[23] There are, I must confess, in the figure of Papias no riddles for Dr. Moffatt. Papias is his pet child. For Papias he has constructed out of his own fancy a character and almost a personality, without any basis in ancient record, purely on the ground of his unhesitating penetration to the soul of those allusions which to most of us are riddles. He sees him, with Marcion and Hegesippus, stand forth as "strong and versatile personalities" in the brilliant light of the later second century, where we can only see them like shadows of "men as trees walking" in the dimness of that obscure period. It is just because Dr. Moffatt has pondered over that misty figure until he has re-invested Papias with his own conceptions of history that he loves and admires him so much. But that [24] ought to be reserved for his own private meditations. The portrait of Papias ought to hang in his study, not to adorn his book. It belongs to himself, not to the world.

Polycarp is a gracious, attractive and dignified figure, as we see him amid the darkling twilight; but "versatile" is the least suitable epithet that could have been selected for him. We know him in his personality fairly well: he is a real human being for us: so far Dr. Moffatt is right. He enjoyed the unbounded veneration of the Asian Christians, and he deserved it. He was regarded by the pagans as "the father of the Christians," and as the most dangerous enemy of the old gods. But "versatile"! Hear what Lightfoot, his devoted admirer, says of him. "Polycarp's mind was essentially unoriginative. It had, so far as we can discover, no creative power. His epistle is largely made up of quotations and imitations. . . . He himself never rises above mere commonplace. A steadfast stubborn adherence to the lessons of his youth and early manhood -- an unrelaxing, unwavering hold of 'the word that was [25] delivered to him from the beginning ' -- this, so far as we can read the man from his own utterances or from the notices of others, was the characteristic of Polycarp." 1 A noble and dignified figure in his life, a pathetic and still more dignified figure in his death! But what is he or any of the others in Dr. Moffatt's list in comparison with John or Peter or even James, as they stand before us in the literature of the New Testament? A wren among the eagles.

Of course, when Dr. Moffett has ejected most of the New Testament out of the realm of authenticity, then "the literature of the New Testament" becomes scanty and the period to which it belongs is left in mist. There remains, according to him, only Paul (who, however, loses Ephesians and 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus); and Paul, though considerably annotated and enlarged in parts, still throws, as Dr. Moffatt admits, a bright light on the period between 50 and 60 or 62 A.D.; but after Paul the darkness sets in, and Luke and Mark fail to lighten it. Mark has been edited until he is no longer [26] recognizable; Luke is far from thoroughly trustworthy; and hence, I suppose, Dr Moffatt fails to find any individuality or personality in Peter, who to us old-fashioned people is such a vivid, powerful, real and human figure. 2 One who set any store by the testimony of Luke in the Acts and in the Gospel could never find Peter or John so faint and unsatisfying. My belief is that Dr. Moffatt, if he had to compose from his natural instinct for a living audience a study of Peter, would forget for the moment the finespun web of printed conjecture, and paint for us in finely chosen words a picture of the great man, such as I can imagine for myself, though less skilfully than Dr. Moffatt could.

It is, however, quite natural that Dr. Moffatt should emerge from his study of modern theories about Ephesians, the Pastorals, the Catholic Epistles of James, Peter and John, the Revelation and the Fourth Gospel, "with a sense of [27] baffled curiosity, which almost deepens into despair at some points”. He has smashed up to his own complete and undoubting satisfaction the greatest epoch of literature, and he finds that there remains in it only the lay figure of a man of the province Asia named John, "whose breathing he cannot hear and whose motion he cannot see

But those men of the later second century! they are Dr. Moffatt's heroes. He knows them: he feels really interested in them: he finds none of the difficulties which we find in comprehending them. Take one example of the way that he handles the evidence about them.

FOOTNOTES:

1 Lightfoot, "Ignatius and Polycarpa," I. p. 458.

2 In appearance Dr. Moffatt leaves the first Epistle of Peter as the work of the Apostle; but what he gives us with his right hand he takes away from us with the left; and the Epistle furnishes no real information about the Apostle's character; see Section XX.