Old-Time Makers of Medicine — Ap. 1 St. Luke the Physician, part 2/2

It is not surprising, then, that there should be dual or even triple ascriptions of authorship for various portions of the Scriptures, and Luke's writings have on this score suffered as much or more even than others, with the possible exception of Moses.

It is now definitely settled, however, that the similarities of style between the Acts and the third gospel are too great for them to have come from two different minds.

This is especially true, as pointed out by Harnack, in all that regards the use of medical terms.

The writer of the Acts and the writer of the third gospel knew Greek from the standpoint of the physician of that time.

Each used terms that we find nowhere else in Greek literature except among medical writers.

What is thus true for one critical attack on Luke's reputation is also true in another phase of recent higher criticism.

It has been said that certain portions of the Acts which are called the "we" portions because the narration changes in them from the third to the first person were to be attributed to another writer than the one who wrote the narrative portions.

Here, once more, the test of the medical words employed has decided the case for Luke's sole authorship.

It is evidently an excellent thing to be able to use medical terms properly if one wants to be recognized with certainty later on in history for just what one's business was.

It has certainly saved the situation for St. Luke, though there may be some doubt as to the real force of objections thus easily overthrown.

It is rather interesting to realize that many scholars of the present generation had allowed themselves to be led away by the German higher criticism from the old tradition with regard to Luke as a physician and now will doubtless be led back to former views by the leader of German biblical critics.

It shows how much more distant things may influence certain people than those nearer home--how the hills are green far away.

Harnack confesses that the best book ever written on the subject of Luke as a physician, the one that has proved of most value to him, and that he still recommends everyone to read, was originally written in English.

It is Hobart's "Medical Language of St. Luke,"[34] written more than a quarter of a century before Harnack.

The Germans generally had rather despised what the English were doing in the matter of biblical criticism, and above all in philology.

Yet now the acknowledged coryphaeus of them all, Harnack, not only admits the superiority of an old-time English book, but confesses that it is the best statement of the subject up to the present time, including his own.

He constantly quotes from it, and it is evident that it has been the foundation of all of his arguments.

It is not the first time that men have fetched from afar what they might have got just as well or better at home.

Harnack has made complete the demonstration, then, that the third gospel and the Acts were written by St. Luke, who had been a practising physician.

In spite of this, however, he finds many objections to the Luke narratives and considers that they add very little that is valuable to the contemporary evidence that we have with regard to Christ.

He impairs with one hand the value of what he has so lavishly yielded with the other.

He finds inconsistencies and discrepancies in the narrative that for him destroy their value as testimony.

A lawyer would probably say that this is that very human element in the writings which demonstrates their authenticity and adds to their value as evidence, because it shows clearly the lack of any attempt to do anything more than tell a direct story as it had come to the narrator.

No special effort was made to avoid critical objections founded on details.

It was the general impression that was looked for.

Sir William Ramsay, in his "Luke the Physician and Other Studies in the History of Religion" (New York: Armstrong and Sons, 1908), has answered Harnack from the side of the professional critic with much force.

He appreciates thoroughly the value of Professor Harnack's book, and above all the reactionary tendency away from nihilistic so-called higher criticism which characterized so much of German writing on biblical themes in the nineteenth century.

He says (p. 7): "This [book of Harnack's] alone carries Lukan criticism a long step forwards, and sets it on a new and higher plane.

Never has the unity and character of the book been demonstrated so convincingly and conclusively.

The step is made and the plane is reached by the method which is practised in other departments of literary criticism, viz.

, by dispassionate investigation of the work and by discarding fashionable _a priori_ theories."

The distinguished English traveller and writer on biblical subjects points out, however, that in detail many of Harnack's objections to the Lukan narratives are due to insufficient consideration of the circumstances in which they were written and the comparative significance of the details criticised.

He says, "Harnack lays much stress on the fact that inconsistencies and inexactnesses occur all through Acts.

