Part 33 (2/2)

Adverse Critics do but insist that however ancient, it must needs be of spurious origin: or else that it is an afterthought of the Evangelist:--concerning both which imaginations we shall have a few words to offer by-and-by.

It clearly follows,--indeed it may be said with truth that it only remains,--to inquire what may have led to its so frequent exclusion from the sacred Text? For really the difficulty has already resolved itself into that.

And on this head, it is idle to affect perplexity. In the earliest age of all,--the age which was familiar with the universal decay of heathen virtue, but which had not yet witnessed the power of the Gospel to fas.h.i.+on society afresh, and to build up domestic life on a new and more enduring basis;--at a time when the greatest laxity of morals prevailed, and the enemies of the Gospel were known to be on the look out for grounds of cavil against Christianity and its Author;--what wonder if some were found to remove the _pericope de adultera_ from their copies, lest it should be pleaded in extenuation of breaches of the seventh commandment? The very subject-matter, I say, of St. John viii. 3-11 would sufficiently account for the occasional omission of those nine verses. Moral considerations abundantly explain what is found to have here and there happened. But in fact this is not a mere conjecture of my own. It is the reason a.s.signed by Augustine for the erasure of these twelve verses from many copies of the Gospel[611]. Ambrose, a quarter of a century earlier, had clearly intimated that danger was popularly apprehended from this quarter[612]: while Nicon, five centuries later, states plainly that the mischievous tendency of the narrative was the cause why it had been expunged from the Armenian version[613].

Accordingly, just a few Greek copies are still to be found mutilated in respect of those nine verses only. But in fact the indications are not a few that all the twelve verses under discussion did not by any means labour under the same degree of disrepute. The first three (as I shewed at the outset) clearly belong to a different category from the last nine,--a circ.u.mstance which has been too much overlooked.

The Church in the meantime for an obvious reason had made choice of St.

John vii. 37-viii. 12--the greater part of which is clearly descriptive of what happened at the Feast of Tabernacles--for her Pentecostal lesson: and judged it expedient, besides omitting as inappropriate to the occasion the incident of the woman taken in adultery, to ignore also the three preceding verses;--making the severance begin, in fact, as far back as the end of ch. vii. 52. The reason for this is plain. In this way the allusion to a certain departure at night, and return early next morning (St. John vii. 53: viii. 1), was avoided, which entirely marred the effect of the lection as the history of a day of great and special solemnity,--'the great day of the Feast.' And thus it happens that the gospel for the day of Pentecost was made to proceed directly from 'Search and look: for out of Galilee ariseth no prophet,' in ch. vii.

52,--to 'Then spake Jesus unto them, saying, I am the light of the world,' in ch. viii. 12; with which it ends. In other words, an omission which owed its beginning to a moral scruple was eventually extended for a liturgical consideration; and resulted in severing twelve verses of St. John's Gospel--ch. vii. 53 to viii. 11--from their lawful context.

We may now proceed to the consideration of my second proposition, which is

(2) _That by the very construction of her Lectionary, the Church in her corporate capacity and official character has solemnly recognised the narrative in question as an integral part of St. John's Gospel, and as standing in its traditional place, from an exceedingly remote time_.

Take into your hands at random the first MS. copy of St. John's Gospel which presents itself, and turn to the place in question. Nay, I will instance _all_ the four Evangelia which I call mine,--all the seventeen which belong to Lord Zouch,--all the thirty-nine which Baroness Burdett-Coutts imported from Epirus in 1870-2. Now all these copies--(and nearly each of them represents a different line of ancestry)--are found to contain the verses in question. How did the verses ever get there?

