A Short History of Christianity: Second Edition, Revised, With Additions — John Shaqi
A Short History of Christianity: Second Edition, Revised, With AdditionsRobertson, J. M. (John Mackinnon)
History
A Short History of Christianity: Second Edition, Revised, With Additions
Robertson, J. M. (John Mackinnon)
Church history
What needs to be explained in both cases is the way in which the later
narratives came to be compiled. Within a hundred years from the date
commonly assigned to the Crucifixion, there are Gentile traces of a
Jesuist or Christist movement deriving from Jewry, and possessing a
gospel or memoir as well as some of the Pauline and other epistles,
both spurious and genuine; but the gospel then current is seen to
have contained some matter not preserved in the canonical four,
and to have lacked much that those contain. Of those traces the
earliest are found in one epistle of Clement called Bishop of Rome
(fl. about 100), which, whether genuine or not, is ancient, and
in the older form of the epistles ascribed to the Martyr Ignatius
(d. about 115?) of which the same may be said. About the middle of
the second century the writings of Justin Martyr tell of a Christist
memoir, but show no knowledge of the Pauline epistles. All alike tell
of a spreading cult, with a theology not yet coherently dogmatic,
founding mainly on a crucified Jesus, faith in whom ensures salvation.
Like the letters of Paul, those ascribed to Clement and Ignatius tell
of schisms and bitter strifes in the churches: that is the constant
note of Christian history from first to last. As to rites, we have
but a bare mention of the eucharist and of baptism; the story of
the founder's parentage is still unknown to the makers of documents,
and his miracles are as unheard of as most of his teachings. There
is nothing in Clement, or in the older Ignatian epistles, or in that
ascribed to Polycarp (circa 150), or in that of Barnabas (same period),
to show knowledge of the existing gospels of Luke or John; a solitary
parallel to Luke being rather a proof that the passage echoed had
been taken from some earlier document; and the gospel actually cited
as late as Justin is certainly not identical with either Mark or
Matthew. Even from Paul there is hardly any quotation; and Clement,
who mentions or is made to mention his epistles to the Corinthians,
pens a long passage in praise of love which has no quotation from the
apostle's famous chapter on that head, though it would have seemed made
for his purpose. In view of their lax way of quoting the Old Testament
we may infer that the early Fathers or forgers had few manuscripts;
and it is plain that they set no such store by Christian documents
as they did by the Jewish; but the fact remains that they fail to
vouch for much even of those Pauline epistles which commonly rank as
incontestable. At times, as in the Pauline use of the word ektroma (1
Cor. xv, 8), which occurs in a similar phrase in one of the Ignatian
epistles, there is reason to suspect that the "apostolic" writing
has been interpolated in imitation of the "post-apostolic." In the
latter the expression is appropriate; in the former it is not.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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