The Gospels in the Second Century An Examination of the Critical Part of a Work Entitled 'Supernatural Religion'   By: William Sanday (1843-1920)

AN EXAMINATION OF THE CRITICAL PART OF A WORK ENTITLED 'SUPERNATURAL RELIGION'

BY

W. SANDAY, M.A.

Rector of Barton on the Heath, Warwickshire; and late Fellow of Trinity College, Oxford. Author of a Work on the Fourth Gospel.

LONDON: 1876.

I had hoped to inscribe in this book the revered and cherished name of my old head master, DR. PEARS of Repton. His consent had been very kindly and warmly given, and I was just on the point of sending the dedication to the printers when I received a telegram naming the day and hour of his funeral. His health had for some time since his resignation of Repton been seriously failing, but I had not anticipated that the end was so near. All who knew him will deplore his too early loss, and their regret will be shared by the wider circle of those who can appreciate a life in which there was nothing ignoble, nothing ungenerous, nothing unreal. I had long wished that he should receive some tribute of regard from one whom he had done his best by precept, and still more by example, to fit and train for his place and duty in the world. This pleasure and this honour have been denied me. I cannot place my book, as I had hoped, in his hand, but I may still lay it reverently upon his tomb.

CONTENTS

CHAP.

I. INTRODUCTORY

II. ON QUOTATIONS GENERALLY IN THE EARLY CHRISTIAN WRITERS

III. THE APOSTOLIC FATHERS

IV. JUSTIN MARTYR

V. HEGESIPPUS PAPIAS

VI. THE CLEMENTINE HOMILIES

VII. BASILIDES AND VALENTINUS

VIII. MARCION

IX. TATIAN DIONYSIUS OF CORINTH

X. MELITO APOLLINARIS ATHENAGORAS THE EPISTLE OF VIENNE AND LYONS

XI. PTOLOMAEUS AND HERACLEON CELSUS THE MURATORIAN FRAGMENT

XII. THE EXTERNAL EVIDENCE FOR THE FOURTH GOSPEL

XIII. ON THE STATE OF THE CANON IN THE LAST QUARTER OF THE SECOND CENTURY

XIV. CONCLUSION

[ENDNOTES]

APPENDIX. SUPPLEMENTAL NOTE ON THE RECONSTRUCTION OF MARCION'S GOSPEL

INDICES

PREFACE.

It will be well to explain at once that the following work has been written at the request and is published at the cost of the Christian Evidence Society, and that it may therefore be classed under the head of Apologetics. I am aware that this will be a drawback to it in the eyes of some, and I confess that it is not altogether a recommendation in my own.

Ideally speaking, Apologetics ought to have no existence distinct from the general and unanimous search for truth, and in so far as they tend to put any other consideration, no matter how high or pure in itself, in the place of truth, they must needs stand aside from the path of science.

But, on the other hand, the question of true belief itself is immensely wide. It is impossible to approach what is merely a branch of a vast subject without some general conclusions already formed as to the whole. The mind cannot, if it would, become a sheet of blank paper on which the writing is inscribed by an external process alone. It must needs have its praejudicia i.e. judgments formed on grounds extrinsic to the special matter of enquiry of one sort or another. Accordingly we find that an absolutely and strictly impartial temper never has existed and never will. If it did, its verdict would still be false, because it would represent an incomplete or half suppressed humanity. There is no question that touches, directly or indirectly, on the moral and spiritual nature of man that can be settled by the bare reason. A certain amount of sympathy is necessary in order to estimate the weight of the forces that are to be analysed: yet that very sympathy itself becomes an extraneous influence, and the perfect balance and adjustment of the reason is disturbed.