PREFACE XXVll 



authority of the metropolitan church, there lies 

 the reason for the fact of the preservation of 

 " Mark," notwithstanding its limited and dogma- 

 tically colourless character, as compared with the 

 Gospels of " Luke " and " Matthew." 



XI. " Mark," as we have seen, contains a re- 

 latively small body of ethical and religious in- 

 struction and only a few parables. Were these 

 all that existed in the primitive threefold tradi- 

 tion ? Were none others current in the Roman 

 communities, at the time " Mark " wrote, supposing 

 he wrote in Some ? Or, on the other hand, was 

 there extant, as early as the time at which 

 " Mark " composed his Greek edition of the 

 primitive Evangel, one or more collections of 

 parables and teachings, such as those which form 

 the bulk of the twofold tradition, common ex- 

 clusively to "Matthew" and "Luke," and are 

 also found in their single traditions ? Many have 

 assumed this, or these, collections to be identical 

 with, or at any rate based upon, the " logia," of 

 which ecclesiastical tradition says, that they were 

 written in Aramaic by Matthew, and that every- 

 body translated them as he could. 



Here is the old difficulty again. If such ma- 

 terials were known to " Mark," what imaginable 

 reason could he have for not using them ? Surely 

 displacement of the long episode of John the Bap- 

 tist even perhaps of the story of the Gadarene 

 swine by portions of the Sermon on the Mount or 



