The main objection to this presentation, as also to that of the rationalists, is that it is very largely based not upon the historical data, but upon a pre-determined theory. Granted the philosophical basis, the criticism practised Tübingen school. upon the New Testament by Paulus and Strauss follows almost automatically. Herein lies the permanent importance of the work of Ferdinand Christian Baur, professor of theology at Tübingen from 1826 to 1860. The corner-stone of his reconstruction of early Christian history is derived not so much from philosophical principles as from a fresh study of the documents. Starting from Galatians and 1 Corinthians, which are obviously the genuine letters of a Christian leader called Paul to his converts, Baur accepted 2 Corinthians and Romans as the work of the same hand. From the study of these contemporary and genuine documents, he elaborated the theory that the earliest Christianity, the Christianity of Jesus and the original apostles, was wholly Judaistic in tone and practice. Paul, converted to belief in Jesus as Messiah after the Crucifixion, was the first to perceive that for Christians Judaism had ceased to be binding. Between him and the older apostles arose a long and fierce controversy, which was healed only when at last his disciples and the Judaizing disciples of the apostles coalesced into the Catholic Church. This only occurred, according to Baur, early in the 2nd century, when the strife was finally allayed and forgotten. The various documents which make up the New Testament were to be dated mainly by their relation to the great dispute. The Apocalypse was a genuine work of John the son of Zebedee, one of the leaders of the Judaistic party, but most of the books were late, at least in their present form. The Acts, Baur thought, were written about A.D. 140, after the memory of the great controversy had almost passed away. All four Gospels also were to be placed in the 2nd century, though that according to Matthew retained many features unaltered from the Judaistic original upon which it was based.
The Tübingen school founded by Baur dominated the theological criticism of the New Testament during a great part of the 19th century and it still finds some support. The main position was not so much erroneous as one-sided. Later views. The quarrel between St Paul and his opponents did not last so long as Baur supposed, and the great catastrophe of the fall of Jerusalem effectually reduced thorough-going Judaistic Christianity into insignificance from A.D. 70 onwards. Moreover, St Paul’s converts do not seem to have adopted consistent “Paulinism” as a religious philosophy. St Paul was an emancipated Jew, but his converts were mostly Greeks, and the permanent significance of St Paul’s theories of law and faith only began to be perceived after his letters had been collected together and had been received into the Church’s canon. All these considerations tend to make the late dates proposed by Baur for the greater part of the New Testament books unnecessary; the latest investigators, notably Professor A. Harnack of Berlin, accept dates that are not far removed from the ancient Christian literary tradition.
Literary criticism of the Gospels points to a similar conclusion. A hundred years’ study of the synoptic problem, i.e. the causes which make the Gospels according to Matthew, Mark and Luke at once so much alike and so different, has resulted in the demonstration of the priority of Mark, which “was known to Matthew and Luke in the same state and with the same contents as we have it now.”[1] This Gospel may be dated a very few years after A.D. 70. Luke and Matthew appear to have been published between 80 and 100.[2] Besides the Gospel of Mark these Evangelists made use of another document, now lost, which contained many sayings of Jesus and some narratives not found in Mark. This document is by many scholars identified with the “Logia,” mentioned by Papias (Eusebius, Ch. Hist. in. 39) as being the work of Matthew the Apostle, but the identification is not certain.
The Johannine writings, i.e. the Fourth Gospel and the three Epistles of John, represent the view of Christ and Christianity taken by a Christian teacher, who seems to have lived and written in Asia Minor at the close of the 1st century A.D. The value of the Fourth Gospel as a narrative of events is a matter of dispute, but the view of the personality of Jesus Christ set forth in it is unquestionably that which the Church has accepted.
