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GOSPELS 



access, and of which they eacli made independent 

 use. (3) The ' tradition -hypothesis ' was that each 

 evangelist drew his matter independently of the 

 others from an oral apostolic tradition which had 

 become stereotyped. 



The result or the discussion has been to make it 

 plain that no one of these theories is by itself 

 sufficient to cover all the facts of the case. The 

 borrowing hypothesis may account for the coinci- 

 dences, but it leaves the discrepancies unexplained 

 and inexplicable. The same remark applies to tlje 

 assumption of a primitive gospel or gospels ; it has 

 been found necessary by its advocates to assume a 

 multiplicity of lost documents in a manner that 

 raises difficulties, historical and other, quite as 

 great as those which it seeks to remove. The oral 

 tradition theory, again, might serve to account for 

 the discrepancies, but when it is sought to explain 

 the immense amount of coincidence by means of it, 

 the improbability of a stereotype tradition of such 

 mass, confining itself so closely to the same inci- 

 dents, told in so nearly the same order and in lan- 

 guage so little varying, is seen to be very great. 

 But, on the other hand, it is now more or less 

 generally admitted that all three theories contained 

 important elements of truth. ( 1 ) In connection 

 with the oral tradition hypothesis it seems tolerably 

 clear that for at least a generation after the death 

 of Christ no important attempt was made to com- 

 mit to writing any record, however brief, of the 

 leading facts of his life or the main elements of 

 his preaching. This was no doubt partly due to 

 the widespread belief that his second coming and 

 the end of the world were close at hand. The 

 epistles were, as has already been said, the earliest 

 literary productions of Christianity, and these were 

 all called forth by occasions much more definite 

 than any that had as yet presented themselves for 

 writing memoirs of Christ. But the life and words 

 of Christ were the continual subject of the preach- 

 ing and catechising of the apostles and their con- 

 verts, a subject they naturally expounded in 

 connection with the Old Testament scriptures. 

 These he had perfectly and completely fulfilled, 

 and Christ was therefore sought in the Old Testa- 

 ment prophecies in a way that made the early 

 Christians feel little need of a written gospel. 

 That this traditional preaching and catechising 

 would tend to become stereotyped within each 

 apostolic circle is manifest ; but that it was also 

 capable of taking different forms in different circles 

 is shown (to take obvious examples) by the want 

 of correspondence between the narratives of the 

 nativity and of the resurrection as given in 

 Matthew and Luke respectively. (2) As regards 

 a primitive gospel (or Ur-evangelium, as Eichhorn 

 first called it), specialists are becoming more and 

 more at one in recognising two relatively primitive 

 documents embodied wholly or in part in the exist- 

 ing synoptists. These consist (a) in the gospel 

 according to Mark, or an earlier draft thereof ; 

 (b) in a so-called 'logia' document, composed 

 mainly of sayings and discourses of the Lord a 

 document which was largely drawn upon by the 

 authors of the first and third gospels for much of 

 what they have in common with each other apart 

 from Mark. The reasons for abandoning the 

 ancient view of Mark's dependence on Matthew, 

 and for now regarding his as the earliest of our 

 existing gospels, depend largely on considerations 

 as to his language, style, and general point of view 

 which cannot be even indicated here, nor does space 

 allow mention to be made of the various minute 

 points which have led many acute scholars to 

 distinguish between an original Mark ( Ur-Marcus ) 

 and the present form of the second gospel. The 

 designation of the ' logia ' document is taken from 

 a much discussed fragment of a very early author, 



Papias, preserved by Eusebius, to the effect that 

 ' Matthew composed ta logia [ the oracles, or the 

 discourses of our Lord] in the Hebrew [i.e. Jewish- 

 Aramaic J dialect, and each one interpreted them 

 as he could.' Schleiermacher was the first to point 

 out the importance of this passage in its possible 

 bearings on criticism. (3) The borrowing hypo- 

 thesis, in the sense that the authors of the first and 

 third gospels knew and very freely used the earlier 

 work of Mark, is by no means a violent one, and 

 seems in many cases to afford the true explanation 

 of the facts. 



The drift of current opinion among specialists 

 may perhaps be stated somewhat as follows: When 

 after the lapse of a generation or so it began to be 

 seen that probably the end of all things was not 

 yet quite at hand, and that in all likelihood the 

 church had still before her a prolonged period of 

 work in the present world, it was felt to be a 

 fitting thing that the most important utterances 

 of the Lord, which the apostles had been in the 

 habit of quoting as supremely authoritative for 

 all Christians, should be preserved from the risk 

 of perversion, interpolation, or oblivion. Thus 

 came to be written down, by some apostolic man 

 very likely by the apostle Matthew himself, a 

 practised scribe a collection of discourses, par- 

 ables, predictions, and aphorisms, not improbably 

 in somewhat loose connection, yet at the same 

 time not without some incidental notice of the 

 circumstances which occasioned a given utterance, 

 or some notes of the dialogue which led up to the 

 weighty aphorism. This collection was (as has 

 been seen ) written in Aramaic. About the same 

 time, Mark, the ' interpreter ' of Peter, as ancient 

 tradition calls him, was arranging in Greek his 

 fragmentary recollections or memoirs of what he 

 had heard Peter tell of the incidents of the period 

 of his own personal converse with Jesus. These 

 he would not scruple to supplement with matter 

 drawn from other sources, so long as he knew it 

 to be trustworthy. Both the above documents 

 obtained wide currency, the former was translated 

 into Greek more or less inadequately, the two 

 were seen to be mutually complementary, and it 

 was inevitable that an attempt should be made 

 to combine them. This was successfully done by 

 the author of the first gospel, a writer in Greek, 

 who had in view in the first instance Jewish Chris- 

 tians, and sought to bring into all possible clear- 

 ness the organic development of Christianity out 

 of the Old Testament dispensation of symbol, 



Srophecy, and promise. After the destruction of 

 erusalem, when Rome had become one of the 

 most important centres of Christianity, there was 

 edited in that city the present form of the second 

 gospel, specially adapted for the apprehension and 

 acceptance of Gentile Christians. At a somewhat 

 later date, and possibly in Rome also, was com- 

 piled the third gospel in dependence chiefly on the 

 ' logia ' document and on Mark, but not without 

 some knowledge of the first gospel, and with im- 

 portant additions from oral or written sources 

 which cannot now be traced, but which probably 

 represented a Judaean tradition. 



Thus it appears that each of the three theories 

 enumerated above has something real to contribute 

 by way of explanation of the origin of the synoptic 

 gospels. Primitive documents are embodied in 

 them ; they contain an element of ancient oral 

 tradition ; and they are not independent one of 

 another. But no one of them is a primary docu- 

 ment in the sense of having been written in its 

 present form from direct personal knoAvledge ; and 

 it is obvious that each succeeding evangelist, in 

 availing himself of the labours of his predecessor, 

 did so with a feeling of perfect freedom, not claim- 

 ing for himself, nor according to his fellow, nor 