Some of these are undeniable; and I have argued that they are to be regarded in the same light as similar phenomena in the poem of Lucretius and in other ancient classical writers, viz.

, as proofs that the work never received the final form which Luke intended to give it, but was still incomplete when he died.

The evident need for a third book to complete the work, together with those blemishes in expression, form the proof."

Ramsay's placing of Harnack's writing in general is interesting in this connection.

(P.

8) "Professor Harnack stands on the border between the nineteenth and twentieth century.

His book shows that he is to a certain degree sensitive of and obedient to the new spirit; but he is only partially so.

The nineteenth century critical method was false, and is already antiquated....

"The first century could find nothing real and true that was not accompanied by the marvellous and the 'supernatural.'

The nineteenth century could find nothing real and true that was.

Which view was right and which was wrong?

Was either complete?

Of these two questions, the second alone is profitable at the present.

Both views were right--in a certain way of contemplating; both views were wrong--in a certain way.

Neither was complete.

At present, as we are struggling to throw off the fetters which impeded thought in the nineteenth century, it is most important to free ourselves from its prejudices and narrowness."

He adds (pp. 26 and 27): "There are clear signs of the unfinished state in which this chapter was left by Luke; but some of the German scholar's criticisms show that he has not a right idea of the simplicity of life and equipment that evidently characterized the jailer's house and the prison.

The details which he blames as inexact and inconsistent are sometimes most instructive about the circumstances of this provincial town and Roman colonia.

"But it is never safe to lay much stress on small points of inexactness or inconsistency in any author.

One finds such faults even in the works of modern scholarship if one examines them in the microscopic fashion in which Luke is studied here.

I think I can find them in the author [Harnack] himself.

His point of view sometimes varies in a puzzling way."

As a matter of fact, Harnack, as pointed out by Ramsay, was evidently working himself more and more out of the old conclusion as to the lack of authenticity of the Lucan writings into an opinion ever more and more favorable to Luke.

For instance, in a notice of his own book, published in the _Theologische Literaturzeitung_, "he speaks far more favorably about the trustworthiness and credibility of Luke, as being generally in a position to acquire and transmit reliable information, and as having proved himself able to take advantage of his position.

Harnack was gradually working his way to a new plane of thought.

His later opinion is more favorable."

Ramsay also points out that Professor Giffert, one of our American biblical critics, had felt compelled by the geographical and historical evidence to abandon in part the older unfavorable criticism of Luke and to admit that the Acts is more trustworthy than previous critics allowed.

Above all, "he saw that it was a living piece of literature written by one author."

In a word, Luke is being vindicated in every regard.

Some of the supposed inaccuracies of Luke vanish when careful investigation is made.

Some of his natural history details, for instance, have been impugned and the story of the viper that "fastened" itself upon St. Paul in Malta has been cited as an example of a story that would not have been told in that way by a man who knew medicine and the related sciences in Luke's time.

Because the passage illustrates a number of phases of the discussion with regard to Luke's language I make a rather long quotation from Ramsay: Take as a specimen with which to finish off this paper the passage Acts xxviii, 9 _et seq.

_, which is very fully discussed by Harnack twice.

He argues that the true meaning of the passage was not understood until medical language was compared, when it was shown that the Greek word by which the act of the viper to Paul's hand is described, implies "bit" and not merely "fastened upon."

But it is a well-assured fact that the viper, a poisonous snake, only strikes, fixes the poison fangs on the flesh for a moment, and withdraws its head instantly.

Its action could never be what is attributed by Luke the eye witness to this Maltese viper; that it hung from Paul's hand and was shaken off into the fire by him.

On the other hand, constrictors, which have no poison fangs, cling in the way described, but as a rule do not bite.

Are we, then, to understand in spite of the medical style and the authority of Professor Blass (who translates "momordit" in his edition), that the viper fastened upon the apostle's hand?

Then, the very name viper is a difficulty.

Was Luke mistaken about the kind of snake which he saw?

