PREFACE xix 



very questionable, ecclesiastical tradition asserts 

 Matthew, Mark, and Luke to be the authors, 

 agree, not only in presenting the same general 

 view, or Si/nopsis, of the nature and the order 

 of the events narrated; but, to a remarkable 

 extent, the very words which they employ 

 coincide. 



II. Nevertheless, there are many equally marked, 

 and some irreconcilable, differences between 

 them. Narratives, verbally identical in some por- 

 tions, diverge more or less in others. The order 

 in which they occur in one, or in two, Gospels 

 may be changed in another. In " Matthew " and 

 in " Luke " events of great importance make their 

 appearance, where the story of " Mark " seems to 

 leave no place for them ; and, at the beginning and 

 the end of the two former Gospels, there is a 

 great amount of matter of which there is no 

 trace in " Mark." 



III. Obvious and highly important differences, 

 in sjyje and substance, separate the three 

 " Synoptics," taken together, from the fourth 

 Gospel, connected, by ecclesiastical tradition, with 

 the name of the apostle John. In its philosophical 

 proemium ; in the conspicuous absence of exorcistic 

 miracles ; in the self-assertive theosophy of the 

 long and diffuse monologues, which are so utterly 

 unlike the brief and pregnant utterances of Jesus 

 recorded in the Synoptics ; in the assertion that 

 the crucifixion took place before the Passover, 



