LECTURE VI BACK TO GALILEE THE WITNESS OF PETER 1 1. Gospels as the New Standard of Teaching It is difficult to withstand the sense of shock and change as one passes from the soaring imagination of Paul in Romans, Colossians, Ephesians, to the simple narrative of Mark. It is true the evangelist also aims to set forth Jesus as "the Son of God," 1 and prefaces his narrative with a quasi-theological vision-story in which a Voice from Heaven proclaims him such. But there is a difference between prologue and narrative. The evangelist tells the story of the Baptism in a way to make clear that John was the expected Elijah, whose function in Jewish eschatology was to anoint the Messiah, before which anointing he would be unknown even to himself. The story goes on in a form corresponding to the Isaian Servant-song: Behold my Servant whom I have chosen; My Beloved on whom my soul set her choice; It conveys thus the same conception of Jesus as the elect Servant, endowed with all the powers of the divine Spirit, which Paul had expressed in Col. 1:19. Paul declares that it was the "good pleasure" (the Eudoxía) that the whole "fullness," or as one of the earliest uncanonical gospels has it, "the whole fountain of the Holy Spirit," should take up its abode in the Son 1 The words vioũ beou are wanting in some manuscripts, but the aim is self-evident. 2 Is. 42: 1-4. The rendering is that of Mt. 12: 18. of God's love. Mk. 1:1-13 puts this in the form of apocalypse, or revelation.3 But the prologue of Mark is like the prologue of John so far as regards its relation to the body of the work. The fourth evangelist introduces Jesus as the Logos incarnate, and does his best to tell the story from this transcendental point of view. But the title never reappears in the body of the work, and in the nature of the case it is impossible to carry through the conception. Mark also makes the effort to tell the story from the point of view announced in his prologue. But in the nature of the case he cannot maintain the Pauline level. He can only relate a series of anecdotes from the Galilean ministry of preaching and healing to show how Jesus was endowed with "the whole fountain of the Holy Spirit." Thereafter he tells how he was glorified through his suffering and resurrection. This latter section of the narrative is prefaced by another vision story in which a second Voice from Heaven explains again the meaning of what is to follow. Jesus is again manifested as the "Beloved Son," or the Elect of God, and his suffering on the cross is revealed as being in reality the victory over death. Mortality thus puts on immortality, and this earthly tabernacle is transfigured into the eternal "house which is from Heaven." We have thus a second introduction of the values of Pauline teaching, which again takes the form of revealing vision, or Apocalypse. After it the evangelist proceeds with the anecdotes connected with Jesus' fate in Jerusalem. But do what he will to emphasize the miraculous powers of Jesus in the story, and the marvel of his wisdom and prophetic foresight, it is of course impossible for him to make it at the same time the story of a real man under real historical conditions, and also the story of the superhuman being who 3 See G. Friedländer. Jewish Sources of the Sermon on the Mount, p. 2. steps down from the "Heavenly places" of the postresurrection Christology. The combination is, however, attempted, even in this earliest known record of the sayings and doings of Jesus, and it is in this attempt that the influence of Paul, however indirectly, is most clearly seen. It is fortunate indeed for us that the attempt could not be carried through. "John " has gone further than Mark in this direction of making the whole story of Jesus one long transfiguration scene, and we all know how fatal would have been the result for real religious values if this late Gospel had succeeded in completely superseding all its predecessors. Mark superseded all earlier Gospels. Had the apotheosis been consistently carried through the real and historical Jesus would have been completely eclipsed behind the glories of apocalyptic vision. The solid ground of plain, hard, fact, in the work-a-day world we have to live in whether we approve it or not, would have disappeared. There would have been left us as the basis for our science of religion a figure scarcely more substantial than the mythical heroes of the mysteries. Let us be thankful that the whole Gospel was not written in the mystic style of the vision-stories at the Baptism and Transfiguration, that there was so much of unwelcome fact, resistent to the alembic of the most ardently devout imagination, so much fidelity to things established in the mouths of many witnesses, that it was impossible for the idealizers to have their way. Well is it that the Church did not follow the lead of that ultra-Pauline element, which after the death of the Apostles sought to limit attention and interest to the Man from Heaven, ignoring the Galilean mechanic whom Paul had not known in the flesh. Sober, moral, common-sense led it to fall back rather on the Petrine reminiscences of the sayings and doings of Jesus. The sense of change in passing from the Pauline Epistles to what I have called the "Aramaic enclave" including the Synoptic Gospels, Acts and Revelation, is indeed abrupt, and if we have any sympathy for the Greek conception of religion as participation in the life of the immortals, it tends to bring us back to earth with a sense of shock. No wonder Marcion would tolerate but one Gospel, and not even that until he had thoroughly expurgated what he regarded as the Jewish interpolations of the Galilean Apostles. Nevertheless if any ladder is to bridge for us the chasm between earth and Heaven it cannot be suspended from the clouds. It will have to rest upon the solid rock of earthly experience. It is not otherwise even with that Son of Man on whom the Ephesian evangelist sees the angels of God ascending and descending to meet our human need. One made in all points like ourselves is a better leader through the valley of the shadow of death than a demi-god; and a Galilean peasant better than an Indian prince. The interval between Paul and the Synoptic writers is considerable in time, but still more so in situation. The one thing that ancient tradition surely knows as regards date is that Markan tradition is post-apostolic. The Gospel represents Peter's story, but without such consecutive arrangement as the evangelist would have given it if he had himself been conversant with the facts, or been able to consult the eye-witnesses. Mark was not himself a follower of the Lord, but afterwards of Peter; and even what he remembered from the teaching of Peter could not be made into an orderly narrative because through his death or otherwise Peter (and inferentially the other eye-witnesses) could not be consulted. This is absolutely the only tradition we possess concerning Gospel origins earlier than the middle of the second century. It is the statement of "the Elder" consulted by Papias, and dates from before 118 A. D. Fortunately it is also not only reasonable in itself and unlikely to be an invention, but of very great importance; because scholarship is now unanimous in regarding Mark as the oldest extant Gospel, and the source, so far as narrative is concerned, of both the NorthSyrian Gospel of Luke, and the South-Syrian to which the name of Matthew had come to be attached before 150 A. D. It points, then, to the very beginnings of extant gospel story. In addition there are reasons which I have tried to state elsewhere for accepting the ancient belief that the compilation of this "Petrine" material into our so-called Gospel of Mark was accomplished in the great Pauline church of Rome, and for dating it in the earlier years of Domitian, not far from the period of Hebrews. These reasons still seem to me adequate. Here no more will be needful than to point out briefly the significance of this date and place of origin. 4 Only a score of years, more or less, since the death of Paul, and James, and perhaps John the son of Zebedee, and Peter. But that means that the chief eyewitnesses, if not all of them, were gone. For James the brother of John had already been martyred in 41 or 42. In the eighties men must have begun to speak, like the author of Hebrews, of the gospel as having" at the first been spoken by the Lord, and afterward confirmed unto us by them that heard." It means, if we use the careful chronology of Clement, that men were already looking back to Nero's time as marking the end of "the teaching of the Apostles," and considered their own generation as belonging to another age. In fact the extinction of the Julian dynasty with the suicide Nero, the chaos of the world in the renewal of the e 4 Harvard Texts and Studies VII. "Is Mar Roman pel?" 1919. |