176 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



which belongs to the Babylonish captivity ; of parts of Zechariah, 

 which belong to several periods ; and of the Book of Daniel, which 

 is not properly to be numbered with the Prophets (the critics in this 

 respect following the old Jewish estimate), but consists of a series of 

 traditions put together for the encouragement of the faithful Jews in 

 the time of the Maccabees. 



In regard to the New Testament there is far less tendency to 

 agreement among scholars. The researches relating to the Synoptic 

 Gospels have made it clear that they are not independent accounts, 

 but have a common origin either in an oral or a written tradition 

 which was variously handled ; that in all probability Mark was the 

 oldest and Luke the latest of the three, but that the title "according 

 to" St. Matthew or St. Mark permits of the hypothesis that they 

 passed through a rehandling in a later generation of their disciples, 

 and that the same is highly probable in the case of the fourth Gospel, 

 which, however, many believe to have been wholly composed in the 

 second century by some disciple or successor of St. John ; that the 

 Acts of the Apostles can not be wholly relied on for the details of the 

 history ; that the four great epistles of St. Paul are the earliest and 

 most certain Christian documents ; and that no reasonable doubt 

 attaches to the Epistles to the Thessalonians. The Epistles of the 

 Captivity present so different an aspect of Christianity that their act- 

 ual Pauline authorship is the subject of some doubt, though from this 

 doubt the Epistle to the Philippians is almost free ; the pastoral Epis- 

 tles, however, can not be treated with any certainty as having been 

 written by St. Paul himself, and the Hebrews are almost certainly by 

 another, though one in close sympathy with him. The Epistle of St. 

 James is reckoned genuine ; the Second Epistle of St. Peter and that 

 of Jude are liable to the gravest doubts, and the First Epistle of Peter 

 is not wholly undoubted. The Johannine epistles go with the fourth 

 Gospel, and can hardly be by the same author as the Apocalypse, 

 which is fixed almost without doubt to be the work of the apostle, 

 and to have been written in the reign of the Emperor Galba. 



It is, of course, quite possible that some of these opinions may be 

 unsound. Few of them are wholly undisputed. It is possible also 

 that the estimate here given of the tendency of opinion may not be 

 entirely correct. Yet it can hardly be far from the truth ; and the 

 main lines of this criticism acquire a greater certainty and acceptance 

 every year. In any case it has become impossible to deal with the 

 sacred history as exempt from the conditions of ordinary history, or 

 with the Psalms and prophets as if their glowing words could be taken 

 as definitions of theological truths or rules of life. In the history we 

 have to pick our way amid many doubtful paths, to ask at every turn 

 whether the facts are exactly as they have been represented. Even 

 in the didactic portions we have to inquire whether the sayings are 

 genuine, and if so, to which of the various phases of a rapidly-chang- 