But the most extraordinary circ.u.mstance of the case is behind. Some out of the Evangelia referred to are observed to have been prepared for ecclesiastical use: in other words, are so rubricated throughout as to shew where, every separate lection had its 'beginning' ([Greek: arche]), and where its 'end' ([Greek: telos]). And some of these lections are made up of disjointed portions of the Gospel. Thus, the lection for Whitsunday is found to have extended from St. John vii. 37 to St. John viii. 12; beginning at the words [Greek: te eschate hemera te megale], and ending--[Greek: to phos tes zoes]: but _over-leaping_ the twelve verses now under discussion: viz. vii. 53 to viii. 11. Accordingly, the word 'over-leap' ([Greek: hyperba]) is written in _all_ the copies after vii. 52,--whereby the reader, having read on to the end of that verse, was directed to skip all that followed down to the words [Greek: kai meketi hamartane] in ch. viii. 11: after which he found himself instructed to 'recommence' ([Greek: arxai]). Again I ask (and this time does not the riddle admit of only one solution?),--When and how does the reader suppose that the narrative of 'the woman taken in adultery' first found its way into the _middle of the lesson for Pentecost_? I pause for an answer: I shall perforce be told that it never 'found its way' into the lection at all: but having once crept into St. John's Gospel, however that may have been effected, and established itself there, it left those ancient men who devised the Church's Lectionary without choice. They could but direct its omission, and employ for that purpose the established liturgical formula in all similar cases.

But first,--How is it that those who would reject the narrative are not struck by the essential foolishness of supposing that twelve fabricated verses, purporting to be an integral part of the fourth Gospel, can have so firmly established themselves in every part of Christendom from the second century downwards, that they have long since become simply ineradicable? Did the Church then, _pro hac vice_, abdicate her function of being 'a witness and a keeper of Holy Writ'? Was she all of a sudden forsaken by the inspiring Spirit, who, as she was promised, should 'guide her into all Truth'? And has she been all down the ages guided into the grievous error of imputing to the disciple whom Jesus loved a narrative of which he knew nothing? For, as I remarked at the outset, this is not merely an a.s.similated expression, or an unauthorized nominative, or a weakly-supported clause, or any such trifling thing.

Although be it remarked in pa.s.sing, I am not aware of a single such trifling excrescence which we are not able at once to detect and to remove. In other words, this is not at all a question, like the rest, about the genuine text of a pa.s.sage. Our inquiry is of an essentially different kind, viz. Are these twelve consecutive verses Scripture at all, or not? Divine or human? Which? They claim by their very structure and contents to be an integral part of the Gospel. And such a serious accession to the Deposit, I insist, can neither have 'crept into' the Text, nor have 'crept out' of it. The thing is unexampled,--is unapproached,--is impossible.

Above all,--(the reader is entreated to give the subject his sustained attention),--Is it not perceived that the admission involved in the hypothesis before us is fatal to any rational pretence that the pa.s.sage is of spurious origin? We have got back in thought at least to the third or fourth century of our era. We are among the Fathers and Doctors of the Eastern Church in conference a.s.sembled: and they are determining what shall be the Gospel for the great Festival of Pentecost. 'It shall begin' (say they) 'at the thirty-seventh verse of St. John vii, and conclude with the twelfth verse of St. John viii. But so much of it as relates to the breaking up of the Sanhedrin,--to the withdrawal of our Lord to the Mount of Olives,--and to His return next morning to the Temple,--had better not be read. It disturbs the unity of the narrative.

So also had the incident of the woman taken in adultery better not be read. It is inappropriate to the Pentecostal Festival.' The Authors of the great Oriental Liturgy therefore admit that they find the disputed verses in their copies: and thus they vouch for their genuineness. For none will doubt that, had they regarded them as a spurious accretion to the inspired page, they would have said so plainly. Nor can it be denied that if in their corporate capacity they had disallowed these twelve verses, such an authoritative condemnation would most certainly have resulted in the perpetual exclusion from the Sacred Text of the part of these verses which was actually adopted as a Lection. What stronger testimony on the contrary can be imagined to the genuineness of any given portion of the everlasting Gospel than that it should have been canonized or recognized as part of Inspired Scripture by the collective wisdom of the Church in the third or fourth century?

And no one may regard it as a suspicious circ.u.mstance that the present Pentecostal lection has been thus maimed and mutilated in respect of twelve of its verses. There is nothing at all extraordinary in the treatment which St. John vii. 37-viii. 12 has here experienced. The phenomenon is even of perpetual recurrence in the Lectionary of the East,--as will be found explained below[614].

