fore can hardly be urged as proving anything. It
is well known that educated persons in Palestine were acquainted with
Greek, although the majority spoke Aramaic. The two languages existed
side by side, very much as Welsh and English exist side by side in
North Wales. If the Gospel was not written in Palestine, it was
probably written in South Syria.

{38}

[Sidenote: Date.]

The date must be shortly before A.D. 70. A favourite argument of
modern sceptics is that it contains a reference (xxii. 7) to the
burning of Jerusalem by the Romans in A.D. 70, and therefore must have
been written after that event. The argument rests upon the assumption
that our Lord could not have foreseen the event predicted--an
assumption which no Christian can accept. Even the favoured servants
of God in later ages have sometimes possessed the gift of prophecy.
Savonarola certainly foretold the fall of Rome, which took place in
A.D. 1527, and the prophecy was printed long before the event seemed
credible. Much more might the Son of God have foretold the fall of
that city which had so signally neglected His summons. Such
expressions as "the holy city," "the holy place," "the city of the
great King," suggest that when the Gospel was written it had not yet
become the home of "the abomination of desolation." And a far stronger
proof is afforded by the caution of the writer in xxiv. 15, "let him
that readeth understand." This is an editorial note inserted by the
evangelist, as by St. Mark, before our Lord's warning to flee from
Judaea. We learn from the early historians of the Church that the
Jewish Christians took warning from this statement to flee from Judaea
to Peraea before the Romans invested the holy city in A.D. 70. Now, it
would have been absurd for the evangelist to insert this note after the
Roman forces had begun the siege, as absurd as it would have been to
warn the Parisians to flee to England after Paris had been surrounded
by the Prussians in 1870, or to warn the English to leave Ladysmith in
1900 after it was surrounded by the Boers. Another and final proof
that the Gospel was written before A.D. 70 is given by the form in
which the evangelist has recorded our Lord's prophecy of the end of the
world (the so-called "eschatological discourse" in chs. xxiv.-xxv.).
The prophecy of the destruction of Jerusalem and that of the last
coming of the Lord are placed side by side with no perceptible break.
Ch. xxiv. 29-31 refer