It is not desirable to go into further details in this place; but the result of the extremely critical and minute scrutiny to which the text of the gospel has been sub jected may be stated as follows. There is a singular coincidence in substance in the three synoptic gospels. " Substantial unity with circumstantial variety," is a saying strictly true of them—more true of them than of any authors professing to narrate the same circumstances. The coincidence is greatly more apparent in the discourses than in the narrative parts of the gospels, most of all apparent in the spoken words of our Lord. At the same time, there arc certain portions of narrative of great importance, that show in the several evangelists almost a verbal coincidence, as in the call of the first four disciples and the accounts of the transfiguration. "The agreement in the narrative portions of the gospels begins with the baptism of John, and reaches its high est point in the account of the passion of our Lord, and the facts that preceded it; so that a direct ratio. might be laid between the amount of agreement and the nearness of the facts related to the passion. After this event, in the account of his burial and resurrection, the coincidences are few." There are no parts that furnish more diffi culty, in the way of formal harmony, than the narrative of the resurrection.
The language of all the is well known to be Greek with Hebrew idioms, or what has been called Hellenistic Greek. The tradition, however, of a Hebrew original of St. Matthew's gospel is uniform. In the fragment of Papias, and in the statement of Irenus—the earliest sources in-which we have any distinct mention of the gospels —it is plainly asserted that Matthew wrote his gospel in the Hebrew dialect. The fact is made a mark of distinction between his gospel and the others. . The same uniformity of tradition ascribes the gospel of St. Mark to the teaching of St. Peter. The gospel of St. Mark is the most summary of the three, yet, in some respects, it is stamped with a special individuality and originality. It describes scenes and acts of our Lord and others with a minutely graphic detail, throwing in particulars omitted by others, and revealing throughout the observant eye-witness and independent historian.
III. Origin of the Gospels.—This is a separate inquiry from their genuineness, althoue-h intimately connected with•it, and springs immediately out of those facts as to the inter nal agreement and disagreement of the gospels of which we have been speaking. The inquiry has been treated iu an extremely technical manner by many critics, and it would not suit our purpose to enumerate and examine the various theories which have been propounded on the subject. We may only state generally, that the object of these theories has been to find a common original for the gospels. Some profess to find such xa original in one of the three gospels, from which the others have been more or less copied, and each of them in turn has been •taken as the basis of the other two. The more elaborate theories of Eichhoru and bishop Marsh, however, presume an original document, differing from any of the existing gospels, and which is supposed to pass through various modifications, into the threefold form which it now hears in them. It
appeared to Eichhorn that the portions which are common to all the three gospels were contained in a certain common document from which they all drew. It had been already assumed that copies of such a document had got into circulation, and had been altered and annotated by different hands. But Eichhorn works out an elaborate hypothesis on such a presumption. He requires for his purpose no fewer than five supposititious documents. The conditions of the problem cannot be met otherwise. These are in order. 1. An original document; 2. An altered copy which St. Matthew used; 3. An altered copy which St. Luke used; 4. A third copy made from the two preceding, used by St. Mark; 5. A fourth altered copy,. used by St. Matthew and St. Luke in common. Bishop Marsh, in following out the same process of construction, finds it necessary to increase the supposititious to eight. which we need not describe. There is not the slightest external evidence of the existence of such docu ments, and theories of this kind, which, in order to explain difficulties, call into exist ence at every stage an imaginary solution, do not require serious refutation.
Another and more probable supposition is, that the gospels sprang out of a common oral tradition. The preaclung of the apostles was necessarily, to .a great extent, a preaching of facts; and, so zealously did they give themselves to the task of proinul gating the wondrous life and death of Christ, that they early divested themselves of the labor of ministering to any of the lower wants of the congregations of disciples that they gradually gathered round them. It is obvious that, in the course their active " ministry of the word," the facts of our Lord's life and death, of which they had been eye-witnesses, would gradually assume a regular outline. What the reading of the gospels is to us, the preaching of the apostles would be very much to the early Chris tians. The sermon of Peter at Giesarea (Acts x. 34) may give some imperfect idea of the character of this preaching. The facts theis briefly indicated would expand in fre quent communication to something of the more detached and living form which they exhibit in the gospels, or rather in what we may suppose to have been the common sub stratum or groundwork of the gospels. It is to be remembered that the apostles were promised that the Holy Spirit would " bring all things to their remembrance, whatso ever the Lord had said unto them." And this constant guidance and superintendence of the Divine Spirit would sufficiently account for the uniformity and consistency of their oral instruction, even although not reduced to writing fors considerable number of years. Allowing for the widest space of years it may be necessary to assume before the writing of the,first gospel, the chief apostles themselves are yet living at the end of this space. It is not a mere tradition of their teaching that survives, but it is their own living witness that is circulated from church to church, as they pass to and fro in their evangelistic labors.