A trained medical man in ancient times was usually a good authority about serpents, to which great respect was paid in ancient medicine and custom.

Mere verbal study is here utterly at fault.

We can make no progress without turning to the realities and facts of Maltese natural history.

A correspondent obligingly informed me some years ago that Mr. Bryan Hook, of Farnham, Surrey (who, my correspondent assures me, is a thoroughly good naturalist), had found in Malta a small snake, _Coronella austriaca_, which is rare in England, but common in many parts of Europe.

It is a constrictor, without poison fangs, which would cling to the hand or arm as Luke describes.

It is similar in size to the viper, and so like in markings and general appearance that Mr. Hook, when he caught his specimen, thought he was killing a viper.

My friend, Prof. J.

W.

H.

Trail, of Aberdeen, whom I consulted, replied that _Coronella laevis_ or _austriaca_, is known in Sicily and the adjoining islands; but he can find no evidence of its existence in Malta.

It is known to be rather irritable, and to fix its small teeth so firmly into the human skin as to need a little force to pull it off, though the teeth are too short to do any real injury to the skin.

Coronella is at a glance very much like a viper; and in the flames it would not be closely examined.

While it is not reported as found in Malta except by Mr. Hook, two species are known there belonging to the same family and having similar habits (_leopardinus_ and _zamenis_ (or _coluber_) _gemonensis_).

The coloring of _Coronella leopardinus_ would be the most likely to suggest a viper.

The observations justify Luke entirely.

We have here a snake so closely resembling a viper as to be taken for one by a good naturalist until he had caught and examined a specimen.

It clings, and yet it also bites without doing harm.

That the Maltese rustics should mistake this harmless snake for a venomous one is not strange.

Many uneducated people have the idea that all snakes are poisonous in varying degrees, just as the vulgar often firmly believe that toads are poisonous.

Every detail as related by Luke is natural, and in accordance with the facts of the country.

In a word, then, the whole question as to Luke's authority as a writer, as an eye-witness of many things, and as the relator of many others with regard to which he had obtained the testimony of eye-witnesses is fully vindicated.

Twenty years ago many scholars were prone to doubt this whole question.

Ten years ago most of them were convinced that the Luke traditions were not justified by recent investigation.

Now we have come back once more to the complete acceptance of the old traditions.

Perhaps the most unfortunate characteristic of much nineteenth-century criticism in all departments, even those strictly scientific, was the marked tendency to reject previous opinions for new ones.

Somehow men felt themselves so far ahead of old-time writers and thinkers that they concluded they must hold opinions different from their ancestors.

In nearly every case the new ideas that they evolved by supposedly newer methods are not standing the test of time and further study.

There had been a continuous belief in men's minds, having its basis very probably on a passage in one of St. Peter's Epistles, that the earth would dissolve by fire.

This was openly contradicted all during the nineteenth century and the time when the earth would freeze up definitely calculated by our mathematicians.

Now after having studied radioactivity and learned from the physicist that the earth is heating up and will eventually get too hot for life, we calmly go back to the old Petrine declaration.

Some of the most distinguished of the German biologists of the present day, such men as Driesch and others, calmly tell us that the edifice erected by Darwin will have to come down because of newly discovered evidence, and indeed some of them go so far as to declare that Darwinism was a crude hypothesis very superficial in its philosophical aspects and therefore acceptable to a great many people who, because it was easy to understand and was very different from what our fathers had believed, hastened to accept it.

Nothing shows the necessity for being conservative in the matter of new views in science or ethics or religion more than the curious transition state in which we are with regard to many opinions at the present time, with a distinct tendency toward reaction to older views that a few years ago were thought quite untenable.

We are rather proud of the advance that we are supposed to be making along many lines in science and scholarship, and yet over and over again, after years of work, we prove to have been following a wrong lead and must come back to where we started.

This has been the way of man from the beginning and doubtless will continue.

The present generation are having this curious regression that follows supposed progress strongly emphasized for them.

APPENDIX II