Book Description

Excerpt from The Beginnings of Gospel Story: A Historico-Critical Inquiry Into the Sources and Structure of the Gospel According to Mark, With Expository Notes Upon the d104, for English Readers No man can pretend to have seriously examined the historical basis of the Christian faith who has not to some extent applied the ordinary processes of historical criticism to the Gospel of Mark, the earliest extant embodiment of the evangelic story. The present volume is offered as an example and aid to serious and impartial but non-technical investigation in this field. The form adopted combines critical analysis of the substance with exegesis in detail. It is chosen for the purpose of exhibiting the results of the higher criticism. The recent general acknowledgment that in Mark we have the oldest canonical Gospel, an embodiment of the accepted outline of Jesus career, already stereotyped when "Matthew" and "Luke" were written, has brought forth a succession of splendid contributions to the purely exegetical interpretation of this Gospel. To say nothing of the great German authorities, our own Gould and Swete have added greatly to the resources of philological exposition, and Menzies has given new light from the historical side. But that which the intelligent layman most requires has not been placed within his reach. The richest fruits of modern biblical study have come from the field of the higher criticism. Documentary analysis of the sources has been eagerly pursued by authorities such as Wernle, Schmiedel, Weiss, Wellhausen, Harnack, Loisy, Sir John Hawkins, Burton, and Burkitt. The recent lives of Christ by Nath. Schmidt, O. Holtzmann, Bousset, and the preliminary studies by Sanday, have shown that the real interest of our time lies no longer in the exact apprehension of the sense the writer of 70-90 A.D. may have given to the evangelic tradition. We no longer attempt to say, Thus the sacred writer conceived the event to have been, therefore thus it was; for we have four sacred historians, no two of whom conceive the event in just the same way. The point of real interest for our time is at least a generation earlier. What was the event which gave rise to the story? Through what phases has the tradition passed to acquire its canonical forms? About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.