An Epoch-Marking Book

Extract

The title page of this book runs thus :—

Synopsis Evangelica. Textum Graecum quattuor Evangeliorum recensuit et justa ordinem chronologicum Lucae praesertim et Joannis concinnavit R. P. Maria Josephus Lagrange, O.P., sociatis curis R. P. Ceslai Lavergne eiusdem Ordinis—Barcinone. Apud ‘Editorial Alpha,’ Via Laietana 30 MCMXXVI.

We venture to speak of this book as epoch-marking because to find a precedent for it we should have to go back to Tatian’s Diatesseron. Indeed, if Tatian’s work was drawn up after his apostasy we have no precedent for Père Lagrange’s Synopsis. Not that scholars have been without the almost indispensable help of Greek Synopses. Pfcre Lagrange, always so courteous in his thanks to scholars, whether believers or unbelievers, is at pains to show how the precedent set by Tatian has been followed of late years by such critics as Tischendorf, Huck, Larfeld. His own words of Latin preface are significant: Verum, quod mireris, ipsi critici a synopsibus graecis conficiendis non desistunt; inter quos Tischendorf, Huck, Larfeld—nullus autem vir catholicus—ab omnibus laudantur.’ (Nevertheless, we may well wonder that these critics have not ceased to draw up Greek Synopses; amongst whom we must give praise to Tischendorf, Huck, Larfeld—but no Catholic!).

If, then, Père Lagrange has ventured upon a Greek Synopsis, and if Tatian’s Diatesseron is the work of a heretic, this Synopsis, dated from Jerusalem, WhitSunday, 1926, marks the close of one epoch of Catholic biblical study and the opening of another.