J. Gresham Machen Bibliography

RECENT LITERATURE 679 For example, when he says at the beginning of the discussion (p. 2) that “we know that the first gospel was composed roughly about the same time” (i.e. about A.D. 70), some of his readers may be inclined to ask how we know it; and the same class of readers may perhaps be surprised to learn that the author of the third Gospel is “universally assumed to be Saint Luke” (p. 6). But this occasional failure to consider the main drift of modern negative criticism of the New Testament in general does not invalidate the results of Mr. Prestige’s careful examination of the birth narratives themselves. The most distinctive part of the book, perhaps, is chapter viii, “The Doctrine of the Virgin Birth.” Here, however, in the perfectly legitimate endeavor to show the necessity of the virgin birth as the mode of the incarnation, the author may be thought to have ventured, in part, upon rather doubtful ground. In agreement with nearly all recent writers and nearly all editors of Justin Martyr, Mr. Prestige accepts the erroneous reading “our race” (i.e. Christians) instead of “your race” (i.e. Jews) in the Dialogue with Trypho, c. 48, where Justin refers to those who, while they accept the Messiahship of Jesus, deny the virgin birth. See Harnack, Dogmengeschichte, ii., 1909, p. 320, and compare the discussion of the passage in this REVIEW, vol. x, 1912, pp. 547-550. Princeton. J. GRESHAM MACHEN.

By an Unknown Disciple. New York: George H. Doran Company. 1919. Pp. 246. $1.50 net. This is an attempt to present the life of Jesus in interesting narrative form as it might have appeared to a disciple with modern powers of observation. Peter, according to our “unknown disciple,” was easily deceived. “You never could make Peter believe that even when people describe a thing as they think they saw it they may still speak falschood.” Luke “was an educated man; but he was a physician, and he seldom saw beyond the things of the body.” “Peter and Luke and Mark and John—they are all dead now, and I can speak my mind” (pp. 7, 8). So the unknown disciple proceeds to rationalize the miracle of “the swine and the madman” and the rest of the Gospel history. The materials for his romance are provided by all the Gospels, and he uses the Gospels without any critical principle of selection except hostility to miracle, indifference to any profound sense of sin, and supposed suitableness to the narrative. The book makes sad reading. But it shows at least (along with countless other failures of the same kind) that no matter what freedom of selection be allowed, the material of the Gospels can never be used to form a believable picture of a purely human Jesus. The impress of divinity extends everywhere throughout the Gospel story. The only real Jesus discoverable anywhere in the Gospels is the wondrous Lord and Saviour of Matthew and Mark and Luke and John. Princeton. J. GRESHAM MACHEN.