whether their point of view is such as would be natural at the time when they profess to have been written, or whether there are allusions to events or opinions of a later period. The positions of the Jewish people and of the Christian community changed so rapidly, new opinions sprang up and colored the thoughts and language of men so strongly, that it would be almost impossible for a writer to avoid betraying himself if he tried to throw himself back to a date two or three generations before his own. Evidence of this character is known as internal evidence, and it plays an important part in the controversy concerning the authenticity of the Gospels. But it does not stand alone. There is also what is called external evidence, or proofs which can be drawn from the writings of other authors who lived at or soon after the date at which the Gospels are supposed to have been composed. Either from direct statements in such works, or from the presence or absence in them of quotations from the Gospels, we can derive proofs of the existence or non-existence of the Gospels at the time when these works were written. It is to evidence of this class that the test of which I have spoken can be applied. The critics who first questioned the authenticity of the Gospels upon historical grounds had the books before them, and knew what they had to meet in the way of internal evidence; but fresh external evidence has been brought to light from time to time of which they had no knowledge. Here, then, we have a new and independent test by which their theories can be judged. It is because a considerable amount of such fresh evidence has been recently brought to light that it seems opportune to try to gather up its results and to show what has been its bearing upon the general controversy. If the original attack upon the Gospels has broken down or has been seriously discredited by this test, we shall have the right to look with great suspicion on the conclusions of critics who continue to use the same methods.
BAUR AND HIS SCHOOL OF CRITICISM.
In these pages, therefore, I propose to give some account of the most striking discoveries which have been made during the last twenty years. In order, however, to appreciate their importance, it is necessary to state briefly the form taken by the attack upon the Gospels. The controversy in its modern shape is now just fifty years old. Its founder was the great German scholar, Ferdinand Baur, a professor of Tübingen University, from whom the famous Tübingen school of criticism took its rise. It was in 1847 that he published a treatise on the origin of the Gospels; but this was only one among several works embodying a novel view of early Christian history. With German learning and German ingenuity he put together, out of the books of the New Testament, a quite different narrative of the origin and growth of Christianity from that which the books themselves tell. Regarding the life of Christ as a merely human life, he sees in the apostolic age a deadly struggle between the adherents of St. Peter and those of St. Paul, lasting far into the second century, and discerns in most of the New Testament books attempts to write the history of Christianity from the point of view of one or another of these parties. It was claimed that they were not histories in the true sense of the word, but partisan tracts, the value of which depends less on what they assert than on what we can read between the lines.
In this attack upon the historical character of the Gospels, a cardinal point is the late date assigned to their composition. It is clearly easier to regard them as historically false if they were written considerably later than the events which they profess to record. Especially is this the case with the supernatural element contained in them. It is a fixed principle with modern critics of the Gospels that "miracles do not happen." Older critics tried to explain away the miracles recorded in the Gospels as due to optical illusions, or unintentional misunderstandings on the part of the disciples; but their successors have recognized the futility of this attempt, and prefer to regard the Gospel narratives as not contemporary with the events which they record and the miraculous element as an addition due to the credulity of a later age. On all grounds, therefore, it was essential to Baur to put the composition of these books as late as possible; and, accordingly, he assigns them all to dates well within the second century. Later than the end of that century it was impossible to place them, since the evidence of Tertullian and Irenæus, writing about a.d. 200, fully and explicitly demonstrated that their preeminence among all Christian writings was by that time firmly established; but no earlier date was granted them than such unimpeachable evidence rendered absolutely
