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  THE MAKING OF THE NEW TESTAMENT


  THE HOME UNIVERSITY LIBRARY OF MODERN KNOWLEDGE

  Editors of THE HOME UNIVERSITY LIBRARY OF MODERN KNOWLEDGE

  Rt. Hon. H. A. L. Fisher, M.A., F.B.A.
  Prof. Gilbert Murray, Litt.D., LL.D., F.B.A.
  Prof. J. Arthur Thomson, M.A., LL.D.


  _For list of volumes in the Library see end of book._

  THE MAKING OF THE NEW TESTAMENT

  _By_ BENJAMIN W. BACON D.D.

  PROFESSOR OF NEW CRITICISM AND EXEGESIS IN YALE UNIVERSITY

  [Illustration]

  THORNTON BUTTERWORTH LIMITED 15 BEDFORD STREET, LONDON, W.C.2

_First Impression September 1912 - All Rights Reserved_

MADE AND PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN




CONTENTS


  PART I

  CANONIZATION AND CRITICISM

   CHAP.                                                       PAGE

      I INSPIRATION AND CANONIZATION                              7

     II THE REACTION TO CRITICISM                                33


    PART II

    THE LITERATURE OF THE APOSTLE

    III PAUL AS MISSIONARY AND DEFENDER OF THE GOSPEL OF GRACE   56

     IV PAUL AS PRISONER AND CHURCH FATHER                       83

      V PSEUDO-APOSTOLIC EPISTLES                               104


    PART III

    THE LITERATURE OF CATECHIST AND PROPHET

     VI THE MATTHAEAN TRADITION OF THE PRECEPTS OF JESUS         128

    VII THE PETRINE TRADITION. EVANGELIC STORY                  154

   VIII THE JOHANNINE TRADITION. PROPHECY                       185


   PART IV

   THE LITERATURE OF THE THEOLOGIAN

     IX THE SPIRITUAL GOSPEL AND EPISTLES                       206

      X EPILOGUES AND CONCLUSIONS                               233

        BIBLIOGRAPHY                                            251

        INDEX                                                   255




THE MAKING OF THE NEW TESTAMENT

PART I


CANONIZATION AND CRITICISM

CHAPTER I

INSPIRATION AND CANONIZATION


The New Testament presents the paradox of a literature born of protest
against the tyranny of a canon, yet ultimately canonized itself through
an increasing demand for external authority. This paradox is full of
significance. We must examine it more closely.

The work of Jesus was a consistent effort to set religion free from the
deadening system of the scribes. He was conscious of a direct, divine
authority. The broken lights of former inspiration are lost in the full
dawn of God's presence to His soul.

So with Paul. The key to Paul's thought is his revolt against legalism.
It had been part of his servitude to persecute the sect which claimed to
know another Way besides the "way"[1] of the scribes. These Christians
signalized their faith by the rite of baptism, and gloried in the sense
of endowment with "the Spirit." Saul was profoundly conscious of the
yoke; only he had not drammed that his own deliverance could come from
such a quarter. But contact with victims of the type of Stephen, men
"filled with the Spirit," conscious of the very "power from God" for
lack of which his soul was fainting, could not but have some effect. It
came suddenly, overwhelmingly. The real issue, as Saul saw it, both
before and after his conversion, was Law _versus_ Grace. In seeking
"justification" by favour of Jesus these Christians were opening a new
and living way to acceptance with God. Traitorous and apostate as the
attempt must seem while the way of the Law still gave promise of
success, to souls sinking like Saul's deeper and deeper into the
despairing consciousness of "the weakness of the flesh" forgiveness in
the name of Jesus might prove to be light and life from God. The
despised sect of'sinners' whom he had been persecuting expressed the
essence of their faith in the doctrine that the gift of the Spirit of
Jesus had made them sons and heirs of God. If the converted Paul in turn
is uplifted--"energized," as he terms it--even beyond his
fellow-Christians, by the sense of present inspiration, it is no more
than we should expect.

    Footnote 1: _Tarik_, i. e. "way," is still the Arabic term for a
    sect, and the Rabbinic term for legal requirement is _halacha_, i.
    e. "walk."

Paul's conversion to the new faith--or at least his persistent
satisfaction in it--will be inexplicable unless we appreciate the logic
of his recognition in it of an inherent opposition to the growing
demands of legalism. Jesus had, in truth, led a revolt against mere
book-religion. His chief opponents were the scribes, the devotees and
exponents of a sacred scripture, the Law. "Law" and "Prophets," the one
prescribing the conditions of the expected transcendental Kingdom, the
other illustrating their application and guaranteeing their promise,
constituted the canon of the synagogue. Judaism had become a religion of
written authority. Jesus set over against this a direct relation to the
living Father in heaven, ever presently revealed to the filial spirit.
The Sermon on the Mount makes the doing of this Father's will something
quite other than servitude to written precepts interpreted by official
authority and imposed under penalty. It is to be self-discipline in the
Father's spirit of disinterested goodness, as revealed in everyday
experience.

Even the reward of this self-discipline, the Kingdom, Jesus did not
conceive quite as the scribes. To them obedience in this world procured
a "share in the world to come." To Him the reward was more a matter of
being than of getting. The Kingdom was an heir-apparency; and,
therefore, present as well as future. It was "within" and "among" men as
well as before them. They should seek to "be sons and daughters of the
Highest," taking for granted that all other good things would be
"added." So Jesus made religion live again. It became spiritual, inward,
personal, actual.

