schools. One of the hopeful things, in the present unsettled and critical condition of the Argentine Republic, is the very considerable foreign population-intelligent Germans, English, and Americans who have made a home there. Foreign blood and ideas and institutions may do something to develop the nobler capability that has been hidden under the sloth, degeneracy, and barbarism of that splendid region. And if its better possibilities are ever realized, it will be due to none. more truly than to this enlightened author and devoted patriot.

ART. VII. — DAVIDSON'S INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW

TESTAMENT.

An Introduction to the Study of the New Testament, Critical, Exegetical, and Theological. By SAMUEL DAVIDSON, D.D. In two volumes. London: Longmans, Green, & Co., 1868.

THOSE who preside at the mysteries, says Plato, in the Phado, have a proverb: "The wand-bearers are many, but few are inspired." Of the many wand-bearers in NewTestament criticism, it is safe to say that only a small minority can lead those who attempt to follow them, by any welldefined path, or to any fixed goal. It is indeed quite possible -and the failures of this and that school of critics seem to make it probable that the fault is not wholly with the guides. There are whole regions of forest wherein the most skilful woodsman loses his way. The patient follower, inexperienced in threading the mazes of swamps and thickets and devious streams, finds that his "road" is only a hidden path, whose direction is marked on the trees by notches that time has well-nigh obliterated, and whose course is often crossed by perplexing by-ways, coming no one knows whence, and leading no one knows whither. He discovers, too, that many of the ancient landmarks have from time to time been removed, here a bridge, that once spanned a brook or river (a log athwart the stream), has disappeared; while there a newly

fallen tree invites him to cross, only to lure his unwary feet into some freshly made track, which ends at last in the pathless woods.

That Dr. Davidson is, on the whole, a wiser, more experienced, and so a safer, guide than many who have preceded him in these difficult ways of New-Testament criticism, will, we think, appear to every fair-minded and unprejudiced reader of his new Introduction. A work which is warmly commended in such opposite quarters as the "Contemporary Review" and the "Westminster," may properly be called a valuable addition to the literature of Biblical criticism.. To go farther than this, to say that Dr. Davidson has cleared up all the difficulties which he has discussed, or has gained for historical science very extensive conquests from the regions of conjecture and probability, would be to concede greater wisdom in the guide, and fewer perplexities in the way, than the facts allow.

The qualifications which Dr. Davidson brings to his task are, first, a critical judgment, generally impartial, and, up to a certain point, well trained; secondly, a wide, if not comprehensive, knowledge of the labors of others, especially of the ablest German critics of every school; and, thirdly, the experience which has come from a long period of study and authorship in Biblical criticism and hermeneutics.

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"It takes twenty years," Faraday used to say, "to make a man in science; the previous period being one of infancy." Dr. Davidson's first "Introduction to the New Testament" appeared in 1848. The positions held in that book were, in the main, orthodox; and the arrows which were frequently shot into the camps of the rationalists and mythists were well-dipped in the odium theologicum of that period. Thus, Baur's hypothesis, that the fourth Gospel originated in the second century, on Hellenistic ground, was dismissed with the somewhat arrogant remark, that "those who can believe all this with Baur and his school, have renounced all claim to genuine historical criticism, by abandoning themselves to a reckless caprice, where calmness of investigation and unbiassed love of truth are entirely wanting." The calmness

and thoroughness of Dr. Davidson's own investigations at this period may be inferred from his quoting, with great apparent zest, a fling at the rationalists from a volume entitled, "The New Testament, with brief Explanatory Notes. By J. and J. S. C. Abbott "!

The differences between the conclusions of the present Introduction and that of twenty years ago, are radical and sweeping. In the earlier work, the books of the New Testament were discussed in the order in which they appear in our Common Version. In the present volumes, a chronological order is followed, beginning with the Second Epistle to the Thessalonians and ending with the Second Epistle of Peter. Originally, the Second Epistle to the Thessalonians, with which the new Introduction opens, was declared to have been written A.D. 53 or 54, "very soon after the first, and not before it, as Grotius imagined." Now, Dr. Davidson maintains that the second epistle preceded the first, was written about A.D. 52, and is therefore "the earliest of Paul's epistles extant."

