NOTE D.*

(See pp. 63, 121, 127, 265, 379.)

ON THE WANT OF VERBAL EXACTNESS IN THE REPORTS OF OUR SAVIOUR'S LANGUAGE BY THE EVANGELISTS; AND ON SOME OF THE CHARACTERISTICS OF HIS MODE OF TEACHING.

"The general spirit and meaning of our Saviour's teaching, as recorded in the Gospels, is free from all uncertainty. If we receive it as the teaching of a divine messenger, it leaves no doubt concerning the fundamental truths of religion, the being of God, God's care for men, and man's immortality and moral responsibility. But in the words ascribed to him we sometimes meet with difficulties, not affecting the clearness with which those truths were taught, but preventing us from readily or certainly ascertaining the precise purport and bearing of what he said in relation to topics incidentally presented.

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Among the various causes by which this uncertainty is produced, there is one perfectly obvious and indisputable, though it has been less regarded, perhaps, than any other. It is, that his words are not always given with verbal accuracy by the different historians of his ministry. We need not recur to any reasoning to show that this fact is in the highest degree probable. The cases in which the Evangelists unquestionably intended to report the same words of Jesus, but in which they differ from each other in their reports, render it certain. It

* [From "Evidences of the Genuineness of the Gospels,” Vol. II. Additional Note D, Section VII. pp. cliii. – clxii.]

follows, that there must be passages, where, to determine the exact meaning that was expressed by our Saviour, we cannot take the precise words of some one of the Evangelists as an infallible guide. When we meet with a difficulty that cannot otherwise be fully solved, the consideration that the reporter may have varied the expression used by Jesus should enter into our explanation.

"Now such unintentional errors, more or less affecting the sense, were most likely to occur on subjects concerning which strong prejudices existed among the Jews, that had moulded their forms of language, if they were prejudices that Jesus did not directly oppose. Every one easily slides into the language of a popular error, or rather we may find it difficult to avoid such language, when not expressly contending against the error. But on the supposition that the Evangelists had not decidedly renounced the opinions of their countrymen respecting the Pentateuch and the Levitical Law, we cannot doubt that they might unconsciously attribute to Jesus incidental expressions favoring those opinions; that they might have done so in cases where, if his precise words had been compared with their report of them, they would not have recognized any important difference of character or effect between his language and their own.

"The unquestionable fact, that the words of our Saviour are not always reported with perfect correctness, is to be kept in view in studying the history of his ministry. It may not lead us to reject any declaration ascribed to him, as not founded on what he actually said, or as not, in its essential meaning, true; but it may enter as one element into our explanation of certain passages. It is sometimes evident that it must enter into our explanation; for it sometimes appears, from a comparison of

the Evangelists with one another, that the report of our Saviour's language which we find in one of them is defective, or otherwise incorrect, and therefore that this report must be explained with reference to the fact that it is so.

"THE general principle of explanation just stated deserves consideration, doubtless, in relation to some of the words ascribed to Jesus, that have been thought to express or imply his opinions concerning the origin of the Pentateuch and the Levitical Law. It may, as I have said, enter as one element into their explanation. But we may question how far it is necessary to resort to it, considering that another fact is to be attended to. This is, that our Saviour, on some subjects, and on some occasions, adopted the common language of the Jews, founded on their erroneous conceptions, certainly without any design of sanctioning those conceptions. He sometimes did so for the purpose of changing the meaning of the terms by giving them a new application. Thus, the Jews, under the name of the kingdom of Heaven,' expected an earthly kingdom, of which the Messiah was to be the monarch. The idea of such a kingdom alone was excited in their minds, when Jesus announced that the kingdom of Heaven was at hand. But he used the term figuratively, in a very different sense, which was to be gradually explained by subsequent events. - Sometimes he used such language for the purpose of rhetorical illustration, which may be drawn either from fact or fable. When a foul spirit,' he said, 'has gone out of a man, it passes through deserts in search of a resting-place, and finds it not.'* No intelligent reader will suppose from these words, that our Saviour

*Matthew xii. 43.

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meant to adopt and sanction the then common notion, that desert places were frequented by dæmons. At other times he is reasoning upon the false conceptions of those whom he addresses, reasoning ad hominem, as it is called. 'If I cast out dæmons through Beelzebub, through whom do your disciples cast them out?'* There were some of the school of the Pharisees, it appears, who pretended to cast out dæmons by exorcism, and who, when they succeeded in producing a real or seeming return to sanity in their patients, were thought to have effected a great work. Our Saviour did not mean to imply that these men possessed powers like his own. The object of his question merely was to expose the prejudices and gross injustice of the Pharisees, who believed that their disciples had, in the one particular in question, similar power to that of Christ, and who, in his case and theirs, regarded its exercise so differently. In such reasoning from false conceptions, the language of error is necessarily used. The character of such reasoning may be more or less obvious; and when not perfectly obvious, he who does not exercise his understanding, but looks only at the naked words before him, may insist that a speaker or writer means to affirm an error, which, in fact, he introduces into his discourse only to show its inconsistency with some other error, or as a temporary stepping-stone on the way to truth. And, besides the occasions that have been mentioned, language founded on the mistaken conceptions of the Jews was employed by our Saviour, either for the sake of producing an effect on the imagination and feelings of his hearers, which could not have been produced, or could not have been produced so powerfully, in any other way, or of conveying

*Matthew xii. 27.

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some truth to their understandings, which they could not have distinctly apprehended if expressed in any other form. Thus he spoke, for example, of moral evil, under the terrific personification of Satan. In such cases we must, and we may easily, distinguish his essential meaning from the modes of expression. in which it is clothed, modes of expression adapted to Jewish conceptions, but not correspondent to our own. Some of the truths taught by Jesus could not but receive an accidental coloring from the medium of the language through which they were conveyed, and we must not confound this accidental coloring with their essential nature.* But this subject admits some further explanation.

"EVERY language is conformed to the conceptions of those who use it, and consists wholly of the signs or expressions of their conceptions. The progress of knowledge makes necessary the enlargement of a language. The discoveries of modern chemistry, for example, have required a new vocabulary, in

"The principle involved in the preceding remarks, that in explaining the words of our Lord we should consider to whom they were immediately addressed, is equally implied in the following passage from Tertullian, ‚— a very remarkable one, considering the time when it was written, though he makes a different application of it: 'Omnia quidem dicta Domini omnibus posita sunt; per aures Judæorum ad nos transierunt; sed pleraque in personas directa, non proprietatem admonitionis nobis constituerunt, sed exemplum.'—' All the sayings of our Lord are meant for all; they have passed to us through the ears of the Jews; but many of them, being addressed to individuals, are not, for us, literal precepts, but exemplifications of duty.' De Præscript. Hæretic. c. 8. p. 205. Conf. De Fugâ in Persecutione, c. 13. pp. 542, 543."