The Gospels in the Second Century eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 383 pages of information about The Gospels in the Second Century.

The Gospels in the Second Century eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 383 pages of information about The Gospels in the Second Century.

The Hippolytean quotations, the ascription of which to Basilides or to his school we have left an open question, will assume a considerable importance when we come to treat of the external evidence for the fourth Gospel.  Bearing upon the Synoptic Gospels, we find an allusion to the star of the Magi and an exact verbal quotation (introduced with [Greek:  to eiraemenon]) of Luke i. 35, [Greek:  Pneuma hagion epeleusetai epi se, kai dunamis hupsistou episkiasei soi].  Both these have been already discussed with reference to Justin.  All the other Gospels in which the star of the Magi is mentioned belong to a later stage of formation than St. Matthew.  The very parallelism between St. Matthew and St. Luke shows that both Gospels were composed at a date when various traditions as to the early portions of the history were current.  No doubt secondary, or rather tertiary, works, like the Protevangelium of James, came to be composed later; but it is not begging the question to say that if the allusion is made by Basilides, it is not likely that at that date he should quote any other Gospel than St. Matthew, simply because that is the earliest form in which the story of the Magi has come down to us.

The case is stronger in regard to the quotation from St. Luke.  In Justin’s account of the Annunciation to Mary there was a coincidence with the Protevangelium and a variation from the canonical text in the phrase [Greek:  pneuma kuriou] for [Greek:  pneuma hagion]; but in the Basilidian quotation the canonical text is reproduced syllable for syllable and letter for letter, which, when we consider how sensitive and delicate these verbal relations are, must be taken as a strong proof of identity.  The reader may be reminded that the word [Greek:  episkiazein], the phrase [Greek:  dunamism hupsistou], and the construction [Greek:  eperchesthai epi], are all characteristic of St. Luke:  [Greek; episkiazein] occurs once in the triple synopsis and besides only here and in Acts v. 15:  [Greek:  hupsistos] occurs nine times in St. Luke’s writings and only four times besides; it is used by the Evangelist especially in phrases like [Greek:  uios, dunamis, prophaetaes, doulos hupsistou], to which the only parallel is [Greek:  hiereus tou Theou tou hupsistou] in Heb. vii. 1.  The construction of [Greek:  eperchesthai] with [Greek:  epi] and the accusative is found five times in the third Gospel and the Acts and not at all besides in the New Testament; indeed the participial form, [Greek:  eperchomenos] (in the sense of ’future’), is the only shape in which the word appears (twice) outside the eight times that it occurs in St. Luke’s writings.  This is a body of evidence that makes it extremely difficult to deny that the Basilidian quotation has its original in the third Synoptic.

2.

The case in regard to Valentinus, the next great Gnostic leader, who came forward about the year 140 A.D., is very similar to that of Basilides, though the balance of the argument is slightly altered.  It is, on the one hand, still clearer that the greater part of the evangelical references usually quoted are really from our present actual Gospels, but, on the other hand, there is a more distinct probability that these are to be assigned rather to the School of Valentinus than to Valentinus himself.

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The Gospels in the Second Century from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.