CHAPTER IV.

S. LUKE'S PREFACE'.

See Proposition 8 in enumeration of proofs of displacement.

To appreciate the force of a statement, however simple, it is generally necessary that we should know with tolerable exactness the circumstances to which it refers. Failing this knowledge, there is considerable danger that either the general drift of the statement, or the points of detail which it involves, or both, should be misunderstood. Whilst if it should so happen that the circumstances alluded to are not only not understood, but from some cause or other should have become the subject of positive misconception, this danger is of course greatly increased.

That this proposition applies with peculiar force to S. Luke's preface will be at once apparent. Not only is it couched in language which is susceptible of many modifications in its actual rendering into English, but it contains. several expressions which, save in the light of facts of which there is confessedly no certain record, are wholly unintelligible.

The temptation under such circumstances is first to assume the correctness of what seems to be the most

See also pp. lxxxi-lxxxv.

probable view of the language used, and then to deduce our facts from the meaning thus given to the statement as a whole.

Obviously such a method would never be resorted to so long as there seemed the least possibility of adopting the reverse process, i. e. of first ascertaining the facts, and then seeing how far the expressions in the original statement could be made to fit in with them. Obviously also should this possibility at any time arise, it would constitute an allsufficient reason for reviewing the previously adopted interpretation of the language used, and the opinions subsequently based upon it.

Now, if the main contention of this volume can be established, we have at once revealed to us the very facts which are so absolutely essential to enable us to understand what S. Luke's preface really means, and are so far placed much more nearly in the position of those to whom it was originally addressed.

The two main facts, from which several subsidiary ones are merely unavoidable deductions, are these:

(1) That S. Luke did, as a matter of fact, write in exact historical and chronological order.

(2) That he so wrote as to elucidate the order, and confirm the truthfulness, of the Gospels which have come down to us as the writings of those who were either eyewitnesses or ministers of the word, viz. the Gospels of S. Matthew, S. Mark and S. John.

Both these facts are established by evidence which it seems impossible to gainsay. The one displacement in S. Luke's Gospel being rectified, we see at once that there is not a shadow of real discrepancy between his order and that

of the other three Evangelists, or in other words that whenever there is any appearance of such discrepancy his 'order' at once explains it, and that we have therefore all the evidence, which the full support of their testimony can give, to his order being what we have termed it, exactly chronological and historical.

Nor does the second fact rest on evidence one whit less indisputable. To deny it is to affirm that, though S. Luke expressed his intention of elucidating the order and confirming the truthfulness of certain logoi or Gospels, and that though he has undoubtedly done this with regard to S. Matthew, S. Mark and S. John, yet this is a mere accidental coincidence, and moreover that the Logoi to which he really refers, though of sufficient authority to be accepted by the Church up to the time of S. Luke, as the basis of all catechetical instruction, have disappeared without leaving any trace behind them.

We might almost as well suppose that every sentence in the present page came into its place by accident, as suppose that S. Luke's narrative could bear the relation which it does to the other Gospels, whilst all the time it was not intended to have any specific reference to them. Not only do they all four traverse precisely the same ground, not only does the actual wording of prolonged narratives constitute a background of exact verbal agreement, but-not to assume what is not dealt with in this volume-there is at least a presumptive probability, (1) that this background is intended. to throw out into bold relief the variations on which the peculiarity of each narrative turns, and (2) that the very omissions and additions form part of a definite plan of writing.

Nor, if we look at the arrangement of the Gospel narrative regarded as a whole, and mark the relative bearing of its several parts, does it seem possible to doubt that there is as clear and unmistakeable evidence of the working of some One Master Mind in the composition and ordering of the whole, as there is in any elaborate and exquisitely concerted piece of music.

Even those who may not be prepared to accept such phenomena as the Gospels present as an illustration of the Scripture statement that there was ever working in Evangelists, as in Pastors and Teachers, the Selfsame Spirit dividing to every man severally as He would, still cannot deny the existence of the main facts of the case, or their bearing upon the present issue.

Assuming then that the two facts stated above cannot be gainsayed, let us see what are the conclusions which they necessarily involve.

(1) They shew negatively that there is no necessity whatever for attributing to S. Luke the meagre and inconclusive reasoning which the accepted interpretation of his Preface involves, whilst

(2) They shew positively that all the statements of his preface are intimately connected with each other, and form. together an introduction to his Gospel, which has the closest and most logical bearing both upon its design and execution.

(1) For what does the ordinarily accepted interpretation of S. Luke's preface amount to? Simply to this, that because many other persons had written Gospels, S. Luke considered that the accuracy of his information was a sufficient justification for his doing the same. Thus understood it is rather

an apology, than a reason, for writing another Gospel. We are obliged to assume that, during the 25 or 30 years which must have preceded the publication of S. Luke's Gospel, the early Church had been dependent upon oral tradition only, or, in other words, that though sufficient time had elapsed for unauthorized writers to provide written Gospels in considerable numbers, the Providence of God and the constituted Authorities of the Church had done nothing whatever to provide any authoritative written documents whatever, either for the instruction of future ages, or for the equipment of those, who were to be themselves "instructed", and to become the instructors of others.

The bare idea of such a state of things is so incongruous. and improbable as to make us view with suspicion any interpretation of Scripture which would imply it.

Nor is this the only pronounced difficulty involved in the current view of S. Luke's words.

That his object was to correct a faulty rearrangement of something, this something being assumed to be the oral tradition of eye-witnesses and ministers of the word, is admitted. But this admission is only a preamble to the assertion that when S. Luke specifies his intention of effecting this object by writing "in order", the notion of order does not necessarily involve that of time, but rather that of "moral and logical sequence", and that accordingly his Gospel is "united in its several parts by a spiritual law and not by a table of dates'."

But is it possible to conceive that the effect of an erroneous rearrangement of historical facts could be effectu

1 Professor Westcott's Introduction to the Study of the Gospels,

p. 192.