew, while incorporating nearly all of Mark in their Gospels, add, each in his own different way, a large amount of discourse material which had probably been already collected in a document commonly described as the second Source (o). And to the material thus collected from two sources both Luke and Matthew add material of their own. That which is peculiar to Luke may possibly represent the earliest stratum of his Gospel with which he combined first (o) and after wards Mark (Streeter).