Permit me to suppose that, between the Treasury and Whitehall, the remote descendant of some Saxon thane occupied a small tenement and garden which stood in the very middle of the ample highway. Suppose further, the property thereabouts being Government property, that the road on either side of this estate had been measured a hundred times, and jealously watched, ever since Westminster became Westminster. Well, an act of Parliament might no doubt compel the supposed proprietor of this singular estate to surrender his patrimony; but I submit that no government lawyer would ever think of setting up the plea that the owner of that peculiar strip of land was an impostor. The man might have no t.i.tle-deeds to produce, to be sure; but counsel for the defendant would plead that neither did he require any. 'This man's t.i.tle' (counsel would say) 'is--occupation for a thousand years. His evidences are--the allowance of the State throughout that long interval. Every procession to St. Stephen's--every procession to the Abbey--has swept by defendant's property--on this side of it and on that,--since the days of Edward the Confessor. And if my client refuses to quit the soil, I defy you--except by violence--to get rid of him.'

In this way then it is that the testimony borne to these verses by the Lectionary of the East proves to be of the most opportune and convincing character. The careful provision made for pa.s.sing by the twelve verses in dispute:--the minute directions which fence those twelve verses off on this side and on that, directions issued we may be sure by the highest Ecclesiastical authority, because recognized in every part of the ancient Church,--not only establish them effectually in their rightful place, but (what is at least of equal importance) fully explain the adverse phenomena which are ostentatiously paraded by adverse critics; and which, until the clue has been supplied, are calculated to mislead the judgement.

For now, for the first time, it becomes abundantly plain why Chrysostom and Cyril, in publicly commenting on St. John's Gospel, pa.s.s straight from ch. vii. 52 to ch. viii. 12. Of course they do. Why should they,--how could they,--comment on what was not publicly read before the congregation? The same thing is related (in a well-known 'scholium') to have been done by Apolinarius and Theodore of Mopsuestia. Origen also, for aught I care,--though the adverse critics have no right to claim him, seeing that his commentary on all that part of St. John's Gospel is lost;--but Origen's name, as I was saying, for aught I care, may be added to those who did the same thing. A triumphant refutation of the proposed inference from the silence of these many Fathers is furnished by the single fact that Theophylact must also be added to their number.

Theophylact, I say, ignores the _pericope de adultera_--pa.s.ses it by, I mean,--exactly as do Chrysostom and Cyril. But will any one pretend that Theophylact,--writing in A.D. 1077,--did not know of St. John vii.

53-viii. 11? Why, in nineteen out of every twenty copies within his reach, the whole of those twelve verses must have been to be found.

The proposed inference from the silence of certain of the Fathers is therefore invalid. The argument _e silentio_--always an insecure argument,--proves inapplicable in this particular case. When the antecedent facts have been once explained, all the subsequent phenomena become intelligible. But a more effectual and satisfactory reply to the difficulty occasioned by the general silence of the Fathers, remains to be offered.

There underlies the appeal to Patristic authority an opinion,--not expressed indeed, yet consciously entertained by us all,--which in fact gives the appeal all its weight and cogency, and which must now by all means be brought to the front. The fact that the Fathers of the Church were not only her Doctors and Teachers, but also the living voices by which alone her mind could be proclaimed to the world, and by which her decrees used to be authoritatively promulgated;--this fact, I say, it is which makes their words, whenever they deliver themselves, so very important: their approval, if they approve, so weighty; their condemnation, if they condemn, so fatal. But then, in the present instance, they do not condemn. They neither approve nor condemn. They simply say nothing. They are silent: and in what precedes, I have explained the reason why. We wish it had been otherwise. We would give a great deal to persuade those ancient oracles to speak on the subject of these twelve verses: but they are all but inexorably silent. Nay, I am overstating the case against myself. Two of the greatest Fathers (Augustine and Ambrose) actually do utter a few words; and they are to the effect that the verses are undoubtedly genuine:--'Be it known to all men' (they say) 'that this pa.s.sage _is_ genuine: but the nature of its subject-matter has at once procured its ejection from MSS., and resulted in the silence of Commentators.' The most learned of the Fathers in addition practically endorses the pa.s.sage; for Jerome not only leaves it standing in the Vulgate where he found it in the Old Latin version, but relates that it was supported by Greek as well as Latin authorities.

