BIBLICAL "HELPS"

Evening Post, Volume CXIV, Issue 38, 13 August 1932, Page 22

BIBLICAL "HELPS"

(By "Ajax.")

*SEW TESTAMENT PROBLEMS

Helps to the Study of the Bible. 2nd Edition. With many Corrections, Alterations, and Additions. By the Bishop of Bradford and nine others, li s 4J. 610 pages and 104 plates. London, Oxford University Press; Humphrey Milford. Published price 8s 6d. [Fourth Notice.] In their treatment of the New TestaJnent the revisers of the Oxford "Helps to the Study of the Bible" have no isueh shocks for old-fashioned orthodoxy «s their treatment of some of the most important of the Old Testament books saayhave caused. I have found no such shock in their. N.T. work, but only that shock of the opposite kind which War noted in the.first of these articles, yi&jvthe, repetition of the view expreMed in the first edition that tho •Epiatle, to the Hebrews might be the ■work of St. Paul—an opinion which for at .least 30 years has been so thoroughly discredited that it ought never to have fceeii admitted to the second edition Itnd should1 be promptly removed. ■■■"■.- ♦ : * «• From, the standpoint of recent (scholarship a surprising thing in the old x edition is the early date assigned to Matthew's, Gospel, and tho late date to Mark's; These positions are now reversed. ;.The old chronology of the Synoptic Gospels was Matthew, 50 to 60 A.D.; Lake, 58 to 60; Mark, 63 to 70. JThe chronology adopted in the present edition isrMark, 50 to 60 A.D.; Luke, mbout 60, but probably later;. Matthew, 68 -to 75. .But in comparing the two series allowance must be made for the fact that in the first edition of the "Helps" \the birth of Christ was asisigned to the year B.C. 4, whereas B;C. 8 or'a little later is now considered to be: the probable date. * * i * The authorship of-the Fourth Gospel is another matter in which there is a •*?ide divergence between the two editions. In the first the traditional ascription of it to John, the son of Zebedee and "the disciple whom Jesus loved," is accepted without question, "but the new editors* point out that, in spite of the support of Polyearp, who iftd, been a disciple of St. John, there are r .difflculties in, the way of this view. There is no doubt, they say, that the Gospel is the work of an eye-witness, or at least rests upon the testimony of an eye-witness, and its historical value need not be called -in question. But it presents certain ■featai'eß"which make it difficult to frelj^ve-thaii the author was a Galilean iwhirsßan. fo2To.t'-only is the style very unKfceitbat; of - the other evangelists, but the^ihjtbor'' seems to have known what passed "at. a private'meeting of -the Sanhed- ' I'm (XI. 4W53), and to have had unrestrict- , cd right of:,entry into the high priest's • palace, wheth be was well known (XVIII., 15,^ J6), ■If jaust be a matter of opinion ■wlSth«jr:*Buch considerations as these outweigh.tike testimony of Polyearp or not. rx-:J; '':•■'■■:.'■■" ♦ ;■ », -. ''■ '. 4- more important difference between . %he two books^is.that,the existence of . a Synoptic Problem is not even mentioned in the first edition, but is secognised-"by the new editors as a ■ reality which has produced important Results..,,. . , , ■ ■ . The study of the problem of the literary relation bgtweeri the first, second, and : third Gospels, which has exercised the , Jjiinds of,(scholars for the. past century, . has, they £ay, led to two* conclusions, the ' first of which is almost universally ac- ' eepfed, and the second only less so. These . are (a) that the Gospel, of Mark was employed as ; a leading source both by" the ; •miter of ijke first, and by the writer of ■&c third .'Gospel; (b) that when the Mgrkan matter has been separated from ■ th« first ilid third Gospels; the common j matter. wsich remains is derived from a ; Josfc work,' commonly called Q. (Quelle, ; German for "som cc"),' which consisted 'j inainly of sayings of our Lord which had , been translated from Aramaic into ; Greek, and were handled by the first and : tfcird evangelists in this Greek dress (see Sir John Hawkins's "Horae Synopticae," i Stad cd., Clarendon Press, "Studies in the j Synoptic Problem," by members of the tTniversity of Oxford, edited by W. Sauday^ Clarendon Press, and "The Four': Gospels," by Carson Streeter). Ik. single paragrapn may seem, a small Sneasure for so important a matter, but ] sft at least notifies the reader of the smfcortanc»'?6f the problem and lets him Snqw, yrbete he can find it fully dissnssecL ': .'