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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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( a . d . 58—60 , ) preparing for the writing of his Gospel , it is not credible that Matthew ' s Gospel should have been written before that period . The book of Acts was obviously finished after the close of Paul ' s first imprisonment at Rome ( a . r > . 61—63 ); and the introduction leads to the opinion that his Gospel was not finished long before the book of Acts was commenced . The completion of Luke ' s Gospel is therefore , with great probability , placed by Lardner about 63 or 64 . If this be correct , the Gospel of
Matthew could not have been published much earlier than 60 ; and the internal evidence would lead one to place it , with Lardner , about 64 . The minuteness with which the Apostle records the declarations of Christ respecting the wickedness of the leading men , and his prophecies respecting the approaching ruin of the nation , accords well with the opinion that his Gospel was not composed ( though various parts were probably written ) long before the commencement of the Jewish War , which broke out in 66 .
St . Mark ' s Gospel could not have been written with a knowledge of Matthew ' s . This does not , indeed , necessarily follow from its abbreviated character , or from its total omission of important parts , particularly of the Sermon on the Mount ; because Mark might have had in view to make that history easily accessible to Grecian or Roman converts , which Matthew obviously designed , in the first instance , for his own countrymen , and almost certainly
wrote in their language : even then , however , one would not suppose that Mark could have purposely omitted the whole of that inestimable discourse , and at the same time recorded the parables of the Sower , &c . But it is not admissible that Mark would have intentionally departed from the order or Matthew ' s Gospel , if he were founding his own upon it ; or even if he had the advantage of its guidance * In some instances , from his personal
intimacy with Peter , he would be likely to give circumstances which Matthew had not given ; and in a few others , to record events in a different order from that of Matthew , where they were peculiarly connected with the personal history of Peter—as in his first chapter , where he places the cure of Peter ' s Wife ' s Mother on the sabbath after Peter ' s call , whereas Matthew ,
less conversant at that period with the transactions of Christ , places it after the first progress through Galilee closed by the Sermon on the Mount , but still before . his own call . This advantage , however , would not be likely to lead to an order so entirely different , in the early part of his Gospel , from that of Matthew , with which , indeed , his own cannot be made to coalesce . The then aged Peter was much more likely to furnish vivid impressions of particular transactions ( see 2 Peter i . 16—18 ) than a series , chronologically
correct , of the whole period ; and he would scarcely , at that distance of time , have advised the abandonment of the digested arrangement already formed by a fellow-apostle . But , indeed , the supposition that Mark formed his Gospel as an abridgment of Matthew , ( or , with the knowledge of it , as Mr . Greswell strangely maintains , to supply its deficiencies and rectify its transpositions ^ will scarcely be adopted by any one who has studied Lardner ' s careful and accurate investigation of the subject .
The Gospel by St . John is so distinct from the others , and is supplied with so many definite notes of time , that all we have to do is to determine where its separate portions are best interwoven with the narrative derived from the other Gospels . * We have already stated , in p . 171 , and in this
J 4 ' * That acute critic , Bishop Marsh , when shewing liuw the ancients reconciled the chronology of John with that of the other Gospels , ( Notes to Michueli » , Vol .
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312 On the Chronology < tnd Arrangement of the Gospel Narratives .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), May 2, 1831, page 312, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2597/page/24/
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