After John the Baptist's ministry to what we should call the
'unchurched' masses, Jesus took up their cause. He became the "friend"
and champion of the "little ones," the "publicans and sinners," the
mixed 'people of the land' in populous, half-heathen, Galilee. The
burdens imposed by the scribes in the name of 'Scripture' were accepted
with alacrity by the typical Pharisee unaffected by Pauline misgivings
of'moral inability.' To "fulfil all righteousness" was to the Pharisee
untainted by Hellenism a pride and delight. To the "lost sheep of
Israel" whom Jesus addressed, remote from temple and synagogue, this
"righteousness" had proved (equally as to Paul, though on very different
grounds) "a yoke which neither we nor our fathers were able to bear."
Jesus "had compassion on the multitude." To them he "spoke with
authority"; and yet "not as the scribes" but as "a prophet." When
challenged by the scribes for his authority he referred to "the baptism
of John," and asked whether John's commission was "from heaven, or of
men." They admitted that John was "a prophet." Those who give utterance
after this manner to the simple, sincere conviction of the soul, voicing
its instinctive aspiration toward "the things that be of God," are
conscious that they speak not of themselves.

Jesus, it is true, was no iconoclast. He took pains to make clear that
if he superseded what they of old time had taught as righteousness, it
was in the interest of a higher, a "righteousness of God." If he
disregarded fasts and sabbaths, it was to put substance for form, end
for means. "Judgment, mercy, and good faith" should count more than
tithes from "mint and anise and cummin." He echoed what John the Baptist
had taught of repentance and forgiveness. Hope should no longer be based
on birth, or prerogative, or ritual form, but on the mercy of a God who
demands that we forgive if we would be forgiven. Such had been, however,
the message not of John only, but of all the prophets before him: "I
will have mercy, and not sacrifice." Jesus taught this higher, inward,
righteousness; but not merely as John had done. John had said: Repent,
for the wrath of God is at hand. Jesus said: Repent, for the forgiveness
of God is open. The Father's heart yearns over the wayward sons. Jesus
preached the nearness of the Kingdom as "glad tidings to the poor"; and
among these "poor" were included even aliens who put "faith" in the God
of Abraham.

The new Way started from the same Scripture as that of the scribes, but
it tended in an opposite direction. Theirs had been gradually developing
in definiteness and authority since the time of Ezra; yes, since Josiah
had made formal covenant, after the discovery of "the book of the Law"
in the temple, pledging himself and his people to obedience. As with
many ancient peoples, the codification of the ancient law had been
followed by its canonization, and as the national life had waned the
religious significance of the Law had increased. It was now declared to
express the complete will of God, for an ideal people of God, in a
renovated universe, whose centre was to be a new and glorified
Jerusalem. The Exile interrupted for a time the process of formal
development; but in the ecclesiastical reconstruction which followed in
Ezra's time "the book of the Law" had become all the more supreme; the
scribe took the place of the civil officer, the synagogue became local
sanctuary and court-house in one, the nation became a church, Israel
became 'the people of the book.'

Legal requirement calls for the incentive of reward. We need not wonder,
then, that the canon of the Law was soon supplemented by that of the
writings of the Prophets, historical and hortatory. The former were
considered to interpret the Law by showing its application in practice,
the latter were valued for their predictive element. Law and Prophets
were supplemented by Psalms, and elements from the later literature
having application to the religious system. The most influential were
the "apocalypses," or "revelations" of the transcendental Kingdom and of
the conditions and mode of its coming. Scripture had thus become an
embodiment of Israel's religion. It set forth the national law, civil,
criminal, or religious; and the national hope, the Kingdom of God. Its
custodian and interpreter was the'scribe,' lawyer and cleric in one.
The scribe held "the key of knowledge"; to him it was given to 'bind and
loose,' 'open and shut.' Any preacher who presumed to prescribe a
righteousness apart from 'the yoke of the Law,' or to promise
forgiveness of sins on other authority, must reckon with the scribes. He
would be regarded as seeking to 'take the Kingdom by violence.'

Jesus' martyrdom was effected through the priests, the temple
authorities; but at the instigation of the scribes and Pharisees. His
adherents were soon after driven out from orthodox Judaism and subjected
to persecution. This persecution, however, soon found its natural
leadership, not among the Sadducean temple-priesthood, but among the
devotees of the Law. It was "in the synagogues." From having been
quasi-political it became distinctly religious. This persecution by the
Pharisees is on the whole less surprising than the fact that so many of
the Jewish believers should have continued to regard themselves as
consistent Pharisees, and even been so regarded by their fellow-Jews. In
reality Jewish Christians as a rule could see no incompatibility between
average synagogue religion and their acceptance of Jesus as the man
supernaturally attested in the resurrection as destined to return
bringing the glory of the Kingdom. Jesus' idea of 'righteousness' did
not seem to them irreconcilable with the legalism of the scribes; still
less had they felt the subtle difference between his promise "Ye shall
be sons and daughters of the Highest" and the apocalyptic dreams which
they shared with their fellow-Jews. Saul the persecutor and Paul the
apostle were more logical. In Gal. ii. 15-21 we have Paul's own
statement of the essential issue as it still appeared to his clear mind.
Average synagogue religion still left room for a more fatherly relation
of God to the individual, in spite of the gradual encroachment of the
legalistic system of the scribes. Men not sensitive to inconsistency
could find room within the synagogue for the 'paternal theism