editorial portions we derive four important phases of the life and thought of the early apostolic age, those mentioned above, and:

D. The post-ascension activity of Jesus.

A. The influence of the fact of defection under persecution as a feature of the apostolic age has already been traced in its effects upon many passages in the reported teaching of Jesus, perhaps most notably in document MK 8:34—9:1.1

B. Is the document M addition to the Sermon on the Mount, that is, the assignment of false prophets to a drastic eschatological fate,2 to be attributed to the havoc they wrought in the early community? Did some member of that community seek to offset their pernicious influence by condemnatory words credited to Jesus? And were these words wrought into the texture of the close of the Sermon without precise regard to context, so that they may now be excised and leave a conclusion of normal content, and parallel to the document G conclusion? Such seem to be the facts; their explanation appears to be suggested by the history of the apostolic age as reflected in the present Matthaean portion G. A final decision may be deferred till there has been made a complete study of all references to false prophets in the gospels.3

C. An examination of the only other passage in which there is the mention of a waning faith in the apostolic age will be made subsequently.4

D. The assertion of post-ascension activity by Jesus is credited to him, on behalf of the mission, nowhere in our four great documents G, MK, P, and M. It does appear in a part of Matthew which comes from some other source, Matt. 28: 20b, "Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the consummation of the aeon." 5

Another problem of the paragraph on persecution is raised by the difference between the Lukan and the other forms of the portion H. The document MK used by Matthew was evidently, in this portion, precisely the same verbally as the document MK which has come down to us. How explain the Lukan portion H? Can it be sum

marily dismissed as a rewriting of his document? Not when there are had in mind the evidences already gathered that the Lukan copy of the document MK differed in some passages from that used by Matthew and that possessed by us, and that the indications, to the present, are that it was a more primitive form of document MK. With this possibility in mind for this passage also, appeal may be made tentatively to the internal evidence. The meaning of the document MK portion H seems clear. Read in the light of the preceding saying in MK 13:7, and the following in MK 13:30, it may be paraphrased interpretatively: "But he that endureth persecutions without defection until after the destruction of Jerusalem, the same shall be saved." Is this the conception of Jesus as to what constitutes the condition and the content of salvation? Assuredly we may not deny that it is, solely because it differs from present-day definitions of salvation. The salvation here promised is that ushered in by the coming of the Son of man on the clouds while the disciples are still alive.

2

When one turns elsewhere to compare this definition of salvation with those given by Jesus on other occasions, it is found that the present instance stands in isolation. Jesus is reported to have used the word "save (ow(w)" three times of healings for the body. In another instance it is not clear that there was healing, but what was given was a present possession, and the "saving" a completed fact. The insertion of the word by Luke alone in the exposition of the parable of the Sower3 exhibits its early currency as a theological term, but separates it from the usage of Jesus in this connection. It is attributed to Jesus once with a very general sense, but indefinite religious content. This context supplies the only instance of Jesus' use of the cognate, “salvation (σwrŋpía).”5 Once only in the Synoptic Gospels does it appear with a meaning somewhat similar to that in the case primarily under consideration, namely, in the unauthentic Mark 16:16, "He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved."

I MK 5:34; 10:52; Luke 17:19. A similar instance in Luke 8:50 is unsupported by document MK 5:36.

2 Luke 7:50.

3 Luke 8:12=MK 4:15.

4 Luke 19:10.

5 Luke 19:9.

The thoughts in the Lukan report of the saying in portion H are simple, and appropriate to the occasion. "Not a hair of your head shall perish": that is, in accord with the thought elsewhere expressed,1 nothing shall carry you beyond the bounds of the care and concern of your Father; his solicitude and sympathy will be constant in your future. "In your patience ye shall win your souls": that is, by endurance and steadfastness under persecution you will gain in real life; by the discipline of hard experiences, even unto bodily death, you will win life itself. If it be asked which form seems secondary and derivative, account must be taken of the probability that, given the words from Jesus as expressed in the Lukan portion H, given, with that, the belief in the coming of the Son of man while the disciples were yet alive, as founded in the rest of the discourse, the tradition would likely take on the form in the document MK portion H sooner or later. Therefore it may, perhaps, be concluded here as elsewhere that Luke's copy of document MK was more primitive than that of Matthew. How far the apparently derivative and secondary record in the present MK portion H is yet the expression of the essential thought of Jesus about salvation can be ultimately determined only by the study of those other sections of this discourse in which the idea of some consummating event emerges more clearly than in the words "In your patience ye shall win your souls."

Of minor significance, but worthy of note, is the modification in the portion F, by which gospel MT (chap. 24) was conformed to the later accretion in portion I through the change of "all men" to "all the nations." By a somewhat similar expedient, the addition of "and to the Gentiles," the Matthaean portion B (chap. 10) was used, without serious modification, by a later editor, as a corrective to the evangelist's thought as expressed in portion I (chap. 10).

For an exhibit of the paragraph on persecution, so far as derivable by an appeal to the oldest form of the tradition, there may be used, it would seem, document MK with the omission of portion C and the substitution of the Lukan testimony, as from a more primitive MK, for the present MK form of the portion H.

I Luke 12:7=Matt. 10:30.

If an examination be made of gospel LK, in all those portions that are derived by Luke from the document MK, it will be found that there is no paragraph which Luke has transcribed with so great a modification of the wording of his source as these verses on the destruction of Jerusalem. This most significant fact has its probable explanation in the chronological relation between the event here portrayed and the production of the gospel by Luke. To the general fact that

he was dealing in this discourse with prophetic material, there is, perhaps, to be added the specific recognition that the event here treated had already become history. Under the influence of the known course of events in connection with the Roman siege and capture of the city, Luke recasts the sayings in plain and definite terms. The differences between the evangelist and his source are, with the single exception of the portion J, attributable with reasonable confidence to the fact that he did his work after Jerusalem had fallen.

Indications that Luke framed his gospel after the fall of the city may be detected in the rewriting of portion A in plain terms, in the addition of the portion B statement about "her desolation," in the sense that the days of conflict and ruthless aggression by the Romans were "days of vengeance" (F), in the interpretation of the great calamity as after all only the fulfilment of Old Testament prophecy (F), in the omission of the suggestion that prayer be made against its coming "in the winter" (H)—without significance now that the event was past. Of even more striking testimony to the late date of the Lukan form, there is the sketch of developments as actually experienced, in the portion I, where Luke has substituted much that is specific for the very general portion I of document MK. And the view of Luke's time as to the period during which the holy city is to be dominated by the Gentiles is set forth in the addition which he makes in the portion K. With Paul, Luke perceives that these times are "the times of the Gentiles," but he shares Paul's faith that there is a future for the Israel now temporarily cast off.

Matthew was faithful to his source even in verbal form, his departure consisting in so common a phenomenon as the indication that events are the fulfilment of prophetic scripture (A). In that connection he gives the definite "holy place" for the general "where he ought not" of his source. It may not be argued from Matthew's faithfulness here that he therefore constructed his gospel before the fall of Jerusalem. Whether from Matthew or from another, there is one clear echo from the experiences of the Roman war in the addition to portion H of the words, "neither on a sabbath." Familiarity with Josephus' record of the fatal effects of the sabbath law in the conflict with Rome, through the enforced suspension of all defensive activities on that day, makes this phrase at this place luminous with meaning.