130 
son, and either wholly or in part by many 
other theologians. The ffih by Owen 
and Grietbsch. 
None of these hypotheses is, however, 
sufficient to account for all the phezno- 
mena which are observable in the three 
first gospels, nor exempt from serious 
objections. For this reason other critics 
have endeavoured to explain the verbal 
harmony that prevails in our three first 
gospels, on the supposition that they 
were derived from a common source. 
The first writer to whom this thought 
occurred (unless indeed the phrase av 
» mnyn Of Epiphanius, which he has not 
explained, denotes the same) was Le 
Clerc, Hist. Ecclesiastica (Amst. 4to. 
1716.) p. 429.: but he appears to have 
mace no further use of his opinion; and 
though it was delivered in very remark- 
able words, it attracted no attention and 
lay dormant upwards of sixty years. 
Michaelis revived it in the third edition 
of his Introduction to the New Testa- 
ment,. published in 1777, still retaining 
the opinion that Mark copied from Mat- 
thew. In the samé year, Priestley pub- 
lished a similar thought in his Observa- 
tions on the Harmony of the Evangelists. 
In 1782, Professor Koppe, at Gottingen, 
published a short Latin Dissertation, in 
which he explained the examples of 
verbal harmony, in the three first gos- 
pels, on the supposition that in. those 
examples the Evangelists retained the 
words which had been used in more an- 
cient gospels, such as those of which 
Luke speaks in his preface. He denied 
that one Evangelist copied from another; 
and Michaelis afterwards did the same, 
adopting the supposition that the docu- 
ment or documents were Greek. Sem- 
ler, in his remarks on Townson, published 
in 1783, was the first who delivered to 
the public, ina very cursory and inde- 
terminate manner indeed, the hypothe- 
sis of a. common Hebrew or Syriac do- 
cument or documents, from which the 
principal materials of the three first gos- 
pels were derived. In 1784, Lessing’s 
Theological Reliques were published, 
in which is a short essay, written five 
years before Semler produced his re- 
marks ; and asserting with more preci- 
sion the hypothesis of a common Syriac 
or Chaldee original, known to the an- 
cients by the name of the Gospel acc: rd- 
ing to'the Hebrews, or the twelve apos- 
tles. Lessing was opposed, in 1786, by 
Storr; and, -in 1789, by Griesbach.— 
But in 1799, Riememer, professor of 
divinity in Halle, not only adopted Les- 
THEOLOGY AND ECCLESIASTICAL AFFAIRS. 
sing’s Hypothesis, but improved it, 
and laid the foundation of the still’. 
greater improvements which it has since* ~ 
received. In the year 1793, the theolo- 
gical faculty at Gottingen, proposed 
the question concerning the origin of the 
three first gospels, for a prize disserta~ 
tion. Halfeld and Russwurm, both 
students in that university, and who had 
attended Eichhorn’s lectures, were can- 
didates. Both adopted the hypothesis 
of a common Hebrew or Chaldee do- 
cument or documents ; but Halfeld, to 
whom the prize was adjudged, supposed 
that several documents were used by the 
Evangelists, whereas Russwurm main- 
tained that they used only different co- 
pies of one and the same document which 
he calls the original gospel, and which 
he did not consider either as the gospel 
according to the Hebrews, or written 
by St. Matthew. During the time that 
the dissertations were preparing for the 
prize, Eichhorn was likewise composing 
a dissertation on the same subject, and 
in the year 1794 he published it, in the 
Sth vol. of his very valuable periodicat 
work, “ The Universal Library of Bi- | 
blical Literature.” This is by far the 
most important essay which appeared in 
defence of the hypothesis of a common 
Hebrew or Chaldee original, previous 
to that by Mr. Marsh. | Eichhorn sup 
poses, as Niemcyer had done, that only 
one document was used by all three 
Evangelists, but that various additions ~ 
had been made im various copies of it ; 
and that three different copies, thus va- 
riously enriched, were respectively used 
by our three first Evangelists. He pro- 
ceeded further, and having analysed the 
three first gospels, he discovered forty-two 
sections, or facts, common to the three, 
which contains a short but well-connect- 
ed representation of the principal trans- 
actions in the life of Christ from his bap- 
tism to his death, and such as might be 
expected in the first sketch of a narra- ~ 
tive of our Lord’s ministry. But these 
forty-two sections, which are to be found 
in our three first Evangelists, are not _ 
treated by each with equal diffuseness ; 
for sometimes circumstances are men- 
tioned by two of them, which are not 
noticed by the third ; and each frequent- — 
ly introduces circumstances which are 
unnoticed by the other two. To the 
original text, therefore, of the common 
document, which in its primitive state _ 
contained only so much matter of the 
forty-two sections as is common to all 
the three Evangelists, various “additions © 
4 
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