596 NEW TESTAMENT 



define the period of which we are to construct the history as extend- 

 ing approximately to the end of the first century, and the literature 

 to be examined as all that which makes a real contribution to our 

 knowledge of the Christianity of the first century. 



But the modern definition of the function of New Testament 

 scholarship compels also a revised definition of the question which is 

 to be answered concerning these books. Formerly the question of 

 genuineness occupied the centre of the stage and was thought of 

 as almost synonymous with the question of the right of the book to 

 a place in the New Testament. To-day the question that introduction 

 asks is not, Has the book a right to a place in the New Testament? 

 but, on the one side, What information can we gain concerning the 

 origin of this book, its authorship, occasion, and purpose, in the light 

 of which its real meaning may be discovered? and, on the other, To 

 what period and stage of the history of Christianity does the book 

 itself belong, and what is the value of its assertions in the realm of 

 historic fact ? Introduction is thus purely an historical discipline, both 

 in itself and in the end that it serves. The questions that it asks are 

 questions of historic fact; the problems to the solution of which its 

 answers contribute are wholly historical. The question of genuine- 

 ness becomes simply the question of authorship and date, important 

 because on its decision depends in some measure the interpretation 

 of the book, but more especially either because by the answer to it 

 we are able to place the book and its contribution in its proper his- 

 toric position, or because the decision helps us to give the right value 

 to its statements of fact. 



The field is so broad that clearness of exposition requires its sub- 

 division into parts. We may speak separately of - 



(a) The letters ascribed to Paul. 



(6) The synoptic gospels and the Acts. 



(c) The Fourth Gospel and the Johannine letters. 



(d) The Apocalypse. 



(e) Hebrews and the epistles of James, Peter, and Jude. 



The letters ascribed to Paul. In respect to the Pauline letters 

 there meets us at the very outset the question whether it is incumbent 

 upon us to vindicate our right to use the term " Pauline letters " at 

 all, as against those who would permit us to speak only of pseudo- 

 Pauline epistles dating from the second century. The era of New 

 Testament criticism that began with Ferdinand Christian Baur has 

 been distinguished, not simply by the recognition of certain letters of 

 Paul as genuine, but even more fundamentally by the perception 

 of the fact that the student of the New Testament is a student, not 

 simply of literature, but of history, and by the attempt on the basis 

 of literature, properly dated and placed, to write the history of the 

 origin of Christianity. Is that era past? Have we now to become, 



