been already noticed in regard to the sermon; and it is especially observable in the eschatological discourse in the twenty-fourth chapter, admitted by candid interpreters to be incompatible in its actual form with any possible utterance of Jesus. From the silence of the fourth gospel no inference can be drawn, since this is no longer supposed to be the genuine work of a personal witness1 of its delivery; but how reconcile so distinct an announcement of the fall of Jerusalem by Jesus with the silence of the Apocalypse in regard to this event; for the Apocalypse, while admitting a partial destruction of the city, assumes its general continuance? And if, according to what appears to be the inevitable inference under the circumstances, the "Zacharias son of Barachias," who closes the series of persecuted prophets in chap. xxiii. 35, must be identified. with the person said to have been murdered by the zealots in Josephus, we have here a distinct proof not only that the gospel was written after the destruction of Jerusalem, but that it ascribes to Jesus words referring to later circumstances which he could not really have spoken.3 In short,

1 Mark xiii. 3.

3

2 B. J., iv. 5, 4. Comp. Zeitschrift für Wiss. Theologie, vol. vi., p. 88. Only when thus understood do the subsequent words become intelligible— "behold your house is left unto you desolate;" it will remain so, adds the writer in effect, until you are heartily and sincerely converted (Matt. xxiii. 38, 39). A curious surmise has been latterly current in regard to these obviously correlated passages, which may ultimately prove to afford a useful illustration of the true origin of the gospel. In Luke (xi. 49-xiii. 34) the passages are detached, and are ostensibly quoted from some other source styled the "Wisdom of God." Now the so cited words are not in the Old Testament, and Jesus can scarcely have meant to quote himself under the form "ELTED." It has therefore been supposed that some lost Christian writing is referred to, in which the Divine Wisdom was represented as taunting the Jews after the ruin of their city with their obstinacy in rejecting Jesus. The "Toσakis" is quite appropriate to the overtures of Divine Wisdom, and the expression may have been somewhat inappositely transferred to Jesus by those who began to recognise in him the personified wisdom of the Old Testament Apocrypha. The "Aoyos" of the fourth gospel may be viewed as an advance on the "oopia Oeov," just as the many journeys to Jerusalem there recorded are probably a development of the "TOσAKIS." But it then occurs to ask, are there any other probable traces in the gospels of this supposed writing? Strauss finds a seemingly analogous reference in Matt. xi. 19, Luke vii. 34, at the close of a similar commination to the Jews for not listening to the Baptist;

although "Matthew" makes nearer approaches to history than the other gospels, the history is far from being reliable and pure; it may have a closer affinity to the original tradition than "Mark" or "John"; but it is no accurate biography, and the authorship here, as in so many other instances, must be regarded as mainly titular.

On the Causes of Pseudonymous Writing.

The wholesale falsification seemingly implied in so abundant a crop of spurious literature as that indicated in the foregoing pages no doubt calls imperatively for explanation. Fictitious authorship in a few cases might be overlooked as fortuitous; not so when it occurs repeatedly and generally; here a general motive is required in order to make the fact seem intelligible or even probable. The problem touches the very essence and rational justification of the inferences of the school of Tübingen. These appear at first to bespeak a scheme of deliberate imposture inconsistent alike with primitive simplicity and sound exegesis ; so that we are obliged to ask how far they are countenanced by analogy; whether any general principle can be found accounting for the simultaneous appearance of so many equivocal pretensions. Now it is certain that pseudonymous writing was from early times a common Israelitish custom. It resulted naturally from the idea of inspiration. The prophet was no author in the modern sense; on the contrary his authority was entirely derivative, dependent on his assumed character as medium or interpreter of the suggestions of another; as a vehicle of that divine enthusiasm which, according to Philo, "supersedes ordinary reason, and occupies the soul's acropolis in

also in the subsequent passages, Matt. xi. 20 and xi. 25: the latter of which offers a curious parallel to some of the concluding verses in Ecclesiasticus (ch. li. 1, 23, 26, 27), suggesting the source of the ideas in which the Zofia eov may have originated.-Zeitschrift für Wiss. Theol., vi., p. 84-92.

