00.3-PREFACE

PREFACE THIS work originates from the invitation with which the Council of Mansfield College, Oxford, honoured me in the end of July 1891, to give a course of six lectures there in May - June 1892. The opinion of Dr. Fairbairn, Dr. Sanday, and other friends encouraged me to hope that faults of execution -- of which I was and am painfully conscious -- did not wholly obscure a good idea in them; and it is at their advice that the present book appears. The lectures are almost entirely rewritten (except Chap. IX.), and are enlarged by the addition of Part I. and in other respects, which need not be specified; but they retain their original character as lectures, intended rather to stimulate interest and research in students than to attain scientific completeness and order of exposition. They exemplify to younger students the method of applying archaeological, topographical, and numismatic evidence to the investigation of early Christian history; and, as I always urge on my pupils, their aim is to suggest to others how to treat the subject better than I can. The books of the New Testament are treated here simply as authorities for history; and their credit is estimated on the same principles as that of other historical documents. If I reach conclusions very different from those of the school of criticism whose originators and chief exponents are German, it is not that I differ from their method. I fully accept their principle, that the sense of these documents can be ascertained only by resolute criticism; but I think that they have often carried out their principle badly, and that their criticism often offends against critical method. True criticism must be sympathetic; but in investigations into religion, Greek, Roman, and Christian alike, there appears to me, if I may venture to say so, to be in many German scholars (the greatest excepted) a lack of that instinctive sympathy with the life and nature of a people which is essential to the right use of critical processes. For years, with much interest and zeal, but with little knowledge, I followed the critics and accepted their results. In recent years, as I came to understand Roman history better, I have realised that, in the case of almost all the books of the New Testament, it is as gross an outrage on criticism to hold them for second-century forgeries as it would be to class the works of Horace and Virgil as forgeries of the time of Nero.

Some German reviewers have taxed me with unfair depreciation of German authorities. The accusation must [xvii] seem to my English friends and pupils a retribution for the persistence with which I have urged the necessity of studying German method. None admires and reverences German scholarship more than I do; but it has not taught me to be blind to faults, or to be afraid to speak out.

I cannot sufficiently acknowledge my debt to various friends, chiefly to Dr. Sanday; also to Dr. Hort, Dr. Fairbairn, Mr. Armitage Robinson, Mr. A. C. Headlam, etc. From the discriminating criticism of Mr. Vernon Bartlet I have gained much: the pages on I Peter were doubled in meeting his arguments. My old friend of undergraduate days, Mr. Macdonell, formerly of Balliol College, gave me especially great help throughout the first fourteen chapters. In the index I have been aided by my pupil, Mr. A. Souter, now of Caius College. A special tribute is due to two writers. Lightfoot’s Ignatius and Polycarp has been my constant companion; yet my admiration for his historical perception, his breadth of knowledge and his honesty of statement, and my grateful recollection of much kindly encouragement received from him personally, do not prevent me from stating frankly where I am bound to differ from him. Mommsen’s review of Neumann explained certain difficulties that long puzzled me; and the lectures attempt, however imperfectly, to apply principles learned mainly from his various writings. [xviii] As the whole work is due to my explorations in Asia Minor, I hope it may stimulate the progress of discovery in that land, which at present conceals within it the answer to many pressing problems of history; and, perhaps, may even prevent my researches from coming to an end. Next to further exploration and excavation, the greatest desideratum is a society to study and edit the acta of the Eastern Saints.

ABERDEEN,
January 23rd, 1895