732 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



tianity, as a great fact in man's history, is not dependent for its 

 life upon any parasitic growths of myth and legend, no matter 

 how beautiful they may be. 



No less important was the closer research into the New Tes- 

 tament during the latter part of the nineteenth century. This 

 work has already been touched upon, but a few of the main 

 truths which it brought before the world may be here summa- 

 rized. 



By the new race of Christian scholars it has been clearly shown 

 that the first three Gospels, which, down to the close of the last 

 century, were so constantly declared to be three independent tes- 

 timonies agreeing as to the events recorded, are neither independ- 

 ent of each other nor in that sort of agreement which was for- 

 merly asserted. All biblical scholars of any standing, even the 

 most conservative, have come to admit that all three took their 

 rise in the same original sources, growing by the accretions sure 

 to come as time went on accretions sometimes useful and often 

 beautiful, but in no inconsiderable degree ideas and even narra- 

 tives inherited from older religions ; it is also fully acknowledged 

 that to this growth process are due certain contradictions which 

 can not otherwise be explained. As to the fourth Gospel, exqui- 

 sitely beautiful as large portions of it are, there has been growing 

 steadily and irresistibly the conviction, even among the most de- 

 vout scholars, that it represents an infusion of Greek conceptions 

 into Hebraism, and that its final form is mainly due to some gifted 

 representative or representatives of the Alexandrian school. Bit- 

 ter as the resistance to this view has been, it has during the last 

 years of the nineteenth century won its way more and more to 

 acknowledgment. A careful examination made in 1893 by a com- 

 petent Christian scholar showed facts which are best given in his 

 own words, as follows: "In the period of thirty years ending in 

 1860, of the fifty great authorities in this line, four to one were in 

 favor of the Johannine authorship. Of those who in that period 

 had advocated this traditional position one quarter and certainly 

 the very greatest finally changed their position to the side of a 

 late date and non-Johannine authorship. Of those who have 

 come into this field of scholarship since about 1860, some forty 

 men of the first class, two thirds reject the traditional theory 

 wholly or very largely. Of those who have contributed impor- 



As to the influence of these translations, it may be noted that, when young John Kuncewicz, 

 afterward a Polish archbishop, became a monk, he took the name of the sainted Prince 

 Josafat ; and, having fallen a victim to one of the innumerable murderous affrays of the 

 seventeenth century between Greek and Roman Christians in Poland, he also was finally 

 canonized under that name, evidently as a means of annoying the Russian Government. 

 (See Contieri, Vita di S. Giosafat, Arcivescovo e Martira Ruteno, Roma, 1867.) 



