A SERIES OF WORKS FROM THE SACRED SCRIPTURES PRESENTED ST. MATTHEW AND ST. MARK AND THE GENERAL EPISTLES EDITED, WITH AN INTRODUCTION AND NOTES BY RICHARD G. MOULTON, M.A. (CAMB.), PH.D. (PENN.) PROFESSOR OF Literature IN ENGLISH IN THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO New York THE MACMILLAN COMPANY LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., LTD. All rights reserved INTRODUCTION THE series of books which make up the New Testament group themselves into a clear and interesting unity. The Acts and Sayings of Jesus (Gospels) The Acts of the Apostles The Sayings of the Apostles (or Epistles) The Prophetic Vision of the New Testament This last, by its revival of the form and matter of ancient prophecy in application to the Christian dispensation, makes a link binding together the Old Testament and the New. The gospels, moreover, are for their age a sacred history like the historic books of the Old Testament; and the epistles, like portions of The Chronicles, may be regarded as documents illustrative of the history. But such a description of them would obviously be inadequate. Indeed, it is extremely difficult to fit the gospels into any literary classification: from the point of view of literature, no less than of theology, they are a class of works that stand by themselves. They are our historic authorities for the most important of all events; yet the purpose of their authors is not to write history. Though they are concerned solely with the life of Jesus, yet they would be imperfectly described as biographies. They treasure up every saying of the Master, as certain books of the Old Testament collect the sayings of the wise; yet but small portions of the gospels have any resemblance to wisdom literature. It would be easier to associate them with the prophetic books of the Old Testament. But the prophets use every variety of literary form to emphasise and recommend the message from above of which they are interpreters; Jesus Christ is himself the authority of the message he brings, and those through whom we learn of him are anxious to record and not to interpret. Moreover, an examination into the literary form of the gospels would be inextricably interwoven with another kind of enquiry: the close resemblances between these books, and their not less interesting differences, necessarily raise the question of their mutual relations, of their authorship, and possible connection with a common original. Such questions as these cannot be discussed here: not only do they belong to the domain of history rather than literature, but they are, of all historical questions, the questions on which there has been the fiercest controversy, and the widest difference and fluctuation of opinion. The aim of the present series goes no further than the placing the New Testament before the reader in the form which will best enable him to read each book in the light that may be collected from itself. In attempting thus to bring the New Testament works into the series of the Modern Reader's Bible, attention is attracted first by the Gospel of St. Luke. Not only does this more than the rest exhibit the character of ordinary history, but further it has a continuation in the Acts of the Apostles, carrying the history a generation later. I propose to include these in a single number of the series, the size of which will necessitate two volumes. Again, of the epistles, the larger number stand in the name of St. Paul, by far the most prominent of those engaged in extending the boundaries of the early church. It seems a convenient course to place these Pauline Epistles in the same number of the series as the history, each epistle inserted at the point of the narrative with which it appears to connect itself, though, of course, distinguished from the history by difference of type. Such arrangement will assimilate this number of the series to The Exodus, in which, by the plan of Old Testament writers, the constitutional documents are made to stand at those points of the historic narrative with which they are to be associated. In another important respect this double volume of St. Luke and St. Paul will be a counterpart of the earlier historic series: it will give the History of the New Testament Church as presented by itself. Again, without entering into disputed |