A more radical change of opinion is seen in the incidental discussion of the doctrine of the resurrection in the chapter on the First Epistle to the Corinthians. In the earlier work he had written of the famous fifteenth chapter of this epistle: "In this division, the essential connections of the doctrine of the resurrection with the leading tenets of the gospel are pointed out." In the work before us, on the other hand, he says (vol. i. pp. 63, 64), " Paul's reasoning (in this chapter) is of the passionate, ardent kind, so conspicuous in the Epis tle to the Romans, in which the heart controls the head. Whatever be thought of its conclusiveness, it has its value to the Christian of every age; teaching him that intensity of conviction, accompanied by supreme love to God and man, ennobles its subject." The plain implication of this last sentence is, of course, the denial of any "essential connections between the doctrine of the resurrection and the leading tenets of the gospel."

But the most marked difference between the critical conclusions of the earlier and the present volumes, is to be found

in the treatment of the date and authorship of the Gospels. Not only did Dr. Davidson at first defend the authenticity and genuineness of all the four Gospels, but the views of those critics who maintained the late origin and consequent unapostolicity of these books, were dismissed as being wholly unfounded and overwhelmingly refuted both by external and internal evidence. How decided a change of opinion Dr. Davidson's later studies have wrought, is seen at a single glance at his present Introduction, in which he maintains the ungenuineness and unauthenticity of all the Gospels, assigning Matthew to about A.D. 100, Luke to about 115, Mark to 120, and John to 150. In a brief introductory chapter on the "Mutual Relation of the Gospels with each other," he defends the position, that earlier Gospels were used in the compilation of the later ones; the later evangelists employing also, though not to any considerable extent, other written sources, and oral tradition. The Aramaic oracles, the "Logia," of Matthew, he holds to have been the earliest Gospel, the original, but only the foundation, of the Greek Matthew of the canon; Mark copied from Matthew and Luke, while Luke used either Matthew or a document which the first evangelist also employed.

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The arguments by which, in his subsequent discussion of the separate Gospels, Dr. Davidson supports these positions, are very clearly and forcibly presented. Especially strong seems to us his defence of Griesbach's hypothesis concerning Mark; viz., that this Gospel was taken from Matthew and Luke, mostly by abridgment, but in part by combination.* Some of the very arguments which have been employed by Lachmann, Meyer, Ewald, and Holtzmann to support the theory that Mark was the primitive Gospel, the Ur-Evangelium, Dr. Davidson turns against this hypothesis.

Thus the brevity of Mark, which sometimes amounts even to obscurity, is shown to have resulted, in many cases at least, from a careless abridgment of the accounts in the

* Vol. ii. p. 90 seq. Davidson differs from Griesbach in admitting, as a third source of the canonical Mark, the Petrine document referred to by Papias.

other two Synoptics; and not, as has been supposed, from the necessary incompleteness of an earlier writing. Again, the "pictorial amplifications" in certain parts of the narrative, which some critics have regarded as a proof that the writer's facts were obtained at first hand from original sources, Davidson accounts for more naturally, by assigning to the mannerism, the "subjectivity," of the evangelist. They present us the details, not of the photographer, but of the finishing artist. We may trace fresh coloring; but native simplicity is wanting.

Throughout his discussion of the external evidence for the authorship of the Gospels, Dr. Davidson aims not to set aside, in any instance, the actual testimony of the Fathers; but carefully to weigh the evidence that is presented, find out its precise value, and then estimate its bearing on the question at issue, as that of one, often the weakest, class of the witnesses in the case. This judicial fairness of Dr. Davidson is particularly to be observed in his elaborate and exhaustive inquiry into the genuineness of the fourth Gospel. The external evidence is considered at even greater length than the internal; and every argument which has been urged by the defenders of the genuineness critically analyzed.

The decision of this important question concerning the authorship of the fourth Gospel, depends, it seems to us, quite as much upon the impartiality, as upon the learning, of the critics who handle it. The case is precisely like that of a suit at law, where numerous witnesses are to be examined, and where the verdict will be determined, not by the admission or rejection of any single piece of evidence, however important such evidence may seem to be, but by the general tenor of the testimony, the rulings of the judge, and the impression which, on the whole, one side or the other leaves upon the mind. Taking this view of the controversy, we have found it a most delightful and refreshing change, to turn from Tischendorf's haughty, dictatorial, and not infrequently wilful presentation of the evidence in John's case,*

* Origin of the Four Gospels. By CONSTANTINE TISCHENDORF. Translated by WILLIAM L. GAGE. Boston: American Tract Society.