WHO CHOSE THE GOSPELS?
Probing the Great Gospel Conspiracy
By C.E. Hill
Oxford University Press
295 pages. £14.99
ISBN 978-0-19-955123-1
When a book arrives with the effusive recommendation of that most sanguine of reviewers, Don Carson, the reader should sit up and take notice.
This is, indeed, a magnificent, well-written book. It carries its scholarship lightly as it addresses and offers a careful and considered path through much of the contemporary cant relating to Gospel origins. OUP should consider issuing it as a £5.99 paperback and the editor of EN should ask Prof. Hill for a series of articles!
Different Gospels
Unless secured in a hermetically-sealed vacuum, no Bible-believing Christian can have escaped the contemporary postmodern suggestion that the early centuries of the Christian era were awash with different gospels and that the church eventually settled for four after a power struggle that might satisfy the best conspiracy-theorists had taken place. Perhaps more surprising is the fact that such nonsense (for such it is!) has been favoured by the scholarly establishment.
Systematically, Hill demolishes the various arguments that have been used to bolster the flimsy basis upon which such assumptions are based by returning to the evidence rather than speculative theories. In a series of well-argued and effectively demonstrated steps, he makes the following points.
Firstly, he notes that (among a small number of claimants) the four canonical Gospels are the earliest known and the most widely attested, even in ‘heterodox’ Egypt.
Irenaeus
Secondly, he notes that, despite scholarly attempts to isolate and emasculate the testimony of Irenaeus, the second century church father, he appears to have received and passed on only four Gospels as received from the apostolic circle.
Thus, and thirdly, other early leaders, even in Egypt (for example and among others, Origen) bear a similar testimony even though well aware of other ‘claimants’. Hill observes: ‘Most writers of the third century simply assume the four Gospels and use them, without calling attention to any controversies about them and without reference to any rivals’ (p.48). Indeed, such (and such alone) were given canonical status and they were so received by tradition as from the apostolic circle. These last were given a unique authority, in Christ’s place, to author Scripture.
Again, other gospels were known and regarded as false. Hill notes that the variety of witnesses and their geographical breadth is striking: simply, in the different regions of the ancient world the same testimony to receiving four (and only four) Gospels is found.
Fourthly, he notes that early harmonies and synopses as well as the codices that were obviously ‘pulpit editions’ support the same conclusion.
Fifthly, and steadily, Hill works backwards from Irenaeus and his contemporaries. He suggests that the evidence points to the fact that Justin (mid-second century) appears to have worked with four Gospels and suggests he could argue with his contemporaries on the basis that they (and others, friends and foes) were familiar with them and the fact that they were integrated into the liturgical life of the Church.
Sixthly, he examines the writings of the Apostolic Fathers (early second century at the latest) and says: ‘In my opinion, all the writers… (excepting possibly Clement) show sufficient evidence for us to believe that they knew at least one of the four Gospels’ (p..203). He concludes that the ‘religious apparatus… the view of the rightful location and transmission of religious authority which made the reception of the four Gospels, as well as the rest of the New Testament, possible (if not inevitable), was in place already in the late first century’ (p204).
Self-attesting
Finally, while he cites early traditions that refer the authentication of the four Gospels to the apostle John, Hill favours the fact they were ‘self-attesting’ (p.242) and, thus, early orthodox Christians were not authorised to choose but receive them.
No Christian worker should be without this book! Buy one for your minister and make sure he reads it and reports on what he has read to the church!
Stephen Dray,
Ferndale Baptist Church, Southend-on-Sea