■■-.* *. . * "Biifc to me tho great attractions'of 'the second, as of the first, edition of • JAe Oxford "Helps" are- the nutober ted value of its tables and its illus- : trations. In the first edition the neat- '. est ''Harmony of the Gospels" that.l Sad seen is arranged in twelve pages xoled into six columns running across the page and headed "Events," "Locality" (a point sometimes obscured in larger Harmonies), "Matthew," "Mark," "Luke," and "John" respectively. Nothing could be neater or more compact except the form into which the Har»ony has now been condensed with the help of smaller but quite clear print. The columns now run down the page" instead of across it—which saves tho trouble of turning the book loundr-and five pages and a half ■office for tho whole story. It will of course be understood that on such a scale room could not be found for tho text of the passages collated, but only for the references. Appreciation of the skill on the part of both the compiler and the printer which has packed so clear a conspectus of the Gospel narratives iijto so narrow a compass greatly increases the pleasure of corisulting.it. * * * A sitnilar ingenuity is shown in a Urge number of tables, dealing with soch subjects"' as "Miraelea in the Old Testament,"'"Parables in. the 0.T.," Prayers in the 0.T.," and similar titles for the New. Testament; "Prophecies Relating to Christ"; "Passages from the O.T. Quoted in the N.T." (4 pp.); "References in the O.T. not being Exact Quotations" (2 pp.); "References; in the N.T. to Incidents . Be'eorded in tho 0.T." (2 pp.)^ etc. These collections, which it is pleasant to browse in or even to look at, must obviously be of great convenience and value for the purposes of either study or reference* * * ■ » The immense value of a table may be illustrated from the one which sets out the "Passages from the O.T.'Quoted in the N.T." It shows one at a glance that Matthew -is by far ' the richest of i£? /••iflpgelists in O.T. quotations jiiA John by far the poorest; that among all the books of the N.T. Romanß iotaea first in this respect, with Mat-the-w second; and that among the epistles the second place is taken by Hebrews. One also finds that, though th# writer of that strangest of N.T. Books,, the Apocalypse, is steeped in ; tti« language of the Pentateuch and the prophets, his uses of it are so numerotjs and sometimes so vague as to defy tabulation, and that instead of making

the attempt tho editors substitute a very interesting note.

1' The -whole of this book (Revelation) is, they say, a reflex of the prophetic visions of the Old Testament. Apocalyptic writins is an off-shoot of Prophecy proper, and was extensively practised by the Jews from about 200 8.C.-A.D. 100. The beginnings of it appear in the Old Testament. In the Revelation of St. John the time-honoured form is used to convey a Christian Philosophy of History, viz., the continual conflict between Good and Evil and the complete eventual triumph of Christ. It is, therefore, full of references and allusions to the -writings of Moses and the prophets, too numerous to be tabulated, and often allusive rather than literal; but the marginal references will better aid the reader in working out the connection between this Revelation, which closes Holy Scripture, and the inspirations vouchsafed to the earlier dispensation, which prepared the way for the fulness of the glory of Christ. There is a queer note on Revelation in another part of the book:— Its certainty that good will eventually be completely triumphant is not yet, as thei late war revealed, the common property' of the Christian world. As the late war came to an end nearly ■> fourteen years ago, one might have expected more recent evidence of _ the world's lack of faith. *It still calls itself Christian, but "hasn't been doing much at it lately!" Has not the use it has made of those fourteen years fully earned "the contents of that seventh vial without harking back to the'war? •' '"