its place." Hence, with the exception of writings in which the prophet professedly comes forward in his own person, most of the Old Testament literature is really anonymous; and when the captivity was succeeded by long political subserviency, the same feeling which induced the nation to convert its best memories into sanguine anticipations led to a transference of the names and forms of its ancient literature to current purposes and hopes. Prophecy being considered as extinct, and no novel revelation being expected until the advent of Messiah, attention was exclusively directed to the old books, on which all sorts of strained interpretations were put in order to wring from them a meaning suited to existing circumstances; and any one wishing to address his cotemporaries effectively on his own account was constrained to borrow the name, and as far as possible the thoughts and style, of some ancient Scripture celebrity. There was the same abject intellectual subserviency which even now looks to authority alone to determine truth; which has to obtain leave of a cabinet minister, a Prussian ambassador, or a bishop, before venturing to acquiesce in the plainest inferences of reason, or to exercise an impartial judgment on the most puerile legends of antiquity. Hence the long series of apocalyptic writings imitated from Daniel, itself a pseudonym; and hence not only familiar literary names, such as Solomon or Ezra, but Adam, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, etc., are made to figure over again in the list of authors.2 Christianity, which, itself originally Jewish, adopted so much from Judaism, continued the practice of pseudonymous writing, this being indeed a necessary result of the continuance of the same motives,-namely the combination of religious enthusiasm with intellectual feebleness,-the idea of inspiration warranting originality and novelty, but novelty quite unable to obtain a hearing under the circum

Philo de Spec. Leg. Mang. ii. 343. See also vol. i. 511.

2 See an instructive review in the Times newspaper, Jan, 31, 1862.

stances except under a borrowed name. In an infant community forming and growing amid arduous struggles and passionate controversies, the religious feelings were all powerful, the historical and critical unknown; indeed the mind was preoccupied with notions such as those of miracle and of the second coming, contradicting all experience and making the very idea of historical continuity impossible. There was a maximum of the fanciful, a minimum of historical exactness. Pseudonymous writing arose out of the same kind of over-hasty, unverified feeling which is the general source of the mythical. Minds engrossed by a dominant idea will be as reckless as to its sources as to the forms of its expression; although the utterance may be almost entirely novel and original, the author's deferential enthusiasm gives it a retrospective importance, and treats it as a genuine product of venerable antiquity.

The problem of the Christian Pseudonyma has been ably treated in a paper by Dr. Köstlin in the Tübingen Theol. Journal1 as a natural result of the peculiar circumstances of the post-apostolic age. He observes that all religious establishments combine in a greater or less degree a certain tendency to change with the characteristic assertion of unity, perfection, and stability. Nature urges to improvement, divergence, adaptation to current circumstances, etc.; but religious establishments have to bring this inevitable impulse into real or seeming accordance with the presumed infallibility and fixity of revelation; and hence the contradictory theory which Roman Catholics call "development;" that paradoxical union of identity and change, that substitution of evolution for addition, that progressive immobility or active repose. The talisman holding the mysterious compound together in early Christian times was the assumed possession of the Holy Spirit; by virtue of which the Church still maintains its ability to add doctrine

1 Die Pseudonyme Litteratur der ältesten Kirche, ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Bildung des Kanons.-Tüb. Jour. vol. x. p. 149.

to doctrine and rite to rite, without any humiliating confession of error or overt deviation. In its more advanced ecclesiastical maturity Christendom had ample instrumental means of altering its laws and doctrines through its corporate organization; not so when, as in the first and second centuries after the disappearance of the apostles, there was as yet no regularly formed ecclesiastical machinery, no generally accredited teachers or determinate books to refer to. Yet no period was more prolific of change or rife in controversy; none felt more the imperious necessity of an authoritative standard. Appeals to reasoning, though not unknown, were feeble and insufficient ; nothing but the absolute responses of revelation, of which the apostles had been the unexceptionable vehicles, could fully satisfy. So circumstanced, the religious movement of the post-apostolie age proceeded on two parallel assumptions: one, the idea of possessing in the all-searching allinforming Spirit a perennial source of new views and doctrines; another in the assurance, that since the new, in order to be true, must be in perfect harmony with the old, such conformity really existed; in short, that the apostolic initiative ruled the present, while the present inspiration faithfully reflected and interpreted the past. Wherever one of these tendencies prevailed unduly or exclusively of the other, something uncongenial, one-sided, or "heretical" was the result. Thus if the source of movement, the consciousness of inward illumination predominated, impulsive and revolutionary symptoms, such as Gnosticism and Montanism, ensued, discarding historical connection and endangering established authority; on the other hand, undue resistance to change, excessive tenacity of precedent, found itself at last isolated and extruded as an unpopular impracticable minority under the name of Ebionitism. From the efforts of the two originally contrasted Christian parties there issued under these influences an abundance of writings bearing apostolic names, referring back to the