To proceed however with what I was about to say.

It is the authoritative sentence of the Church then on this difficult subject that we desiderate. We resorted to the Fathers for that: intending to regard any quotations of theirs, however brief, as their practical endors.e.m.e.nt of all the twelve verses: to infer from their general recognition of the pa.s.sage, that the Church in her collective capacity accepted it likewise. As I have shewn, the Fathers decline, almost to a man, to return any answer. But,--Are we then without the Church's authoritative guidance on this subject? For this, I repeat, is the only thing of which we are in search. It was only in order to get at this that we adopted the laborious expedient of watching for the casual utterances of any of the giants of old time. Are we, I say, left without the Church's opinion?

Not so, I answer. The reverse is the truth. The great Eastern Church speaks out on this subject in a voice of thunder. In all her Patriarchates, as far back as the written records of her practice reach,--and they reach back to the time of those very Fathers whose silence we felt to be embarra.s.sing,--the Eastern Church has selected nine out of these twelve verses to be the special lesson for October 8.

A more significant circ.u.mstance it would be impossible to adduce in evidence. Any pretence to fasten a charge of spuriousness on a portion of Scripture so singled out by the Church for honour, were nothing else but monstrous. It would be in fact to raise quite a distinct issue: viz.

to inquire what amount of respect is due to the Church's authority in determining the authenticity of Scripture? I appeal not to an opinion, but to _a fact_: and that fact is, that though the Fathers of the Church for a very sufficient reason are very nearly silent on the subject of these twelve verses, the Church herself has spoken with a voice of authority so loud that none can affect not to hear it: so plain, that it cannot possibly be misunderstood. And let me not be told that I am hereby setting up the Lectionary as the true standard of appeal for the Text of the New Testament: still less let me be suspected of charging on the collective body of the faithful whatever irregularities are discoverable in the Codexes which were employed for the public reading of Scripture. Such a suspicion could only be entertained by one who has. .h.i.therto failed to apprehend the precise point just now under consideration. We are not examining the text of St. John vii. 53-viii.

11. We are only discussing whether those twelve verses _en bloc_ are to be regarded as an integral part of the fourth Gospel, or as a spurious accretion to it. And that is a point on which the Church in her corporate character must needs be competent to p.r.o.nounce; and in respect of which her verdict must needs be decisive. She delivered her verdict in favour of these twelve verses, remember, at a time when her copies of the Gospels were of papyrus as well as 'old uncials' on vellum.--Nay, before 'old uncials' on vellum were at least in any general use. True, that the transcribers of Lectionaries have proved themselves just as liable to error as the men who transcribed Evangelia. But then, it is incredible that those men forged the Gospel for St. Pelagia's day: impossible, if it were a forgery, that the Church should have adopted it. And it is the significancy of the Church having adopted the _pericope de adultera_ as the lection for October 8, which has never yet been sufficiently attended to: and which I defy the Critics to account for on any hypothesis but one: viz. that the pericope was recognized by the ancient Eastern Church as an integral part of the Gospel.

Now when to this has been added what is implied in the rubrical direction that a ceremonious respect should be shewn to the Festival of Pentecost by dropping the twelve verses, I submit that I have fully established my second position, viz. That by the very construction of her Lectionary the Church in her corporate capacity and official character has solemnly recognized the narrative in question, as an integral part of St. John's Gospel, and as standing in its traditional place, from an exceedingly remote time.

For,--(I entreat the candid reader's sustained attention),--the circ.u.mstances of the present problem altogether refuse to accommodate themselves to any hypothesis of a spurious original for these verses; as I proceed to shew.

<script>