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Untitled Article
regular connected narrative in the xivth and six following chapters of Matthew had such interruptions , and such long intervals in it , as there must have been if the miracle of the Five Thousand occurred above a year before the crucifixion , —and also that the Gospel of St . John is so defective as it must then have been , in the account of what took place at the Jewish Festivals .
To reconcile the Gospel of St . John with the ancient opinion respecting the duration of our Lord ' s ministry , Dr . Priestley and others have supposed , that the word Passover , in John vi . 4 , was not in the earliest copies . But this supposition is not authorized by any external evidence whatever ; and it is not necessary for the object in view . * If the opinion of the early fathers respecting the duration of our Lord ' s ministry , had been , decidedly , that it included three , or four , Passovers , and if , further , they had rested it on the tradition supposed to have begun with
those who were personally acquainted with the period recorded by the evangelists , then it ought to have been allowed g reat weight , and could have been overbalanced only by clear internal evidence to the contrary : indeed , if , on such grounds , they had extended the ministry of Christ to include three Passovers , and supposed the festival mentioned in the fifth chapter of John ^ to have been one of them , there is no internal evidence which would have weighed so powerfully against their opinion as to produce any great hesitation in admitting it . In the actual circumstances of the case , though their
opinion ( taken generally ) accords with our own , we cannot lay any great stress upon it : but were it as consistent and clear , and its foundation as complete , as Mr . Mann and Dr . Priestley regard it , in favour of two Passovers only , yet sound principles of criticism as to the text of Scripture would make me hesitate in giving up the word nao-xa , or the whole verse , in opposition to the evidence of every known manuscript and version . Bishop Pearce rested on internal evidence in proposing to relinquish the whole
verse ; and his note deserves the reader ' s attention . It is a specimen of the latitude with which critical emendation was , at that period , pursued , even by learned divines of the Church of England ; and it ought to rescue Dr . Priestley from the imputations so often cast on his mode of criticism . Bishop Pearce ' s reasoning proceeds upon the supposition , that the separate portions
of St . John ' s Gospel are arranged in the exact order of time ; and if this were true , his argument would have great weight . On Dr . Priestley's opinion as to the duration of Christ ' s ministry , the alteration of the text required , for its availableness , a transposition of one of the portions of John ' s Gospel ; and one similar transposition is all that is needed to bring the order to that of the preceding gospels , without any change in the text .
Against every supposition some objection rests ; but the reference of the miracle of the Five Thousand to a time shortly preceding the last Passover , is so perfectly accordant with the narratives of Matthew , Mark , and Luke , that the difficulty arising from the position of it in St . John's Gospel is entirely outweighed . The difficulty , too , is itself greatly lessened by the characteristics of that Gospel . We know of no other . In every other respect it obviously accords with the circumstances of the period . Our Lord ' s discourse after the miracle , as recorded by St . John , ( see vers , 51 — 56 , ) has
• Independently of this objection , ( which we deem an insuperable one , ) Dr . Priestley ' s arrangement ot" the events in our Lord ' s ministry is attended , us we shall hereafter shew , with other grcut difficulties ; and , in particular , it leaves the last rive months with few records .
Untitled Article
172 On the Chronology and Arrangement of the Gospel Narratives .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), March 2, 1831, page 172, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2595/page/28/
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