from without, impervious to the feeling and thought of the time, nor as a book, or theology, but only as a free and germinant idea, capable of drawing into itself and adapting every serviceable element from its environment, we should expect to find, and do find, the ebb and flow of the tides of religious thought leaving their mark in the structure of this literature, and not outside alone. As some of those exquisite flower-like forms of ocean's bed build themselves up out of material carried on the currents that sweep in and out through their pores, so the literature of Christianity's formative age retains within its structure watermarks of the conflict of religious forces pouring now from the Jewish, now from the Hellenistic world; and while the more vital consciousness subdues and assimilates the weaker, yet the weaker finds a place and reappears, though in transfigured form. National religion in even its proudest development, the worship of the genius of Rome, disappeared before the new universal religion. But its best elements were not destroyed. They were fulfilled in the transfigured doctrine of the kingdom of God. Nature-worship, in its Hellenistic adaptation to the hope of immortality by participation in the divine nature, went down before the gospel of the risen Christ. But the Hellenistic doctrines of personal immortality had their resurrection. In conflict with them the crude Jewish eschatology of a restoration of all things in a kingdom inherited by flesh and blood underwent a change so complete as to leave scarce a trace of its earlier form. Little remains of it in the fourth Gospel beyond the assurance that departing we shall be "with Christ." The doctrine of raising from among the dead (ἀνάστασις ἐκ νεκρῶν) is transformed into a doctrine of participation in the eternal life that is "hid in God."

It is the purpose of this introductory lecture to classify the successive types of New Testament literature

in the well known and generally admitted order of their appearance. First by an interval of decades come the great Epistles of Paul, continued in a later succession of Deutero-Pauline and Catholic Epistles. The latter are attributed to Apostles and Brethren of the Lord who had the authority of Apostles, and in substance as well as form are largely Pauline. Contemporary with some of the later Epistles come the Synoptic writings, beginning with Mark, and including both treatises of Luke. For practical purposes we group with these the kindred book of the Revelation of John. Later still, at the very close of the first century or beginning of the second, come the so-called Johannine writings, which consist of a Gospel and three brief Epistles.

It is important to observe that we cannot reckon the Revelation in the "Johannine " group, or class; we should reserve the term 'Johannine to this book which alone of the five canonized at Ephesus bears the name of "John " in its text. The Ephesian Gospel and Epistles while not much later in date than the Revelation are at the widest possible remove from it doctrinally, and as literature belong in a totally different class. We should also note that of the three groups described the first and third (Epistles and Johannine Writings) are composed exclusively of writings which are Greek, and never were anything but Greek; whereas the second group (Synoptics and Revelation) is almost as completely Semitic in origin, scarcely any part save the story of Paul in the second half of Acts having been originally composed in Greek. The rest seems to have been translated from Aramaic in its main substance.

The middle period of New Testament literature represents, therefore, an Aramaic enclave. The statement seems simple enough. It means only that the Synoptic writings and Revelation are based on translations from the Aramaic, and in this carefully chosen expression

would probably be admitted by all philologians. Conşidered in itself alone it is not a fact of great importance; for we may accept the translation as in general quite adequate. But considered as a symptom of the origin and nature of the material embodied in these naturalized Greek writings, it has an importance which entirely transcends the apprehension of the ordinary reader.

Stated in other terms the phenomenon is this: practically the whole literature of our European, Greekspeaking, Pauline Christianity, in those vital elements which cover the life and teaching of Jesus, and the founding and extension of the Church, together with its entire apocalyptic eschatology, is a foreign substance relatively to its literary context. It is a rib taken out from the body of the Aramaic-speaking branch of the Church, and grafted into the Pauline. The Palestinian mother-church was dispersed in the formative period of the New Testament, leaving no literature of its own. What survives is due to the pious care of the Pauline churches, which incorporated with their own apostolic writings such of the Aramaic material as could be made available. This material was foreign in language, and to some extent in conception also, but not really alien. Had it been foreign to this extent the adapted material could never have been vitalized at all. Unchristian material, whether Jewish or heathen, would never have been received; or if taken up it would have been promptly ejected. The enclave is Christian, but retains something of its Jewish origin. Apart from the single book of prophecy, ascribed in the editorial framework to John, this Aramaic material is distinctively, and in every sense of the word, "Petrine"; since not only the foundation narrative transmitted from Mark to the later Synoptists is universally understood to represent the reminiscences of Peter, but the subsequent story of the founding of the Church is centered on this Apostle.

But why did the Pauline churches take up this Semitic material? For two reasons. First, Paul himself looked back to and rested upon this Petrine authority (I Cor. 15:1-11); and after Paul's "departure" his churches had no other recourse against the unbridled speculations of Gnostic heresy. Second, while the translation probably errs if at all rather in the direction of too slavish literalness, the much more important matter of selection was entirely in the hands of Greek editors. And unless every indication both of ancient tradition and modern inference is wrong, these Greek editors took up only what was most congenial to the Pauline churches among which their compilations were intended to circulate. In Matthew we have a few traces of material which if not anti-Pauline is at least irreconcilable with Paul's teaching. The same is true of Acts. But editors anxious to believe that all Apostles taught precisely the same doctrine found a harmonizing sense quite as easily as moderns find it in the Epistle of James. Their catholicity was generously inclusive.

The case of Mark is typical, and this Gospel became determinative of later Synoptic narrative. There is good reason to accept the testimony of antiquity that this Petrine foundation stone of the sayings and doings of Jesus was compiled under the direction of Mark. At least it appeared under his authority. And Mark, as we know, was a follower of Paul. Until the end Mark was with Paul at Rome, or acting for him from Rome, as his trusted representative. Such connection as this lieutenant of Paul had had with Peter was probably only a matter of his young manhood, at least a score of years before the time of writing.

It is true that Mark appears in a different relation in a writing known to us as the First Epistle of Peter. This is an encyclical, later than the Gospel, addressed from Rome to the Pauline churches of Asia Minor. It

encourages them to stand fast in the fiery persecution they are called upon to undergo together with their brethren throughout the world, apparently the Domitianic persecution of about 90 A. d. It purports to speak for Peter, and conveys a greeting from "Mark" as Peter's (spiritual) "son," implying a second association of Mark with Peter after the death of Paul. I need hardly say that if the date 90 A. D. is correct the assumption to speak for Peter is a literary fiction. The device was regarded as admissible at the time, and perhaps at first was fully understood as the mere convention which it almost certainly is. Few scholars to-day would attempt to maintain Petrine authorship in any real sense. At all events everything about First Peter save the name is Pauline, and Pauline only. Hence we can use its mention of Mark as Peter's son only as witness to the regard which was accorded to the evangelist at the place of composition as early as 90 A. D. And this is of no small importance. For we learn from Acts that Mark really had been associated with Peter in the days before he accompanied Paul and Barnabas on the socalled First Missionary Journey. We may perhaps assume also that he came down with Peter from Jerusalem to Antioch after having left Paul and Barnabas at Perga. That was about the year 47 or 48. This early association with Peter might well account for his being referred to in the Epistle as Peter's spiritual "son."

The data of Acts will also account for Mark's being called an "interpreter" (pμnveurs) of Peter in a very ancient tradition of Palestinian origin which spoke of him as author of the Gospel. In its original form and sense this tradition is perfectly credible. Before his journey to Cyprus with Barnabas after the breach with Paul at Antioch Mark may very well have been associated with Peter. But there is not a word in the tra