Walter Richard Cassels

“ The Apocalypse, which, if any book of the New Testament can be traced to him, must be ascribed to the Apostle John, makes no claim whatever to such a distinction. In none of the Apocryphal Gospels is there the slightest indication of knowledge of the fact, and if we come to the Fathers even, it is a striking circumstance that there is not a trace of it in any early work, and not the most remote indication of any independent tradition that Jesus distinguished John or any other individual disciple with peculiar friendship. ”

“ It was the misfortune of Marcion to live in an age when Christianity had passed out of the pure morality of its infancy, when, untroubled by complicated questions of dogma, simple faith and pious enthusiasm had been the one great bond of Christian brotherhood, into a phase of ecclesiastical development in which religion was fast degenerating into theology, and complicated doctrines were rapidly assuming that rampant attitude which led to so much bitterness, persecution, and schism. ”

“ That any guarantee of the truth of the Gospel should have been thought desirable for readers who knew the work is to be composed by the Apostle John, and who believed him to be "the disciple whom Jesus loved," is inconceivable, and that any anonymous and quite indirect testimony to its genuineness should either have been considered necessary or of any value is still more incredible. It is impossible that nameless Presbyters of Ephesus could venture to accredit a Gospel written by the Apostle John ”

“ Irenæus, however, goes still further, and states that the Valentinians of his time not only had many Gospels, but that they possessed one peculiar to themselves. "Those indeed who are followers of Valentinus," he says, "again passing beyond all fear, and putting forth their own compositions, boast that they have more Gospels than there actually are. Indeed they have proceeded so far in audacity that they entitle their not long written work, agreeing in nothing with the Gospels of the Apostles, the Gospel of Truth, so that there cannot be any Gospel among them without blasphemy." ”

“ The Fathers, whose uncritical and, in such matters, prejudiced character led them to denounce every variation from their actual texts as a mere falsification, and without argument to assume the exclusive authenticity and originality of our Gospels, which towards the beginning of the third century had acquired wide circulation in the Church, vehemently stigmatized Marcion as an audacious adulterator of the Gospel, and affirmed his evangelical work to be merely a mutilated and falsified version of the "Gospel according to Luke." ”

“ Now this representation, which has ever since been the admiration of Christendom, presents the very strongest marks of unreality. Jesus, who loves Lazarus so much, disregards the urgent message of the sisters and, whilst openly declaring that his sickness is not unto death, intentionally lingers until his friend dies. When he does go to Bethany, and is on the very point of restoring Lazarus to life and dissipating the grief of his family and friends he actually weeps and groans in his spirit. ”

“ Canon Westcott says: "The Ignatian writings, as might be expected, are not without traces of the influence of St. John. The circumstances in which he was placed required a special enunciation of Pauline doctrine; but this is not so expressed as to exclude the parallel lines of Christian thought. Love is 'the stamp of the Christian.' (Ad Magn. v.) 'Faith is the beginning and love the end of life.' (Ad Ephes. xiv.) 'Faith is our guide upward' [———] , but love is the road that 'leads to God.' (Ad Eph. ix.) ”

“ Marcion objected: If the God of the Old Testament be good, prescient of the future, and able to avert evil, why did he allow man, made in his own image, to be deceived
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by the devil, and to fall from obedience of the Law into sin and death? (1) How came the devil, the origin of lying and deceit, to be made at all? (2) After the fall, God became a judge both severe and cruel; woman is at once condemned to bring forth in sorrow and to serve her husband, changed from a help into a slave; the earth is cursed which before was blessed, and man is doomed to labour and to death. ”

“ He not only admits that the statement of Origen regarding the identity of his opponent with the Epicurean of the reign of Hadrian "and later," may be erroneous, but he tacitly rejects it, and having abandoned the conjecture of Origen as groundless and untenable, he substitutes a conjecture of his own, equally unsupported by reasons, that Celsus probably wrote between 150-160. Indeed, he does not attempt to justify this date, but arbitrarily decides to hold by it until a better can be demonstrated. He is forced to admit the ignorance of Origen on the point, and he does not conceal his own. ”

“ We do not propose to criticise minutely the various conclusions arrived at as to the state of the text, but must emphatically remark that where there is so little certainty there cannot be any safe ground for delicate deductions regarding motives and sequences of matter. Nothing is more certain than that, if we criticise and compare the Synoptics on the same principle, we meet with the most startling results and the most irreconcileable difficulties. (3) The opening of Marcion's Gospel is more free from abruptness and crudity than that of Luke. ”

“ Almost the only occasions upon which any prominence is given to them are episodes in which they incur the Master's displeasure, and the cognomen of "Sons of thunder" has certainly no suggestion in it of special affection, nor of personal qualities likely to attract the great Teacher. The selfish ambition of the brothers who desire to sit on thrones on his right and on his left, and the intolerant temper which would have called down fire from heaven to consume a Samaritan village, much rather contradict than support the representation of the fourth Gospel. ”

“ CHAPTER X. PTOLEMÆUS AND HERACLEON—CELSUS—THE CANON OF MURATORI—RESULTS.
We have now reached the extreme limit of time within which we think it in any degree worth while to seek for evidence as to the date and authorship of the synoptic Gospels, and we might now proceed to the fourth Gospel; but before doing so it may be well to examine one or two other witnesses whose support has been claimed by apologists, although our attention may be chiefly confined to an inquiry into the date of such testimony, upon which its value, even if real, mainly depends so far as we are concerned. ”

