xxvili PREFACE 



by one or two of the beautiful parables in the? 

 twofold and single traditions would have been 

 great improvements ; and might have been 

 effected, even though " Mark " was as much 

 pressed for space as some have imagined. But 

 there is no ground for that imagination ; Mark 

 has actually found room for four or five parables ; 

 why should he not have given the best, if he had 

 known of them ? Admitting he was the mere 

 pedissequus et breviator of Matthew, that even 

 Augustine supposed him to be, what could induce 

 him to omit the Lord's Prayer ? 



Whether more or less of the materials of the two- 

 fold tradition D, and of the peculiar traditions F and 

 G, were or were not current in some of the com- 

 munities, as early as, or perhaps earlier than, the 

 triple tradition, it is not necessary for me to discuss; 

 nor to consider those solutions of the Synoptic 

 problem which assume that it existed earlier, and 

 was already combined with more or less narrative. 

 Those who are working out the final solution of the 

 Synoptic problem are taking into account, more 

 than hitherto, the possibility that the widely 

 separated Christian communities of Palestine, 

 Asia Minor, Egypt, and Italy, especially after the 

 Jewish war of A.D. 66-70, may have found them- 

 selves in possession of very different traditional 

 materials. Many circumstances tend to the con- 

 clusion that, in Asia Minor, even the narrative 

 part of the threefold tradition had a formidable 