The discoveries of papyri in Upper Egypt during recent years, containing original letters written by persons of various classes and in some cases contemporary with the Epistles of the New Testament, have immensely increased our knowledge of the Greek of the period, and have cleared up not a few difficulties of language and expression. More important still is the application of Semitic study to elucidate the Gospels. It is idle indeed to rewrite the Gospel narratives in the Aramaic dialect spoken by Christ and the apostles, but the main watchwords of the Gospel theology—phrases like “the Kingdom of God,” “the World to come,” the “Father in Heaven,” “the Son of Man,”—can be more or less surely reconstructed from Jewish writings, and their meaning gauged apart from the special significance which they received in Christian hands. This line of investigation has been specially followed by Professor G. Dalman in his Worte Jesu. The study of the Semitic elements in early Christianity is less advanced than the study of the Greek elements, so that it is doubtless from the Semitic side that further progress in the criticism of the New Testament may be expected.
Bibliography.—See the separate bibliographies to the separate articles on the books of the New Testament. The selection here given of the vast literature of the subject has been drawn up with the idea of setting the student on his way. 1. General and Historical.—Jerome’s Prefaces (to be found in any R. C. edition of the Vulgate); Luther’s Prefaces (to be found in German-printed editions of Luther’s Bible); F. Seebohm, The Oxford Reformers (3rd ed., London, 1887)—for Erasmus; M. Creighton, “Chillingworth” in the Dict. of Nat. Biogr.; Chr. Schrempf, Lessing als Philosoph (Stuttgart, 1906); J. Estlin Carpenter, The Bible in the 19th Century (London, 1903); A. Schweitzer, Von Reimarus zu Wrede (Tübingen, 1906). 2. For the Synoptic Gospels.—W. G. Rushbrooke, Synopticon (London, 1880), (trans. in The Common Tradition of the Synoptic Gospels by E. A. Abbott and W. G. Rushbrooke, London, 1884), Sir J. C. Hawkins, Horae Synopticae (Oxford, 1899); Prof. Julius Wellhausen, Einleitung in die drei ersten Evangelien (Berlin, 1905), Das Evangelium Marci (1903), Das Ev. Matthaei (1904), Das Ev. Lucae (1904)—these four books make one work; Prof. A. Harnack, Lukas der Arzt (Berlin, 1905). 3. For the Fourth Gospel.—K. G. Bretschneider, Probabilia (Leipzig, 1820); Matthew Arnold’s God and the Bible, chaps, v., vi. (still the best defence in English of a Johannine kernel, new ed., 1884); W. Sanday, Criticism of the Fourth Gospel (Oxford, 1905); A. Loisy, Le Quatrième Evangile (Paris, 1903); Prof. P. W. Schmiedel, Das vierte Evangelium gegenüber den drei ersten (Halle, 1906). 4. For the Semitic Elements in the N.T.—Prof. G. Dalman, Die Worte Jesu (Leipzig, 1898), (Eng. trans., The Words of Jesus, 1905); Prof. Johannes Weiss, Die Predigt Jesu vom Reiche Gottes (1st ed. 1892, 2nd ed. 1900). The Protestant view of the New Testament in Prof. A. Harnack, Das Wesen des Christentums (Berlin, 1900), (Eng. trans., What is Christianity?, London, 1901) may be compared with the Liberal Catholic view in A. Loisy, L’Évangile et l’Église (2nd ed., 1903). (F. C. B.)
5. New Testament Chronology.
The subject of the chronology of the New Testament falls naturally into two distinct sections—the chronology of the Gospels, that is, of the life of Christ; and the chronology of the Acts, that is, of the apostolic age.
The Chronology of the Gospels.
The data group themselves round three definite points and the intervals between them: the definite points are the Nativity, the Baptism and the Crucifixion; the age of Christ at the time of the Baptism connects the first two points, and the duration of his public ministry connects the second and third. The results obtained under the different heads serve mutually to test, and thereby to correct or confirm, one another.
1. The date of the Nativity as fixed according to our common computation of Anni Domini (first put forward by Dionysius Exiguus at Rome early in the 6th century) has long been recognized to be too late. The fathers of the primitive church had been