“ For as there are four quarters of the world in which we are, and four general winds [———] , and the Church is disseminated throughout all the world, and the Gospel is the pillar and prop of the Church and the spirit of life, it is right that she should have four pillars, on all sides breathing out immortality and revivifying men. From which it is manifest that the Word, the maker of all, he who sitteth upon the Cherubim and containeth all things, who was manifested to man, has given to us the Gospel, four-formed but possessed by one spirit ”

“ Whilst a strong family likeness exists between the Epistles and the Gospel, and they exhibit close analogies both in thought and language, the Apocalypse, on the contrary, is so different from them in language, in style, in religious views and terminology, that it is almost impossible to believe that the writer of the one could be the author of the other. ”

“ In the Gospel of the Clementines the man is not blind from his birth, "that the works of God might be made manifest in him,"—a doctrine which would be revolting to the author of the Homilies,—but the calamity has befallen him in consequence of some error of ignorance on the part of his parents which brings its punishment; but "the power of God" is made manifest in healing the sins of ignorance. The reply of Jesus is a professed quotation, and it varies very substantially from the parallel in the Gospel, presenting evidently a distinctly different version of the episode. ”

“ Indeed, the close relationship between the first three Gospels is standing testimony to the fact that one Gospel was built upon the basis of others previously existing. This which has been called "the chief prop of the mutilation hypothesis," (2) has really no solid ground to stand on beyond the accident that only one of three Gospels survives out of many which may have had the phrase. The fact that Marcion's Gospel really had the words of Luke, moreover, is mere conjecture, inasmuch as Epiphanius, who alone gives the Greek, shows a distinct variation of reading. ”

“ For God as Shepherd and King governs according to Law and justice like a flock of sheep, the earth, and water, and air, and fire, and all the plants and living things that are in them, whether they be mortal or divine, as well as the course of heaven, and the periods of sun and moon, and the variations and harmonious revolutions of the other stars ”

“ We have said enough, we trust, to show that the sources for the reconstruction of a text of Marcion's Gospel are most unsatisfactory, and no one who attentively studies the analysis of Hahn, Ritschl, Volkmar, Hilgenfeld, and others, who have examined and systematized the data of the Fathers, can fail to be struck by the uncertainty which prevails throughout, the almost continuous vagueness and consequent opening, nay, necessity, for conjecture, and the absence of really sure indications. ”

“ For instance, Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews, misunderstands the expression of Jesus, that in order to see the kingdom of God a man must be born from above, and asks: "How can a man be born when he is old? can he enter a second time into his mothers womb and be born?" (2) Now, as it is well known, and as we have already shown, the common expression used in regard to a proselyte to Judaism was that of being born again, with which every Jew, and more especially every "ruler of the Jews," must have been well acquainted. ”

“ The first writer who distinctly classes the four Gospels together is Irenæus; and the reasons which he gives for the existence of precisely that number in the Canon of the Church illustrate the thoroughly uncritical character of the Fathers, and the slight dependence which can be placed upon their judgments. "But neither can the Gospels be more in number than they are," says Irenæus, "nor, on the other hand, can they be fewer. ”

“ But as certainly as these discourses bear upon them the colouring of the Apostle's mind, so certainly do they agree in their substantial contents with his best recollections—because the Spruchsammlung proves that the discourses of Christ in certain moments really could rise to the full elevation, which in John only surprises us throughout more than in Matthew. To deny the apostolical authorship of the Gospel for such reasons, therefore, were pure folly, and in the highest degree unjust. ”

“ When the Apostle was dead, however, and the tradition that it had been foretold that he should live until the coming of the Lord exercised men's minds, and doubt and disappointment at the non-fulfilment of what may have been regarded as prophecy produced a prejudicial effect upon Christendom, it seemed to the writer of this Gospel a desirable thing to point out that too much stress had been laid upon the tradition, and that the words which had been relied upon in the first instance did not justify the expectations which had been formed from them. ”

“ The only extraordinary circumstance is that, even using a totally different source, there should not have been a greater agreement with our Synoptics. But for the universal inaccuracy of the human mind, every important historical saying, having obviously only one distinct original form, would in all truthful histories have been reported in that one unvarying form. The nature of the quotations in the Clementine Homilies leads to the inevitable conclusion that their author derived them from a Gospel different from ours ”

“ The determination of priority of composition from internal evidence, where there are no chronological references, must as a general rule be arbitrary, and can rarely be accepted as final. Internal evidence would, indeed, decidedly favour the priority of Marcion's Gospel. The great uncertainty of the whole system, even when applied under the most favourable circumstances, is well illustrated by the contradictory results at which critics have arrived as to the order of production and dependence on each other of our three Synoptics. ”

“ Apocalypse which excited and fostered them was a popular volume: but as years passed away and the general longing of Christians, eagerly marking the signs of the times, was again and again disappointed, and the hope of a Millennium began either to be abandoned or indefinitely postponed, the Apocalypse proportionately lost favour, or was regarded as an incomprehensible book misleading the world by illusory promises. ”

“ If the writer had really had the passage in the Gospel in his mind, it is impossible that he could in this manner have completely broken it up and changed its whole context and language. The phrase: "they are not of the world" would have been introduced here as the reason for the hatred, instead of being used with quite different context elsewhere in the passage. In fact, in the only place in which the words would have presented a true parallel with the Gospel, they are not used. Not the slightest reference is made throughout the Epistle to Diognetus to any of the discourses of Jesus. ”